Coaching Videos & Tips - February 20 2020 No.640
WHICH DO YOU RECKON'S EASIER?
Every moment demands that we make a choice. Using our minds normally, our choices are automated... and that leads to a thought-fuelled chain reaction...
And, if you'd like to know more about making the right choices, you can browse all 639 "back issues" in The Archive!
Touch decision? Yes, how difficult is it to choose between getting on with what you're supposed to be doing or thinking about getting on with it?
Today, choose something - just one thing will do (no point in straining ourselves!) - that you've been putting off, long-fingering or something that you'd prefer not to have to do at all... and, as Nike would have it, just do it.
Better again, why don't you write down beforehand that you've done it and you're all pleased with yourself.
The normal mind, operating on autopilot, makes our moment-to-moment choices for us. If you think about it, this makes an awful lot of sense if the height of our ambition is to make it safely from one day to the next. If you think about it too much, well, as we know, that's a bad thing! But you do need to understand that if you want change in your life - any kind of change at all - you're going to have to stop making automated choices... because automated choices, programmed and patterned as they are, are always, always and forever, the same.
Every single moment of every single day requires choices of us. That's why we're automated. Otherwise, we'd be overwhelmend by the amount of choices we have to make. But, reflect on this: if you make the wrong choice in relation to something apparently really small - like will I finish writing this sentence or get up and have a look at the sun coming up over Mont Blance - even a choice that apparent miniscule is going to impact my ability to... even finish this sentence.
And one little less-than-optimal choice leads to another - and so the monster grows. Every single time we make an inappropriate choice, we've feeding the beast of our own repetitive patterned existence. And we all want more from life than that.
You subconscious mind is great at making what we might describe as best choices (it's often not a question of right or wrong, it's often a question of "will this get me through the day?" or best). You don't even need to be consciously aware of what is going on if you leave your subconscious mind to do what you might think is the heavy lifting but what is, in reality, what comes naturally to a mind that is designed to enable us do what we need to do, moment-to-moment, to get what we really want to get out of each moment (mindful of our bigger goals).
Does this sound familiar? Could I be talking about the fabled Two-Piece Jigsaw? Of course I am.
The present, focused, agile mind always knows what's best to do. It's a completely different type of real-time response to the moment-to-moments of life. You might say it's hard to distinguish between flow (or being in the zone) where we're just doing what we're doing to the effortless best of our ability, or doing what we're doing with such automaticity that it looks as if we're in the zone.
But there's a world of difference. In flow, I am present, experiencing reality and working with it. On autopilot, I am utterly divorced from reality, doing what I'm doing by rote. The former is life as it should and can be lived, the latter is basic existence. Now, which would you choose?
We're all subject to a little normal craziness... so here's my own personal latest example... two actually.
I hate plumbing (it's about the one thing I really do dislike) - it's not that I can't, I just don't want to. And it's impossible to get a plumber around here unless it's a major renovation... the local artisans like to "create something" (maybe it's a French thing!).
So, I've been putting off and putting off replacing one of the bathroom hand basins... yes, I've been thinking about it. I've even woken up one or two nights... thinking about it. And I've kept thinking about it until we've got water all over the floor! So, now, months after I knew it had to be done, with months of mental torture in between, I'm just doing it!
And I don't much care for anything to do with car problems either... and the little car we keep for when the children are here on holidays acted up over Christmas... and they're coming next week for Lisa's birthday. I've been thinking about calling the mechanic (they're easier to get, they're not as artistic as plumbers!)... but that's all I've done. Until yesterday - and, crazy as it sounds - it felt good when I made a simple 'phone call.
You see, I much prefer talking to clients, doing Facebook Live, live webinars with Online Program owners, making videos... anything but the things I'd prefer not to have to do...