Some months ago my ears pricked up when listening to BBC Radio 4’s Midweek. Matt Croucher, veteran of the war in Afghanistan, was being interviewed as someone who had lain down on a land mine to protect his mates. Matt talked about the reality of working 7 days a week, 12 hours a day in 50 degrees of heat. The interviewer asked what was important to him now, “… getting things in proportion” he said simply.
How right he was. Many people come to me a bit freaked out by their feelings of outrage, disappointment, rage and frustration in their business dealings, or in their careers.
Supercoach Michael Neill talks of acknowledging our experiences and our own (and sometimes peculiar ‘take on things’), but also to remain open to the idea that the nature of thought itself leads us down our own “reality tunnels”. We become wedded to the idea that our outrage, our disappointment, our hurt is somehow an objective truth, whereas in fact it’s more a function of the way our emotional responses and thoughts intertwine and create our reality.
If we take some time to imagine ourselves somehow free of our particular “reality tunnel” or painful challenge and look at things from an altogether different perspective, like the wonderful things we have around us, then we can perhaps allow ourselves to create another more positive “reality tunnel”.
Negative thoughts, feelings and emotions are by their nature transitory. We need to realise that we are creating our own reality often by habit or default. By allowing that they are also sometimes ‘illusory’ may help us through a bad patch… as the ancient saying goes, “… this too shall pass.”
A state of mind?
Michael Neill says “happiness leads to success not the other way around”. This tells us that happiness is also about an ability to perceive things differently, to be prepared to not always take disappointment, rejection and sadness at face value but to keep a sense of proportion, and to search for a deeper meaning to your abilities, your goals and to your life.
Top Tips
- What are your goals for 2012, and are they likely to enhance your unique abilities, and your ‘life’s work’?
- Are you aware of your own “reality tunnel(s)” and how they might be affecting you right now?
- How would you like to ‘recreate’ what you are thinking and feeling about the challenges you face, and how might this contribute to your own sense of happiness and fulfillment?
- What is the one ‘lovely thing’ you’d love to have or do that doesn’t involve retail therapy, money, or a loss to someone else!?
Quick Fun Exercise:
Jump to conclusions... or a more thoughtful reality?
Have a quick glance at this photo, what do you see.
Then look at it hard and long, what do you really see? Email me your answer.
