Coaching Videos & Tips - July 11 2019 No.611
SOMETHING TO GET EXCITED ABOUT!
Ordinary everyday life can be just that... ordinary. But the extraordinary is not just before your very eyes, it is within. Let it out.
We all have "positive mental resources" - memories of achievement, elation, excitement. But our subconscious is primed to remember the negative.
Take a little time - now and again over the next couple of days, starting today, to recall your positive mental resources. Don't use them as a comparator to today's normal state of mind, use them as a reminder of how high you can fly. And let that inform your goal-setting.
And, if you'd like to go a little deeper, don't forget that you can browse all 610 "back issues" in The Archive!
You might be forgiven for thinking that today's Quick Tip goes against the grain of living in the here and now. Let me explain.
Ordinarily our experience of the here and now is coloured by our negative mental resources. We're not aware of this, of course, because the process is subconscious. That is why we train our minds to experience the moment - the more we do this, the more aware we become - to the point that, in the inevitability that we find ourselves under pressure, we actually notice our negative mental resources skewing our perspective and our resultant behaviour... this is the everyday path to proper and purposeful focus.
But, all too often, we actually forget what it's like be experience the "highs" of life... so deeply do our positive mental resources become buried by the ebb and flow of everyday life. As a result, we often simply don't believe that we are capable of hitting those highs. I regularly hear people tell me "I've never been happy"; "I can't remember ever being carefree"; "I don't know what it's like to be happy" - stark comments but I'm not exaggerating.
We need to "re-mind" ourselves that we have had, can have and must have the experiences of a life lived in flow and in the zone. We need to know that these experiences are part of the lexicon of who we are. We need to become aware of the resources that we already have at our disposal.
And, most importantly, when it comes to goal setting or what I would call imagining future "Perfect Moments", we need to inform ourselves of the kind of experiences we can imagine by reminding ourselves of those that we have already experienced.
I remember watching the initial hours of the first Gulf War, amazed at the apparent pinpoint accuracy of modern weaponry... "A cruise missile has just flown past my hotel window and taken a right at the Irish Pub" (or words to that effect!).
Roll on nearly three decades and marvel at how the pinpoint accuracy of military technology has evolved... La Patrouille Suisse (the Swiss airforce's aerobatic team) take a bow!
For, last Sunday, La Patrouille was scheduled to perform above a Swiss town marking the 100th anniversary of a famed Swiss aviator. La Patrouille's Sqaudron Leader led the team in their aerobatic display... in the village below, the participants in the Annual Yodelling Festival were bemused!!
The Swiss Airforce explained. Sqaudron Leader, flying a high tech war machine that is not equipped with what you and I have in our ordinary everyday car, GPS, saw the festival tent and picked the wrong town!