Raising the bar

I sometimes think that we live life like a high-jump competition.

We take on new things and have a good go at clearing the bar.  Every time we succeed, we raise the bar a little higher.  Eventually we’ll raise the bar so high that we can’t clear it any more.

Then we feel gutted.  Beaten.  Defeated.

All those clearances we made before feel like wasted effort – in the end we were a big loser!  All our focus goes on the failure.

This approach relies on some rigid rules about how to be successful in life that are hard-wired into our brains.

The Rules

Rule 1 – Strive to be perfect

We must always push us to keep striving to be higher, faster, stronger.  We strive for perfection, to be better every time.

Rule 2 – Never, ever stop

Like the high-jumper, when we achieve our goals, we barely stop to celebrate.  We have to go and get focused for the next jump.  The next task.  The next hurdle to negotiate.

Rule 3 – Failure is not an option

When we fail, we feel crushed, fixate on our failure.  It feels like the end of the world.

How did this happen?

Evolve or die

I guess we have to thank our ancient ancestors for these rules.

Back then it was survival of the fittest – evolve or die.

You had to keep raising the bar – inventing a better spear, learning how to make fire, how to be a great hunter.

Stopping was not an option – life was urgent and primal.

Failure was the end of the world – literally

I’m still thankful that we have strong survival instincts. Yet in our modern world, I reckon it might be time to break these rules apart.

To live a remarkable, high quality life requires a more flexible approach to life than our primal ancestors took.  We need to break all the rules.

Breaking the rules

Stop pushing so hard

Striving to be perfect is such a heavy burden to carry.  We can always find someone richer, smarter, more charismatic to compare ourself against.

Perfection is just an imaginary concept to compete against – it lacks any kind of definition.  It’s like trying to find the end of the rainbow.

Instead of striving for perfection, how about aspiring to do the best you can?  Frankly you won’t always succeed, however hard you try.  Welcome to human!

If you try to do the best you can, enjoy each experience as much as possible and accept the outcome it is hard to ask for more.

Sometimes that means that you’ll lower the high jump bar rather than raising it, and be happier for it.

Give yourself a break

Never stopping is exhausting.

In the modern world, we have the luxury of being able to stop and reflect.  To smell the roses.  To day-dream, relax, look after ourselves and recharge our batteries.  We have the space to prepare for the next great challenge or project.

For most people life flows in peaks and troughs of energy and activity.  Your body and minds will tell you when it is time to go for it and when to slow down and take a break.  If you don’t listen you’ll be cruising for a break down.

So when you clear a jump, take a while to enjoy it.  Perhaps rather than resetting the bar, find a deck chair and take a nap.

Enjoy failure

“If you’re not failing 90% of the time, you’re not trying hard enough”.

The current world high-jump record is held by Javier Sotomayor of Cuba at 2m 45cm.  Check out his jump.

Sotomayor didn’t just wake up one morning, hop out of bed and successfully jump over 8ft.  Sotomayor’s record is the result of a lifetime of failure.

Javier has inevitably failed many more than he has ever succeeded.  All the hours of training involved failing to clear the bar thousands of times.  He has learned to reflect on and learn from his failures to figure out new approaches to clear the next height.

If he had taken his first failure at the age of 5 as an utter disaster and given up, his personal best would probably be about 40cm.

If you can learn to enjoy failure, to reflect on it, to see the good things that happened as part of the failure, two things happen.

First, life becomes a pleasure all the time, not just when you succeed.

Second, you’ll learn more quickly and find success more easily in the long run

Sometimes in the high jump you’ll fail.  If you can enjoy that failure and learn from it, you’ve succeeded in breaking the rules.

Over to you

• What rules do you follow in life?
• Where did they come from?
• What would happen if you broke all the rules?

Photo credit: Selective Focus Photography,  Lord Jim (Flickr Creative Commons)

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Do what matters

If you’re ready to find work that matters, click here to subscribe and get much more about how to do it

Bored? Frustrated? Stuck in a rut? Work feel meaningless?

You probably spend at least 40% of your waking hours at work.

