by admin | Nov 30, 2022 | Simple Self Help
Once you can recognise that the work you do is a service to others, that they have a need for what you offer, then the process of work becomes something else, something special. It is as if you can see in your own work the solution that others have been searching for. Take the time to look at what you do and at the skills you bring to bear as something that people have been waiting for and which they need.
So many people express the frustration they feel in their jobs, unacknowledged, less involved than they wish, with heartfelt views and opinions that are rarely consulted. The pain and distance from true fulfillment that we can all identify with so strongly is the opposite of the opportunity for involvement and service that we yearn for. Being able to deliver a role that is appreciated and recognized is a true motivator we can identify with and connect to. Through such links with emotionally nurturing work and finding personal expression through our work we can achieve a sense of immense satisfaction.
In the way you go about your daily tasks see the sense of taking care of others that is represented. In delivering your service others directly benefit. Perhaps this is because you simplify a process for them so they do not have to keep struggling. Maybe you bring clarity to a problem that has long been troubling them. Then again, it could be that you are just good at what you do best. Whichever it is others will line up to pay you for this skill.
Whatever angle you approach your work from, see the gains that you abilities bring to your client group and continue to do whatever is necessary to ensure that others benefit from your working with them or on the matters that aid them.
Whether they are internal clients and colleagues from within your organization, or external customers, we all interact with others each day and the scope to do so from a place of service gives you focus for your work that will bring deep satisfaction.
Explore what skills you have and which you have yet to develop that can bring you the benefit of the deep sense of personal fulfilment from your work. If you are to spend many years engaged in activities for which you get paid, then at least make sure that this work is something that brings a variety of rewards to you. The need for personal fulfilment is one of the most heartfelt desires we have and the scope to satisfy this demand through your work is so important.
Identify what others will see as a service to their needs and maintain your focus on providing your skill set to meet those needs closely.
by admin | Nov 20, 2022 | Declutter
In all that you have gone through and the unhappiness, anger and sadness you have felt, you have given a place to these feelings within yourself. Here is a simple method for loosening those attachments between your mind and body and moving to some resolution that supports the letting go.
Go to a quiet place where you can have half an hour to yourself and will not be disturbed as you go through this practice. You can lie on the floor so long as you are comfortable, or you can sit in a chair that supports you well. Have a notebook and pen nearby because once the physical exercise is done, you will likely find it helpful to make note of your thoughts and observations afterwards.
Start by closing your eyes and taking a cycle of ten steady breaths in and out, just to get yourself to a place where you can work through the process I am going to describe. Once you are feeling calm, think now about the thing you would like to release to let go of. Think about it, about how it makes you feel, and notice the emotions that come up as you focus upon this.
Take the strongest feeling you can identify and think about where you can find it in your body. All feelings will find a place in our body and create sensations that we are aware of. Perhaps you will feel heat, cold, stinging pain, dull pain, a throbbing sensation, tingling, or even cramp. From your objective self look at the sensation you are aware of. Notice how it is present and how you could describe it.
Now you are clear on the symptom and where it is showing up in your body, ask if there is a message attached to it. It could be a physical feeling or sensation. Perhaps it is a taste or a smell. Observe what is taking place without judging. Just let it be. It is what it is, nothing more. Be connected to the sensations that present to you.
Allow the process to continue until you feel that it is done or that you have received the message. Now it is time to repeat that cycle of breathing you did at the start, to relax and find a place of calm and peace. Move through this breathing and then allow yourself to sit up from the floor or to move gently up from your chair. Give yourself a good stretch of your body.
What did you notice and feel?
Pick up that notebook or journal and begin to write down what just happened. Write too about your feelings and thoughts of any message or point of release that came up for you in the process you have just taken yourself through. Pen or pencil will be best because you are committing straight to paper through your hand and body. Whatever comes out, just let it do so. Don't pause to edit or to take time out for analysis and judgement. Remember that it is what it is. There is no right or wrong, no crazy, silly or foolish. You are simply being lead to write what comes up and to faithfully record it in the moment. Get close to the whole thing. Keep your pen busy for as long as there is 'stuff' coming up to the surface for you. Stay with what presents itself through your pen to paper and keep writing until the connection to the feelings has gone.
