Observing Your Thoughts

Have you ever taken the time to truly observe your thoughts?

You have thousands a day. Many are trivial. Many are ridicules. Some are emotionally charged and can hijack your attention for hours. A few may be sublime.

Have you ever gone through the exercise of simply choosing not to engage or entertain any of the thoughts that are auditioning for your attention?  If not, I encourage you to try it sometime.  Simply sit down in some quiet place and remove your attention from any thought that presents itself to your awareness.

Some thoughts will be easy to ignore. Others will keep coming back.  However if you keep letting them go, keep shifting your attention to anything else  - your breath, an inner feeling of affection, simply experiencing the nuances of a current sense perception; sight, sound, feeling, etc. – what do you notice?  After even 10 minutes of such an exercise, what do you feel?

As Pascal once said, “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” 

If you spend even 10 minutes a day with the intention of thinking less, and experiencing more, it can bring great gifts into your life.  (I have seen this very experiment create a lot of value to hundreds of life and business coaching clients over the years.)  Gradually you can begin to use the mind for practical issues, but not refer to it constantly for a sense of identity.

Coaching And Enlightenment.

Recently someone asked if I thought that coaching could help a client achieve enlightenment.

The short answer is no.

In my experience, a genuine seeker with a longing for “Enlightenment”  (such an overused word) is not going to get what they want through conventional coaching.   They might become more spiritually aware. They might become more aligned with their higher values. They may benefit in a dozen other valuable ways.  But true awakening involves the actual falling away of the part of us that is seeking to get better, or attain some object called “enlightenment”. 

This is not something that you can even speak of effectively, because any concepts simply create more fuel for the part of us that is trying to figure it all out.

In my opinion, 999 out of 1000 people called to this sort of inquiry need to find a teacher and a path that resonates with them.   The right teacher will meet them wherever they are, in their journey to higher awareness, and help them eventually recognize that it is only when the mind stops seeking, that it is one with what is.

For those of you looking a place to start, I suggest you visit http://www.stillnessspeaks.com/ and watch some of the videos of various established teachers.

Good luck,

Steve.  

If You Were Told To Change or Die, Could you Do It?

Imagine your doctor sits you down and tells you on no uncertain terms, "If you don't change your lifestyle, you will be dead in a year." What do you think the chances are that you would actually manage to eat a little better, exercise more, etc.?

The answer, and this has been well studied, is 1 in 7.* Shockingly, only 1 out of 7 patients that have the "change or die" conversation with their physician, are able to change their behaviour. And the point is, if 6 out of 7 of us have trouble making changes when our life literally depends on it, is it any surprise we struggle to make so many other changes in our lives, careers and businesses?

As we approach the time of the year when many of us reflect upon our living and consider the changes we want to make in the New Year, it is important to remember there are some changes we can make by ourselves but many more we simply cannot. These latter type of "adaptive" changes are those bigger challenges that require a change in mindset and behaviour. These types of changes take time, reinforcement and the power of relationship to help us revise limiting thoughts and assumptions. In short, there are changes that are very difficult for us human beings to do on our own - even when our life depends on it.

So if you are contemplating making some important changes this year, remember that your best intentions and willpower may simply not be enough to guarantee you the results you seek.

Thus, to better increase your odds of success, here are a few tips:

- Make sure that whatever you are trying to do, really does line up with what is truly important to you. (What you genuinely value.) Many changes fail simply because they conflict with a deeply held belief or value.

- Make sure you have a high level of commitment. A good rule of thumb is that you should have a 4 out of 5 level of commitment if you are going to be able to hang in there long enough to see through an important change. Anything less and you could easily be distracted or discouraged when things get tough or busy.

- Anticipate resistance. Anytime we attempt to move out of our comfort zone we run into resistance. Some of these thoughts/feelings/habits can completely sideline us if we are not ready for them. When the resistance shows up, get curious about any assumptions or assertions that undermine your change initiative. Chances are they are based on faulty or out of date information that no longer serves you.

- Design your support team. Big changes can be scary. Call in backup. Make sure you have a few key people you can share your goal with and turn to when things get tough. We really benefit from relationships that can remind us why we are doing something, help us examine our limiting beliefs and help us see where growth is waiting to happen. (We are all blind to some of the biggest changes we really need to make - to get the results we want.)

Good luck with all your goals, dreams and aspirations for the upcoming year. If you can dream it, and it makes your heart sing, if you take care of yourself day to day so you don't get exhausted, if you build on your strengths, if you can take it a step at a time and reach out for help when, or before, you need it, and if you can be open to the journey taking you in a different direction than you initially planned - then I believe you are going to have a fabulous adventure in the New Year.

