Tag: The Fullfilment Project

Book Recommendation: The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse by Charlie Mackesy

Book Recommendation

Images Source: Amazon.co.uk

Illustration Copyright Charlie Mackesy

Buy A Copy Here

Why Read This Book

This book is beautifully illustrated that is full of gems of wisdom. There are pages that make you stop and think and others that uplift spirits. A joyful and philosophical book for children and adults alike.

Contents

There are no contents as such.

Summary

The book follows the journey of a boy, a mole, a fox and a horse on a journey through the wilderness. The book can be read from beginning to end, but you can dip into the book anywhere and find a nugget of wisdom and beautiful illustrations.

Two of my favourite pages are one where there is stain from a tea cup on the page and all the characters are illustrated looking at it. The words say “Is it the moon?” asked the boy. “It’s a tea cup stain… said the mole, “and where there’s tea there’s cake.” The mole loves cake. My other favourite page is an illustration of the boy riding the horse with the mole and the fox is walking alongside. The words say “What is the bravest thing you’ve ever said?” asked the boy. “Help”, said the horse. It is a truly beautiful book.

The Missing Piece Of A Life Well Lived

Happiness, Success, The Fullfilment Framework

“People who truly understand what is meant by self-reliance know they must live their lives by ethics rather than rules.”

Wayne Dyer

Our Beliefs

We all have our own beliefs, things that we believe to be true. It might be that all children are precious or that the environment needs to be protected or that money is the route of all evil. You may agree with some of these beliefs but maybe not all of them. Our beliefs are part of what makes us who we are, and also what links us to other people; we gravitate towards others who believe in what we believe. This is human nature.

Our Actions

Our actions in life are often directly related to our beliefs. If you believe that being kind is important then you will often be kind to others, for example. However, often our actions are triggered by our emotions and are reactions to the immediate situation we are in. Our character plays a part too, but our actions are not always aligned with our beliefs. We might believe that we should take care of the environment but find it hard to give up on our big fancy car that guzzles fuel.

The Missing Piece

There is often a missing piece between beliefs and actions, and that is ethics. Ethics are moral principles we hold as important, which extend our beliefs into a code to live by. If we have a strong ethical code then our actions will more robustly align with our beliefs. It takes effort to put together an ethical code for ourselves. First we must clearly define our beliefs through self-exploration, by asking ourselves deep questions about what we believe and then putting our beliefs down on paper.

Then once our beliefs are clearly defined we need to reflect on what the ethical extensions are for each belief. For example, if you were to believe that it is important to be kind then the ethic of that would be something like to treat others as they wish to be treated, sometimes called the platinum rule. Your actions would then reflect this ethic and the route belief more consistently.

In order to live well, we need to live intentionally, with purpose. This is the importance of figuring out your Why, your overriding purpose for your life, but this is built on top of your beliefs and your ethics, which is all built on deep self-knowledge. It is to know yourself intimately and have the courage to live by your beliefs, your ethics and your Why. A life well lived is a courageous one aligned with who you are and how you can help those around you to live their best life. Fulfilment in life comes from living well, so join in the fulfilment revolution and figure out your beliefs and your ethics and have the courage to live by them.

Something To Think About

What are your beliefs and their corresponding ethics, and how will you bring these into your life?

Book Recommendation: Stillness Is The Key by Ryan Holiday

Book Recommendation

Why Read This Book

If life is feeling chaotic and challenging, with the feeling that there is little stillness in your life, this book will help bring you wisdom and bring stillness to your everyday existence. It is a remedy for the challenges of modern life.

Contents

  • PREFACE
  • INTRODUCTION

PART 1: MIND

  • The Domain Of The Mind
  • Become Present
  • Limit Your Inputs
  • Empty The Mind
  • Slow Down, Think Deeply
  • Start Journaling
  • Cultivate Silence
  • Seek Wisdom
  • Find Confidence, Avoid Ego
  • Let Go
  • On To What’s Next…

PART 2: SPIRIT

  • The Domain Of The Soul
  • Choose Virtue
  • Heal The Inner Child
  • Beware Desire
  • Enough
  • Bathe In Beauty
  • Accept A Higher Power
  • Enter Relationships
  • Conquer Your Anger
  • All Is One
  • On To What’s Next…

PART 3: BODY

  • The Domain Of The Body
  • Say No
  • Take A Walk
  • Build A Routine
  • Get Rid Of Your Stuff
  • Seek Solitude
  • Be A Human Being
  • Go To Sleep
  • Find A Hobby
  • Beware Escapism
  • Act Bravely
  • On To The Final Act
  • AFTERWORD
  • WHAT’S NEXT?
  • ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
  • SOURCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

Summary

This little book is a soulful look at the human condition through the lens of the mind, the soul and the body. There are lots of examples of well known people’s lives and how they struggled and succeeded in different ways of being to bring about stillness. There is a lot of advice about how to live in a way that brings about stillness and a clear exploration of the pitfalls that push it away, based on these examples of real situations, including Tiger Woods’s personal demons and the US President John F. Kennedy’s handling of the Cuban missile crisis. Ryan Holiday has the steady voice of a wise elder in this book, someone who deeply understands what it means to live a life with stillness.

Principles To Live By

Happiness, Success, The Fullfilment Framework

“A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.”
― Dwight D. Eisenhower

There are many sets of rules or principles in our culture that act as guides of how to live, if we choose to follow them. There are religious ones, self-improvement ones and business success ones. One of the oldest known in modern culture are the Ten Commandments, found in the Hebrew bible and the Old Testament in the Christian bible. There are others however.


There is the Golden Rule, ‘do to others what you would have them do to you.’ Which is found in most religious writings across the world, in one form or another. One of my favourite sets of rules is from the small but excellent book, The Go-Giver: A Little Story About a Powerful Business Idea by Bob Burg and John D. Mann. In it the protagonist learns 5 laws of stratospheric success. It is business orientated, but they apply to every day life as well. Here they are:

  1. The Law of Value: Your true worth is determined by how much more you give in value than you take in payment.
  2. The Law of Compensation: Your income is determined by how many people you serve and how well you serve them.
  3. The Law of Influence: Your influence is determined by how abundantly you place other people’s interests first.
  4. The Law of Authenticity: The most valuable gift you have to offer is yourself.
  5. The Law of Receptivity: The key to effective giving is to stay open to receiving.

In life however, I think living by rules can sometimes feel restrictive, as constructive as they might be. I personally think it is better to live by principles. This means you have a reason why you do what you do and what you do and how you do it are more flexible, as long as they align with your principles. I have put together ten principle as part of my reworking or the Fullfilment Framework. This is a work in progress, so as ever, feedback is welcomed in the comments.


Principles of a Life Well Lived


I have distilled down principles that are good to live by to ten specific principles that I believe will collectively help us feel happy and successful in life and as a result feel fulfilled. These are the principles of a life well lived, categorised into Self and Others.


Self: Growth

As human beings if we feel we are not growing as individuals then our lives feel like they are stagnating to some degree and we lose any kind of fulfilment. We need to develop in our jobs, if not in our spiritual or personal realms. To gain deeper understandings and to improve is a inner drive that is greater or smaller depending on your personality, but I would say it is always there.

We also need to have a growth mindset to get the best out of life. To have a destination in mind but to be flexible on the route. To favour hard work and problem solving over believing that we have fixed, innate qualities like being creative or not being good with numbers. We become good at anything with learning and practice. Water flows around obstacles and makes its own paths. Equally, a tree that bends in the wind will not break and it continues to grow, as this is its nature, much like growth is part of our nature.


Self: Equanimity

This is very difficult, it is the art of being calm and collected in any given situation, good or bad. It is mastery over our emotions. It is not getting emotionally pulled into situations so much that the situation dictates how we feel and what we do. Self-mastery includes equanimity, keeping experiences in perspective in the greater scheme of things. It is not abstaining from emotions; it is Mastery over them.


Self: Fortitude

We all have challenges in our lives, some are overcoming procrastination to work on something important to us and some are life changing events that threaten derail our whole lives. When we have a goal in life, a North Star that we are aiming for, we need the drive to work on this every day. No matter what our challenges are, having the fortitude to keep going when life pushes back will mean we achieve the good success we deserve.

Self: Seeking

Part of the Fullfilment Foundation is Acquiring Wisdom, which is part of Seeking. What I mean by Seeking is the act of exploring the unknown, to yearn for explanations of why things happen the way they do, but also to have the courage to step into the unknown in life when the prospect fills us with fear. This can be in our job, in relationships and in personal projects, and it can potentially challenge the values and beliefs that we have defined for ourselves.

This is part of the process of seeking, it is being open to change when new experiences bring new information, new wisdom that we have not been aware of before.It is following a spiritual path or a path of self-exploration, depending on your theological beliefs. It is the path of the wisdom warrior, to courageously seek a deeper understanding.


Self: Self-Competition

In life, we often compare ourselves to others, we compete with them, even if this is only in our own minds. This will either make us feel self-important if we are ahead, or feel bad about ourselves, if we are behind. This is not productive at all if winning is everything. Comparing a standard of work with others can be useful, but it is best to compare our current selves with our previous selves. To be better today than we were yesterday.


This is how all the great achievers think, whether individuals or companies, those who innovate and change the world compete with themselves, not their competition. This means they can focus their Why, on bringing to life the vision they have developed from their Why.


Others: Stewardship

Greatness comes from leaving things better than you found them. Not being satisfied with the status quo because it kind of works OK. When this is done with the intention of improving things for others the benefit is magnified for yourself and others. It is planting trees when you know others will benefit from its shade. This is a kind of entrepreneurial spirit, the act of looking for things that need to be improved and making changes to achieve this.


Others: Servanthood

A good leader takes care of those around them, it is not a rank, it is a mindset. A good leader serves others. In life, we do not need to be in the position of a Manager or a Supervisor to be a leader, but we do need to have others who will follow us in our endeavours, to help us advance our vision. Servanthood is a rewarding mindset to have because our biochemistry rewards acts of generosity, kindness and compassion, and it is key to our happiness and feeling of fulfilment. However, it is not about being a dog’s body, it is a partnership of giving and receiving. It builds trust and cooperation and our relationships begin to thrive.


Others: Reciprocity

It is important to give, but it is also important to be humble enough to receive as well. It gives others the opportunity to give. Also, when we help others, we feel a sense of fulfilment, we feel good. Fulfilment itself is reciprocal because it requires the helping of others to find fulfilment in their lives. To help others grow and achieve, to feel joy and happiness. When we do this in our relationships and in our work, we feel fulfilled at the end of each day, but we must be able to accept the help from others too.