- How might I see myself differently as a person?
- How can I use this experience to identify a new way forward in my life?
- What steps can I take to reduce the emotional pain of a similar future experience?
- Can I learn from this to let go of upset earlier?
- How might I retell the story I tell myself about what I went through?
Writing down the thoughts that surface will give you more steps to moving through your 'stuckness' around the letting go of that situation, scene or interaction with a person. Don't stop there with that first practical process. Do it again next week and then the week after. Any time you feel stuck or overwhelmed by the whole letting go process give yourself this private time to breathe, to notice the sensations in your body as they present themselves, and journal about the thoughts, ideas and emotions that come from the physical breathing exercise.
What has happened is just that, the past. You cannot change your past. You cannot remove what took place. However, you have the freedom and ability, as well as the means now, to look at the past with a new perspective and with a script that you can totally rewrite to take away guilt and any ill feeling over your actions or struggle. Remember this. It is what it is. Nothing more than this.
You can rewrite your story so that it serves you, rather than pulls you down. Remember this simple phrase, that "If it's to be, it's up to me."
When you note down your thoughts from the process, you will likely come up with new ideas for how you live moving forward, fresh approaches to how you enter into new activities and relationships.
by admin | Nov 11, 2022 | Simple Self Help
One of the least understood miracles of this amazing life is that you attract what you place your focus on. So if you have complaints about how things are for you, instead of seeing things improve you will notice more and more of the unpleasant stuff pile up outside your door, waiting to come in. It can feel like nothing is ever going to get better, as if your world is going to fall about.
In my own experience there have been several times when I was stuck in a problem and continued to make the situation worse. At such times the debts were piling up and the creditors were getting angrier. I made things worse by panicking and by throwing myself into a pitiful state of mind, imagining things getting increasing bad. The days were so painful that it seemed that all I could do was work endless hours and yet made no progress at all. Such difficult times, when they ended, came about because of a shift in my thinking, in the way I was using language and more than anything else because I stopped complaining and began to express my gratitude. Gratitude for what the experience was teaching me, for the opportunity I was receiving to learn about new skills, for the good things I could acknowledge and for the money that I did actually have.
By shifting your focus onto the good things, people and lessons you do have you begin to let go of a lot of the hassles and to start receiving more good, more beneficial happenings and greater flow of abundance, love and energy.
Expressing your gratitude for what you do have, for what you notice about your circumstances right now, in the moment, can bring about profound change. Start with where you are now.
This morning for example, I am writing at home, with beautiful weather outside; sheep in the fields surrounding the house; a lovely blue sky and a gorgeous landscape beyond the windows. I am enjoying a great cup of coffee and writing with a beautiful pen that flows ink straight onto the manuscript. My children are out on the beach for the day and enjoying themselves there. I am doing what I love and in this moment all is well. I am very grateful for all of this right now.
How about you? In this moment what can you be grateful for? What can you think about that you can express your gratitude and thanks for? Look at the things that you can appreciate.
Remember that what you focus on will expand and bring you more of the same. If you would like to receive more of what you want, take the time to give thanks for what you have already and trust that the Universe wants to provide you with more. So let it happen.
by admin | Nov 6, 2022 | Declutter
Heartbreak, business failure, broken promises, or the ending of a friendship. Whenever one of these upsets touches you and you feel unhappiness, it is so very easy to get down, to become sad or to feel down.
It is what it is.
Your interpretation of an event is simply that, your own interpretation. You give meaning to everything. By default you can change that meaning or adapt how you see something by making the decision to do this. You have freewill and choice in the matter.
