What matters most to you. Leadership. Core Values. Essentialism. Growth. Balance.
Continuing in this second part with our regular themes. Expanding on them.
All content of conversation here unite in the aspiration of enhancing our Lives. Becoming more resilient and Self-aware in the process, while finding the most possible enjoyment and positive impact from it.
Our internal struggles, when we find ourselves out of Balance, along with the state of the world currently, may invite us to think and feel to various degrees, that improvement is welcome. And imperative.
There is an observable ripple effect of inside-out change and a powerful influence of individual responsibility combined with Self-efficacy in the larger planetary context.
Getting out of our forcing-doing mode and transcending it by attending to optimising our mindset, attitude, habits and lifestyle, bring rewards in the long-term.
Let us see today how we can not only upgrade our thinking, but find balance across all (yet known) layers of human experience: mental-emotional-physical-spiritual.
Each to the proportion you currently require.
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The highlighted Self-reflection questions can aid your unique, independent insights.
Enjoy the fruits of investing into increasing your Self-/Awareness.
Navigation
All (yet known) layers of human experience
The meaning of Centeredness and Inner Peace
Balanced decision-making
Expanding and shattering (Self-imposed) limits
Part 2
Mapping out the process - optimised compass
Practising Balance in your Life and Leadership will take on a meaning of your interpretation. All data we perceive is filtered through our beliefs and principles. The resulting convictions can be re-evaluated any time. Discover what kind of beliefs and assumptions hide underneath your convictions.
Making these conscious, becoming aware of your patterns, you can gauge whether you find them aligned or not (any more). This exercise – Self-reflection as a habit – gives you a chance to release thought patterns that form obstacles to your progress and success, and emphasise those which aid them.
It is key that you carefully choose what you saturate your Mind with. Positive mental attitude can be learned. Growth Mindset can be amplified.
I-perspective reflection points for you today:
"What does Balance mean to me?
What is my definition of a balanced lifestyle?
What do I determine as a fair equilibrium of priorities?
How much are my priorities rooted in my goals?
How many of my priorities seem to be rooted in external influences, contributing rather to someone else's goals?
How much of that contribution is my conscious choice and how much of that energy/attention/time do I want to redirect and rather invest into my priorities?
What do I feed my Mind with? How can I optimise my sources of information and the company I keep?
How well can I equipoise things most important to me and those promoting the Well-Being of my surroundings, involving what I consider my duties as a Leader?"
When you think of your Life today and observe how it unfolds including days when everything goes by an expected routine, along with high-impact events that touch the extremer ends of the emotional scale in either direction...
When you then think of things that are not exciting for you, feel like a waste of time, or contracting, stressful even...
When you take inventory of things that always turn out to be the best time/energy investment, fun, useful, where your Heart, Mind and Spirit are fully on board, where you feel expansion, at your best, fit to act, empowered, things you do with ease...
...how are these in proportion to each other?
If put them into piles of various Life areas, how would those piles look like?
Which area feels rewarding and successful and which do you see as neglected and/or somewhat of a struggle?
How difficult or easy do you think, and feel, positive change can be achieved?
What do you measure ease by? What do you consider arduous and why?
Is a currently difficult period in either Life area something you are willing to put up with for a temporary period, knowing the effort will yield results – any improvement from the current situation?
How satisfied do you feel generally? What emotions dominate in your Life currently?
How satisfied do you feel with the details of areas of personal space, work, social circle and impact, when you zoom into them?
What feels so off that you know you want to make changes immediately?
Even if those changes may feel almost insurmountable momentarily, what smaller steps can be identified that would contribute to a positive change? –Think kaizen method or the concept of atomic habits.
Of vital importance will be, first to identify WHY you want the change.
What do you hope the outcome will be? What benefits do you expect from it? Which answers to any of the above questions do you wish to be different and how?
The identified reasons will fuel positive progress and help you not only persevere throughout the process but keep your passion for it ignited.
We can read any amount of advice until we feel it important enough to apply it.
Especially if we already know: things are out of balance.
Recalling so many precedents, when imbalances showed up in negative behaviour and feeling, others' and own. Not a great way to embrace our duty, especially when in Leadership roles, and the responsibility we have towards ourselves.
When symptoms like irritation, fatigue, gloominess show up more often, they ask for our attention and adjustment.