Others: Joy Making

Joy is different from happiness, because happiness evokes the idea that we are striving for something. Joy on the other hand is about bringing laughter and smiles to people’s faces. It is enjoying the moment, and we can bring this into our own lives through the attitude that we have, we can be joyful; and when we are the joy spreads. When we bring joy into the interactions, we have with others it feeds the souls, so to speak, it increases our wellbeing ten-fold and our lives and the lives of those around us are better for it. To be joyful is to enjoy life to its fullest, to be an ambassador of joy is to bring joy into the lives of others.


Others: Connection

There are two ways I think we should strive to be connected, with the people in our lives and what is often called the Great Mystery; God, Tao, Brahman, or just the Universe itself, that which is bigger that all of us but contains all of us. In life we need healthy relationships, in our personal lives and in our professional lives.

This involves things like regular contact, spending time together, preferably in person rather than via a device, and caring about the wellbeing of the people we know. When we are waiting for a meeting to start at work, or some other situation, asking how people are and listening to the answer, rather than checking our social media status or emails. This is how we build trust and loyalty, how we build depth into our relationships. Above all else it is caring about the other person beyond how you know them, compassion, empathy and love build strong bonds.

The Great Mystery or God can make some feel uncomfortable, even angry when the subject is brought up. However, I am not suggesting that you have to become religious if you are not. I feel that your beliefs should be dictated by your own conscience based, on your experiences and knowledge, and not the opinions or beliefs of others.

That being said, when we do not feel that we are connected to something greater than ourselves, then I think we can feel separated in our existence or full of self-importance, as if we are what is most important. Feeling connected to something larger than ourselves, even if this is the Universe itself, does two things. It helps us feel like we belong here and it keeps us humble to think of ourselves as like a drop of water in an ocean, an essential part of the greater whole.


Final Thoughts

These principles that I am suggesting will, I think, help you feel happy and successful. You might pick a few of them to follow and leave the rest. That is fine, it is not a definitive list, but I believe that they are the core of what it means to live well.

Something To Think About

Which of these principles would you follow? Also, what other principles have you already decided to follow or could you follow?

New Beginnings: It Takes Courage

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Success

“Fear wins or freedom wins. And so let us ask ourselves, will my life be about aversion or ascension?” 

Brendon Burchard

In our lives you could argue that every moment is a new beginning, in which we always have a choice in how we respond to the circumstances we find ourselves in. Perhaps a choice of either Fear or Freedom, often a difficult choice to make when the harsh realities of life seem set against us. This is the question that connects the two opening chapters of the book The Motivation Manifesto by Brendon Burchard.

The first chapter is entitled On Freedom and the second is entitled On Fear. The opening words in the third chapter, On Motivation, sum up the opening message of this book. “The dominant motives of Humankind involve either freedom or fear; there are no other pathways in our psychology. One demands engagement with our true self and ambitions, and inevitably leads to independence, growth, happiness, and transcendence. The other causes us to skirt around challenges, avoiding struggle as much as possible – despite struggle often being the very thing required for growth.” [The Motivation Manifesto by Brendon Burchard, page 51]

Whether you agree with this or not, it does bring up the question of how we ourselves respond to the events within our lives. Do we respond with the confidence to tackle the challenges in our lives or do we avoid conflict and therefore forfeit the potential rewards that lie on the other side of these challenges, if we were to tackle them rather than run from them?

We each have our own ways of making decisions, of dealing with the demands that beset our lives. So, what is your default setting, so to speak, when you are faced with a challenge? Most of us are not aware of the how and the why of our decision-making process. It is not until we start to question ourselves, and start to observe ourselves that we get a sense of whether we fall prey to fear or if we embrace freedom.

It has been said that every moment is full of potential and all around us there are metaphorical doors opening to new possibilities, but most of the time we choose not to take opportunities when they appear in our lives. We are too busy, we don’t want to deviate from what we are used to or we are just uncertain of what the outcome might be. When we do take opportunities that come our way, things can go wrong for us, but wonderful things can also happen too.

You may be thinking that it is all well and good suggesting that we take more opportunities when they come our way, but how do we know which opportunities will bring positive results and which will bring negative results? Unfortunately, we don’t really know what the results will be until we walk through the doors of opportunity and see what happens. It is like the act of being brave, you have to do something that scares you, even though you may be terrified, and the bravery comes afterwards. The more opportunities we take the more experience we get and we start to realise which might be good opportunities and which might not be.

We can think about our experiences in similar situations and make a judgement call. It is the difference between intelligence and wisdom, you could say. Intelligence is knowing lots of things, but wisdom is intelligence plus experience. It is the culmination of trying and failing over and over until we don’t fail as often, because we have learned from our experiences and applied some intelligence to our decision making. This is why elders are so respected in so many cultures, because they have the experience that gives them wisdom. I for one would someday like to be an elderly person who has made lots of mistakes, but has not been afraid to keep trying.

I think that as we get older we can develop an instinct for good opportunities, perhaps it is a little bit of wisdom. We can look at an opportunity and have a good or a bad feeling about it, and I think this can guide our decision making. I definitely feel that my good opportunity radar is beginning to work fairly well. I sometimes get the feeling that I should do something and I have tried to trust in this feeling and go with it and see what happens. Don’t get me wrong, it is scary trusting in these feelings, but in my experience trusting in my good opportunity radar has brought good things into my life.

This might be the divine in the world at work, guiding me, I don’t know. I like to think of these situations are karmic sign posts pointing to good things, as the Buddhist in me believes in karma. You may well see these kinds of situations in your own lives in a different way, depending on your own beliefs and experience. You may think that it is God guiding you or that there is no divine hand guiding you or anyone else. Whatever your theological beliefs I do believe that when we begin to trust our feelings about whether we should try something new, or take a chance, then we invite more positive outcomes and experiences into our lives.

Every moment is full of potential, there are doors of opportunity all around us, but it is up to us to walk through these metaphorical doors and try something new, whether this is a new job, a new relationship, rekindling an old relationship, a chance to learn something new or a chance to try something you have never done before, we will always grow as individuals. The outcome might not always be a positive one, but every mistake is an opportunity to learn in itself, even this can lead to making better decisions in the future and therefore a better future, as we become wiser with every mistake we make and every challenge we try to overcome. Go forth, try new things and keep going, and if you fall, fall forwards, pick your self up and try again.

Something To Think About

What opportunities are thee in your life that you are fearful of taking? How would it feel if you give it a try and it works out well for you?

Brexit: Them and Us

Happiness, Leadership, Success

“Not one of us can rest, be happy, be at home, be at peace with ourselves, until we end hatred and division.”

– John Lewis

Them and Us

We have officially left the EU and have become an island unto ourselves. Times they are a changing, as the song goes, and it is important to reflect on the consequences of this change. There are two other growing parallel changes in the world as we move forward into the 21st century. Over the past few years, there has been a resurgence of nationalism is America and in countries across Europe, including the United Kingdom. Our departure from the EU has elevated the idea of ‘Britain First’ from the small conversations of the few into a more national conversation. You may have voted to remain or to leave the EU, you may now wish you had voted differently. Either way, we must be careful not to fall into the trap of thinking we are above or better than the countries of Europe, just because we say we are.

There has also been a rise in those who wish to protect our planet from the global, environmental crisis, which is becoming a movement that spans the world. This is being led by our youth, the ones who will be living in the world to come. They are trying to save their future, as the adults of the world appear to be trying to save their own national and personal priorities. Our strengths are always evident when we come together to achieve great things. Our weaknesses are evident when we separate into factions and try to take care only of our own.

Tribes

There is something inside human beings that pushes us towards trying to belong to a group. Wanting to belong to a group is a drive that is part of our evolution. In caveman times, it was safer to be in a group of people who would look out for our wellbeing; that would keep watch while we slept and would catch food so that everyone in the group could eat. Being part of a group, or a tribe, is a very human thing to do, and most of the time there is nothing wrong with this.

We support football teams, we belong to congregations, we are identified by the country in which we were born, the religion we follow, the ethnic roots we have. It is normal and adds to the variety of our communities and gives the individual, whether child or adult, a sense of not only safety, but also an understanding of themselves. However, what we need to be careful of is other people hijacking our drive to belong to a group, by setting us against people who belong to other groups. This is when we have real division, which then breads conflict. This happens in many places in the different areas of our lives; in the workplace, in schools, in social groups and in families.

Conflict On Demand

This is where division comes from, the dividing up of them and us. It happens with small groups of people and with countries, it happens with religions and with ethnicities, it happens between popular people and those who are not popular. We are fed conflict as entertainment, whether it is in the Big Brother house or characters in a soap opera, there is a pervasive message in modern culture that conflict between individuals or groups of people is entertaining.

If you think about the plays of Shakespeare, blockbuster films and programs on TV, there is very little that does not have a strong element of conflict. It would seem that there is a human desire to experience conflict, but when this spills out into our lives and we argue with other people, when we try to dominate other people or we create division between other people, this is when our actions and words bring conflict into the world.

The tensions and conflicts around the world, pose complex issues steeped in a human history of conflict across both national and religious lines, including the Crusades, the World Wars and the so-called War on Terror. What we need is exceptional leadership to guide us out of the darkness into the light. But that leaves people like you and me with a problem, what can we do to stem the flow towards division and conflict.

What Can We Do?

Well, what we do and what we say shapes the world we live in. Through our interactions we co-create our relationships, which in turn creates our society, which in turn creates our nations and our cultures. How we choose to live our lives will influence everything else, even if just a little.

What we need is a harmony revolution, because the only sensible way to counteract division in our own lives is to bring people together in harmony. By harmony I mean, to use a metaphor, the bringing together of very different instruments into an orchestra to create beautiful music. When we come together as human beings and we share what makes us unique, then we can collaborate, cooperate, and co-create. We can make the world a better place to be.

Often the best way to stop others trying to create an argument with us, or fight with us, on an individual level, is to not participate in the conflict, because then it fizzles out. If a fire has no fuel it will go out. A conflict needs two participating sides, if one side comes to the situation with peace, compassion and forgiveness, then healing can take place, because every attempt to create conflict does wound the other person, but if they do not retaliate then healing and harmony is possible. And when this happens, both sides are healed.

Those who are the angriest are the ones who suffer the most, because to be angry is to suffer. The best way to respond to anger is with compassion, because they are suffering, and compassion can extinguish anger. Nelson Mandela taught the world that forgiveness can free the soul and can break the cycle of fear and violence that can seem inescapable. There are inspirations in our global culture that lead us towards the light of freedom, forgiveness, compassion and love.

