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By Phil, March 11, 2010 3:48 pm

Warning: This post contains 5 powerful ways to bring more energy, joy, confidence and influence into your life.

Reading time: 2 minutes and 48 seconds

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)

Comments (21)

By Phil, March 8, 2010 4:28 pm

Reading time: 2 minutes and 10 seconds

Get started today

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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

Comments (18)

By Phil, February 18, 2010 5:29 pm

Reading Time: 3 minutes and 12 seconds

Get off the Hamster Wheel

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Have you ever felt like you’re stuck on the hamster wheel – running as fact as you can and going nowhere?

Life can be seen as the sum total of all the choices we’ve ever made.  Every day we’re faced with hundreds of decisions – some inconsequential such as which brand of toothpaste to buy, some very important such as choosing a new career direction.

It is what it is….

Many people believe that our life is determined by fate and that there is no way to influence what happens to us.   This theory suggests that we have no choice in any events in our life.  Living by this philosophy can lead to giving up on life.  In this world, our life is little more than a piece of driftwood floating on the stream of fate.

The Smarter Choice

The alternative mindset is that we live in a world full of choices.   From this view point, the world fills with possibility.  In a given situation we face a huge range of options. If you are in a meeting with your boss, you could choose to answer her questions earnestly and to the best of your ability, you could choose to be challenging and stand up for your views, or you could choose to run out of the door screaming and never come back.   Each choice has potential consequences and inevitably some consequences may appear preferable to others.  However, we have the power to choose.

The Hamster Wheel

Even if we believe in choices, it is easy to close ourselves down to our options.  We can get into a routine or a rut.  Life becomes about survival.  Welcome to The Hamster Wheel.

Getting off the Hamster Wheel can give us tremendous energy and power.  It allows you to feel in control of a given situation.

Choose Life

Over time and through self-reflection we can learn to slow down and see the bigger picture.  Once we realise we have options, life stops being about survival and starts to become about possibilities.  We step off the hamster wheel.

When we are making deliberate choices it becomes easier to take responsibility for our actions.  When we choose and commit to our actions we can own the results regardless of the apparent level of success.   We make choices, we commit to them, we accept the results and we grow as a person.

Exercise – Getting off the Hamster Wheel

This exercise is a quick way to get off the hamster wheel and learn to see all the options.  You can work through it in advance to plan your biggest decisions by doing it every morning.  This also works in the moment when you feel stuck on the hamster wheel.  Asking these questions opens us up to the reality that we do face options.

• What is the challenge that I face today / am facing right now?
• What are my options?
• What other choices could I make (regardless of how feasible they may be)?
• What could I do if I had no fear?
• Which choices best align with my values and who I am as a person?
• What support can I get in taking this choice with power and committing to it?

Getting off the hamster wheel and choosing life is a tremendously powerful approach to life.   Try it today and see what happens.

Picture credit – Sebastien Davies (from Flickr – Creative Commons)

Comments (15)

By Phil, February 15, 2010 1:49 pm

Reading Time: 3 minutes and 1 second

Find your Purpose

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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 (16)

By Phil, February 9, 2010 4:14 pm

Reading Time: 2 minutes 12 seconds

Life's Too Short

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“Every morning, we are born again”  Buddhist Maxim

How do you get through the day?  A simple question.  What keeps you going when the going gets tough?  One common way is to put our heads down and soldier on.  Humans have a remarkable ability to put on a suit of armour that protects them from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.  Another way is to ride the emotional roller-coaster.  Like all roller-coasters we tend to feel sick with fear and anticipation on the way up and scream on the way down.  These approaches both get us through the day, but it feels like a struggle to survive.

Life shouldn’t be ordinary and it shouldn’t just be keeping our head above water.  It’s too easy to forget that our days are limited and precious.  I’ve found that creating some daily principles for living help me to be more intentional every day.  It gives me a foundation for how to approach life.  These rules help me to live life to the full.

What do daily principles look like?  Well here are mine:

1. Life is a Precious Gift – Make the most of it
2. Treat others as you’d like to be treated
3. Be authentic and true to your values
4. Find joy in everything you do
5. Inspire others to make the most of life
6. Work is love made life – put your heart into everything that you do

I created this list a few weeks ago.  I took myself out on an hour long run with the plan to capture the essence of how I’d like to live my life.  Running is my most creative place and the ideas just started to flow.  At the end (after mopping my sweaty brow), I wrote down my first draft.  I stewed on these for a day or two, made some changes and suddenly I had this powerful list.  Now I have this list up in my office, on my fridge door, and carry it around on a card in my wallet.

We are born again each morning .  I love to review these ideas every morning to get my head in the game.  I’m able to set my intention for how I’d like to be that day.  Just to be reminded that life is precious every morning is crucial.  When I wake up feeling sad, stressed or unexcited I’m reminded to find joy in life. Most importantly the principles take away the temptation to simply survive – I remember that life is too short to be ordinary.

What are your principles?  How do you remember to live life, rather than just surviving it?  Please leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Picture credit – Moustaque