Good luck,

Life and Business Coach Steve

Tuning Your Instrument

In your life, career or business, you are your biggest asset,
your own instrument of success. You are also your biggest liability. And how you
show up every day, with your colleagues, friends, family or clients, is a huge
factor in determining your overall level of happiness and success.
So tell me, how much attention do you put into tuning your
instrument?

If you were a world-class musician you would never think of
performing without tuning your violin, guitar or what have you. The sour notes
would be noticed immediately and detract from your performance. Thus musicians
always take the time to tune their own instrument and then tune to the orchestra
prior to a performance. How about you?

In your life, career and businesses, I am sure you have had a
few experiences where you felt in tune with yourself, your surroundings, the
task at hand, and things flowed almost effortlessly.

And I am pretty sure there have been many other times when the
sense of struggle was so palpable, you may have felt you were playing off the
wrong sheet music.

If you do nothing to proactively prepare for each day or tune
your instrument, it will not take too much (stress, conflict, unexpected
developments, etc.) to tip you into a far more reactive mode. And feeling a
little off-key or behind the rhythm, you are more likely to appear impatient,
intolerant, unsympathetic, distracted and generally self-focused. This of course
is going to be noticed and have an impact.

Taking the time to tune your instrument, to get more present,
in-sync, will not immunize you from life's challenges. But it will ensure you
meet them with the greater creativity, trust and the resourcefulness needed to
be your best, under any circumstance. And this will also have an impact. (A very
positive one.)

How To Make Those Important Changes

If you were to ask a caterpillar if she wanted to become a butterfly, I suspect the answer would be something along the lines of, “Absolutely yes! I would love to float, fly and flit between all the pretty flowers. This crawling around is driving me crazy."

However, if you were to re-interview that caterpillar, after she had laboriously secured herself in a protective place, shed her entire skin, and began to dissolve her existing body into a stem-cell-like, undifferentiated soup - within the darkness of the chrysalis – you might get a different answer. Perhaps, “I had no idea change would be so difficult.” or “Help, get me out of here, I am scared of losing everything.” “Maybe this becoming a butterfly is not such a good idea.”

The point is, we may all desire to make some big changes in our lives and careers, but these types of changes are rarely easy.

What to do?

Actually, let’s start with what not to do. If you have a strong or persistent calling to make some important changes in your life - and if you have examined the calling long enough to know it is not coming from fear or ego - DO NOT IGNORE IT!! History and the teachings of myth are pretty clear on this. Shakespeare sums up the consequences of ignoring a big calling to change succinctly in the play Julius Caesar where Brutus states, "There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and miseries.” You don’t want to spend your one precious life wallowing around in the shallows or miseries.

So, if ignoring, or medicating away, the calling to change does not work, what does? Here are some key factors to consider, drawn from the best of positive psychology, neuroscience, myth and the spiritual traditions:

- First, you really benefit from creating the time and space to explore the possibility of a major change. (Big changes require a lot of time and energy. If you are running too busy, you might end up leaping before you have looked, or never leaping at all.)

- Secondly, you will definitely benefit from knowing enough about yourself to understand what does bring you more joy, meaning, success, etc, whatever you want more of. (If you don’t know what you are looking for, how are you going to find it?)

- You will definitely benefit from a vision of a best possible outcome of the change that inspires or moves you. (Inspiration is a big force in helping us move past our current beliefs and limitations.)

- You will definitely benefit from having a plan, even if it is really basic. (Failure to plan is too often planning to fail.)

- You will definitely benefit from having the support of allies. (Changes can be hard, with many moments when you feel like giving up. Being able to plug into the emotional support of your friends, colleagues, partners, coach, etc. – can make a critical difference, and remind you why you set off on this change in the first place.)

- You will definitely, benefit from proactively managing your stress. (Too much stress can make a coward out of anyone.)

- You will definitely benefit from building on your strengths. (Building on your weaknesses leads to mediocrity.)

- You will definitely benefit from learning to do your best, but remain unattached to the outcome. (This is a very important teaching. Attachment to a specific outcome creates a bit of tunnel vision which can prevent you from adjusting and adapting to all the unforeseen circumstances that will come your way. And there will be many.)

If you have some big changes to make, or some have been thrust upon you, have faith. The single most common thing I see, in working with hundreds and hundreds of people making big changes, is – even if at first glance the change looked like an uninvited disaster - that in some unexplained way the change always led them to a better place.

The Perils of Too Much Multitasking.

It would make a pretty good plot for a Sci-Fi thriller. Aliens flood the world with cheap new technology that allows everyone to access unlimited information, stimulation and pleasant distraction. The information opium overloads people's ability to think, act and engage each other in conversation yet alone reproduce - civilization grinds to a halt.