Healing Ourselves First

The words of the 1991 song by Micheal Jackson, Heal the World come to mind, “Heal The World, Make It A Better Place, For You And For Me, And The Entire Human Race.” And I believe that we can heal the world, one human interaction at a time, but we must start with ourselves. If we heal the divisions within ourselves; the prejudices and the grudges, we are more able to heal the divisions between ourselves and those in our lives.

I am not in any way negating the realities of the challenging daily lives in which we live. I am not assuming a totally peaceful Utopian ideal world is at our fingers tips either, but if each of us, in our own way, considers small ways in which we can connect more with our friends and families, neighbours and work colleagues on a more human level, this would be a great start. Taking the time, when possible, to make perhaps a bit more of an effort in ways that you may already be doing, to chat and ask after each other’s wellbeing, share a story or a joke. Our children and others will see this and perhaps change their own behaviour for the better.

Even though it seems such a small thing to do, there is evidence of efforts of this kind having a genuinely positive effect on those doing this and on those around them. So, I ask of you, in your own way, to have a think about what you can do, and what you may have thought about doing, along these lines, but have not done yet, because for one reason or another you just haven’t. Make that call to that friend or relative, knock on that door. Lift your head and give a sign of greeting and even stop for a quick chat with that neighbour or colleague at work. Connect with your eyes, words and smiles. Chances are the world will start smiling back at you a lot more often too.

Stepping Into The Unknown

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Success

“How can you know what you’re capable of if you don’t embrace the unkown?”
― Esmeralda Santiago, Conquistadora

In life there are many avenues to go down, many paths to take, or not as the case may be. Some of these paths lead to dead ends and some to wonderful opportunities. The challenge we have is that we never know beforehand, for certain, if making a particular choice will bring a positive outcome or not. Each time we are stepping into the unknown. We can, however, as the saying goes, learn from our mistakes and use our experience to weigh up the options and then make a decision. Some say we should go with our gut, with what feels right, but if this is not tempered with wisdom and experience, then we will only be following our instincts, which are primed for survival, not necessarily leading a fulfilling life.

The unknown could be a new job, a new relationship, trying a new hobby or something that changes lots of things in our lives, like moving to another town or city. We make these sorts of changes every day, but they still come with uncertainty and some anxiety. Each new change begins with a decision and leads to more decisions along the way. I would argue that no approach to making decisions is the best or the worst, as we each live individual lives and we are all individual people, but there are some things that can help when we are stepping into the unknown, which I will come onto in a moment.

However, first of all I would like to explore why we might feel the need to step into the unknown. It has long been part of the human spirit to push beyond our boundaries into uncharted territories. Human history is full of examples of men and women that have strived beyond the boundaries of their day to create new innovations and break records, whether this is manned powered flight or reaching the South Pole on foot.

For most of us such challenging goals are not things that we aim to do, partly because we are interested in other things and partly because we have commitments in our lives that need our attention and focus. That being said, we all have things that we are passionate about, things that we would happily do for free if time and circumstances permitted. This is the unknown territory that I want to talk about today, the venturing into the things that we are passionate about. Often, we don’t jump into our passions because we have responsibilities that we feel we must commit to or we lack the confidence to do so.

More often than not we do not follow our passions because we have had bad experiences trying new things in the past and we think that the same thing will happen again. There is an important principle connected to this that I have recently been trying to apply in my life, which is that the past does not equal the future. A lot of people, including myself, are held back by failure, because based on past experience we expect to fail again. The problem is that we see failure as a negative thing because of our past experiences. If we accept that we will fail sometimes then we can employ all of the resources that we have to make it work and to succeed.

We also live in a time when almost everything is instant. Whatever it is you want to buy, often there is an option to have it delivered the same day. We can do our banking on our mobile phones, we can send an email to someone and they will receive it a few seconds later, no matter where in the world they are, as long as they have an internet connection. Innovation has made our lives a lot more convenient, but not easier. This is because we expect everything to be instant, but many of the important things in life take time and effort. For example, relationships take time and effort to become strong and durable through the ups and downs of life. It is the little moments of asking how someone’s day is going and caring about the answer, of engaging in small talk in the moments between doing other things. These things help to build strong, healthy relationships.

Too often we are spending time with people without spending time with them. I’ve seen couples at restaurants where they are both on their mobile phones and not looking at or communicating with the person they came to the restaurant with. It has become an accepted thing to do to scroll through our Facebook feed on our mobile phones, instead of making a connection with the person we are with. This has had a knock-on effect that means young people are finding it difficult to build relationships, because the social skills that are normally built up through trial and error as a child cannot be practiced if they are looking at a screen and not a person.

Failure also seems all the more magnified because if we expect things to be instantly successful, and if we fall at the first hurdle, we give up. We are becoming conditioned for insecurity when we should be conditioned to fail our way to success. I guarantee that every successful person who is famous for their success has failed more times than most other people have tried. It is not about how many times you get knocked down, it is about how many times you keep getting up and try again. Having this sort of mentality will enable us to stride forth into the unknown with the confidence to fail and try again.

For this to work, however, we need to have the right motivation. Wanting to be successful so that we can be rich is a motivation, but it will inevitably lead to an emptiness, because you cannot buy happiness. If, on the other hand, we want to be financially successful so that we can help more people live better lives, then fulfilment will be our reward. Motivation is key and it has to fit with our values and beliefs, this above all else is important, because to live a fulfilling life our thoughts, speech and actions should reflect what we value and what we believe.

But where do our beliefs and values come from? They are manifestations from the culture and community we grow up in, the examples our parents give us and how they raised us, as well as the education and experiences that we have had. Through all of this input we piece together what we believe and what we value. All of this then effects the decisions that we make on a day to day basis, but I believe that if we are to make wise decisions in life then we should be wisdom seekers, and I believe that wisdom can be found in any of the many religious scriptures and philosophical texts from around the world, amongst other places. If we have wise guidelines or principles to follow, then stepping into the unknown will seem less scary.

Something else that can help us in our ventures into the unknown is to have an attitude of asking ourselves “what if…?” What if we tried something new, what if we gave it a go, what if? Being open to the many positive possibilities that could result from trying something new means that we will more likely have a positive outcome. It is also a way of getting past the barrier of failure, a way to overcome our fear of criticism or looking like a fool; what if we succeeded, what if we achieved our dreams. This allows us to consider the possibility of actually succeeding, rather than becoming consumed by the thought of failure.

For me, this is a call to action, for us all to be a beacon of light, because we went first, we stepped into the unknown unsure what will happen, but with faith in the idea that there are benefits in both failure and success, and that our values and beliefs will guide us towards a better world. To strive for a world where everyone respects the inherent worth and dignity of every person. If we strive to be the light for those around us, then we will become beacons for good and we can dispel the bad in the world, bit by bit. It also means that others will be the light for us as well, this is what being part of a community and a fellowship is all about. If we can achieve this, then we can walk into the unknown and bravely accept what is before us on our path.

I would like to end with a poem entitled, Our Deepest Fear by Marianne Williamson, which speaks to what I have been discussing today. It mentions God in the poem, but if your beliefs that do not include God, then please think of the word God in the context of your own beliefs.

Our Deepest Fear
By Marianne Williamson

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness
That most frightens us.

We ask ourselves
Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.

Your playing small
Does not serve the world.
There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking
So that other people won’t feel insecure around you.

We are all meant to shine,
As children do.
We were born to make manifest
The glory of God that is within us.

It’s not just in some of us;
It’s in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine,
We unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we’re liberated from our own fear,
Our presence automatically liberates others.

Poem: Life’s Covenant

Poems
Infinite is our space and time.
Infinite is our consciousness.
Life blooms and fades, ebbing and flowing
from and back to the great eternity.
The Brahman, the Tao, the Emptiness,
the Universe, the Ubuntu.
Our divisions are all of our own creation;
Red versus Blue,
White versus Black,
Me versus You,
Us versus Them.
We were born of the flourishing planet
that we ride through the cosmos,
built from the elements of our eternal universe.
We exchange breath and energy and food,
our survival is a dance of coexistence,
our thriving comes from our collective
respect, cooperation and love.
We are intertwined and inseparable.
This is the truth under all other truths; we are one.
To create division seems to be a violation
of the very covenant of life itself.
Let us see others as ourselves and rise together
to our greatest happiness, joy and potential.

Bring on 2019

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Success

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” 

– Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search For Meaning

Bad experiences 

Many of us, if we think back to our childhood, our teens or our early adulthood, we can think of bad experiences that we have had, like bullying, breaking an arm or leg, parent’s separating or big disappointments. I sincerely hope these experiences for you were not too traumatic, but I feel safe in saying that no one grows up without some of, what we could consider to be, bad experiences. Often these bad experiences involve being embarrassed, upset, humiliated or injured.

All of the bad experiences we have get carried around by us as we grow, mostly unconsciously, metaphorically speaking. They even have an impact on our day to day decisions and on our relationships. They become part of the prism through which we see the world.

Fear of the past becoming the future

These bad experiences can become underlying fears or anxieties that shape our behaviour, sometimes in unusual ways. We often gravitate towards  what we know, even if it is bad for us, because it is familiar, it is not the unknown, which we can be the most afraid of. In evolutionary terms we have a deep, ingrained suspicion of the unknown. Historically, this has kept our species alive. To be suspicious of a shadow could mean that humans avoided being eaten by wild animals. Today, we are often suspicious of other people’s motives when they are nice to us or of experiences that are alien to what we have experienced before. 

However, this suspicion becomes a present fear when it comes from a bad experience we have had in the past, and if we allow it to remain unresolved in our minds the fear can grow and become a barrier to our happiness and success. The fear manifests as anxiety, and the more extreme the bad experience the greater the anxiety usually, especially if there is an unknown element to the situation that we are anxious about.

Attitude is everything

Something that has helped me overcome my anxieties is to figure out the unhelpful belief that is creating the anxiety. Often this is unconscious and some work is needed to figure this out. Writing a journal about your anxiety can help. Once we have the unhelpful belief we can then find a belief that will act as an antidote, something we can use to replace the unhelpful belief.

An important way to think about all of this is that often we let our bad experiences in the past control our present and our future. We let the drive to avoid experiencing the same bad situation dictate our decision making and the things we say and do. We let our past control our future because we, whether unconsciously or not, believe that our past will be repeated. But I am here to tell you that your past does not equal your future. We have more control than we think about what our futures will be like, because our future is largely a result of our decisions, actions and behaviours of our present.

