Do you know what’s bearing down on you? It’s time to step back and ask yourself tough questions.
 

For many today, the pressure is on: difficulties with careers, finances, relationships and everything else that comes with a bad economy. Dealing with this pressure will most likely demand a significant course correction, based on a shift in the way you think and how you live your life. Most of us have probably never needed more conscious inner inquiry, more trust in the outcome and better decisions.

It takes a lot to make us consider new options and risks, new ways of doing, being and thinking. That’s why such radical course corrections are driven mostly by experiencing pain. They call for ways to rebuild our lives from the bottom up, reviewing the foundations and removing faulty structures along the way. They demand an exploration into our ‘shadow side’, seeking out the root causes of our pain and suffering where they hide—in our beliefs, expectations, assumptions, and paradigms.

Taking an inventory is always an ‘inside job’.

The truth of our lives comes from within. What seems logical and rational too often results in pain and suffering. You need to discover that many once-necessary aspects of your life are no longer relevant, important or even interesting. It’s time to move on.

Here are some examples you will need to check out:

• Do past answers to problems and challenges no longer work as they once did?
• Do old attachments no longer have any power?
• Do the objects of your jealousy, envy, anger and grudges no longer have the hold over you they did?
• Are your visions and dreams no longer unfolding according to your plan?

You are almost certainly the major obstacle to change in your life.

Think about this: “If it’s to be, it’s up to me.” This no time for feelings of lack and inadequacy; no time to be striving for perfection, needing to be an “11” on a scale of 1-10. Doing this causes you to judge yourself harshly and engage in self-limiting, self-sabotaging and self-critical thinking. It produces a misplaced focus on personality rather than what is in your heart. It keeps you from conducting an honest inventory.

The good news is that each of us has the capacity to conduct the kind of inventory we need. We can stop belittling ourselves and find greater degrees of self-knowledge, self-love and self-respect. It will take courage to confront your limiting beliefs, assumptions and self-images. It will also require you to be honest when you look at yourself in the mirror of inner reflection and drop attempts to deceive yourself or others.

By letting go of your illusions and your ego’s needs to be perfect in every way, you will be free to experience who you really are and listen to the voice within.

What it’s like to talk with “me”

Experiencing an open and honest personal inventory requires you to take time to be with “me.” The greatest obstacle is always lying to yourself. You can find the truth about “how I am” and “who I am”—but only if you take time to listen, “outing” your ego-personality defenses, your “stories”, your self-limiting beliefs, fears, and defensiveness.

Only by listening deeply and freeing your curiosity to operate without judgment can you uncover what’s underneath all those ego-driven behaviors. The ones that separate you from your authentic self and keep you feeling deficient. In their place, you can establish a way of thinking that accepts you just as you are, points to your true needs and gives you the capacity to cope with life’s tests and trials.

As you learn to listen and trust yourself more, you will find yourself making better choices and navigating life with greater strength, courage, steadfastness and wisdom.

Here are some questions for self-reflection:

• What in your life weighs you down and keeps you from making progress? What propels you to take action?
• Do you ever feel you’ve been busier than ever but feel like you’re going nowhere? What accounts for this?
• How much of your life is engaged in “activity” (the illusion of being busy, and doing for the sake of doing) and how much is engaged in “action” (achievement and goal-oriented behavior)?
• Are you scurrying around trying to maintain a lifestyle that no longer serves you? Or moving consciously to create a new one that will?

Technorati Tags: change, purpose, correcting your course, inner work, introspection, finding answers within

Recession’s storms provide the dormant period you need to prepare fresh growth.
 

Photo credit: Jon Worth

Today, I came across an interesting thought from John Baldoni, writing for the Harvard Business Publishing blog (“Adopt a Fresh Take on the Recession”).

He writes: “One thing this recession can provide executives is more time. Typically the pace of business slows during a recession, so it creates opportunity for dialogue and reflection. This gives business leaders an opportunity to adopt a ‘fresh take’.”

That seems a genuinely good idea. Since all the frantic rushing to make bundles of money during the boom time, and the crazy, short-term thinking it brought on, were major causes of the recession, it makes sense for the opposite to be worth doing to find a way out again. Besides, when things get slow and energy seems depleted, creating future plans can be therapeutic as well as useful in career or business terms.

Advice to use any ‘spare’ time to slow down and think hard works as well for individuals as organizations. Why not use any slowing as a time to stand back and take a good look at your priorities and direction? Where should you be using whatever resources are still available? What should you be working on that could be to your best advantage?

There are times when we all press on with a strategy we’ve begun to question, or stick with career choices that don’t appear to be working out, purely because there never seems time to work on a new direction. If you have that time now, deploy it wisely.

Like a plant driven underground by winter storms, use any ‘dormant’ period in your progress to put down stronger roots and get ready to ready to burst back above ground when conditions improve.