Well maybe it's not a great movie plot, but there is a growing body of evidence that our skyrocketing predilection for multitasking is taking its toll. And I am not simply talking about the folks that drive their cars into ditches while texting or watching a dvd . I am talking about the typical multitasking most of us do trying to cram more and more activities into a limited amount of time each and every day.

The impact this everyday type of multitasking is having on our performance is getting better understood by science. One 2005 study conducted at the University of London found, “Workers distracted by e-mail and phone calls suffer a fall in IQ more than twice that found in marijuana smokers.”

Other studies looking at brain activity have found that the concept of successfully multitasking is a bit of a myth. When we think we are multitasking we are actually shifting scarce mental resources from one part of the brain to another. While we might get away with this in menial tasks such as walking and chewing gum, for more complicated tasks it definitely has its price. A study of brain activity from the University of California in Irvine found that if someone is distracted while engaged in one complicated task, it can take a full 25 minutes to get back to the same level of attention.

Work from the University of Michigan has also shown that multitasking releases significant amounts of stress hormones that negatively impact our health and memory. Higher levels of stress have been shown to greatly reduce our social skills, intuition, creativity and overall sense of well being. The long-term impact this has on our relationships, our careers and our quality of life is just beginning to be understood.

The bottom line is that while it might be impossible to live and work in the 21st century without multitasking, taken to extremes it can lead to a shallow, anxious, unproductive, unhealthy, impatient, lonely existence. You may think you are getting so much done, but there is pretty good evidence to indicate you are actually less productive, less effective, less healthy and certainly much less fun to be around.

So as this new year begins, I invite you to get very clear on what is most important to you, and allocate your time accordingly. And as relates to those key activities and key relationships that contribute the most to your success and happiness, establish a zero tolerance for distractions. It is very useful to create structures that limit your likelihood of being distracted. (For example some business owners and executives I know work from their home office several mornings a week to get some focused time on key productive activities. Others draw lines around when they turn off their Blackberrys and simply enjoy their private life.)

Also, the better job you do managing your overall stress level, the easier you will find it to keep present and resist the mind's temptation to fly out of the moment to battle some future challenge. It all comes down to better mind management. And if you take yours to the next level this year, it will pay big dividends.

How To Get Those Important Things Done.

Have you ever found yourself wanting to get something done, yet struggling to actually do it?

For most of us, this happens all the time. Whether it is something you want to do for your business, your health or career, our best intentions can often be torpedoed by conflicting thoughts and feelings.

For example, I have had the intention of writing this article for about 3 weeks now. Even though I have had ample time, until today it has simply not happened. I would block out time on my calendar to write, but when the time came, I would ignore it or otherwise get distracted. So, I would look out a week, and block out more time to “finish the article!!!” and sure enough as the next date rolled around, I would lose my commitment.

If you have a few things in your life you truly want to accomplish, but are struggling to move ahead with, here is a simple technique to try.

This approach is most powerful when you do it with a partner, where someone can act as your coach and pick up on any signs of resistance. However, in a pinch you can try it out yourself as follows:

Step 1) Stand up (in front of a mirror if you can), and state your intention. “I want to complete my article today.”
Step 2) Scan your mind and body for any sign of resistance or conflict. In this example I might notice a conflicting thought that “I don’t know if the topics will be of interest to all my readers.”
Step 3) Give voice to, or otherwise express or act out, your conflicting thought. In this example I might repeat the conflicting thought , “I don’t know if the topics will be of interest to all my readers” in a weak, whiny voice (it is important to act out or exaggerate the silliness of the conflicts) for about 15 seconds or until you feel it has been fully expressed and effectively removed. (In my case I know it is impossible to write something that will be a hit with everyone. Yet to wait for perfection is to stay on the sidelines, and thus not be of use to anyone. )
Step 4) Now that you have cleared one conflict, speak your intention again and see if you can pick up any other conflicting feeling or thought. If anything comes up go through the steps again.

Keep doing this until you can state your intention with a solid voice and a strongly felt sense of commitment. Make sure to eliminate any feelings of resistance, and pay careful attention to notice any body language (like head nods, slouches, eye blinks, etc.) that show up in the mirror and might indicate other conflicts to explore.

Once you have your strong commitment, act as soon as possible. We have a limited reservoir of attention each day. Anything (morning paper, email, phone calls, etc,) you let come between you and your principal commitment, robs you of the energy you need to get the important thing done.

Try it. This approach will serve you well for many everyday commitments. However, if you run up against some really stubborn conflicts, seek some help. We are all highly resistant to the changes we would most benefit from making. And it is hard to spot and work through the big ones on our own.