Here's the thing about accepting what is. You think you were wronged in a love affair or loving relationship that has ended. You think you were wronged this way because in your mind, you have told yourself that this really is what happened. Your mind conspires to create a story or to edit a drama in which you were made to be the victim in such a situation. It's your mind that does this so of course you must be right, therefore it must be true. I am taking some liberty and license with this in order to make the point. Please don't take this literally. I simply want to help you understand the concept that you can have a story about something in your mind, and if you want to, you can rewrite that story and take different meaning from it.
Accepting the idea that an experience is simply what it is, looking at it without judgement, is a powerful way for you to move forward from a place of hurt or upset and to recover the strength and magnificence of who you are. This approach doesn't mean you are giving something up or demeaning yourself at all in the process. But it does allow you to be free of those elements of self-judgement that can taint a scene from your past and add to it all type of negative meaning and often, with this, self-criticism. None of this is good for you.
Being aware is being mindful
Mindfulness is a way of approaching events, people and actions through the lens of non-judgement. In a book about decluttering, about letting go of the things which do not serve you, and the commitments and relationships that do not support you or make you strong or add value to your life, then adopting an approach of mindfulness will be of great help.
Each time you look at a conversation with someone that did not go the way you expected or at a relationship where you feel slighted, insulted or hurt, consider this. Might it be that the other person made those comments or took those actions without the same interpretation that you gave to those same words or actions? If you can see the sense in this or the possibility that this might indeed have been their completely different interpretation of the scene that played out, can you then see that there actually is no right or wrong? Can you see that your judgement and your perspective is just your judgement and perspective, nothing else?
By making a different story about what happened and how you or they reacted to what was said, can you find it easier to process the way you feel about the meaning you took from that event? Might it help you to explore this idea by applying it to some recent hurt or times of unhappiness?
Finding a way forward
In psychology and self-help books there is a very helpful phrase that comes from the super little book 'Love is Letting Go of Fear', written by Jerold Jampolski. I read this book years ago and always remember his assertion that 'there are only two emotions - Love and Fear.' At the time I thought that could not be right. What about happiness, excitement, humour, nostalgia? How about panic, terror, nervousness, awkwardness? But the more I thought about his statement, the easier it was to see that so many lesser emotions are simply symptoms of either fear or love and that he was right to say this.
Finding it difficult to let go of negative experiences and emotions is difficult because of all the fear that is contained within those same experiences. Put another way, if we were not so scared of what might come after we let go then we would let go so much faster and move forward. Look at this another way, we have a hard time letting go of our suffering because we feel safer hanging on to what is familiar, rather than stepping out into the unknown. Let this go. Get on with those aspects of your life that you love and represent who you are.
by admin | Nov 2, 2022 | Simple Self Help
Within my own community there are many successful people who own and run large businesses with staff either based locally or internationally, others who have a few staff and work in the town.
A characteristic shared by so many of these neighbors who are truly successful is that they rarely travel far from their businesses. Another way to interpret this might be to say that they avoid having the distractions and hours lost in travel and having to respond or react to other people's timetables. Instead, they recognize the importance of maintaining a strategic focus on their work, staying close to the pure heart of what they excel at doing.
Take a close look at your own work routine. Of the time that you allocate to being either at or in work, how much of that is productive in the sense that it creates revenue and other measurable benefit for you. If as an example, you could determine that perhaps one third of your working time is what yields the results, how much more might you create if you successfully expanded this block of time and received a corresponding increase in results?
The opportunity to spend a better proportion of your time in the activities that bring you rewards is not best served through wasting time in traveling, being away from your own work place or getting involved in roles that could be better delegated and left to others.
When a successful friend of mine was asked by a start-up business owner why he no longer did some of the basic jobs, his reply was both very simple and most illuminating. "Why", he said, "would I want to do anything that only pays me $10 or $50 an hour if I can pick up a phone and dial out for someone else to do it? That leaves me free to create ideas and products where my involvement and leadership is worth perhaps 10 or 20 times that?"
Are you doing what works and what matters? Can you let go of some of the stuff that comes across your desk and give it away, keeping your focus on what gets the best results for your own investment of time and attention?
