Comments (15)

By Phil, February 15, 2010 1:49 pm

Reading Time: 3 minutes and 1 second

Find your Purpose

To receive a regular reminder that life is too short to be ordinary, click here to subscribe and help us reach our goal of 500 subscribers  (currently 175).

What can we learn from a man stripped of all his worldly possessions and dignity?  The psychologist Viktor Frankl, author of Man’s Search for Meaning spent four years in Nazi concentration camps during World War II.  He survived some of the most inhumane treatment in modern history.  As a doctor, Frankl focused his energy and strength on studying those around him during this deprivation.  He learned a huge amount about the importance of living a life of meaning.

Everyday Life in Auschwitz

Frankl interviewed hundreds of inmates he treated in camp hospitals.  He identified that those who survived the illness and mistreatment almost always had a deeper meaning or purpose in their lives.  In Frankl’s own case, he was determined to survive to be reunited with his wife, the love of his life.  This drove him to dig frozen earth, endure countless beatings and fight off the scourges of malnutrition and tetanus for four years.

What Makes Us Give Up?

Frankl watched fellow inmates succumb to what he called “giveupitis”.  One day, they would simply lie in bed and refuse to get up, ignoring beatings and abuse from the guards.  At this point, Frankl sadly noted that they had given up their reason for living and their death was usually came within a day or two.  Without purpose they had no reason to go on.

The Power of Purpose

Frankl’s groundbreaking work has huge significance for your life. Without meaning, life can be tinged with a deep seated feeling of futility and emptiness.  Frankl saw this manifest in “giveupitis” amongst his patients and fellow inmates.  Today this lack of meaning can lead to a lack of motivation, energy and excitement.  It can hold you back from chasing your vision and goals and keep you stuck in the ordinary.

Finding a deeper purpose provides the motivation to strive for success.   It helps with springing out of bed in the morning and providing the energy to push for what is really important.

How to Find your Purpose

Ask yourself the following questions to identify your purpose:

Overcoming Challenges

• Think about your toughest situations when you’ve been closest to giving up. What was the spark that kept burning and got you through?
• What did you continue to believe in?

Greatest Days

• Think about your greatest and most fulfilling moments in life where you felt most proud?
• What was your driving force to achieve these amazing feats?
• What makes you feel proud about what you did?

People Power

• Who are the most important people in your life?
• What do they mean to you?
• How do they inspire and motivate you?

So, what is your purpose?  How do you plan to make the most of that today and every day?  What have you learned from Viktor Frankl’s experience?  Please share your passion with the LOL Community by leaving a comment. And if you have time, pick up a copy of Man’s Search for Meaning, a truly inspiring read.

Photo credit: Studio 494 from Flickr Creative Commons

Comments (11)

By Phil, February 11, 2010 4:49 pm

Reading Time: 2 minutes and 39 seconds

Love

To get a regular dose of love sent to you inbox, click here to subscribe and never miss another post.

St. Valentine’s Day.  What was your first reaction?  February 14^th is a day that divides opinion – you either love it or loathe it.  For one day, the world is supposed to become flooded with modern day Romeos wooing their Juliets.   We’re encouraged to reveal our secret crushes, send cards, bestow flowers and romantic gestures on the objects of our affection.  Love is in the air, cupid cruising with his bow and arrow.

Personally, I don’t hold much affection for the Hallmark Holiday this has become; I find that once celebrations get tinged  by commercialism they lose their meaning.  I’ve spent too many years crammed into battery farm restaurants, nose to tail with 500 other nauseating couples, eating the overpriced menu and drinking the underwhelming cava.  However, St. Valentine’s Day is an opportunity to think about love and how it fits into our lives – regardless of our romantic situation.

What is love?

Love is one of the most used and abused words in our language.  It is much more complex than the romantic love that St Valentine’s Day now emphasizes.  In its simplest form, love can be defined as a “profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person”.  Love is a feeling of concern, empathy and compassion towards another living creature.  When we feel love, just for a split second, we go outside our head and put ourselves firmly into the shoes of someone else.  We feel their pain, we share their joy, we put their interests on a level with ours.  Love in its purest form is about understanding how someone else feels.

Love is All Around

Take a walk around today and you’ll see love in unexpected places.  The patient mum caring for her screaming toddler, the group of friends sharing a joke on the bus, the young lady giving up her seat for the pensioner.  These actions are all based in love, a feeling of empathy for another person.  Love is a shared experience where people recognise that they are not the only person who matters in the world.

Almost every human belief system has a version of the maxim to love your neighbour as you love yourself.  This rule is never reserved for one day a year, it is for every day living.  Loving others helps to break the bubble of self-absorption that humans can develop.  It opens us up what is going on the world around us.  Showing love and compassion to others allows us to receive love in return.

