How To Hijack Your Life Back
by Jeremy ChanceRecently I posted on Facebook, and got quite a response.
It was an insight I’d had into my own behaviour – which I am posting to Facebook all the time so what’s new? Yet this one hit a chord with a lot of folks! I was surprised by the rich reaction it garnered. Many people commented, I got unsolicited emails privately, and now I’m reading a book about it!*
The latest result was an email in my inbox 2 days ago. It came from a star employee of BodyChance. She was writing to let me know that my FaceBook post inspired her to leave BodyChance in two months for a new adventure in Singapore with her 10yo daughter Emily!!!
For her, it is a good thing and I wish her well.
For me, it is another minor disaster and set-back, sucking up the energy and attention I was just about to give to another long stalled project that I consider critical. And yet the team is the operational core of our future, so can I even call it a distraction?
My post originated while being on a Mastermind course with a group of biz owners, each of us trying to figure out the straight road ahead. That was the context. Here’s the Facebook post, unedited in its original form:
God bless Katie. In my meditation this morning, I noticed my flat mood and I questioned it, releasing a whole lot more energy and enthusiasm for living. Being in an environment with people who are hitting the ball out of the park on biz criteria - it's can happen that I lose confidence and the ability to act. Comparison is a deathly game to play, and dear Katie's simple methodology helped again for the 1,000th time. Amazing that I keep forgetting I have this tool.
Still. The road ahead does seem fuzzy. Nancy did a great talk yesterday on the difference between being motivated by "going away" and "going towards" and it hit me for the first time - I had heard her talk about this before - that I am using "going away" with BodyChance. It all started from a panic to help my family - I had three people dependent on me and the school was collapsing. I had to do something about it. That was back in 2004 and it is definitely a "going away" from the worry, fears towards the goal of financial ease.
Trouble with that motivation - when things gets better, I lost the motivation! BodyChance has to get bad again before I am truly motivated. Well - from this day I declare: NO MORE. Now I will be driven by a "towards" motivation!
And how have I fared in my new resolution?
It’s hard to say while I am busy putting out fires on deck, trying to steer ship BodyChance to avoid the shallow waters and reef. I am forever pulled up on deck to deal with the latest emergency.
Living life by the weather is our inevitable destiny, and yet living a life that is steady, consistent and moving towards a future, even while tacking in opposite directions to get there, is a worthy goal. It’s simple to ask – where is ship BodyChance heading? And have I (and have you?) articulated the destination in a way that all those involved can hear and agree with? This is a going towards motivation…
Are you the kind of person who gets active when things go from bad to worse?
That’s a going away motivation, and it is bound to weaken as a motivating force once your life improves again. Dieters are the obvious example…
fat | thin | fat | thin | fat | thin – like, FOREVER.
Not me. Not now. I want something different. I spent hours sitting at the cliff face, looking out over the harbour, wondering where I wanted to be in 3 years. What did I want to be doing? What would a typical day look like?
And frankly, that got scary.
All the things I thought I SHOULD want – actually, they did not attract me much. Then I wondered how much of my current life is a sham? That’s always a tricky question for me – most of my life I’ve felt I am in the wrong place doing the wrong thing. I have had to “re-decide” to communicate Alexander's discovery THREE TIMES in my life. Once when my Dad died, again when I had my mid-life crisis, and I guess it is coming up again with all these meditations on how to be.
Not that there’s much chance of me going away from Alexander's discovery – that’s pretty rock solid. However, what kind of relationship do I want?
What kind of relationship do you want? Have you thought about that? Have you got YOUR going towards motivation clear?
Are you reminding your Self daily about it? Are you visualizing how it will look? Are you ratcheting up your creativity to build the structures in your mind and life that will cause you to flow in the direction you want?
These are questions that are coming up every day for me. I think it’s a wonderful practise to take out two hours, move to a silent spot with a note pad and pen, and simply ask these big questions to your Self…
Turn off the TV. Stop reading that book. No more chatting on social media for a while.
Just sit quietly and do some DeepThinking. Ask an open question.
Even let the thinking do itself.
*The book is Path of Least Resistance by Robert Fritz, whose insight is that structures determine behaviour more powerfully than a person’s individual psychology.
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The DeepThinking practise is part of into ATSuccess coaching program. Right now our programmes are full, however you can start discovering some great questions to ask and ready your Self to do something different. Sign up for my free email seminar on the 12 Steps to the ATSuccess approach to communicating Alexander's discovery to students who love your work. Sign up below now, and get started with some DeepThinking questions about 12 different aspects of your AT practise…
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