It is true that our present is a result of our past, and we cannot control or change the exact present moment, because of this, but we all have control over how we respond to the present and what our future will be like. In any situation the one thing we can always control, if we practice enough, is our attitude. Even in the Nazi concentration camps, in the most dire of situations, there were inmates who would go around making sure everyone else had food, water and whatever minor comforts where available. As evidenced in Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search For Meaning, which documents his experiences in such a camp.

Taking on a newyear

So, if 2018 was not a particularly good year for you it does not mean that 2019 will be the same. The same is true if you had a good 2018. We cannot control everything that will happen in our lives, but if we firstly control our attitude to the events in our present and our past experiences, we can live positively and make positive decisions in each moment to make our future’s as awesome as they could be.

If we develop positive beliefs that we use to replace negative beliefs we can build our resilience to the difficulties in life, so we can rise above them and begin to fly. It is not about how many times we get knocked down by life, but rather the act of getting up every single time and taking on whatever lies before us on our path.

In 2019, build up your resilience, grow your relationships, build up your health, and seek opportunities. The opportunities are always there, but we have to have a positive mindset in order to see them and then take advantage of them. The world needs the things that only you can bring into it. You are needed to make the world a better place. I wish you a happy new year and an awesome 2019 and beyond.

Something to reflect on

Normally at this time of year we set new year resolutions, which we often do not continue with beyond January. However, I suggest you endeavour to have a positive attitude whatever the circumstances, however difficult this may be.

Having a generous spirit

Happiness, The Fullfilment Framework

“You often say, ‘I would give, but only to the deserving.’ The trees in your orchard say not so, nor the flocks in your pasture. They give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish.”

– Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

 

Christmas Spirit

Christmas is always a time for giving. Whether it be the cultural act of gathering and giving presents or the big push by advertising companies to get people to buy their products as Christmas gifts, there is no getting away from it at this time of year. It is a time when we put a lot of thought into the gifts we buy for our loved ones, because we want our gift to make them happy, to make them smile when they open it. The good feeling is a shared experience; they feel good when they get something they want and we feel good to see them so happy.

It is not the gift itself that makes us happy, as such, it is largely the act of giving and receiving that brings out our happy. So why is it that we are not as generous, generally, throughout the rest of the year. Obviously we cannot afford to be buying presents for people all year round. However, if the real meaning of generosity is in the act of giving, then we can choose how we are generous in ways that do not cost any money at all. They do however cost time and energy, two things that we all have.

 

Generosity is a Mindset

At any time we can give someone a smile, we can actually listen to someone, we can ask how someone’s day is going and care about the answer, we can help someone carry their bags up some stairs, we can hold the lift doors open so someone who needs the lift doesn’t have to wait for the next lift to be available, we can complement someone, we could wish someone good day, we could give our time to help someone with something that we are skilled at and they are not. There are countless things we could do to give our time, our energy and our words.

 

“Imagine if we could spread a little

happiness just by being nice to other people.”

 

As we gather together this Christmas and become more generous, loving and sharing let us begin to imagine what the world would be like if we treated everyone with the same love and respect as we do our own loved ones. Imagine if we could spread a little happiness just by being nice to other people. Imagine how happier you will be as a result of so much giving. We feel good when we give, so let us bring the Christmas spirit into our hearts and let it linger there beyond the New Year and on for the rest of the year.

 

Give more smiles, wish more people well, and if you are someone who prays, pray for everyone we encounter who is going through difficulty, even those we do not get along with. To be angry, jealous, frustrated or sad is to suffer, so let us spread a little love and start a generous revolution. Our world is shaped by how we interact in it, so let us shape our world to be a kinder, more loving place that we all want to be a part of.

 

Something to reflection on:

The way we perceive the world is our reality. Our actions in the world help to build someone else’s perception of the world. Positive thoughts, words and actions can change the world for others and ourselves.

How to find fulfilment

Happiness, Success, The Fullfilment Framework

“Your soul is the power and

core of who you are.

Feed it well.”

– Anonymous

 

 

Recently I have been reflecting a lot on what is meant by fulfilment, whether it is selfish or generous to seek it. How it is that we might find fulfilment and what it actually is. As human beings, we are all unique in our likes and dislikes, our personality and our passions, our behaviours and our tendencies. So, it makes sense that fulfilment would be an individual attainment, it would not be the same for everyone.

cropped-the-fullfilment-project-logo-profile-pic-black-white-red-v32.jpg

Since February last year I have been writing this blog about fulfilment, which I call The Fullfilment Project, with Fulfilment spelt with ‘FULL’ at the beginning, to signify a full life. I have been exploring happiness and success and what they mean in relation to fulfilment and I have come to believe that for fulfilment to occur we need to have both happiness and success, which to some degree is obvious. However, many who are looking for either happiness or success, I believe, focus on unfulfilling goals, as they are misguided by our culture and unhelpful beliefs. I am not now or have I previously claimed to have figured out the way to find fulfilment, I am an explorer looking for answers by asking questions and diving into hypotheses, and I have found some conclusions along the way, which I would like to share with you in this blog post.

I have created what I call a Fullfilment Framework, pieces of the puzzle of how to live a fulfilling life. These are drawn from personal experience and meditations, as well as seeking wisdom from both secular and religious sources. Wisdom comes in many forms, but it is still wisdom. In order to live a fulfilling life, I believe we need to begin with a good foundation, which is the core of a life well lived. There are three things I think we need in our fulfilment foundation.

Firstly, we need good self-knowledge, a deep understanding of ourselves, through self-reflection, knowing our values and beliefs and being tested in difficult situations and seeing how we deal with them. Secondly, we need acquired wisdom. Self-knowledge is not enough to guide us on a fruitful path, we also need to be steeped in wisdom, from secular, philosophical and religious sources. Thirdly, we need what I call the Good Health Triad. This is focusing on building for ourselves good mental health, good physical health and good energy or Chi health. Chi is an Eastern word for the life energy that flows within us and to have good health we need good Chi. All of these things we cannot do alone, we need friendships, companionship, and sometimes professional support, we need to learn good dietary and exercise habits and ways to boost and maintain our chi, all of which are good things.

From this Foundation comes our values and beliefs, which are like a prism through which we see the world, through which we think, speak and act in the world. The next level of finding fulfilment, I think, is to find out our ‘why’, our reason for doing all that we do. It is the purpose that guides us, distilled from our values and beliefs, from our self-knowledge and acquired wisdom. It can be difficult to figure out our ‘why’ with clarity. Often, we borrow from quotations or religious and philosophical ideas. I attend a Unitarian church, which was built on the idea that each individual person has a right to explore their own theology, to search for their spiritual truth rather than be told what The Truth is. All Unitarians connect with that, which is why they gather together and attend a Unitarian church. However, for each of them this may not be their personal ‘why’, because everyone is an individual, with different histories, experiences, values and beliefs. This is why I believe it is so important for each of us to search for what we believe our purpose to be in this life. It should be our North Star that guides us through both the calm and the troubled waters of life.

“…our North Star that guides us through both

the calm and the troubled waters of life.”

 

Simon Sinek-Start With WhyThen, when we discover our ‘Why’ we must discover how we are going to bring this ‘Why’ to life in our day to day lives. This is what I call our ‘Way’. In his book, Start With Why, Simon Sinek sets out the importance of finding your ‘why’ in order to live a purposeful life. He talks about how companies also need to clearly define their ‘why’, companies such as Apple have a clearly defined Why, to empower the individual against the big system. He also gives individual examples of Martin Luther King Junior who gave the “I have a dream” speech, not the “I have a plan speech”, as Simon Sinek puts it, and the Wright Brothers, who figured out powered manned flight for the first time, working out of their bicycle shop, with the intention of changing the world with their invention.

Simon Sinek says that we need to have clarity of our why first, then we can work outGolden_circle ‘how’ we express this why and then finally ‘what’ we do to prove the why we have. He calls this the Golden Circle, in the centre is the Why, then next the How and on the outside of the circle is the What, and it looks a bit like a bullseye. The important point here is that our human brains work from the why to the what when making decisions. The part of the brain that is responsible for decision making and our feelings like trust and loyalty is the Limbic Brain, which has no capacity for language. This is why we more easily agree with things that match our values and beliefs, not the details and the factual information.

My personal exploration of fulfilment has led me to a phrase that has hit home for me. The phrase is “To help others find fulfilment is to fulfil what it means to be human.” When this phrase first popped into my head I dismissed it as flippant and without substance, but through further reflection and meditation on this I have come to think that it has a certain depth to it that I did not initially appreciate.

“To help others find fulfilment is to

fulfil what it means to be human.”

On an evolutionary level we have evolved to be social animals, and during caveman times there would have been some in the group hunting and gathering food while others in the group would perform other functions for the survival of the collective whole. We evolved to have what Simon Sinek describes as a circle of safety, that everyone in the tribe made sure that they were all protected from the dangers outside of the tribe, whether this be the weather, dangerous animals or the scarce food and resources. It is hard-wired into our DNA to uplift those in our tribe, whether this is our family, our team or our congregation.

To encourage us to behave in a way that supports the tribe, evolution gave us some hormones that control certain behaviours. Our bodies produce Dopamine when we make achievements, it is an incentive to progress and we get a hit of Dopamine whenever we hit a milestone or tick something off our to-do list. Our bodies produce Serotonin when we perceive that others like or respect us. Our bodies produce Oxytocin when we are with our closest friends or trusted colleagues, it is the feeling of friendship, love and deep trust. All of which feel good.

The point I am making is that we have evolved to have hormones that actively encourage us to build meaningful, deep relationships, to strive for progress and try and get the affection and respect of those we care about. In other words, to feel happy and successful, on a biological level, we need other people. We need friends and family, loved ones and people we love. These relationships are key to living a fulfilling life. There is a problem though when we actively look to get these feelings that come from these hormones in unhelpful ways. For example, when we use social media and we get a like or a notification we get a hit of Dopamine, which feels really good, so we do it more, effectively replacing people with a device.

Life is beter in flip flopsAdvertising companies tell us that we will become either happy or successful if we buy their product or service, only to be told a few months down the line that a new product or service will do the same, but neither a product or a service will make us happy, as they are invariably transient, they change or break and the happiness promised is really only excitement and joy. We are often told that the measure of success is the amount of money we have or the amount of things we own, but it really does depend on how we measure success, as individuals.

I believe that success is very much intertwined with happiness and that you cannot have one without the other. As human beings we are hardwired to strive after progress, but if we are deeply unhappy or depressed, progress is not a clear focus for us. So, you could say that we need to be happy to succeed and we need to succeed to be happy, but the success really does need to be in an area that we passionately care about, something that is in line with our values and beliefs, in line with our ‘why.’ Which is why it is so important to figure out what our ‘why’ is.