What would it be like if you really enjoyed that time, if it felt like you were doing something important and meaningful, something that mattered?

I spent a decade working as a forensic accountant.  I hate details and I’m not a big fan of numbers.

I didn’t see the point of what I was supposed to be doing – it felt pointless. I struggled to find any joy in my working day.

Suffice to say that 40% of my life was not ideal.

I put work in a painful box, and kept it away from the rest of my happy life.  I felt drained of my life force every day.

I felt trapped by my job – after all, I was objectively successful, relatively well paid and had the “security” of working for a big global company.  What right did I have to ask for more?

It was only when I talked to a good friend about her career that I started to think differently. She had a clear vision for her work – to improve society using smart, analytical business ideas.  She was completely passionate about her career, dripping with enthusiasm.

My friend did work that she believed made a difference in the world around her – it impacted the lives of others, and the community she lived in.  Whilst I could hardly get out of bed every day, she couldn’t wait to get to work.

I realised that it was possible to enjoy making a living. To find work that felt meaningful.  To make a difference in the world.

This spark inspired me to start my own journey to doing work that matters.  It has been a long road and not always smooth sailing.

Now I help others who wish to find work that matters and I love my work every day.

In talking with hundreds of people who have felt stuck in a career rut and made radical changes in their work lives, I’ve found some five striking reasons to find work that matters:

1 Identity “You are what you do.”

Work is a key component of our identity. Our work helps to define our place in the world.

When you meet someone new, one of the first questions you’ll inevitably be asked is “what do you do for a living?”

Answering that question helps to tell your personal story, the way that others perceive you.

Work helps you to express your individuality and express yourself.

If you love your work, it aligns with your values and who you are a person.

2. Quality of Life. “Work takes up 40% or (much) more of your life”

Given this, work has a huge impact on your happiness and quality of life.

Work can be hugely energizing and bring us a great deal of challenge and joy.  It can also suck the life force from us and leave us devoid of the energy to do more than lift the remote control.

Finding work that works for you can change your whole life.

3. Personal Development. “Work pushes you to grow”

The work we do is one of the main ways that we interact with the world around us.

You can take on new challenges, learn new ideas or skills and develop your ability to interact with others.

You can work with different people who can teach, inspire and challenge you to be the best you can.

The right work stretches you, dares you to be better.

Work allows us you to develop as a person and find out more about the world that we live in.

4. Purpose. “What were you put on earth to do?”

The work that we do can help us to answer some of those bigger questions in life.

I often hear someone saying that they want to  “do something meaningful”, “something that makes a difference to people” or “makes a difference in the world”.

When we find work that we love, it is sometimes called finding our vocation, or “doing what we were put on earth for”.

Finding work we love helps us to make sense of our existence and find meaning in life.

5. Making a Living. “If you have to work, why not do something that matters?”

Like it or not, most of us need to work to make a living.

We need to make money in order to create the life we’d like to live.  Receiving financial reward for what we do enables this to happen.

As we need to work, why not try to do something that we enjoy and that motivates us?

I’ve met too many people who put life on hold for that well paying job they hate, yet the idea of sticking that out for another 20 years is killing them.

These powerful reasons tell me that doing work that matters is vital to living life to the full.  I’ve learned my lesson here, now its..

Over to you

Please share your thoughts on work:

• Why do you go to work?
• How important is to do work that matters for you?
• How have you found work that you enjoy?
• What is stopping you from finding work that you love?

Answers on a postcard – or better still, leave a comment.

If you’d like to explore finding work that matters, take a look at my career coaching services. If you’d like to find out more drop me an email to phil@lessordinaryliving.com and we can find a time to chat.

Photo Credit: Tinyfroglet (Flickr Creative Commons)

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Change your story, Change you life

Part 2 of Spring Clean your mind – subscribe now and get a 6-step process for a clearer mind and better living delivered to your inbox

What stories do you tell the world about yourself?  If you changed it how would your life change?

