Coaching Videos & Tips - June 13 2019 No.607
THERE IS NO ARROW...
This is an important video. It sums up, in less than five minutes, the why and the how of "setting your mind" to achieve your objectives... worth a watch!
Wake up! It's a phrase that's liberally sprinkled throughout Tony deMello's (to whom I refer in today's Reflection) book "Awareness". On autopilot, as you are by default, you are asleep, sleep-walking your way through what you call your life.
So, wake up! Do it now. See, feel, hear, smell and taste where you are right now. Come to your senses. You have five of them, give them the attention they deserve.
And, don't forget, you can browse all 600 "back issues" in The Archive!
I mentioned "approval" in last week's reflection or, what Tony deMello called "the drug of approval"... and we're all addicts. Developmental psychology tells us that from the moment we left the womb (or actually a little beforehand), we've learned to crave the kind of attention and approval that makes us feel whole because , sadly, we don't feel whole ourselves.
And, then it gets even worse between the ages of two and three when we realize, for the very first time, that we're not the centre of the universe! So what do we do, we learn to collaborate, negotate, communicate and manipulate... all with the same purpose in mind - the keep ourselves centre stage, to ensure that we get what we want and, more importantly, to get what we want most of all... approval.
Now, approval is not the same as the recognition I was talking about last week. Approval makes us feel better about ourselves. It papers over the cracks of our perceived or conceptual selves, makes us feel wanted and important. In short, we like to be liked.
However, if you are in charge of your own state of mind; if you are present and focused, you don't need anyone's approval because, as your self-awareness develops, you begin to approve of yourself. This is a journey because, first and foremost, our formative programming is the source of our self-disapproval... you can't just decide to approve of yourself.
Which brings me back to my point a couple of weeks ago... we need mindfulness because without it, our default state of mindlessness will continually disapprove. And we all know where that leads.
Was in Geneva yesterday... all human (crazy) life was on the roads!
First of all, a woman stopped her car on the hard shoulder of the autoroute, got out, stepped out into the road, took out our phone and started taking photos of La Cascade d'Arpenaz... a local and sometimes spectacular waterfall. 100 metres further along, a man had stopped to do exactly the same. But the best was yet to come.
As I approached the Swiss border, two of the three lanes were open, the outermost lane was closed, a big red "X" was shining overhead and the electronic barrier down. And yet, cruising alongside me, in the outside lane, at walking pace, was a big white Audi with a happy couple in the front and a couple of children in the back. The driver, obviously being so mindfully in the moment, cruised smack bang into the barrier! As I drove on, the Gendarmes were surrounding his car, weapons drawn.
So that's why their called crash barriers!