Many religious scriptures tell us that in order to be happy we must first help others be happy. I think this is partly because we are hard-wired with our hormones to feel good when we help others to be happy in their lives. Their smile makes us smile, especially if we are the cause of it. However, this comes with a warning, we must ensure that we take care of ourselves as well. If we are not careful we can spend all of our time making sure everyone else is OK and we do not look after ourselves. A balance is needed, which is why we need a good fulfilment foundation.

When it comes to success, achieving success with others feels more magnified than a solo achievement. Even athletes who take part in sports events individually could not achieve success without a coach and their loved ones supporting them. When we focus on goals that are innately selfish, like earning a large amount of money, we often sacrifice our relationships to earn the money, which is an empty success when achieved, because it brings very little happiness. But if we do it with the motivation to help others we feel great happiness when we succeed, because of the positive effect we have on others.

I am now a firm believer that both happiness and success are reciprocal, in that they are received, in part, when we give them to others. And as fulfilment is largely dependent on both happiness and success, fulfilment is reciprocal as well, but it is not something that we can go out and find, like a treasure hunt, fulfilment is a sense of being that comes from living life well, through positive relationships, a good understanding of ourselves, the wisdom of others, good health, and living in a way that brings more joy, love and peace into the world than their opposites. To help others find fulfilment is to fulfil what it means to be human.

 

Something to reflect on:

Whether you believe that we only get one life or not, to live deeply is to live well. cultivate positive relationships, help others when you can and strive to be your best self, so you can help other to do the same. This is a worthy goal and we need a worthy goal to live a fulfilling life.

Just Do It

Achieving Goals, Success

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”

– Winston Churchill

 

The slogan of Nike is “Just Do It”, which is a call to action, but the action is deeply personal. When we hear Just Do It we are directed in our minds to the thing we are unsure about, the thing we are scared to do, but we are drawn to doing. We all have things that we want to do but we don’t think we are able to do or we feel that it will end in failure, so we don’t even try. I think having such doubts comes from previous failure that hurt us deeply in the past, and have become a forgotten wound that has healed and left a scare deep in our subconscious.

There is a moment between when we think about doing this thing we are scared to do and our brains talking us out of it. It is this moment of a few seconds when if we don’t act then it is unlikely that we will Just Do It. Many of us feel that we need confidence before we can do new things or that we need courage to do it. Both of these are often true, but there is something that comes before confidence and courage. Before we can have confidence, or courage, I believe that we first need clarity, we need to know what our Why is. If we understand the reason why we do what we do we can understand everything that we do. It is the act of discovering our raison d’être, our reason for being. When we know our reason for being we develop confidence in our own abilities, fueled by our passion for what we value. First we need clarity, then we get confidence and then we take the step of Just Doing It by having the courage to give it a go.

Courage, by the way, is not having the confidence to do something before you do it, no, it is giving it a go even if you are scared. The courage always comes with being scared, and the more scared you are the more courage you need to give it a go anyway. The clarity we have in what we believe and value is a sort of compass pointing us in the direction our soul wants us to go to and our confidence is a platform we can use to jump from when we take risks and try new things.

I have had a difficult time over the past decade when my confidence has been shaken to its core and anxiety seemed to take over my everything. However, I am taking back my confidence and my courage by finding clarity and being willing to give new things a go. I know that you can do the same. We have all had things that have knocked us down, but it is not about how many times we get knocked down but how many times we get back up. If we always get up one more time than we get knocked down we can rebuild, restore and move forwards. As long as we are moving forwards baby steps count too. So think of that thing you are putting off doing and Just Do It.

 

Something to reflect on:

Knowing thyself is the key to success at anything. Clarity leads to confidence, which leads to courage. Whatever is in your heart to do, just do it.

 

What are we looking for?

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Success

“Don’t Look For Anything,

Just Learn to Look”

– Sadhguru

 

In his blog post on 30/04/18 Sadhguru reflects on the difference between looking to find a conclusion in life and the art of just looking. It is true that in our culture we are very focused on outcomes, achieving goals and reaching success, but in our path of life the important things like happiness and love, and even success, should not be end goals, not really. Real happiness, love or success are experiences felt in the moment, within ourselves, and they are very personal.

 

Looking in the wrong place

If you take any of these three things you can say that they are different for each individual person, because they are manifestations from our individual interactions with the people and the world around us, and when our circumstances and our relationships with other people and the world are in alignment with our values and beliefs then happiness, love and success manifest in our lives. The point here is that we spend too much time in search of attaining these things, as if they are out there in the world, as if we could possess them, if only we can live the right life, buy the right things and do the right actions. Happiness, joy, love, pleasure, satisfaction, success and many other human goals are all things that we experience within ourselves, we can never find them by looking for them out there in the world.

 

“The ability to look without motive

is missing in the world today.

Everyone is a psychological creature,

wanting to assign meaning to everything.”

– Sadhguru

 

Just looking

Many sages talk about being mindful, of being fully conscious of the moment we are in and not being distracted by our regrets of the past or worries about the future. The point that Sadhguru is making in his blog post referenced above is that our capacity to experience life in it’s fullest form is dependent on whether or not we focus on just looking so that we understand what we are looking at more deeply, it is curiosity for curiosity’s sake. He says “Spirituality is not about looking for God, truth or the ultimate. It is about enhancing your perception, your very faculty of seeing.” In this way you could say that the path to enlightenment, or just happiness or success, is in fact the path itself. All of these positive experiences that I have been talking about can be experienced instantly if we have the right mindset and if we look at the world and ourselves without expectation of a goal.

 

Something to reflect on:

How do you try to manifest happiness, love and success in your life? Are you seeing them as goals or as experiences in the moment?

How to be happy in your life

Happiness

“Attitude is a little thing

that makes a big difference.”

– Winston Churchill

 

Attitude

Part of self mastery is choosing our attitude in any set of circumstances. This is undoubtedly one of the most difficult things that we can do, but it is possible. There are many examples in our history of people in extraordinarily awful situations and yet they manage to find a positive outcome, because their attitude to the situation was a positive one. This begins with building the habit of looking for the positive in every situation.  Being caught in traffic means that you will be late for work, but you can still enjoy the view, or use the time to listen to your favourite music or a self development CD in the car. This is a habit we need to build up in every situation that makes us feel uncomfortable, unsettled or unhappy. If we can find little things to be positive about then we can build up a resilience that will include the power to choose our attitude in any set of circumstances.

 

Beliefs and values

A large part of what makes us unhappy in life is our beliefs and values. Now, before you become defensive about your beliefs and values please hear me out. As I have shown in my Fullfilment Framework (Summary Explanation Resource), we begin with our Foundation of self knowledge, acquired wisdom and good health, but it is our beliefs and values that are a prism through which we see and understand the world. Whether we see something as good or bad affects how we behave and think about it. For example, if we believe that certain behaviours are bad we will label the people who display those behaviour as bad, whether intentionally or not. This could be a lifestyle choice, the clothes that someone wears or the religion they follow. This then causes us to compartmentalise the world into categories of right and wrong, good or bad, etc.

 

To a degree we have to separate out the world into categories so we can function in it, but often it the beliefs and values that we hold about ourselves that cause us to become unhappy. For example, if we don’t think that we deserve to be happy, this will be a significant obstacle to becoming happy. Some of us do this without consciously realising that we are doing it. We might believe that in order to be happy we have to own certain things, like a car or a house. This will never bring about lasting happiness, because things in the world are fleeting and therefore we constantly strive for something new to make us happy.

 

Advertising companies and the media tap into this to sell us things or encourage us to watch specific TV channels. This is the equivalent of a hamster running on a hamster wheel and expecting to get somewhere. Our beliefs around happiness have to begin with contentment, this is entry level happiness, without which we cannot reach the higher levels of happiness.

 

Thoughts, speech and actions

The things that have the biggest influence on our beliefs and values are our thoughts, speech and actions as they reinforce them with everything we think, say and do. Being mindful of what we say and do is very important because they have an impact on the world and the people we spend our lives with. Managing our speech and actions allows us to have a well managed life outside of ourselves. However, more important is the thoughts that we have, because they impact our mind and our inner wellbeing.

 

“…the most important relationship

we have is with ourselves.”

 

Many of the things we say to ourselves in our own heads we would never say to someone else, because they are too cruel. We would not want to hurt the feelings of the people in our lives, but the most important relationship we have is with ourselves. If we make a conscious effort to be kind, compassionate and supportive to ourselves in the thoughts that we have, then our level of happiness with multiply exponentially.

 

The path we walk and the way we walk it

Many of us have goals that we want to achieve in our lifetime, but there is one goal that I believe should come above all others. That is the goal to be able to look back at the end of our lives with no regrets and gratitude for a life well lived. This goal can be achieve by focusing on two things, the path we walk and the way we walk it. The path we walk is the journey from where we are right now to the place we want to be in the future. It is very important to have a life goal, something that you strive for every day. It might be a career in a particular company or to learn something new or to complete a degree in the thing you are passionate about.

 

However, it is equally important to know the way that you will be walking this path. The way we walk our life long paths comes from a number of sources. Our personality plays a big part, whether we are kind or courageous, dedicated or disciplined. We are influenced by our environment, the people we love and those we spend the most time with. Many of us have a religious tradition that we follow, or at the very least a life philosophy. All of these things are factors that affect the way we walk our path, but usually we do not have control over these things, they evolve and they come and go so we end up living from moment to moment rather than in a considered and constructive way.

 

In order to live a life well I believe that we need to begin with a Foundation of self knowledge, acquired wisdom and good health, have beliefs and values that come from our Foundation as a beginning, but then we need to dig deep inside ourselves and figure our what our ‘Why’ is, what our purpose for living is. Mine is to help others be their best selves. Everybody’s ‘Why’ is unique to them and can take years to figure out, but it is a worthwhile endeavour. This Why then becomes why we do what we do in every aspect of our lives. The second part is to figure out our ‘Way’, the way in which we are to live our lives every day, it is how we express our Why in our lives. To find out our Why and to live our Way is at the very centre of what it means to be human, and what it means to live a happy life.

The blessings of bordom

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Success

“Boredom always precedes

a period of great creativity.”

