THE MIND BOGGLES!! |
Coaching Videos & Tips - September 30 2021 No. 724 |
We all have choices. If we're not in charge of our own state of mind, our mind will make those choices for us automatically. So, the very first choice you need to make is simple... you need to choose to be in control of your own state of mind.
This Week's Reflection
We tend to think of "life choices" as the big decisions we need to make - they might be career or relationship related, business or professional choices - things that we would often refer to as "crossroads". But, you're never going to make it to that crossroads if you don't take each little step to get there!
And it is each little step that we take - daily or even moment-to-moment - that provides us with the most important choice in life: am I going to take this step properly or will I just drift from one step to the next on autopilot. Let me put that another way: are you going to take each step that you have to take to day mindfully or mindlessly?
When we do something as simple as dressing ourselves mindlessly, we've taken another normal crazy everyday step that leads us, inevitably, round and round in circles. When we busy busy busy ourselves mindlessly during the course of the day, we don't move towards life's crossroads... we get stuck. It's one of the most regularly recurring phrases I hear: "I feel stuck".
If you are stuck, it's your own doing. You failed to make the right life choices when it mattered. And the only place and time that does matter is this place and time - here and now. It's the little stuff that matters. It's the little choices we make that provide us with the oppportunities to make big choices. Make the little choices carelessly at your peril.
This Week's Quick Tip
Stop. Take your psychological temperature! How are you feeling? You hot and bothered or as cool as a cucumber?!
How's your mood? What's your state of mind? You're not doing this to start thinking (and over-thinking) about your current "state" - you're doing this to check yourself, pause and make one of life's great choices...
When faced with the choice of turning up to the here and now, fully present and clear or, letting your mood run away with you, which do you choose?
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Normal @%!*#y People!
OK, so this is a very mild example of the dysfunctionality of families but... here we go.
A friend's duaghter celebrated her 22nd birthday on August 22nd and, on August 23rd she received birthday wishes from both her aunt and uncle. In a susbequent conversation my friend casually pointed out that the birthday had fallen the previous day...
At which point both her siblings said, almost in unison, "I think you've got that wrong" - they confirmed their view by (falsely) claiming that they'd always expressed their birthday wishes on the 23rd. As my friend said, they were implying that I was so stupid that I didn't know my own daughter's birthday.
A minor incident? No - just one in a pattern stretching back nearly five decades that had seen a classic example of what we call "sibling rivalry" - my friend was always and would always be "the airhead" - the "stupid one"!