Quick Thoughts – The Fullfilment Project

Rhyming With Who You Are

When we put ideas or thoughts out there into the world inevitably we get feedback from other people. Some think your ideas or thoughts are great, others will think they are not. Often we pin our self worth to what other people think of our ideas and thoughts. This is a mistake, it is giving away our power to others in the hope that they will validate our existence.

Social media is an extreme version of this. Every day people share their lives with followers and ‘friends’ hoping to get a like or a share as validation. What comes back is essentially feedback. If we listen to all of it, then we can become lost in the variety of ways in which other people think we should live. It becomes just noise, like the feedback when a microphone gets too close to the speaker it is linked to.

What we need to do is to provide our own feedback, and follow what is in our hearts. Our ideas and thoughts should rhyme with who we are. Then we will live a life that rhymes with who we are, and this will be a life well lived.

Mastering Your Work

Quick Thoughts

While we work we are often asked by our Manager to complete a Personal Development Plan. This is often limited to office based work, but applies to any field of employment. This can be seen as another task to do or it is seen as a tick box exercise. The PDP is in fact a huge opportunity.

It is an opportunity to actively develop yourself, to take ownership of your career and progress to the level or role that gives you the most fulfilment.

In my opinion your PDP should begin with the values of the company you work for as well as your own values. This is because it is important that these values are compatible. You should include how you learn, how you work and what your skills and experience are. This will give you a good foundation to build your PDP from.

Set short goals, usually weekly, mid-term goals, usually quarterly and long term goals, usually yearly. I would also review your progress against these goals on a regular basis. I will be trying daily reviews at the end of my shift to highlight what went well, what I could have done better, what I learned and what actions I will take from the learning.

I feel that daily reviews will speed up my development and make sure it does not plateau at a low level. Try it yourself and see how you go. If it is too frequent, try weekly reviews. You will not regret it.

Building Self Credibility

Quick Thoughts

Often, without meaning to, we make promises and break them, both to others and to ourselves. It could be that we say we will start going to the gym or that we say we will do a friend a favour, but then don’t.

When we break promises, no matter how small, we lose credibility with ourselves. We start to believe that we are unreliable and slowly our actions follow our thinking and we do.

If, however, we decide to go to the gym and we do it or we decide to get up when the alarm goes off, instead of hitting snooze, and we do it or we do the friend a favour when we say we will, then we will build credibility with ourselves and people will see that we mean what we say, that we are reliable and trustworthy. It is a matter of integrity, because integrity is a verb.

What Can Our Struggles Teach Us?

Quick Thoughts

When going through difficult times, it is important to be grateful for everything that we have, which includes our tough experiences. The valleys we go through serve to highlight the euphoria of reaching the summit of the mountains we climb.

We all have, to varying degrees, the ability to choose how we want to feel, by choosing what we focus on. For example, if we are unwell, do we focus on how that is making us feel or do we focus on still having the ability to do the things we enjoy, even if the illness reduces these options. We all have the ability “…to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” (From Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor E Frankl).

On the flip side the valleys will teach us lessons that the mountain peaks never can. Every struggle is an opportunity wrapped in unpleasantness. Every struggle is an opportunity to learn. I try to be in a state of flow, of effortless action, as often as I can. When I find myself in a negative state of mind or I fail at something and I come out of flow, I now ask myself three questions.

What can I learn from this situation?
Where are the opportunities?
What should I do?

These questions help me re-centre and I then actively bring my mind back to flow. They are also fundamentally proactive, which means negative thinking patterns do not get a chance to sidetrack my mindset. Give these questions a go or come up with your own, you will not regret it.

We Are Connected

Quick Thoughts

It is amazing how connected we all are on our planet. To illustrate this here is something from a TV series on Netflix called Connected that blew my mind. It is in the episode on Dust and how important certain dust can be.

In Chad, North Africa, in what used to be Lake Mega-Chad, but is now part of the Sahara Desert, there are the remains of fish and other creatures, which once lived in the lake, before the area became a desert. The wind breaks up the skeletons into dust which is then carried by the wind up into the atmosphere and it makes its way all the way to the Amazon Rainforest, in South America, where the dust becomes part of the soil.

What is amazing is that the rain in the rainforest washes away most of the nutrients that the plant life needs to grow and survive, but the dust all the way from the Sahara Desert in Chad, North Africa, replenishes it. Around 22,000 tons of phosphorus is deposited in the Amazon Rainforest every year from Lake Mega-Chad, which is about the amount the soil loses every year due to rainfall.

Without this process happening, there would be no rainforest. We are truly, globally connected to every other ecosystem on the planet. This is why when we throw things away, there is no away. We need to look after our planet as well as each other.

There Are No Boxes

Quick Thoughts

Recently, I was watching the first episode of the series Strictly Come Dancing and while one of the contestants, Tom Fletcher, from band McFly, was introduced they showed his wife, Giovanna Fletcher, in the audience. Nothing special about that, but for me two worlds collided.

Giovanna Fletcher presents a Cbeebies (BBC children’s channel) program The Baby Club, which I am very familiar with, having a toddler in my life. McFly is a band I associate with the music of my youth. As a result I put Tom Fletcher in the Pop music box in my head and Giovanna Fletcher in the Cbeebies box in my head.

This was a wake up call for me, that reminded me that in truth there are no boxes in life, everything is interconnected with everything else. This provides an opportunity to remove the barriers that get in the way of creativity.

Nature is more abundant at the edge of one natural space to another, where the jungle meets an open plain, where a river meets the sea, the number of variety of life goes up. When we cross-pollinate areas in our mind our creative output will be more like a rainforest, life abundant.

Taking Ownership of Your Journey

Quick Thoughts

I’d like to tell you a story (author unknown). One day there was a great flood and a whole town was being evacuated. A van pulled up at a man’s house and the driver shout for him to get in as everyone was being evacuated. The man said, “No thank you God will save me.” Not wanting to risk staying, the van driver drove off to safety.

The water began to rise and was up to the man’s first floor window. A man in a boat came by and offer to take this man to safety, but again the man said “No thank you God will save me.” When the water rose up to the roof a helicopter came to rescue the man, who was then standing on his roof. Again the man said, “No thank you God will save me.”

The water continued to rise and the man drowned. When the man got to heaven he asked God why did you not save me? God said, “I sent a van, I sent a boat and I sent a helicopter.”

The moral of the story is that we have to take accountability and ownership of our own rescue and our own lives. We cannot expect others to do everything for us, even God for that matter, if you believe in him. If we are waiting for others to fix everything, we will miss so many opportunities that can lead us to great joy, fulfilment and success.

So, be humble and take offers of help when they are offered to you and take ownership of your life and your life will be exponentially better.