What is a story and how can it make a difference?  Here is a life-story in 87 words:

“I was born in the north of England in the 1970s during a time of economic turmoil.  I never really felt comfortable or confident as a child, and I was bullied by the other kids in my neighbourhood.  At school, I did reasonably well, somewhere in the middle.  I stumbled my way into an ok university, again with average results.  When I graduated, through sheer desperation, I took a job with an accounting firm – certainly not what I was passionate about, but frankly about what I deserved.”

• How do you respond to this story?
• What sort of person do you think this is?
• How do you think they feel?
• How would you respond to this person if you met them?
• What lasting impression would you have about them?

In less than 60 seconds, this story has set the foundation for how you relate to someone, and we all know that first impressions are hard to change.

This, of course, is my story. Or more importantly, one version of my story.

Everything in this story really did happen to me.  If someone asked me to “tell me about yourself” I could choose to tell this story.

Two truths about storytelling

Two things that happen when we tell stories:

1) We choose which “facts” to include in the story.

The building blocks of stories are experiences and memories, which we often think of as “facts”. When we tell the world our story, we have literally billions of these building blocks to choose from.  In my story I count somewhere in the region of 16 that I selected to let you know about me.

You may think that your story is your story – yet you choose the building blocks in every story you tell yourself or anyone else

2) We add our own editorial.

We choose how to present these “facts”.  We pick the tone and the editorial direction.

Clearly in my story, I’ve chosen to tell a hard luck story.  At every turn I am playing my little violin.

“I was born in a time of economic turmoil” – really?  I was 1 year old at the time and my parents both had jobs.  Yet I chose to add this little zinger in.  I’m trying to make you feel sorry for me.

“I never felt comfortable or confident.”  Find me anyone who can’t say something similar about parts of their childhood.

“About what I deserved” – now I’m busy making judgements about myself.  I’m telling you that I’m not self-confident, that I feel pretty worthless and inviting you to feel the same way.

In storytelling, the narrator chooses whether to create a hero, anti-hero or villain.  We have the choice on HOW to tell the story.

Our life is little more than the sum of all our experiences.  When we tell others about who we are, we tell them our story. We weave together some selective memories from the past, and bind them together with our interpretation of those “facts”.

Choice is good

The important thing is that we always have a choice when we tell any story.  We can pick the building blocks and we have a choice over the narrative glue we use to stick them together.

Once we become aware of what stories we tell and what impact that has on us and the world, we can start to tell stories that we love and stop telling stories that drag us down.

Here is my story again in 87 words:

“I grew up in a happy home and went to a school that I loved.  I thrived and was able to study history at a great university, after travelling the world in my gap year.  I met and married my soul mate along the way.  I’ve been blessed to be able to travel and live in different cultures.  It took me a while to find what I love to do, however now I’ve found my vocation and am thriving by helping others live life to the full.”

Ask yourself the same questions about this person that you did about the first story.

When we change our story, we really can change our world.  We also change how the world around us responds.

Even writing the first story, I could feel myself getting drained of energy.  I literally slumped in my chair, and felt overcome by worry.

Writing the second story, I felt my energy growing.  I felt great about myself, clear and confident.

In my mental spring clean, I’m going to look at the stories I tell the world.  For each story, I’ll ask:

1) Choosing Facts

• What facts did I choose to share?
• Why did I choose these facts?
• What other facts could I have chosen?

2) Narrative / editorial

• What kind of story am I try to tell?
• What is this story telling the outside world about me?
• What is this story telling me about me?

3) Alternatives / changing the story

• What do I really want to tell the world?
• What other stories could I tell that would serve me better?

If you are taking part in spring-cleaning your mind, ask yourself the same questions.

Good stories to look at include

• How you introduce yourself at a work or networking function
• What stories you tell at a job interview
• What stories you are telling on your resume
• What stories you share with your friends
• What stories you tell your family, what stories you tell your other half and if applicable children.

I know I’ve found some stories I love and others that need junking.

Try changing your story and see how your life changes.

Next time – we’ll look at the stories we tell ourselves.

Picture credit : Victoria Peckham (From Flickr Creative Commons)

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Spring Clean your Mind

A five part series to find clarity, focus and the energy to be your extraordinary.  Click here to subscribe and have every post delivered fresh to your inbox!

