Coaching Videos & Tips - October 10 2019 No.622
TAKING RESPONSIBILITY
We all get frustrated when we feel we're either not in control or, worse, out of control! There's no point to it because, truth is, we're in control of precious little in our lives. Precious little save for one all important thing... what's going on in our own heads.
And, if you'd like to go a little deeper, don't forget that you can browse all the "back issues" in The Archive!
You can take responsibility for your own state of mind now. In fact, now is the only time you can do it.
So stop. Look around you - see with fresh eyes. Listen - notice how it sounds like someone has turned the volume up when you really tune in to what you're hearing. And breathe - take a couple of big ones! Feel the air in your lungs by fully filling them.
Don't think about what you're seeing, hearing of feeling - we're trying to not think, to be. Take a couple of minutes to be.
Frustration, annoyance, distraction, anxiety, worry... the stuff that everyday life throws at us. Although, when you think about it, that's actually not what happens at all. Someone who annoys us does so because we let them. A situation that frustrates us does so because we allow it. You and I cannot choose what crap life is going to throw in our direction today - but we can choose how we bahave ourselves in the face of what I often describe as "life's waves".
All the challenges of everyday life - even the big and seemingly (at the time) insurmountable ones - are like the waves of the ocean: they rise and fall, they arise and pass. If you choose to allow yourself to be tossed all over the place by these waves, then more fool you - because you know that, moment-to-moment, you can choose to meet the moment with your head firmly screwed on. If you choose to steady the ship, clear your mind, pay attention to what is actually going, life becomes plain sailing... even in the choppiest of waters.
We cannot control what's going on around us. We only add to the mayhem when we allow our automatic mind re-interpret what's going on because, at best it is an approximation of reality. At worst, it is our prejudiced warped idea of what is actually going on: prejudiced because we are constanly pre-judging based on our patterned thought programmes; warped because those thought patterned thoughts bend reality into a shape of our own making.
While we cannot control what is going on around us, we can greatly influence people and events if we are focused, present and paying attention to reality in real-time. When we control our own minds we are active players in the reality of the moment: our presence impacts others - it makes and leaves an impression. That changes the dynamic of the moment and how each moment unfolds from one moment to the next.
If you do what it takes to train your mind to turn up to now, you will greatly influence the course of your life because future nows are dependent on this now, right here, right now. If you don't bother to train your mind to be present, you'd better get prepared to go down with the ship!
As you know, I'm constantly amazed at what goes on in supermarket carparks. Yesterday I was pinned into my car by someone who parked right against me... with about 300 vacant spaces all around me! But this bizarre behaviour is not confined to supermarket carparks - a hospital carpark provides me with this week's story.
Everyday life affords us with plenty of opportunities to do a little "mental exercising" and one such opportunity was grasped by a client earlier this week whilst sitting in his car. As he tuned in to his breathing, a motorist took about four minutes to manoeuvre herself into a parking space right next to him - with a passer-by shouting instructions at the top of his voice.
As I said to him, what a wonderful opportunity to use the potential distraction of the sideshow to more fully tune his mind in to just what he had decided to do!