“Experience is not what happens to you; it’s what you do with what happens to you” Aldous Huxley
My suggestion this month (and don’t worry about the calendar, I know the month is at its end) is to pause. People are quite rightly concerned about their futures now that it appears uncertain, but just pause - take a breath. You still have control over how you react to every new thing, or piece of news, or dramatic event, that comes your way. Sometimes it may be the only control you have, but it’s the most important.
Remember when you were a kid and you were taught to chant, if anyone called you names, “Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me”. There was a very good reason for that. The names you are called, or the things that happen to you, are not as important as your reaction to them.
So this month, remember to - pause - breathe - take control - and now you get to choose how to respond.
There is a lot of fear going round at present about possible unemployment and job cutbacks. It’s alarming because it has brought to the fore an issue that has often been associated with men who lose their jobs late in their careers and realise that they don’t know who they are, apart from their job. This is a very important fact to keep at the front of your mind - you are not your job, you have a job, or do a job. But you are not the job.
We all do it all the time though. We ask “Who is that guy?” and the answer will inevitably be “He’s a plumber/programmer/lawyer/insert-your-job-here”. But that’s not who he is. It’s what he does. Before you had a job - did you exist? Yes. Before you had your current job, did you have another job? Probably. Do you imagine that when you retire you will cease to exist? No. Most likely you are imagining, for your retirement, all the things you’ve wanted to do for years, the places you’ve wanted to go and didn’t have the time off. And now you do.
Think about it. Before you had a job, were you real? Did you have love and happiness, hopes and dreams, fears and upsets? Yes. Did you have people who loved you and cared about you? Yes. Did you have friends who you knew were there for the good times and the bad and that, during the bad times you would need them even more, and they would be there? Yes.
If you are unlucky to have lost your job, or be on reduced hours or income - keep reminding yourself that you are still the same person. You are a person who is loved and cared about. You are a person of worth. You have friends and family that love you, not based on your job, but simply because you are lovable and loved by them. And at difficult times, they will want you to know that even more. Because our common humanity is something that is not dependent on what job you hold, or how much you bring home.
We are all in this together (not in the smarmy, hypocritical way the politicians keep telling us) and there will be times when we need help and times when we will want to help others.
Talk to each other. Even more than usual, when times are hard, communication is essential. Resist the temptation to avoid people because you feel raw and abused by your circumstances. Trust in the understanding of the people you have gathered round you over the years. Friends are not just for the good times. They are for all time.
This is where the talk stops and the commitment takes over. You see, we could all sit about all day meditating on our best selves, our life purpose, our vision. That’s all very well, and it’s necessary. But at some point we have to put our money where our mouth is. Where are you at present?
Have you dreamed the dream? Have you set the goals? Have you envisioned your future the way you want it? Now - are you ready to take the steps to get yourself there?
I’m sure lots of you are bored to tears with the YouTube video clip of Susan Boyle at the “Britain’s got Talent” show. It’s not a show I watch, but a colleague pointed me at the video clip and I have to say it brought tears to my eyes. Yes, I know some of the acts DO bring tears to the eyes, but Susan was not like that. It just made me feel all tingly that this woman had never given up on her dream and here she was getting the chance to shine.
We all deserve the chance to shine in our own area of genius. What is your unique genius? What is the world waiting to see/hear/learn from you? And have you any right to keep it all to yourself? Get like Susan Boyle and “dream a dream”.
Just a quick mention that April 25th is World Malaria Day. I found this link on the Care2 website www.care2.com . Take a look and see what you can do to help. When half of the world is complaining about recession and depression, it’s a good idea to put it all into perspective and value our health, our privilege in living in first world conditions and our joy in the quality of our life and health.
When you watch this Unicef video, make sure to watch to the end. As usual it starts by looking at the gloomy situation, but it’s worth watching for the hopeful ending. I love happy endings!
We all want the best for ourselves in our lives. We want the best job, the best salary, the best partner, the best kids, in short - the best life. That’s great. We are built to go after what we want in our lives. We don’t always know, or acknowledge that we know, how to do that.
I think I’ve mentioned before that I am engaged in an ongoing coaching relationship with the Canfield Coachingteam in the U.S. It is constantly providing me with thought-provoking and challenging issues. Change and growth are all part of the process. Sometimes I feel like I’m going round in circles. At others I feel like I’m stuck in the one spot, going nowhere at all. I even feel, sometimes, that everything is changing too quickly and I can’t cope. Here is a brief list of helpful tips I got from one of Jack Canfield’s motivational CDs.