Spring is in the air!  Nature is waking up.  The earth is blooming with fresh buds, blossom on the trees, a whiff of hope in the air.

Spring is a time of renewal, new life, new possibilities, new hope, new beginnings, fresh thinking.  It’s a time to emerge from the shadows of hibernation, shake off the lethargy and face the future with joy.

An important tradition at this time of year is spring cleaning.  This is the ritual of cleaning house, sprucing up our dwelling, clearing away the clutter.  We cast off the baggage we’ve picked up over the winter.

This year, I’m planning to take the opportunity to spring clean my mind.  I want to sort through some of the dusty old boxes I’ve been storing in my mental attic.  I’m pretty sure that there are some hidden treasures I can polish up and enjoy.  I also know that there is a lot of junk up there that I no longer want to hump around with me.

My Mental Spring Clean will cover four areas:

Stories

We all spend a huge amount of time and energy creating stories about our identity.  We tell the outside world all about ourselves – what we do, our social status, how we interact with others, our expectations from the world around us.

We also tell ourselves stories about who we think we are.  I know that one story I was telling myself was that I had to do everything myself because there is no-one out there who would want to collaborate with me.  Since I recognized this story and started to change it, I’ve found that suddenly people are starting to want to get involved with my projects.  A simple change of story and led to a big difference.

Our stories are usually based on some simple facts, however we choose how to weave these facts together.  We also have the choice of which facts to select in creating the story.  Understanding the power of our personal narrative and how we communicate it can hugely change our lives for the better.  Change our story and we change our life.

Games

The psychiatrist Eric Byrne wrote the seminal book Games People Play in 1964.  He identified the human need for attention and the need to fill the unstructured void of time.  Byrne identified that human interaction is based on conversations and analyzed these transactions in more detail.

He found that almost everyone plays games to get attention from others.  Often we don’t realize what we are doing.  Some of the games Byrne talks about include “See what you made me do”, “Ain’t it awful”, “If it weren’t for them” and “Stupid”.  Any of these sound familiar to you?

I know that I’ve spent most of my life playing “Just good enough”.  In this game, I try just hard enough to get the result I want without standing out from the crowd by being the best.  It is a game to keep me safe from unwanted attention, yet it also stops me from taking risks, really going for it, or feeling fulfilled.

In this mental spring clean, we can assess the games we are playing, figure out which ones are helpful and which ones are holding us back.

Gremlins / The voice in my head

This one is an old chestnut.  I have that horrible voice in my head that tells me;  “you’re not good enough, you can’t do that”, “who would listen to someone like you anyway”, “get over yourself, you’re no-one”.

These gremlins are powerful forces.  Typically we created them in our childhood to protect us from a situation that would have been detrimental.  Perhaps to overcome a fear of being embarrassed, we created a gremlin that stopped us answering questions in class.  The gremlin was there to keep us safe.

Often, this voice in our head has long since stopped being useful.  It stops us from taking action and being our best self with the old warnings.  In this mental spring clean, we’ll look at how to gracefully retire some of these gremlins and free ourselves to be whatever we want to be.

Habits

As children, we sponge up huge amounts from the world around us.  We learn routines about how to live our lives.  We pick up habits about how to behave from our parents, peers and everyone we meet.

Habits can be extremely positive, like a regular exercise routine, the process we use to keep ourselves organised or taking 10 minutes each morning to plan our day.  They can also be unconstructive – procrastinating, avoiding using the telephone when we know we should, drinking to relieve stress.

To some extent, we are what we do, and these habits become a large part of our identity.  We can understand more about how habits form, identify which habits to change and apply some of the rules of change to create positive new habits.

Get Cleaning

This Mental Spring Clean will look at each area in more detail and give practical advice on how to change for the better.  I’m planning to use the journey to create a mind that feels shiny, fresh and new  – ready to face the renewal of spring.  Please join me and enjoy some mental sorting, dusting, cleaning and polishing.  Let the Mental Spring Clean begin.

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Experiment!

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“Change your thoughts and you change your world” Norman Vincent Peale

How often do you try new things just to see what happens?

