I hope that the myriad of topics I cover have in some way inspired you to think differently, to focus more on yourself, to take responsibility for you own developmental journey, and piqued your interest in learning more about how your brain works, how we learn, how we create habits, how stress affects us, and how to use all of that to create a life we want and enjoy.
There is a lot here, and if you have managed to develop an always-learning approach to life, i wanted to share 6 simple pieces of advice to keep you moving forward.
Share Your Process
Share openly and authentically with those whose lives you touch both your struggles and your progress on your path of development and growth. The choice to do so is both empowering and emancipating, that smidgen of vulnerability required here is the difference between thinking about and actually doing what you know will give you the life you want. And it will also liberate others to follow their desires and show them the way to do so.
“Tell the story of the mountain you climbed. Your story could become a page in someone else’s survival guide.” – Kim Banwell.
Create A Reason
The challenges of the path you have chosen may, on more than one day, hardly seem worth confronting unless you accord them greater meaning than the simple triumph over them. The question must be asked “why?” then your answer must be given. Why is the most powerful question you can ask yourself, but you must answer it honestly.
Your path is not without purpose – we all have one and it is as unique to each of us as our fingerprints. Your growth does not only serve you, it also shows a path for others, adding knowledge and options into the collective bank to support evolution. To quote Donald Neale Walsch “it shall leave in the wake of its advancement the ladders and stepping-stones by which those who follow may do so more rapidly.”
“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” - Nietzsche
Express Gratitude
This is the most powerful tool you have. Gratitude can be a selected energy, and not merely an automatic response. When you actively choose to be grateful for everything presenting itself in your life (and I do mean eeeeeverything), it sets up an energetic signature that washes over and impacts the energy of whatever is now arising. This can transmogrify (defined as “to transform, especially in a surprising or magical matter”) the presentation itself – to say nothing of your entire life.
The power to be grateful for even the negatives things – to embrace the lessons that pain, frustration and failure can give us are key to moving forward with growth and wisdom are our core.
“There is a type of power that accompanies true gratitude that may not be understood when you are in the middle of a crisis. Listing your many blessings is positive action at its finest and can be the catalyst that you need to attract the solutions or strength you need.”
Choose A State Of Being
Do this in advance of anything you know you are going to think, say or do. Life has very little to do with what you are doing and everything to do with what you are being whilst you are doing it.
The surprising thing about this is that through pure intention “beingness” is transformed from reaction to creation. It is no longer something that arises out of an experience, but something that you put into an experience. This is both empowering and freeing for us and those who see us being it.
Take A Moment
Most often, you respond to whatever is happening in your life – whether it is an illness, a disappointment, a happy surprise, a success; whatever it might be – from the logic centre in your mind. You analyse the data that your mind holds regarding the experience at hand, and that is the place from which your reaction emerges (and we know from all the previous blogs that’s our sub-conscious learnt beliefs and behaviours).
If you take a second, it is possible for you to cultivate the ability to respond from the wisdom centre in your soul. Here, the data regarding the experience at hand is unlimited and expansive, and includes considerations and understandings that you will not have even conceived of previously.
Taking a moment whenever anything is confronting you – something that you call “good news” or something you call “bad news” – and get present in the conscious mind, so that you can make the choice to not restrict yourself by what your sub-conscious knows and instead free yourself to all possibilities and options – essentially I’m asking you to act as if you are out of your mind.
Development and Growth is just personal change – any changing anything requires us to break out of the known and be open-minded, often open-hearted, to different viewpoints, new data, others’ experiences and make ourselves vulnerable to learning something new and choosing to change a pattern/habit or belief.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” – Albert Einstein
Collaboration not Competition
All of us were brought up on the concepts of Darwin’s theory of evolution and the principle of “Survival of the Fittest” which asserts that competition is what drives us forward and is a necessity. Whilst this is still a common- held belief, it is disproven science. Modern science has proven the Jean-Baptise Lemarck who wrote his theory of evolution in 1809 way before Darwin, was far more accurate. His theory was based on collaboration and adaption using the environment as cues.
By keeping this at the forefront of your mind and seeing every and any interaction with a colleague (in your team or elsewhere in the company) as an opportunity to collaborate for the evolution of the culture and progress. This does not mean always agreeing, but it does mean thinking harder about what we want to stand for – holding true to that, but in a way that encourages others to listen, be open-minded and work with not against each other.
“We can get so much further in life through collaboration rather than competition. 1 plus 1 equals 11 not 2.”
“If you want to be incrementally better, be competitive. If you want to be exponentially better, be cooperative.”
Until next time...
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