What do we need to do?
Stop doing what’s not working. So you’ve tried lots of things. Some of them were deliberately tried, some of them out of desperation, or as a last resort, but - if you’re still here - then you’ve been trying lots of things to get to the stage of still being here. If you hadn’t tried crossing the street against the red light you would not now know how dangerous that can be! But you’ve survived - so you learned something by that. Every little thing we do in our lives is based on tiny, instant decisions we make, which are - in turn - based on previous responses we have gotten to things we tried.
Do more of what is working. When you find something you do that really works for you, that gives you the response/feedback/result you desire, then incorporate more of that into your life. Apply it to other areas of your life/work and see how that succeeds for you.
Try new things and see what does work. The only way to increase the number of ways you can succeed and make changes is to continue to add new skills/tools to your repertoire. It’s risky, I know. And risky can mean scary. But think of the payoff. You get to identify lots of new powerful techniques to improve/change you life. So try new things. Take each one for a test drive. If it works add it to your list of what works, and if it doesn’t then add it to the list of things to stop doing!
Overall you’ll have added greatly to your knowledge and experience, right now, in the present. You’ll also have identified new skills to use to create a better future for yourself.
Change really gets a bad press. Change is set up as being difficult, painful, unpleasant, something none of us wants to do unless we have to. Well anything that’s portrayed that way is going to have a tough job getting any takers!
What if you could see change as a gateway to something better? What if you could see it as the passage to a better, more fulfilling life? Maybe you could see it as your contribution to the miracle that is your dream life?
Sounds too good to be true? Let’s look at some real life situations. Say you’re in a job that you’re a bit fed up with. You’d like a better one, but you don’t take any action to get one. You stay where you are, taking advantage of the drinks on a Friday evening to complain about your job, your boss, your lack of prospects etc. There is no chance of things getting better unless something changes. Realistically, the only thing YOU have control over is yourself.
What can you do? Well, what does lie within your control? You can decide whether to stay or go. You can choose to look for a change of tasks within the job. You could ask for more responsibility, to do more varied and interesting tasks. You might decide that the job pays the bills and you can use it to fund your more interesting hobbies. You could look at what attracted you to that job in the first place and examine what has changed since then (maybe the job has, maybe you have). I’m sure you can think of other possible options in this scenario.
What if you leave things exactly as they are? Do nothing? Wait for “fate” to step in and take the decision away from you? Absolve yourself of all responsibility for your own happiness & fulfillment?
As one of my favourite quotes goes “If you keep on doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep on getting what you’ve always got” (W.L. Bateman). So if you keep on doing the nothing that you’ve always done, you’ll keep on getting the unsatisfactory job that you’ve always got.
What’s the way out of this puzzle? Accept change. Embrace it. Go out and find it before it finds you. Give yourself to it wholeheartedly. And eventually maybe you’ll even learn to enjoy it?
Hale Dwoskin who teaches The Sedona Method, details the three important questions we have to ask ourselves in relation to feeling bad about anything:
Could I change how I feel about this thing?
Would I change how I feel about it?
When?
The events presented to us in any situation may not be under our control, but our feeling about the events is OURS. Now what are we going to do with it?
It seems, from responses to the blog and newsletter, that confidence building is high on everyone’s list of priorities. I’m right there with you. I think confidence is something we’re born with, and it grows and diminishes with different events/cycles in our lives. If you’re lucky you’ve had confidence boosting parents and siblings, teachers, church leaders, friends, classmates, colleagues, bosses etc. (you get the picture - the list is endless). So with such a list, I’m guessing most of us have had knocks to our natural confidence.
Inside our heads we all have an idea, or picture, of how we look as confident people. Otherwise we would have nothing to measure our lack of confidence against. When I ask someone to visualise themselves as a confident person and they say they can’t see it - it’s not true! Sounds harsh maybe, and I would not come right out and say “You’re not telling the Truth. You Are Confident!” But pause for a second and listen.
First of all how do you know you lack confidence? Somewhere inside your head you do have a picture of what confidence is, what it means, and how it would feel to be like that. Otherwise you wouldn’t know that you don’t have it. See? To know you’re missing it, you have to know what it is and what it looks/feels/acts like.
That’s a fantastic start. So you DO know what confidence is/feels like/looks like. Great! Now you know what you’re working towards. Maybe you just haven’t connected with it for a long time. It’s time to start.
Listen to what Jack Canfield (Chicken Soup for the Soul book series, The Success Principles and many more inspiring books) has to say about it. What do you think?