Give a Little Piece of your Love

I think I’ve found my peace with St. Valentine.  The real St. Valentine was brutally stoned to death for protecting outlawed Christians in the Roman Empire.  He gave his own life to protect others, the ultimate act of love.  Two millennia later, his example has reinforced the importance of treating others with respect, compassion and care.  I’ve started to see love all around me in the simplest human moments.  I will strive to treat each person I encounter with the love that I would like to receive.  Not just today, but every day.  Happy Valentine’s Day.

Photo credit: Mohsen

Comments (11)

By Phil, January 25, 2010 6:17 pm

Reading time: 3 minutes and 15 seconds

Two powerful ways to boost your focus and improve productivity every day – click here to subscribe and never miss another post

Find your focus - picture: Sergi's Blog

“Its such a perfect day – I wish I spent it with you” – Lou Reed, Perfect Day

Imagine a perfect day of focus.  From the minute you open your eyes, you are energised, in the zone and ready to go.  Throughout the day, you effortlessly work through your top priorities and get them done.  You deflect the interruptions with grace and constructively deal with the challenges that arise.  As you wind down at the end of the day, you feel fulfilled, content and satisfied.  This may sound unrealistic, unobtainable and a little bit crazy, however why not try to get as close as possible to this?

I’ve struggled with finding focus on a daily basis.  I’m a well known procrastinator, particularly when it comes to doing the most important (and for that read scary) things.  Yet recently I’ve found two really powerful techniques that have helped me immensely to move closer to having the perfect day, and here they are:

1. Plan out your day in scrupulous detail

One problem I had with being focussed and effective each day was that I didn’t even know what focus looked like.  To change this, I have taken to setting aside time each morning to create an incredibly detailed plan of attack for the day.  Starting with my prioritized to-do list (I’ll share how to create this later in the week), I work out the key priorities for the day – this includes things from work, my personal life and also how I’m going to take care of myself.  I use my calendar to see how much time I have available to make sure that this is realistic.  I then create an incredibly detailed programme for the day ahead with a blow by blow account of EXACTLY what order I will do everything and the timing for this.  For example today’s schedule looks like this:

8.30am Meditate

8.45am – Send key emails (and I have a list of exactly which ones)

9.15am – Clear out email accounts

10.00am – Go to Coffee Shop – Write four blog posts

12.30pm – Return home

12.45pm – Run – 4 miles tempo run

1.15pm – Post run stretching, shower

1.40pm – Lunch – spaghetti bolognese

2.00pm – Put postings on Linked In

2.30pm – Business Telephone calls (again I have a list of which ones)

3.30pm – Design ideal client experience

5.30pm – Scheduled business call

6.00pm – Do Crossword and relax

6.30pm – Send out personal emails

7.00pm – Cook supper, relax and read

Anyone who knows me will realise that this is the antithesis of my laid back personality.  Yet the remarkable thing is that it is 11.38am and I’m in the coffee shop finishing my second blog post of the day.

I’ve found that knowing what you want to achieve creates a real sense of focus and even if you follow the plan with 80% success, those days feel remarkably productive.  Mapping out your perfect day in obsessive detail is no guarantee of success every time, yet it gets you focused on what is most important and helps to reduce the draw of distractions during the day.  It is easier to get back on track and know what to revert to if you are thrown a curve-ball.

2. Act like you are being audited

This powerful technique came from the Change your Thoughts blog.  The key here is to act as if your actions are being audited each day.  Imagine that at the end of each day you have to justify what you did to a super critical auditor who will make you account for every second.  How easily could you justify what you did today?

To put this technique into practice, start out by “meeting the auditor” twice a day for a week – at lunchtime and at the end of the day.  Each time you meet, you need to justify your time since the last meeting – explain what you have done and what makes that important and useful.  You also have to explain your less productive time – that half hour on Facebook, the twenty minutes in the bathroom, the 3 hours watching TV.  Remember the auditor is not there to judge, only to listen and record.

The objective of this process is not to beat ourselves up, or to take all the fun out of life, it is simply to find focus.  One of my primary values is to take better care of myself and develop inner peace and happiness.  For me, finding time to meditate, run, read and simply relax and get quality time is justified and I can look the auditor in the eye with good conscience.   However, if I goofed out on the important deadline that I had and didn’t make an important call to go running, that is harder to justify.

Over time, your inner auditor will become internalised.  You’ll feel them looking over your shoulder as you start your game of Tetris and go back to finishing your spreadsheet.  It will become easier and easier to justify your time at the meetings as you find your focus improving.

So the perfect day may not happen every day, however using these techniques you can get closer to a focused and effective day to day existence.  As with all personal change some days will be better than others and you’ll need to be kind to yourself when the less good days come along.  However with persistence and patience you’ll find the Perfect Day may just be possible.  Let me know how your perfect day is, by commenting.

Comments (3)

By Phil, January 15, 2010 12:19 pm

Reading time: 2 minutes 48 seconds

The next in the series on finding your focus – click here to subscribe and never miss another post.