– Robert M. Pirsig

 

In the age of instant food, TV and same day delivery there is very little that we have to wait for anymore. There was a time when we had to wait a whole week to see the next episode of a TV series, but now we can binge watch a whole series in one sitting if we want to. The rise in technological communication has meant that we have a world of both knowledge and entertainment accessible anytime anywhere through a variety of devices that can access the internet. So why is it that we feel the urge to reach for our mobile phones after having nothing to do for more than 30 seconds?

 

The rise of convenience

Part of the problem is that it has become so convenient to download and access a plethora of apps that can do almost anything you could imagine, if you can think of it then there is probably an app for it. As the app market became big business the gaps in the market began to be filled and someone built a app to fit each of these gaps, not necessarily to improve the lives of people or to better enable humanity to become our best selves, but to fill the gaps in the market. Often the apps that we can see as we scroll through the options in the Apple Store or Google Play are manifestations from the ebbs and flows of fads and popular culture, like the variety of bottle flip games for example. Convenience has become such a market commodity that the experience of having to wait for things has become a rarity.

 

Addiction to devices

Another part of the problem is that unwittingly we have become addicted to our mobile phones, and more specifically social media. There are a number of studies I am sure that back up the fact that more and more of us have become addicted to our mobile phones, we are never really separated from them. We use them as alarm clocks to wake us up, then we check our emails and Facebook notifications before getting out of bed, we spend time scrolling down the news feeds liking post after post, then we share some posts that we like and wait for others to like our post. Then we spend time through out the day with our heads down transfixed by our devices instead of interacting with the people we are physically ‘spending time’ with. We impatiently keep checking our Facebook posts to see how many people have liked them, refreshing our timeline every few seconds to see if the number of likes has gone up.

 

This is an extreme example, but many of us, including me, do some of these things on a regular basis, but we think that it is OK, as it has become the new normal in our culture. We can sit with work mates during lunch or with our friends or relatives in a restaurant and no one is talking to each other because everyone is looking at their mobile phones. People in their early 20s and younger are losing the art of conversation, it seems, because, having grown up with mobile phones from an early age they have not practiced the art of having a conversation face to face. Relationships are suffering because the skills needed to have successful relationships are practiced while awkwardly bumbling through social interactions as a teenager onward.

 

There is now scientific evidence that the use of mobile phones, and specifically social media, generate Dopamine in our bodies, which is one of our feel good chemicals which is also released when people drink, take drugs and gamble. Addiction to these things is really an addiction to Dopamine, and we are allowing children to have access to mobile phones and social media from a very young age, which needless to say, will not have a positive outcome. I am not saying that I am somehow above such things, I too have a mobile phone and go on social media, but I am trying to be mindful of its negative aspects so I can avoid my mobile phone ruling my life. Social media and mobile phones are tools to be used by us for the greater good, if you can see them that way.

 

The blessings of boredom

When I was a child I spent a lot of time climbing trees, building dens and going on ‘adventures’ with my friends and I have very few memories of being bored, because when I was growing up in the 1980s and 1990s we largely had to make our own fun. It was the very fact that we would have had periods of boredom that we began to invent things to do, often very creative things. I remember trying to build a zip wire in my back garden, which incidentally didn’t work, and making our own Scooby Doo style horror films with a camcorder and whatever costumes we could cobble together. Being bored is a gift that can precede the most wonderfully creative projects.

 

In our modern culture there seems to be an aversion to boredom, because it is uncomfortable and the marketing messages that we receive day in day out from companies trying to sell us distractions tell us that boredom is almost a sin. If we drown out our uncomfortable experiences with distractions then we are censoring our emotions, which is akin to clipping the wings of a bird. If we do not allow ourselves to experience life in it’s fullness then how can we ever learn to fly.

In search of truth

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Success

“If you really look for truth,

don’t assume anything – just seek.”

– Sadhguru

 

Presenting Truth

In every religion there is a prophet or sage that presents us with, what I am calling, universal truths, presented in a way that is understandable by the people they are preaching to. If we take the Bible as a case in point, as we have just finished the Easter weekend. We can look at the parables of Jesus and take from them truths, which we can then apply to our lives. Those who preach truth inevitably disrupt the status quo, much to the frustration of those who rely on the status quo, who have their own version of truth that is often aimed at either distracting or manipulating the masses. A contemporary example of this is the mass media who share their own narrative of what you can buy to bring you happiness. This is often why prophets and sages are so dis-barraged. A poignant and extreme example of this is the crucifixion of Jesus, someone who preached peace, love and selfless actions. Something that is prominent in our minds as we end the Easter week of the Christian calendar.

 

Accepting, Not Accepting and Seeking Truth

We have to be careful when receiving truth from anyone, even prophets and sages, because if someone tells us something claiming that it is a universal truth, and we believe them, it will not bring us closer to truth. If we decide not to believe them then we do not get closer to truth. However, if we admit that we do not know and we go seeking truth, then we will become closer to it, because it is in the seeking that we find truth.

“Do not accept any of my words on faith…

Only accept what passes the test

by proving useful and beneficial in your life.”

– The Buddha

 

Applying Truth To Our Lives

It is the application of universal truths within our lives that allows us to seek and find these truths. It is important to listen to prophets and sages, as well as scientists and historians, when seeking truths. Many have become wise through seeking and applying truths and seeing what works and what doesn’t, so listening to them can give us short cuts and sign posts towards truth. Part of the human condition is to look beyond our survival instincts and needs and look for meaning in our lives.

 

This is the main reason we search for universal truths, because we hope that these truths will equal meaning. Often we hope that if we are told what is the truth then we will also be given meaning, but neither truth nor meaning can be attained by the receipt of parables. We have to go looking for truth and then to apply it to our lives and see what sticks, what makes a difference. Truth is a life long pursuit, it is not the collecting of stories or even facts, it is goal we seek and the journey to get there as well. When held up in this regard it becomes a kind of catalyst for positive change in our lives. Do not settle for the truth you are told, see if it works in your life and then share it with those who need to hear it, so they can see if it works in their lives as well, as we can all be seekers and teachers of truth.

 

 

The problem with division

Happiness, Leadership, Success

“When fear displaces reason, the result is often irrational hatred and division.”

– Al Gore

 

We have all experienced division in one form or another, often in the groups of people we share our lives with, because we interact with them the most and opinions and beliefs can cause friction and division.

 

Division and disagreement are not the same

Having a difference of opinion is not the same as division, though in the many public spheres of society it is seen as such, especially in politics and religion, as cliche as this is. Disagreeing and division can be seen as the same thing, as if to have a point of view you have to be one extreme or another. This creates the unfortunate paradigm of a polarised society. We have seen this in the recent presidential elections in America and the confrontational tweets, comments and rants from President Trump.

 

We also see it in the politics in the UK, with many feeling that they have to be either Conservative or Labour supporters, and these are seen by many as polar opposites. This disagreeing in a society that appears to value, and in some cases promote, a them and us mentality has brought about a situation where there is little room for people to debate and disagree and still remain on good terms. It is definitely something that is promoted in the media and in TV programs because it improves the ratings, because, though we might not openly admit it, many of us enjoy watching other people at loggerheads. This has given rise to the era of reality TV, soap operas and gossip magazines. Rarely in these type of programs and magazines are people getting along and being nice to each other.

 

Division creates conflict

At the heart of every division is a conflict created by the very division itself. This begins when we are born into the world and all of our senses are jumbled up and we have not yet learned to differentiate between things. Slowly we learn to know the difference between ourselves and others, between colours and object, and this goes on until we have categorised everything so that we can understand the world and operate within it. This often then leads onto catetorising groups of people, almost as tribes, like football  teams and religions groups.

 

Many of the great sages and prophets from the variety of world religions and philosophies from around the world have promoted the idea that we have to unlearn these categories, as they are in effect divisions which set one thing against another, such as man and nature or culture and culture or person and person. But deeper than that they promote the idea of an overall oneness to the universe that, once acknowledged, will allow us to temper our conflicts and remove them, because once the divisions are gone then so are the conflicts.

 

We all have a part to play

Often when we are in the middle of a conflict with someone we are offended largely because we see the conflict as the other persons fault and their responsibility to walk away or solve the conflict, because they started it. However, this is massively dis-empowering, because this leaves all of the power with the other person. In every conflict that we are apart of we have a part to play, either because we in some way contributed to the conflict by our behaviour or lack of actions, or we have a chance to end the conflict with what we choose to say and do, or not say and not do.

 

For example, if someone is very angry and shouting at you, putting ourselves in their shoes or asking questions and listening actively we can find out the cause of their behaviour. Often when we do this we can easily resolve the problem by focusing on the cause rather than the behaviour. Taking some responsibility in every situation gives us the power to make change in the world and help more people than we hinder. Division and conflict are things that we can all work to minimise in our lives, and as a result we can have a positive impact on the world, leaving it better than we found it.

How to achieve your dreams

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Success

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t you’re right.”
― Henry Ford

 

As we learnt in my recent blog post, How to be more confident, self doubt is a decision not to try, and it is also a habit. This might sound harsh, but those who achieve success in their chosen field do so largely because of their mindset. Here are a few ways in which we can make good choices when working towards our dreams.

 

Say “What if?”

When we come up against difficult challenges in our lives often we can back down and avoid doing anything risky or that involves us putting ourselves out there, open to criticism and possible failure. One way to get past this barrier to success is to say to ourselves “what if?” What if we did succeed, what if we managed to achieve our dreams, what if. This allows us to consider the possibility of actually succeeding, rather than becoming consumed by the thought of failure.

 

Start the day right

Often our days are influenced greatly by how they begin, we often say that someone who is in a bad mood has got up on the wrong side of the bed. Having a positive start to our day can have a massive impact on the decisions we make and whether we feel confident to make bold moves or to take advantage of opportunities. It is important to create a morning routine of positive rituals. If you are religious this could involve prayer or giving thanks to God. If you are not religious, giving thanks to the universe for being alive.

 

Studies have shown that gratitude is very important for our wellbeing and it can bring so much positivity into our lives. Doing some physical activity at the start of the day can be very energising. This could be just stretches, if you have a physical condition such as Fibromyalgia like me, or it could be doing some weights or going for a run or swim. Whatever your level of ability and health, some physical activity at the start of the day can set you up to have an awesome day. It is also important to set our intention for the day. You could ask yourselves “What am I going to bring to today?” and decide that no matter what you are going to have an awesome day. Our brains look for the things we focus on, so if we begin the day in a negative mindset we will look for problems, but if we start the day with a positive mindset our brains will look for opportunities.

