I tell people that I take the lightest path toward my goals and by lightest, I mean the path of least resistance. They often misunderstand this philosophy believing it to be a lazy, and poorly defined approach because it lacks what they see as structure. My goals are very real and a clear vision of what I am going to achieve is ever present, I’m just fluid in how I achieve it. I make the best decisions that I can and use my heart and head in as much balance as my life will allow, but once the vision is clear I allow myself to flow towards it. I don’t march at it with a measuring stick in hand because let’s face it, a measuring stick could be just something else to beat myself up with (there are so many people out there holding their own happiness to ransom, setting their own ‘passes’ and beating themselves up for their perceived failures).
It is much better to go forward and then back yourself! Progress in the belief that you are capable and that your innate wisdom has you on the right path. Give yourself a fighting chance and don’t look at the heavy challenges in your life as walls you need to bang your head off until they crumble. Look at them as slight nudges to tell you that there is a lighter path for you to follow in order to reach your destination. If you stay in the flow, the right path will reveal itself, you just need to create a space where it has a chance to do just that.
I once spoke to a teenage girl who had left school with very few qualifications. “I’m going to end up in a gift shop or a cafe for the rest of my life,” she said (she lived in a seaside town.) I could see that she was really quite down about it, “well if we are making this shit up”, I said, “let’s make it Harrods or the Claridge’s then!” She let out such a violent laugh that I laughed immediately with her and we giggled so much we reached tears. I believe that the awakenings of the mind are experienced through laughter and in the silences. As a coach, I am never scared of, or step on, either.
We caught up a couple of weeks later and she told me how our conversation that day had, for the first time, opened up the ‘possibilities streams’ of her thinking. She wasn’t doing summersaults up and down the seafront in her bare feet, but she was in herself much more optimistic about things in general. She went onto explain how that had been a real 360 for her, and that where she was choosing to focus her attention before, was much darker.
I keep perspective by being aware of what is going on in the world, but I don’t engage with the discussions, post-mortems or analysis. I enjoy the day before me, the work that I do and the people I do it with. I don’t worry about what may or may not happen in the future or about anything that happened in the past. I don’t mind experiencing the full gamut of human emotions, ok some are nicer than others, but they all must be experienced and all will pass. If you don’t allow this of yourself it is like squeezing a balloon, it’ll just pop out somewhere else.
Dr Robert Sapolsky of Stanford University in one of his lectures explains: In our brains we have neurons and at the centre of these neurons is the Axon Hillock. The Hillock is supposed to sit in negatively charged environment waiting for the stimulation of positive charges to the cell to cause it to activate. Enough charge and this will cause the cell to fire its message or instruction across the synapses. Scientists have shown that when we are under prolonged stress, we have the Hillock constantly in an environment full of positive charge. This reduces its sensitivity which results in the alteration of your brain and it’s functions. In tests on rats, scientists showed that under continuous stress conditions, two major things alter in the brain. The hippocampus, the part of the brain dealing with the passing of short-term memory to long-term memory thereby making meaning of things, shrinks! The other change is in the Amygdala, the part of your brain that deals with emotions, grows. So letting the ills of the world spin the flywheel of your mind is firing all of your survival responses with no outlet. The consequences? a deminshed ability to make reason of things and an amplified emotional response to issues rather than a reasoned one. Is that a trade off you are willing to make?
Be clear I am not suggesting that we don’t think or trust in our feelings, it’s what we are choosing to think about that I am challenging. Rich, and creative thoughts are worth anybody’s time and could occupy hours enriching the human experience. It’s the thoughts that bring fear, stress and sadness that are like the potato crisps of the mind, empty calories! They feed neither the soul nor the imagination and put the body and mind under primal, and health endangering stress.
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