These lessons came as a result of the recent MindBody Detox Retreat.
I love how I never stop learning and I learn off every new person and experience I have. So don’t stay in the comfort zone, or your learning and growth will miss out – plus your sense of personal fulfillment. Step into the unknown and experience what the best of you is truly capable of achieving.
I was doing a session this week with a client on the MindBody retreat and as we were spending time delving into attachment, vulnerability, basic human needs, and a bunch of other topics; it became very clear to me that projecting an image of what you want others to think of you is not only energy consuming, but it erodes your authenticity and therefore LIKEABILITY. Not so cool…
Facebook crimes
Have you ever had (or still have) a Facebook ‘friend’ who always posts about how fabulous their life is? How fabulous their relationship is. How fabulous their holidays are. How happy they are (all the time). And even how great their pets, children, job, etc., etc., etc. are.
What are your real thoughts when you read their stuff? Not the stuff you ‘like’ or the comments you post on Facebook; but what you really think.
Stress is a bigger subject than I have time to fully cover this morning, so I am going to concentrate on two particular aspects – SURVIVING Vs THRIVING. I want to show you how to move from survival to thriving; and what is necessary.
Setting the context
Many people ‘think’ they work best under stress…
And the truth is that stress is useful up to a certain point. In fact it was the ‘stress response’ that allowed us to survive as a species over 10’s of 1000’s of years. The stress response is great for avoiding danger. The physical responses it elicits in our bodies allows us to physically perform at a generally higher level – IN
Have you ever stopped to think whether the guilt you have felt, or do feel, serves you?
And did you know that in the Tibetan language there is no word for ‘guilty’. Apparently the closest translation is “intelligent regret that decides to do things differently”. Guilt has come up a lot with a client I am working with at the moment and so I wanted to share with you what I have learned and what I am teaching them.
Understanding ‘it’
What is guilt and where does it come from?
As I pondered this I came up with two different themes.
1. The guilt that someone directs at us
2. The guilt we direct at ourselves
Hands up if you ever got to a place where you thought ‘I finally made it’ and then decided to put your feet up and take it easy? If so, then fast forward a few months. Were you still ‘on top’?
Damn it!
Why couldn’t life be ‘easier’? Why can’t we stay on top for longer (given all the hard work it took to get there)? When do we get a chance to ‘rest’?
Sometimes life sucks just a little bit. It seems to me that if you stop moving forward, putting some effort in on a regular basis, then before you know it, you are moving backwards. Why? Why? Why? Damn it!!
Actually, the why for me is less important. For me it is the acknowledgment that ‘this is life’ and ‘SO WHAT DO I DO ABOUT IT NOW?” that is the most important. And that is what we will be talking about today.
Were you ever told as a child to ‘stop telling stories’? Well today’s tip is all about stories and what impact that have on your life and your results in life.
The challenge
So I was doing a coaching session with a client in Copenhagen last night (unfortunately it was via Skype and not in person; because Copenhagen is such a gorgeous city). And as with most clients, my job is not only to help them identify what they want (and how to get there); a big part of my job is to say to them “that’s total crap” or “that’s absolute rubbish” (if they are more prim and proper). My job is to challenge their ‘stories’.
Because here are a couple of secrets:
The amount of people suffering from chronic stress and depression is on the rise. In fact we probably all experience both to varying degrees at times. Tony Robbins suggests that in many cases overwhelm precedes depression, so it seems like a great topic for me to focus on; plus I have worked with a number of people in this space.
Some background
Firstly, I am assuming all of us have been overwhelmed before. Whether for short periods or longer periods. The short stuff is manageable. It is the longer, chronic overwhelm we want to avoid.
I have pondered this often. Read about it extensively. Observed it with my coaching clients. And played crash-test dummy with myself along the way and this is what has been revealed to me.
When we are most happyBelow are some of the conditions that typify when we are most happy, based on a lot of research and observation:
– when we are being ourselves
– when we have a degree of autonomy or control over what we are doing
– when we are being creative
– when we are challenged to a level that stretches us (but does not snap us)
– when we make a positive impact on another person
– when we connect to something bigger than us
– when we are doing something we are good at
If you ever get to the end of the day and feel like you have not made any forward progress, or that your day was not successful, or you feel like you were pretty unproductive, I might have just the strategy for you.
That feeling thing
I am going to repeat myself, because apparently ‘repetition is the mother of learning’. The way we FEEL has more impact on our life than what we have (or don’t have). In fact we can actually feel a certain way, by thought alone.
So success isn’t just about achieving things, it is about feeling a particular way. So rather than fixating on what we need to have or do or get to feel successful, we would be better off asking, “how can we generate more FEELINGS of success?”
Tony Robbins, a famous success coach once said ‘the quality of our lives is directly proportional to the quality of relationships we have in our lives’.