 

Handling the negative

When negative things happen to us often we crumble or we react, getting angry or upset. If we let this happen we can push ourselves off course and away from our dreams. One of the most important skills we can learn is to pick ourselves up when life knocks us down, but more important than that is to become immune to the negative nonsense. If we develop the habit of letting other people’s opinions of us or little mistakes that we make become magnified through our focus on them, then we cripple our chances of achieving our dreams.

 

This self sabotage is a habit that we need to break. So, when minor negative things happen in our lives telling ourselves that we are OK and can keep moving forwards means that we will and we can. It is rare that we get knocked down to rock bottom, but we often have to deal with negative circumstances and people each day. This is what we need to build up an immunity to, so we can live with more joy and help others bring joy into their own lives.

 

Motivation is key

The Wright Brother successfully took flight in a manned powered plane on 17th December 1903. They were not the only people trying to achieve this. Samuel Pierpont Langley led a team who were very well funded, well educated and followed around by the press constantly. Whereas, the Wright Brother had no funding, no one followed them around anywhere and paid they for their venture from the proceeds of their bicycle shop. However, Samuel Pierpont Langley did not have something that the Wright Brothers did, which was the right motivation. He wanted fame and fortune for being the person who figured out manned flight, but the Wright Brothers had a vision of flight changing the world for the better. They were aiming at making advances for the betterment of humankind.

 

This is because their mission to change the world, their drive to succeed and their passion for what they were doing kept them going, even though they would crash several times every day, until at the end of 1903 they achieved their dream. If we want to achieve our dreams we have to examine our motivations. If we are only interested in self gratification and relishing the spoils of success then any success we have will feel empty. When we raise others up, when we make positive change in the world, when we bring joy and success to others, then we will be on the way to achieving the dreams that we can be proud of.

 

A dream achieved is only worthwhile if we bring other people closer to their dreams along the way.

 

 

How to be more confident

Success

“Your doubts will create mountains. Your actions will move them.”

– Mel Robbins

 

This post is going to be a brief summary of Mel Robbin’s ‘Confidence Crash Course Livestream’ that was replayed on YouTube. It is an outstanding exploration of what confidence actually is and how to manage the self sabotage that gets in the way of us being more confident. I have added in here and their my own take on what was said in this livestream. There is a link at the bottom of the post to the YouTube video to watch the hour and a half video chocked full of good advice. I recommend watching it as there is a lot of content that I have not included here, as there is not enough space in a blog post to cover it all.

 

Myths about confidence

  1. Confidence is a personality trait

  2. Confidence is fixed

  3. Confidence starts with belief

 

Truths about confidence

  1. Confidence is a skill

  2. Confidence is situational

  3. Confidence begins with action

 

There are areas in our lives that we feel more and less confident in, which shows that it  really does depends on the situation we are in more than our overall confidence as a person. Knowing that confidence begins with action means that we have control over our confidence, because…

 

Confidence is the decision to try

 

A lot of people feel less confident when starting something new, but it is key to remember that you are always going to either succeed or survive. Either way you will learn something new. It can help to remember Mel’s definition of confidence and replace the word ‘confidence’ with ‘the willingness to try’. This then becomes actionable and we can take the action we need to, so we can take control of the situation we are in and work towards a positive outcome.

 

Self doubt is the decision not to try

 

Self doubt is also a decision to avoid taking the action that we do not want to take. It often has become a habit to doubt ourselves rather than trust that our inner voice is capable of directing us in the right direction.

 

Wise words: “Your doubts will create mountains.

Your actions will move them.”

 

The 4 traps of self doubt

  1. Hesitating

  2. Hiding

  3. Hypercritical

  4. Helplessness

 

Hesitating

  • Triggered by uncertainty
  • Waiting
  • Overthinking
  • Wanting your work to be perfect

You will never find the right time to do something. The only solution when we are hesitating is to just do it. When we are waiting to avoid something the solution is to just take action. If we are overthinking a decision it can help to ask someone else to make the decision for us. Many of us are perfectionists and this is also a way of hesitating and avoiding taking action. Remember that ‘good is gold,’ the only person that thinks that it needs to be perfect is us. Good is good enough. Hesitating is a way of staying in control, but it causes us not to take advantage of opportunities. The only answer to avoiding hesitation is to take action.

 

Hiding

  • Triggered by fear
  • Avoiding people/calls
  • Being silent
  • Being a chicken about money and terms
  • Procrastinating
  • Not talking to new prospects

We avoid the actions that we fear, but saying that we can’t talk to that person or we can’t make that call is wrong. What we actually mean is that we don’t talk to that person or make that call. Avoiding it is a choice that we have control over, we just have to bite the bullet and do it. Procrastinating is another way of hiding from the thing we don’t want to do, it is a way to be in control. We don’t know what will happen when we take action, but we will either succeed or survive.

 

Hypercritical

  • Triggered by past failures
  • You argue against yourself
  • You focus on the reasons why you can’t
  • You fixate on what could go wrong
  • Your stress has an edge

Often we are hardest on ourselves. We say negative things to ourselves in our heads that we wouldn’t say to anyone else, because they are so harsh. We argue with ourselves, saying things like, “I can’t do that” or “I’m going to fail,” while we are trying to convince ourselves to do something. We often fixate on what could go wrong, rather than what we could get right. Sometimes our stress has an edge to it, it seems quite serious, but only if we focus on the wrong things.

 

Strategies

  1. Break down big steps
  2. Take small moves forwards
  3. Record your progress

 

Helplessness

  • Triggered by low self worth
  • You actively play the victim
  • You know the solution
  • You may say that “nothing ever goes my way”
  • You’ve got all the excuses in the book

Actively playing the victim means that we don’t have to take responsibility for things, even when we know the solution we avoid taking action. When something does not go to plan saying “nothing ever goes my way” is another way of not taking responsibility. As is coming up with a long list of excuses. If we own our mistakes we can always find a success in the situation.

 

Wise word: “The problem isn’t knowing what you want.

The problem is having the courage to say it.”

 

The 4 traps of self doubt are learned behaviour

 

Many of us are clear on what we want, we just don’t want to admit it, because we would then have to do something about it and take action. We need to ask ourselves, “Do we have self doubt or a habit of doubting ourselves?” Self doubt is a learned behaviour, often from the people we have spent the most time with. Knowing this means that we can change our behaviour to actions that serve us better. The ingredient we are missing is courage. To get from clarity, which is knowing what we want, to confidence, which gets us what we want, we have to have courage. We have to just do it, even if we are anxious or nervous, because courage is not the absence of fear, it is taking action even when you are scared to do it. Confidence is at the other side of courage.

 

Clarity > Courage > Confidence

 

Wise Words: “Changing is hard.

You don’t have to go through it alone.”

 

One of the best things we can do is to try and bounce back after failure. One strategy to do this is to write a list of all of the failures that we are mentally carrying around with us. All of the failures that we cannot let go of. Then, to write down one important lesson we learned from each one of them. This releases the burden of carrying the failure around, because we begin to treat the failure as a positive thing that can help us move forward.

 

Wise words: “If you have a problem that can be

solved with action, you don’t have a problem.”

 

It is important to focus on what you can control and let go of what you cannot control. We often spend a lot of time and mental energy worrying about things that we have no control over. Mel, during the live stream, had a few technical problems at the beginning, but she kept on going. She focused on what she was saying and the content that she wanted to deliver, which she had full control over. The result was that the message got across and the content hit home. If she had given up at the first sign of technical trouble then she would not have impacted the 1500 or so people that tuned in to the live stream and the countless others who have watched the YouTube replay. Focus on what you can control.

 

A technique that Mel Robbins talks a lot about is the 5 second rule. This is used when you have anxiety rise up and your frontal cortex, the thinking, rational part of the brain, shuts down and the amygdala, the emotional, fight or flight part of the brain, takes over. You simply say 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, which switches the frontal cortex back on and you think of your anchor thought. Your anchor thought is something that make you feel good or that you can get excited about. For me it is thinking about seeing my Wife and daughter at the end of the working day. The reason this works is that the body has the same physiological behaviour when you are anxious and when you are excited, the only difference is what your brain thinks about it. So, telling yourself that you are excited about whatever it is, your brain calms down and the anxious feeling goes away. It is a technique that can really work when the panic begins to set in when you are in a stressful situation.

 

And finally, the take away message is that a negative mindset does not serve you. So actively removing the negative mindset when it shows up and replacing it with a positive mindset is really important for a happier and more successful life, and a more fulfilling life as a result. If you have found this information useful please do watch the full video by clicking on this link (Confidence Crash Course Livestream Replay) and check out Mel Robbin’s YouTube channel, her books and her website, www.melrobbins.com.  Keep on working towards your dreams, and remember, fulfilment is a path that we walk together.

 

#LiveDeeply

 

How to get empowerment in your life

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Success

“The price of greatness is responsibility.”

– Winston Churchill

 

Disempowering

We all, from time to time, feel like our lives are not fully in our control, that circumstances and the actions of others are somehow working against us, but this is often not the reality. The world does not revolve around individual people, it is a collective creation and a collective experience. What actually dis-empowers us is thinking that our happiness and success are created in the world outside of ourselves. Thinking that we will be happy or successful with more money or more stuff, the right man or women, the right job or the right house. What we are doing when we do this is giving away our power to the whim of the world and the actions of others. These material things might make us feel successful, happy, or even popular, on the surface, but thinking that we need them to have this status or even to be happy is the problem.

 

Being a Victim

When bad things happen to us in our lives we can often be heard saying either “Why me?” or “Why does this always happen to me?”. The truth is that it does not always happen to us, but if we ask that question our brains will have to come up with an answer as to why, because the brain works like a computer. Thinking such things creates a victim mentality that comes up with lots of reasons or excuses for why bad thing happen to us. The problem is that a victim is never in control of the situation, and thinking that the world is against us means that we force ourselves to become disempowered victims unnecessarily. Becoming a victim is another way of avoiding taking responsibility in our lives. Life can be hard and scary and it can become very easy to blame circumstances or other people for our misfortunes, I have done it myself on many an occasion, but I am becoming more mindful of my mental habits and avoiding having a victim mentality is something I have had to work on quite a bit. It is something that is key to taking control of our lives. We have to free ourselves of thinking that we are a victim by realising that we can control what we do and what we say each and every day.

 

Taking Responsibility

There is a way that we can become empowered, as I have alluded to above, and it is the thing that many of us would prefer not to do. We become powerful in our lives when we take responsibility for everything that happens within it. Taking responsibility does not mean that it is our fault when everything goes wrong, but it does mean taking responsibility for what we say and what we do in our lives. Part of this is understanding that we cannot control what other people say and do to us, but we can control how we respond. I say ‘respond’ because if we react we do so emotionally without engaging the frontal cortex of the brain, the thinking rational part, and we can say or do something we will regret which makes the situation worse. If we take a moment to think about how to respond to what has happened then we can make wise choices in how we handle the situation.

