Welcome back and do hope you had a good break over the summer. Really hope you are feeling rested and ready to go once again and if not, no worries at all. Only, if you have come back rested or want to feel rested going forward, are you ready to start back as you mean to go on? If so, well then read on
One night, I got to hear a speaker talk about his need to start every day with a fifteen-minute meditation. This calmed him down and got him grounded to be better positioned to deal with and take on the challenges of the day in a more creative and energised way. (His weakness was that he allowed himself to be pulled in to many different directions during his working day.)
At the end of the talk, he was asked, “what he does on really long and busy days?” His answer: on days like that, he usually does thirty minutes of meditation!
That you now continue to take time out for when you do it will allow you to keep on learning how to live and make the most of the life you are living. Self-leaders allow themselves the time to be silent, and so they cultivate the power of the imagination, which helps them move towards what they want their life and work to be about. For you, this time out may only be ten to fifteen minutes once a week. This is a brilliant start and will give you something solid to build on. Make the most of this time and use it constructively. It is not about looking back over the past and digging up regrets and mistakes or just day-dreaming about the future. Look at where you want to go and what you are doing about it.
Work at developing a mechanism that allows you to take time out regularly. Space and time will let you gather your energy and thoughts and stop yourself from being pulled in different directions daily. Once you have discovered what works for you to achieve this, have the courage and determination to just do it daily. Any time spent allowing yourself to recharge your batteries and get creative is not wasted, even if it is just taking a few minutes out to be quiet, to just stand back from all the hustle and bustle around you. This alone will improve your understanding of what is going on for you and how best you can respond to it. You need to be aware of what it is you are reacting to and work out how you can positively respond to it instead. (If you are reacting to what is going on around, you are not in charge–only by responding do you get to take control of the situation.)
You need to not only look at what is happening, but also why it is happening. It will also give you the opportunity to realize the different choices you may have and to think about the implications of each option. This will improve your decision-making abilities. If you can ensure you have regular times out, it will also allow you to learn from living.
Self-leaders know that the more they can maintain their energy and sense of creativity, the more resilient they will be, the more they will keep going and the more likely they will be to go on and live the life they want to live. They understand that taking time out to build up their energy and creativity will allow them to move forward in the face of their fears and doubts.
If you want to follow up on what I have written here and living a life of true and real success for you, please check out my books—available from AMAZON