Coaching Videos & Tips - January 2 2020 No.633
MY VERY OWN NEW YEAR'S MESSAGE
Literally leapt out of bed at 6.30 this morning to make this video - I think it contains an important message because, with the best will in the world, very often what appears to be an inconvenient now confronts us... and there's going to be plenty of those over the year ahead.
Text in The Archive!
What do you think of this now? Do you think what you're doing now is the right thing? Are you over-thinking now? Are you over-thinking what you think about yourself now? We all know that over-thinking actually divorces us from now.
How do you feel now? How do you feel about you now? How do you feel you're doing now?
Take a couple of minutes and consider this next question carefully: what do you believe you should be doing now, mindful of what you want out of 2020?
I ask one very particular question in today's Quick Tip - how do you feel about you now? And, this morning, this Reflection is actually about the reflection you see when you look in the mirror... something that I'd really like you to reflect upon!
How we feel about ourselves is something that is largely automated and taken for granted. It is conditioned and programmed from our early formative years. As such, it is definitely not something that, in the cut and thrust of everyday life, we should spend too much time dwelling on... a little navel gazing could well have brought about an abrupt end were we so caught up in revery when the proverbial tiger leapt from the bushes!
Yet, how you feel about you impacts everything, starting with the very energy of which your apparent solidity is composed. You know how it feels when your own energy levels are depleted or low. How you feel about yourself impacts what thoughts you select as part of the process of evaluating what's going on - and that directly impacts your current version of "reality" moment-to-moment, which dictates your behaviour and creates your life. It's a circle that is often vicious.
We often use phrases like "self-limiting beliefs" or "self-sabotaging thoughts" to describe how we feel about ourselves when we don't match up to our "expectations". I've put this last word in inverted commas too because, in actual fact, we automatically always live down to our expectations... until we do something about it.
That something is not encapsulated in today's Quick Tip - today's Quick Tip is just a very quick "taking stock" - we all need to regulalry evaluate and re-evaluate how we're doing. The something that we all need to do to sidestep our self-limiting thoughts and beliefs is to... stop thinking and come to our senses. I suspect you might jusy know how to do that.
You might expect a little New Year cheer this week - but you might also understand, as you read what follows, that that cheer should be something we carry with us in every now.
Many years ago a good friend recounted his final conversation with his elderly uncle. As he lay on his deathbed, his final words to my friend were "Seventy-nine years of nothing...what the hell was that all about?"
A few years later, I talked to my dear friend as he lay on his deathbed, at thirty-nine years of age... he echoed his uncle's sentiment. At, at least, three points in the preceding decade he had passed up opportunities to do exactly what he wanted to do with his life - for fear of what exactly he couldn't say. And, now, it was too late.
When I first studied Buddhism, I was confounded by the Buddha's writings entitled Meditations on Passing a Graveyard. Now I understand. This is not a dress rehearsal - this, now, is you opportunity to live your life to the full.