I love experimenting.  I am constantly looking for fresh ideas and ways of approaching life.  I like to dabble, try things out, spice things up a little.

I’m fascinated by the energy flows that humans have and how we can influence them.  In particular I’ve been playing with how our state of mind and physical presence can affect the energy of the world around us.

Here are some experiments I’ve tried with amazing results – they have helped me to increase my confidence, influence and presence.  If you’re interested, pick one and try it out – then leave a comment to share the results.

1. Fully Present

Spend a day fully engaging with everyone you meet.  Make it your intention to listen to everything they have to say.  Be encouraging and ask them open questions about what you hear.  Create space for the other person to express themselves.   Resist the temptation to bring the conversation back to you and your experience.

What was different about your interactions?  How did you change as a result?

2. Glitterball

Glitter

Walk around imagining that you have a glittering ball of energy and light floating just in front of your chest.  Let the light glow and shine in every situation.  Keep it present as you speak to people.  See how the world responds to you and your energy.  Try this in a crowded bar and see how long it takes to get served.

3. Eyes Wide Closed

Practice walking with your eyes closed.  Find a safe place away from traffic / danger (a path in the park or a garden is good), close your eyes and start walking.  Count your steps and see how many you can manage before your have to open your eyes.  Keep trying and see how far you can trust yourself to go.

4. Energy Field

A two-part experiment.  This one takes a little courage.  Next time you are walking in a city or busy place, try these two different approaches:

1)   Walk with a closed posture and keep your eyes to the floor.  Make yourself feel small.  Keep your energy inside yourself and at a low level.  Don’t get out of the way of oncoming people as you are walking.  See what happens.

2)   Walk with an upright posture.  Open out your chest.  Take up as much space as you can.  Slow your pace a little – feel at leisure.  Open your eyes wide and look ahead.  Make eye contact with everyone you see.  Walk in a straight line without deviation and don’t get out of the way of oncoming people.  See what is different.

5. Hat Trick

Imagine that everyone you meet today is wearing a funny hat.  They can all wear the same one, or each person can have a different one.  Jester hat, cowboy hat, viking helmet, policeman’s helmet, pirate hat, balloon hat, top hat, huge hat covered in feathers, tiara, royal crown.  As you talk with them, keep imagining the hat and seeing it sitting jauntily on their head.  What difference does this make to your interactions?  This works particularly well for uncomfortable situations, or in dealing with difficult people.

What other experiments have you tried?  Please share them with the LOL Community and we can play too!

Photo credit: Chez Worldwide, Fake Allowance (from Flickr Creative Commons)

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Twenty eight minutes.

That is all I have.  Twenty eight minutes to distil my thoughts into a blog post.  I’m in the coffee shop and the battery life of my lap-top has imposed this limit on me.

What am I feeling?  Pressure to create.  Where do I start? How do I start?

Sometimes I feel that my writing just flows.  My desktop tells a different story.  It’s a graveyard of half-written posts, abandoned to the scrap heap of history.  The one about learning to slice onions was particularly awful.  Maybe I’ll post it one day, so you can agree.

Getting started is usually the biggest hurdle.  The blank page.  The blinking cursor.  It’s almost mocking me.  Come on – fill me up.  Bring me to life.  How difficult can that possibly be?

My personal best is 47 minutes.  I’ve sat and stared.  Occasionally an idea popped into my head.  No, who’d want to read about that?  Too boring.  Too trite.  Too patronising.  Even I wouldn’t read that.  Back to staring, and waiting.

If only I was as amazing at everything as I am at self-censoring.  Life would be a breeze.

So how do I get started.  Breaking inertia, getting the ball rolling.  Michael Atavar, author of the brilliant How to Be an Artist probably sums it up best:

“THE ONLY WAY TO START IS TO START”

Pick something, anything to fill the vacuum.  Look at the world around you.  The people, the environment, nature, the sky, the sunlight playing on the water, the feeling you have inside you, the photograph of the old man in the café covering his eyes, the colour of the paint on the wall.  Anything that catches your interest.