 

Our lives are controlled by the decisions that we make and taking responsibility for these decisions is empowering. This is how we become the master of our fate and captain of our souls. There is no quick trick or fix for this, but there is a mental habit that you can use. Every time you hear yourself blaming someone else for something stop for a moment and think about your role in the situation and what you may have done or not done to contribute to it, find your responsibility in the situation. Also, do a review of your life looking at the things that give you energy and the things that drain you of energy. Then think about what it is that you really want out of life and make a plan to cut out the things that drain your energy and work towards your dreams. Only you can make your dreams come true. No one will just come up to you and give you what you want, you have to work for it every day, but first you have to take responsibility for your life. Only then will you move forwards and achieve a life well lived.

 

“..it is knowing the path and walking the path.”

 

Set yourself standards of behaviour and attitude and expect them of yourself. Give yourself permission to be great at whatever it is that you want to spend your life doing. You are in control of your life when you decide to be in control and not before. It is up to you, but do not forget to build your support around you as well. Sometimes we fall and we need support to get back up. A life is not a solo mission, it is a path walked with others by your side, but if you decide on which steps you take happiness and success will surely follow, this is the root of fulfilment, it is knowing the path and walking the path.

5 Things all effective leaders need to have

Leadership

“A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.”

– John C. Maxwell

 

When it comes to effective leadership profit margins and performance projections are not the game. A leaders job is to know where they are leading their followers and to be able to articulate it in such a way as to inspire their followers to move in that direction together and to look after those that they lead. Leadership is about vision, energy, wisdom, human connection and having a moral compass.

Vision

Simon Sinek talks frequently about leadership and the need to have a vision and his vision is “I imagine a world in which the vast majority of people wake up every single day inspired to go to work, feel safe when they are there and return home fulfilled at the end of the day.” My vision is of a world where the vast majority of people collaborate to help each other lead happy and successful lives and live fulfilling lives as a result. This is why I created and continue to write this blog. I would not be so bold as to compare myself to Simon Sinek, we are not even in the same league, but what I am pointing out is that a vision is of a world in which we want to live, it is tangible, it is something we can imagine and work towards.

The job of a leader is to instill their vision in the culture of those who they lead, so no one is fuzzy on the direction that they are going in. This means that the vision becomes a part of everything that the members of a team or the employees of a company do on a daily basis. When Managers only reward short term gains, like reaching a profit margin, then the whole thing becomes unstable and often collapses, but a vision is something that is almost unreachable, it is a north star which we will never reach, but it points us to where we are going. It is therefore a constant and creates a successful and stable working environment, which breads more creativity and innovation, because the vision is clear and the team or the employees feel safe to take creative leaps.

Energy

It is no accident that effective leaders have lots of energy, because energy is infectious and we are drawn to those with energy. If a leader uses energy well they energise the people around them and they diffuse it into the culture of their workplace, causing their team to put there mental, emotional and physical resources to the task of working towards the shared vision, towards the north star of that team and that company.

This only works, however, when the leader in question actively interacts with their team or their employees. Whether you are a CEO or a Team Leader passing your energy onto those under your charge is an essential ingredient of effective leadership, it is part of making a human connection with those that you lead, because for someone to follow you they need to trust you, and trust is built up over time through positive interactions where, as a leader, you look after those in your charge.

Wisdom

It takes time to become an effective leader, it is a combination of both knowledge and experience, along with the other traits I am discussing in this blog post. It has been found that the most effective leaders are between the ages of 45 and 70. This is the sweat spot for effective leadership. Wisdom is a term that is banded around a lot, sometimes it is referred to when talking about people in their 80s and 90s, but I do not think that it is necessarily always about age.

I believe it is about the daily pursuit of knowledge and understanding of how to do the things we care about well. It is about us putting this knowledge and understanding to the test of experience every day, and on the other side of failure after failure we find wisdom. It is a deep understanding of how and why the thoughts, speech and actions of greatness result in this outcome. It also takes time to become wise, which would account for the age range within which we find effective leadership.

Human Connection

When leaders are in charge of a small team of people there are day to day human connections. Everyone knows the names of each others children, everyone’s lives are intertwined. The team will work and socialise together and relationships are built up over time through many many little interactions that amount to strong human connections. Therefore the leader needs to be adept at building and encouraging these connections, these relationships. Empathy is a strong component in these relationships, to connect emotionally on an individual level.

Empathy is a cornerstone of any human relationship and a good leader knows that teams and companies are not built on money or products, they are built on human relationships, because 100% of employees are human beings and 100% of customers are human beings. An effective leaders job is to look after their team or their employees and their employees will look after the customers. This is how sustainable businesses grow, and the stakeholders will benefit from this model more than if the leaders only focused on what the stakeholders wanted.

Moral Compass

As leaders rise up the ranks they become more and more detached from the employees they lead, so empathy no longer works, human connections become lessened, because there are less of the little interactions that add up to a working relationship. This is why empathy decreases in effective leaders in higher ranking positions, but it is in fact replaced by compassion. In other words they become more focused on doing the right thing even when it is hard.

This compassion is their moral compass, which becomes more prominent in effective leaders over time. It is detached from the individual employees that the leader is leading, but it is focused on doing what is right for all of the employees in their charge. Even if they are the CEO of their company, an effective leader is dedicated to doing the right thing, even when there is pressure to do the easy thing and put profits over people.

Effective leaders need to have a vision and clearly communicate it out to those they lead. They need to use empathy to make real connections with the team they lead. They also need to engage their moral compass of compassion when leading from a more senior position when they cannot rely on close working relationships to support and guide their employees. Being an effective leader has a lot to do with knowing that people are more important than profits, because effective leaders create effective leaders in those that they lead. To be a great and effective leader we have to make sure we look after the person to the right of us and the person to the left of us and we can all do that.

Choosing unity or division

Happiness

“The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety.”

– W. Somerset Maugham

In many areas of our lives there are divisions; between the good and the evil, the reds and the blues, parents and children, the religious and non-religious, the rich and the poor, one religion and another, one political party and another, and many more, but there are also those who strive towards unity, towards the acceptance of and respect for others. However, even with such people in the world our society is divided, in many ways. There is a lot of them and us mentality about, which makes any effort towards unity and acceptance very important, in my view. What often gets in the way of working towards unity is the human need to belong to groups. Belonging to any group automatically creates them and a us situation, which creates a division, whether small or large.

Belonging To Groups

So, what is it that makes us want to belong to a group? It happens in all walks of life, all ages, all genders.  Whatever country we were born in, or religion we were born into, this too is part of our identity, whether we have left them behind or not. And I do think that we need to belong somewhere in order to fill in a piece of who we are. This could be a hobby, a football team, a religion; whatever group we choose to join the group becomes part of who we are. It tells ourselves and others that we are sporty or religious, or whatever, which is part of why, I think, we are drawn towards belonging to groups.

However, if we don’t conform to any of societies accepted groups, then we can become outsiders and the need to belong and not being accepted might leave a gap in our sense of self. I suppose whichever side of this division we fall on, whether we belong or we don’t belong, this is also a key part of our identity. Our past also inform our present, it is the context within which we understand our place in the present. Without a history, without a story, I suppose we might not have a sense of self at all.

Our Mythologies

This could be why across all of human culture there are many mythologies, stories that explain how everything came to be. These stories vary across the world, but usually place humankind either as owners or caretakers of the world or as an equal part of it. In the novel Ishmael, written by Daniel Quinn, this idea is explained with humankind being labelled as Takers or Leavers. In the novel it is explained that “The premise of the Takers story is ‘the world belongs to man,’…The premise of the Leavers story is ‘man belongs to the world’.” The Takers are those who belong to the cultures of the world who might class themselves as civilized, cultures that try to subdue and control nature. Leavers are those who belong to the indigenous cultures of the world like Native American Indians and Australian Aborigines for example, that try to live in harmony with the world.

These cultural stories, these mythologies, can be a significant part of our lives, explaining how everything that exists came to be, and most importantly where we fit into the grand scheme of things. Some cultures, especially in what we call the West, are becoming secular, and our secular societies have their own story given to us by Science. This story is constantly evolving, as new discoveries are made about the world and the universe in particular, but the story still puts human beings at the top of the pecking order, so to speak, creating a division between human beings and the world.

But what of the “Leavers” in our current world? I have heard it said that Native American Indians see all living creatures as their brothers and sisters, the birds in the air, the fish in the rivers and the animals on the land are all family. All life in this regard is a family community, in need of each other. I think a lot can be learned from these indigenous people. They have a lot of wisdom that we can all benefit from, if we can see past our own cultural mythology and understand the cultural mythology of another.

“At the heart of every division is a conflict, created by the division itself.”

 

Generally, in our civilisation we have come to regard the world as something to be conquered, something to own. Animals being there for us to eat and hunt and breed. This is, generally, our way of seeing things. It is a perspective shared by many people around the world. Yet, dividing ourselves from anything, I think, causes more problems than it solves. At the heart of every division is a conflict, created by the division itself. The moment a division is created there is an us and a them, whichever side you are on.

Do our groups define us?

Problems occur when we see the groups we divide ourselves into as what defines us, rather than our own personal perspectives. We put our faith in the mythology, in the story that is told by our group, this then separates us from others. Even seeing ourselves as human separates us from the rest of the natural world. This “primary boundary,” as Ken Wilber puts it in his book No Boundary, is, according to him, “…that split between the seer and the seen, the knower and the known, the subject and the object. And once this primary boundary occurs, a chain of inevitable consequences follows. A host of other boundaries ensue, each being built upon its predecessor; the various levels of the spectrum exfoliate; the world as we collectively know it leaps into existence; and we become lost, amazed and enchanted, distracted and complexed, loving and loathing our universe of opposites.”

The main point that Ken Wilber makes in this book is that all boundaries are created by ourselves, in order to make sense of the world. But if these boundaries only exist in our minds, if they truly are our collective view of existence, of the world, then surely we can change how we see the world, change how we see others. We can start to see the good in others, to be grateful for their kindness, to see them as equals in this complex and beautiful world in which we live. This is no small task however, given that we have spent our whole lives learning to see the world as we do. We are very good, on the whole, at community spirit, what we need to do is make our communities bigger than our religion, our town and our country. We need to connect to those outside of the groups that we belong to. Our community is our world; it’s up to us how big that world is going to be.