Coaching Videos & Tips - May 14 2020 No.652
TIPS FOR A LONG DAY
There's nothing better than a good dose of reality to get your attention. Nothing better than the good dose of reality provided by this moment and this moment and...
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No two moments are the same... regardless of how routine or mundane your average day is, regardless of how apparently similar one moment is to the next, every single moment is unique.
As such, anything could happen in any moment: something good - for example, an opportunity worth grasping; something bad - a stumbling block worth avoiding... it means you need to be all present and correct.
So, right now... stop. Notice how you feel - it doesn't matter how you feel what matters is that you notice: it is the first and only step to awareness in and of the moment.
In today's Quick Tip I state what should be obvious to us all (if we had our heads screwed on and eyes wide open): every single moment is a once-in-a-lifetime, never-to-be-repeated experience. In our ordinary everyday lives, it doesn't feel like that - but, sure, aren't you watching the videos and reading these articles so that you can live an extra-ordinary everyday live!
That means you need to step up your approach to each moment. It demands that you tune in and turn up... regardless of the humdrum of everyday life.
Remember this really important fact: in large part, the Flow research - an almighty and extensive piece of work - was carried out amongst people doing the mundanest of apparently menial tasks: turning bolts on the Detroit auto production lines or herding sheep in the Aosta Valley in Italy. It was amongst the most humdrum that Csikszentmihalyi found those who were most immersed in the here and now.
In all the cases that he quotes in his wonderful book, Flow, each had developed strategies for joyfully fitting a cylinder head, chasing an errant sheep, tightening a bolt or tending their vegetables or garden. That's what each week's Quick Tip is all about: helping you develop your own strategies and moment-to-moment tactics to use the props provided by the moment to be in the moment.
We had all better adopt, practice, refine and enhance our strategies and tactics for immersing ourselves in the moment - if we don't we'll miss our own lives.
Talk about missing your own life (that's what today's Reflection is all about): I am reminded of a story told to me by an old and sadly passed-on friend who may, by his own admission, have missed some in-your-face opportunities to strike out and life the kind of life he really wanted... so he told me that afternoon before he passed on.
A few years earlier, he had recounted how he hd travelled overnight to visit his dying uncle. He arrived mid-afternoon to a small bedroom, curtains drawn, dimly lit by the dancing flames in the grate.
Having sat with his apparently unconscious uncle for a number of hours he was startled when the old man grabbed his arm, opened his eyes and asked... "77 years - what the hell was that all about?"
They were his parting words.