Congratulations, you’ve started.  Now do something with it. Write it down, talk about it with someone, draw it, photograph it, video it, write a haiku about it.  The first building block.

Where does this take you?  What happens next, where does your mind draw you?  Find the excitement, open the next door and see what is behind. The rust starts to flake off the mental cog wheels.  Each rotation gets easier.  The rolling stone picks up momentum.  Moss be gone.

Starting something is much easier than not starting something. Not starting is static, frustrating, tedious.

Starting is dynamic, energizing, exciting, creative. It’s not important if you’re trying to write a blog post, get a project moving, find a new job or change the world.  Everything has to start somewhere.

So I pick something.  Twenty eight minutes.  I roll with it.  The wheels turn.  Something else follows.  Suddenly the words are flowing.  I’m riding a train of thought, not exactly sure where it is going.  And then I reach the destination, and I’m pleased.  With 8 minutes still to spare.  Time to start something new….

What are you ready to start?  How long have you been waiting?  How do you get the ball rolling?  What gets you unstuck?  Please leave a comment and let the LOL community know.

Great blogs about starting

Marc Winitz at Black Belt Guide on Making a Breakthrough.

Tess at The Bold Life on Living Without Regret.

Photo Credit: Lord Jim from Flickr Creative Commons

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I’ve developed a sick fascination with the British TV show Masterchef.   In the show 156 aspiring amateur chefs compete for the title of “Masterchef”.  They cook for two judges, an angry bald man and an equally irate Aussie who critique their food and slowly kill their dreams, one by one.

The Impossible Dream

My fascination is not with the food (although the contestant who cooked a tinned peach and tomato bread pudding was pretty special).  It lies with the contestants.  In reality TV, the head-shot is a vital tool for every director.   This is where we hear the ambition, the motivation, the dream.  Here are a few from the series so far:

“I do know what I want to do in life now, my passion is food.  My dream is to run a restaurant in the Scottish Highlands” Andrew (Property Developer)

“I want my life to be completely about food.  I want to do it full time.” Kirstie (Real Estate Broker)

“I’m very passionate about food – its been a hobby up until know and Masterchef will allow me to move it forward” Peter (Police Officer)

“I love cooking and to do that for a living would be a dream.  Masterchef means everything to me” Kerry (Full-time Mum)

Almost every contestant is hoping to make a living from cooking.  I love their passion for food and their huge dreams.  They put their heart and soul into this competition.  Yet at every turn, these lifelong ambitions are crushed.  Only one can be crowned Masterchef.

That Makes Me Mad

The show makes me angry.  When I hear contestant after contestant laying out their dream for a career in cooking I seethe.  “What’s stopping you?” I scream at the screen.  “Just go and do it”.

9 ways to explore your Passion

There are many ways to start making a living doing what you love.  I don’t think that entering a competition with a 1 in 156 chance of winning and no guarantees of success at the end is the best way.

So how could these contestants go about making a living from their passion?  The answer is one step at a time:

1. Do what you love – a lot. Cook, cook, cook for anyone and everyone.  Practice the skill you want to make a living from as much as possible
2. Develop your skills. Go to cookery school.  Learn the basic techniques and advanced skills.  Hone your style, and practice some more.
3. Join groups that share your passion. Find others who love food and build networks with them.
4. Interview people who already make a living from your passion. Start talking to restaurant owners and chefs.  Learn about the profession from those already in it.  Understand what you are committing to.
5. Get experience. Look for an opportunity to cook in a professional kitchen.  Volunteer to clean dishes for free.  Be a sous chef and chop onions all day.  Get into the lion’s den to see what life is really like.
6. Establish your expertise. Blog about food – share your passion with the world and get a following
7. Take small steps to make money. Write a cookbook and sell it online – find a way to make a small living in a risk free way from food
8. Write a business plan – look at the financial realities of being a cook or owning a restaurant and see how that fits with your other values in life.  Get experts and your network to review the plan.
9. Start increasing your commitment. Set up a street stand to sell food, or take a part-time job in a kitchen

None of these actions are too difficult in themselves, yet combined they will help to live the passion.  Following these steps would allow the contestants to test out if this really is the dream they were looking for, and build the skills and experience to succeed.

