Coaching Videos & Tips - November 20 2018 No. 581
DOUBLING DOWN
With the best will in the world, we're all only human! From time to time, when we think the going's getting tough, the automated survival instinct kicks in... and that is never, ever a good thing in today's modern world (unless you're standing in the middle of the road with a 40-ton truck hurtling towards you!)... you need to do something else.
And Don't Forget... every single video, article and tip, all the way back to December 2008, is available in The Archive
Our mind is - bizarre and all as it sounds - designed to play tricks on us, sleights of hand that enable us make it through the day. Turn the tables... time to play some mindgames of your own.
When you find your mind wandering down some dark alley, pull up the handbrake... grab a hold of something real - I mean that literally. It could be the handle of the mug of coffee, the arm of your chair, you could clasp your hands. But don't grab a hold of your hair... you don't want to pull it out!
Over the last ten weeks or so, we had a video series on goal setting and, more importantly, goal setting. It is the subject on which I spend most time with my clients. Many of them, just like one I spoke to a couple of days ago, think that they are faced with binary choices... "I'll stay in this job or take the new one" being the one I most often hear.
Life never presents us with binary choices. True enough, often we face the proverbial fork in the road where there's a left and a right way forward. But, truth is, every minute of every day, unbeknownst to the normal unfocused mind, we're faced with myriad choices that lead us down life's path. These are multiple choices - think of the number of "nows" in one waking day. But, at each step, the choice always boils down to one between mindlessness (the norm) and mindfulness (the extra-norm) and that is, indeed, a binary choice - a little like the unlikelihood of being half pregnant, you can't be half mindful - you either are or you aren't.
The point about this binary choice is that it opens up a world of multiple choices - it isn't about "this job" or "that job" - it is about "what kind of life do I really want?" And, when it comes down to it, the mindful mind opens up a whole wonderful world of possibilities way beyond our normal comprehension. And, even at that - the prospect of having the life you would really like to have - people baulk! But, of course, if one chooses one direction then, by definition, one declines another!
Have I helped you move this debate forward in your own mind? Not in your thinking mind I haven't! But it is your non-thinking mind you need for this one.
Hats off to my Irish friends in the Department of Tourism... the guys who came up with the award-winning idea of calling a load of pre-existing roads, cycle-ways and dirt-tracks the "Wild Atlantic Way". It's such a success that news has reached far-away galaxies.
Three commercial airline pilots - from BA, Virgin and Continental - all reported UFO sightings off the Kerry coast last week... I can only assume the aliens were intent on visiting the Wild Atlantic Way!
Are we alone in the universe? I hope not, I hope, somewhere out there, there's a planet where less than 96% of its inhabitants are normal crazy people.