Oprah Winfrey is one of most focussed people on plant.  From humble origins she has built a one woman media machine.  Over the last 25 years she has logged over 4,000 hours of the Oprah Show, speaking to audiences in over 100 countries.  Her empire includes a magazine, book club and one of the world’s most popular websites.  Oprah is the only person to have appeared on every Time Magazine list of the 100 most influential people in the world every year since its inception.  When Oprah speaks, the world listens.

So how does Oprah stay so focussed.  Here are 4 of her secrets:

1) Be Authentic – Find your Vocation

“The Biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams”

Oprah walks her truth.  Her personal drive comes from the feeling that she was put on earth for a purpose.  We all have a unique set of skills, strengths and abilities and personal values to serve.  Finding a vocation – what you were put on earth to do – creates massive personal focus.  Think about what you were put on earth to do – it needn’t be as grand an ambition as Oprah, Gandhi or Martin Luther King – perhaps it is to be a great parent, to care for others in your community, or to design a new technology to help mankind.  If you can find your purpose, you’ll feel the urge to use every second on earth to achieve this.

2) Work Smarter – be more effective than everyone else

“The Big Secret in life is there is no Big Secret.  Whatever your goal, you can get there if you are willing to work”

Oprah is renowned as one of the hardest working people on the planet – she never stops.  Yet her secret is that she has learned to work effectively – to put her energy and attention into the most important activities and let the less important things go.  Learning to work smarter is a key way to find more personal focus – it will free up energy and help you feel more fulfilled.  Later in this series, I’ll share some key ideas on how to work smarter and be more effective.

3) Never give up – don’t let them drag you down

“We are each responsible for our own lives – no other person is or even can be”

Oprah could have given up before she even started.  What are the odds of a girl born into poverty in rural Mississippi to a teenage mother becoming one of the most influential people on the planet.  Early in her career many media insiders were scathing of her rise, Time Magazine writing “In a field dominated by white males, she is a black female of ample bulk. As interviewers go, she is no match for, say, Phil Donahue.”  Her secret is the ability to live in the moment and to face triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters the same.  Oprah doesn’t’ operate in a rose-tinted wonderland where everything is wonderful.  She takes a realistic, pragmatic approach to success and failure.  She looks for the learning in every success – how to be better next time.   Think about how you can cultivate a realistic determination to achieve your vocation.

4) Help others – Follow a Higher Calling

“What I know for sure is that what you give comes back to you”

Oprah is a woman on a mission.  Everything she does is designed to help other people to make the most of their lives.  By putting the welfare of others above that of herself, she has selected a motivation beyond serving her own ego and needs.  Finding a motivation that goes beyond ourself is powerful way to increase our focus.  When others are depending on our actions, it is harder to find an excuse or wimp out of helping.  To increase your focus, consider the motivation behind your actions and look for opportunities to serve the greater good where possible.

Of course, there is only one Oprah.  Finding your focus is a very personal process, yet we can learn from her example.  One way to this is to try modelling Oprah.  Pick a day, think about the focus needed to achieve what she has and then try being her for the day.  Concentrate on acting authentically, being as effective and focussed on your priorities as possible, being indomitable and genuinely helping others.  What did it feel like to be Oprah for the day?  Please leave a comment and let everyone in the Less Ordinary community know.

Comments (6)

By Phil, January 6, 2010 11:36 am

Reading time: Under 2 minutes

2010 is here, the first year of a new decade.  This decade is so new that it doesn’t even have a nickname yet.  For me, this symbolic change brings with it a combination of emotions – excitement at the possibilities ahead, trepidation at some of the complex challenges out there, but most of all hope for the amazing possibilities in the future.

At Less Ordinary Living, the vision is to help you live your life to the full.  I believe that everyone has vast potential to make a difference.  This year my goal is to be a catalyst to help you make the most of your potential and fulfil your ambitions.  With dedication and support, everything is possible and it would be an honour to be part of your support system this year.

The plan this year is to cover key topics to help you grow and develop each month.  The theme for January is Finding Focus in 2010.  Our worlds are becoming so complex and full of distraction that it can be a real challenge simply to stay focused on what is really important.  Over the next month, I’ll cover some key techniques and ideas for developing an inner sense of calm, taking control of your time and increasing your personal effectiveness.

If you think that this would be helpful for you, please do subscribe by clicking here to make sure you don’t miss any of the series.

Beyond January, we’d like your help to shape the future direction of Less Ordinary Living.  Please leave a comment or email me at phil@lessordinaryliving.com to share:

What are your goals and plans for this year?

What are the biggest challenges you face?

What are you excited about?

What are you afraid of?

How can we best support you in fulfilling your potential in 2010?

I look forward to hearing from you and sincerely wish you a very Happy New Year.

Phil