If you are ready in making a doing what you love, think about how these steps might work for you.  You can start taking action to explore the possibilities and start making the dream a reality.

What is your passion in life?  What would it mean to make a living from it?  What advice can you share on making this happen?  Please share your thoughts with the LoL Community.  Thank you.

Picture credit : Tracy Hunter (Flickr Creative Commons)

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Chillax

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In pursuit of perfection

Have you ever felt like you are trying way too hard?  Are you stretching and straining every sinew striving for the happy life?  Waking at 5am to run 10 miles before an intense yoga session, then hitting the office and working flat out til 8pm.  Cooking that macrobiotic tofu stir fry, washed down with a superfood smoothie, before updating your seven blogs, tending your organic zen garden and finishing the reading for tomorrow’s philosophy class.

Things may not be quite that extreme, but trying to live life to the full all the time can be exhausting.  Perhaps even more importantly, it can also lack zing, spark, energy and just plain fun.

Fade to grey

I have had a fascinating time over the last few months working on improving myself.  I dedicated myself to a regime of meditation, have been training hard for a marathon and cutting back on my alcohol intake.  As a solopreneur with extrovert tendencies I was interested in exploring the concept of being self-sufficient and so spent a lot of time alone in my inner world.  Don’t get me wrong, this has all been great and I’ve learned a lot about myself.  Yet I woke up one morning and realised that somewhere along the way I’d lost myself.  I was trying way too hard.  I had shut down from the world around me and felt like a silent ghost fading into the background.  I’d forgotten to enjoy the journey and have fun.  Time to lighten up.

Back to Life

I took a deep breath and said b*ll*cks to it.  I started talking, laughing, bringing people into my life.  I started to be kinder to myself – if I’m tired I won’t run, if I’m not in the mood I won’t meditate just to tick a box, heck I might even enjoy a glass of wine or three on a school night.  All the pressure and stress I was feeling started to melt away.  It was like taking off a suit of armour.  Slowly but surely the smile has returned to my face.

The Middle Path

Once I stopped trying too hard, balance returned to my life.  I still have ambitions to live life to the full and am pursuing that.  Yet I remember that this means finding pleasure every day, not just chaining myself to a rock in Spartan self-denial.  Every day I’m looking for the middle path – doing something meaningful and enjoyable.

The best thing of all is that this change of attitude has had a big impact on the way the world responds to me.  It sounds clichéd, however when you smile the world smiles back.  Suddenly people are responding differently to me.  Before they stared straight through my ghostly apparition, now they are talking and engaging.  Things are flowing where before they were stuck.

So what have I learned from this?  Here are five simple yet important lessons:

1)   Life has a sense of humour – the world has an astounding way of playing with us.  If you take things too seriously this can be very stressful, if you play along and laugh about it life becomes delightful.  So lighten up and enjoy the joke, rather than being the joke.

2)   People matter – there is great power in exploring our inner-self, yet even monks live in monasteries.  People bring energy, creativity, joy and learning to life.  Surround yourself with great people and revel in it.

3)   Stress is a killer – taking life too seriously is extremely stressful.  All the expectation and pressure feels like wearing a heavy backpack.  Stress drains our energy, dampens our enthusiasm and makes us sick.  Lightening up takes the stress away and helps us live life.

4)   Let it go – there are some things in life that are fundamental and worth fighting for.  There are many more things that are trivial and we should let go.  Letting go of some of this weight brings more joy to life.

5)   Enjoy the journey – it is vital to have some long term vision and goals to motivate us.  Yet we need a balance with enjoying life each and every day to experience true enjoyment.  Life is precious, so enjoy it every day.

Wherever you are on your journey, I think these are valuable lessons to keep in mind.  If you find your face frozen in a grimace, if you can’t remember the last time you smiled (never mind laughed), if you feel like life is an endless hamster wheel, it might be time to ask if you are taking it all too seriously.  Please share your thoughts on these ideas with the world by leaving a comment – thank you!