Technorati Tags: change, personal growth, strategy, priorities, new directions

Why being the grit in the oyster hurts—and why it matters so much

The BBC recently ran a tribute to the late, great, British TV journalist Charles Wheeler. Predictably, the plaudits came thick and fast for a man of integrity, who applied his gift for communication that we might all be better informed. Amongst his many qualities was an innate curiosity and doggedness. He wasn’t a man to keep his head down, whatever the pressures to do so.

I was privileged at one time to have a senior colleague who was not unlike Wheeler in his ‘old school’ approach and regularly exercised his superbly developed talent for cutting through fashionable jargon and politicized tosh. Yet his polite requests for explanation or clarification rarely produced more than stony expressions and poorly disguised exasperation on the faces of the speakers. The subsequent silence was only broken by the scratching of a pen as it fought to find space for making another negative comment in his personal file. At his retirement send-off, he was described by his head of department as having been, for many years, the ‘grit in the oyster’.

Grit is uncomfortable and irritating. It’s also the source of a pearl. Not grit, no jewel. Read the full story

How do you know who you really are?

René Descartes, the French philosopher, mathematician, scientist and writer, known as the Father of Modern Philosophy, coined the phrase, “I think, therefore I am” (From the Latin: Cogito, ergo sum). Fast forward to today, and most people live according to a variation of this phrase: “I am whoever and whatever I think I am.”

On what basis are you who and what you think you are? Is it even true? Who is really pulling your strings?

Picture a mother-board or a system-board: the group of electronic bits and pieces that runs everything from cell phones to computers. It has numerous chips, circuits, nodes, diodes, and other small metal and plastic structures soldered to it which contain all the ‘working parts’ that allow an electronic device to function.

When you were born, your motherboard (your brain) had few of the necessary structures and working parts you need to function as an adult. So how did it happen that you now have all the thoughts, beliefs, world views, assumptions, expectations, inferences, biases, and most importantly, the values, that you use every day? Where did all your neural nodes, diodes and structures on the motherboard of your brain come from? Who installed your programming? Read the full story

Some thoughts about one of today’s fetishes: setting clear life and career goals.

The conventional wisdom is that we all need clear and challenging goals for our lives; that life without goals is leads to failure and dissatisfaction. I wonder if this is correct? After all, many people give up on the goals they have set themselves. From New Year’s resolutions to ‘new me’ decisions, it’s goal setting that seems to lead to failure more often than to success.

Why should this be? Why should people find that giving themselves something to aim at leads to being in a worse position than when they started? Setting goals seems to be such a simple process. You take a look at yourself, decide what you want to change most, think about how to get started, then do it. What is it that goes wrong?

Here are some thoughts about potential pitfalls. They don’t happen to everyone, but they are definitely common enough to be worth avoiding. Read the full story

When someone’s committed, it shows in the way they care and how deeply they are engaged — even at work

“Harmony Before Matrimony (Gillray 1805)
Wikimedia

What is a commitment? A commitment is an agreement that is (1) a fact demonstrated by observable and measurable behavior; and (2) an attitude that reflects a consistency and alignment in thought and belief.

For example, a committed relationship is one wherein your behavior demonstrates commitment in an operational and observable way and your thoughts and beliefs about the relationship are consistent with, and in alignment with, the notion of commitment. If you say you are in a committed relationship but never have time for your partner, that is not commitment.

If you spend 95% of your time with your partner, but are consistently wishing or wanting to be elsewhere, not sure if the relationship is the right one or fantasizing about being with another person or persons, that is not commitment.

Harmony is a state in which there is a tight alignment and congruence among what you say, feel, think and do. When one or more of these elements is not in alignment with the others, no one will experience harmony. What he or she will feel and experience is imbalance without real joy, happiness, meaning or purposefulness. In a state of imbalance, a person is moving drone-like though life at work, at home or at play. Consider those who consistently say they are unhappy at work, at home and at play. What’s most often lacking is commitment. Read the full story

Few people are as busy as those seeking to distract themselves from what really needs to be done

It’s easy to imagine that you are busy when all you are truthfully doing is attending to various social calls — especially when those activities can be indulged in without moving from your desk and computer. E-mails, instant messaging, and social web sites like Twitter all demand time and attention, and no other type of attention will do in our ‘instant world’ save the immediate kind.

For some time, I’ve made it my practice never to answer e-mails right away, unless they are so obviously urgent that nothing else will do. I’m not intending to be rude to those who contact me — quite the reverse — since my immediate response would have to be superficial and poorly considered. What I would have written right away and what I eventually write a day or so later are rarely even similar. The intervening period has allowed my mind time to take in what the other person wrote to me, mull it around, and produce something in return that is more worth reading.

Many writers on time management and productivity will urge you to check your e-mails and similar messages only at set times, rather than spending all day jumping to see what has arrived when the computer makes whatever noise signals a fresh e-mail. Few go the extra step and urge you not to reply until at least 24 hours have passed. But if refusing to break off whatever you are doing to read an e-mail when it arrives saves you from needless distraction, waiting a while to respond will often prevent you from writing what you may regret only a little while later. Read the full story