Coaching Videos & Tips - April 19 2018 No. 554
What Price Loyalty?
Loyalty is like charity... it begins at home. And the very first person you need to be true to is, obviously, yourself. And, when it comes to loyalty and the priorities that inevitably follow on, it is actions that speak... words count for nothing.
A little reflection this morning... take a little time (this should definitely not take any length of time) to consider who the most important people are in your life.
Ask yourself how you spend your time, energy and attention with them... do you (think) you have a work/life balance issue? When you're with the people who are most important to you, are you all there or, like all too many of us, are you mentally all over the place?
How do your actions stack up?
Here we go again! Someone has just commented that I'm obsessed with meditation... they didn't comment online, they did it to my face! Fair enough, if you've something to say, it's the best way to say it. The individual in question told be that he'd never understood my obsession with meditation, that he prefered to "hit the road" three or four mornings a week... not short runs either, this guy is a repeat Marathon runner.
As a Marathon runner, he explained, I hit that "runner's high" so I know what that altered state of mind you're always talking about is like... "I get it, I feel it, it's how I clear my mind". And that's cool, he does indeed know the difference between the normal everyday cluttered state of mind and being in what athletes aptly call "the zone".
I explained to him that my obsession with meditation is down to the fact - or mountain of scientific facts - that meditation is, first of all, the only scientifically validated way that we have of deliberately activating the brain's centre of conscious awareness, of Central Executive as Baddely calles it. And it is the only scientifically validated way we have of restructuring of rewiring this key neural component so that it becomes actively engaged in our ordinary everyday lives.
I asked my friend how often he got his runner's high in the office, stuck in traffic or making a presentation... the answer is obvious - you need to be running to get your high. Runner's high impacts the brain whilst running, regular meditation impacts the brain whilst working and living.
There are many many things we can do to hit what the University of Chicago calls "flow" - you can tend your vegetable patch, sit in the middle of a lake fishing, pump iron in the gym, woodwork, run... the list is as diverse as we are as people. But there's only one thing that will change how your brain engages you in your ordinary everyday life.
Abuse takes many forms. This is a story about Lydia - someone her "friends" thought so boring that they nicknamed her (behind her back, of course) "Sparky". Sparky and her husband Liam spent the evening at a refined dinner party... Sparky got just a little tipsy and Liam, ever the Knight in shining armour, helped her to their car as they headed home.
The following morning the party's hostess, Anne, received a 'phone call from Liam... could they drop by - he wanted Lydia to apologize for her behaviour face-to-face. Anne wondered aloud that there was nothing to apologize for but Liam insisted.
Lydia and Liam duly arrived - Lydia apologizing profusely for falling down drunk, knocking over a table of flowers and shouting abuse at a variety of people. "None of this happened" Anne replied... but Lydia insisted it had - Liam had told her just what a scene she'd made and how she ought ot be utterly ashamed of herself!