Photo credit: Sasha W – From Flickr creative commons

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Find your focus

“Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift, that’s why its called the present” Eleanor Roosevelt

Finding your focus feels absolutely amazing!  The feeling of being absolutely together, engaged, energised and able to give our full attention to whatever we are doing is pretty much unbeatable.  The biggest irony is that when we are focused it is completely effortless to be there, yet it can be one of the most difficult things to achieve.  This month on Less Ordinary Living we are going to explore how you can become more focussed, so click here to subscribe and enjoy every step of this journey.

I think of being focussed as living in the moment – being completely present in our current situation.  When our mind is in this state, we are able to give all of our effort and attention to whatever we are doing or whoever we are with.  If you’ve met a master in being focused, you’ll probably also notice that they have a presence about them  Presence means living in the moment and it is another benefit of finding focus.

Probably the biggest single factor that blurs our focus is our mind.  We’ve all been gifted with a powerful super computer in our head.  However this computer keeps running 24 hours a day, throwing out thoughts and powerful emotions.  These thoughts and emotions typically relate to two things:

1)   The past – our brain is constantly picking over all the data it has taken in from our life to date.  It generates thoughts about what we have experienced, our actions, and the world around us all the time.   We pick over a conversation with our boss, how we reacted to our partner last weekend, our apparent failures to stick to our new years resolution – anything really.  These thoughts also generate emotions which are our response to the stories we are creating – guilt, shame, embarrassment, sadness, joy.

2)   The future – our brain is also imagining the future based on the data available to it.  We create endless permutations about what will happen if….  We tell ourselves that we couldn’t possibly do something because we don’t have the skills or we visualise all the terrible outcomes of taking an action (unemployment, bankruptcy, homelessness, starvation).  Sometimes we daydream about the good things that might happen, and then the dark shadow of fear appears – I couldn’t do that it would be too risky.  The emotions arising when our mind wanders to the future include excitement, anticipation and quite often fear.

The problem with all this is that when our mind is stuck in the past or the future, it blurs our focus.  We lose track of what is happening right now.   When our mind wanders we cannot be present – we phase out of conversations, we start procrastinating because we want to avoid our fears, we blow off our to do list because it our project is doomed to failure in a hundred nasty ways we’ve imagined.

So how do we start to deal with this conundrum and become more present and focussed?  Here are two approaches that will start this process based on my experience:

1)   Awareness. The first step is to become aware of what is going on in our head  Learning to detach from our thoughts and emotions is a powerful step in becoming more focussed.  Try this exercise to become more aware of what is going on upstairs:

• Sit still and take a few deep breaths – try to clear your mind – keep a pen and paper handy
• Try to focus all your attention on your breathing for 3 to 5 minutes
• Thoughts will naturally emerge – when they do, simply observe them and write them down, then return to concentrating on your breathing
• When you are finished, review your list.  Consider where the thoughts came from, which ones were taking you to the past and which to the future, and also consider how this frequency of thoughts affects your concentration and focus.

If you repeat this exercise every day for a week, you’ll start to learn how to detach from your thoughts and become more aware of them.  As you get more proficient, start to become aware of your thoughts and emotions throughout the day.  You may find that even after a week you’ll start to find more focus through this practice.

2)   Focus your attention.  If we train our mind to focus and be in the zone for short periods of time, over time we can learn to keep our mind from jumping into the past or future.  This simple 5 minute exercise is a simple way to do this:

• Find an object that you find beautiful or interesting (a flower, piece of art etc).
• Study the object intensely – take in its shape, colour, texture, structure, smell, feel.  Bring all your attention onto this object and bring your mind into focus on it.  Become absorbed in the object and make it the sole point of your attention for 5 minutes.
• If thoughts arise simply acknowledge them and move your attention back to the object in hand.
• Enjoy this time and at the end, reflect on what it felt like to be really present and focussed.

Again if you practice this exercise repeatedly you’ll find your concentration and focus improving.  You’ll learn to clear your mind of distracting thoughts and emotions from the past or about the future.

So we’ve started our journey towards finding that amazing feeling of focus consistently.  Tune in next time to continue finding your focus, or click here to subscribe so you don’t miss it.

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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

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