Sometimes these signs may be less obvious – just not feeling overly energized or enthusiastic about Life and your enterprise... A bit of dullness that at times passes quickly; and becomes only a problem when it doesn't.
It can help so much to stop any negative momentum before it starts gaining speed.
To understand root causes. Gaining deeper Self-knowledge.
Most Self-/Awareness practices will be fundamentally about that: Pausing, reflecting, discerning, choosing better.
When things are running at a high speed in your business and you feel like you don't have time to take care of yourself; you will have to arrive at a point where you find you are worth it to make time for these things.
Whether the "messy middle" – as the stage of the process providing the most discomfort is often called – means for you overwhelm and decision fatigue, with many storylines and action happening at once;
or a strain on your patience as the results let you wait, momentum seemingly stalling, impatience and frustration mounting with a desire to experience those tangible outcomes...
...ultimately, how you feel about yourself, your Life, will show up in your Leadership. Especially if you aim to be authentic at everything you do.
What do you choose to express and stand for?
How we master challenging times, our unceasing Personal Growth, will largely influence how we lead, the quality of the example we lead by.
Evolve the parts – you evolve the whole.
Evolving certain aspects of yourself, pivotal Character traits, your habits day by day, will help upgrade your Life.
By evolving yourself and the example you represent will mean an upgraded Leadership experience for those who look to you for guidance.
You can identify the need for greater quality Leadership on a broader scale, when you look at the antithesis of (what you consider or is generally considered) a positive example.
In that contrast you will see how much the lack of Character-development and moral fibre plays out in increased corruption and authoritarian power-grabbing across the globe.
What damage the lack of Self-/Awareness, lack of genuine care, ignorance and not enough humility towards Leadership duties can do.
That dramatic exposure of detrimental effects of low-quality Leadership can be noticed on a small scale too. You can learn to be aware, of how to avoid, stop and reverse a negative trend related to that, in your remit of influence. The Circle of Influence, as Steven R. Covey called it.
What legacy would we leave if we'd just submitted to harmful layers of human nature and not try to improve the state of things – individually and in any form of teamwork?
What would happen if we gave up, not believing that we can make a greater positive difference?
What are our strongest motivators and inspirations to make empowering impact?
What are we aware of that can we influence?
Our own Character. Our own demonstration of moral fibre, surely.
What are you willing to work on to enhance your influence?
Life-changing sentiments take shape when we devote time to reflect. They can form and become crystallised in times of turmoil, when we allow for a pocket of mental space.
These times, like any moments of transformation in history, are an invitation.
We do not operate in a void.
You do not need to take on global responsibilities to make that positive ripple effect through your work as well as your personal impact.
Just like in the past decades through work and personal examples, I see it today: how much it matters that people who receive Trust, mandate to lead, do work on their own mental-emotional-spiritual-physical development so that they serve in the best way they can, in any role they fulfill.
When you feel at a stage where you tell yourself, "there must be more to Life", like feeling better about yourself, physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually; working on improving these layers within yourself naturally results in a corresponding upgrade of your Leadership practice and impact.
Self-responsibility being here again an emphasis in the example we lead by.
Stewards of Trust is what Leaders are. If we are to improve quality of Life on this planet, in our communities, our organisations, that shall be on our minds at all times as we tend to our duties.
What is your personal tipping point?
When do you feel that you are changing out of desperation and when do you feel you make a change from an empowered position?
How is your mindset, your attitude about this today?
There needs to be a strong willingness, to make things better, and reclaim consciousness in choices – to steer our Life more successfully.
In this share, I wanted to instill the power of the recognition of when I felt the damage imbalance caused in my Life, and how that led to a worthwhile commitment to practice consciously keeping a constant holistic view of all Life areas.
It required a conscious decision and fuelling the belief that it is in the realm of possibility to be well in all Life areas, and that we do not need to sacrifice one for another.
The latter – and ideas related to harmful sacrifice – can be identified as limiting patterns. The choice is ours, individually, how we want to perceive the world we are viewing and shaping.
Core Values.
The most fundamental compass I always encourage in all conversations around Life Vision, Personal Growth, increasing quality of Leadership: Core Values.
Like Freedom, Fairness and Integrity.
When you are clear on your Core Values, you can reliably and clear-mindedly reach for them even in turbulent times, to make better choices.
They show themselves clearly when a stronger emotional response is triggered in a circumstance. They help us see clearly what is most important to us.
And how could we recognise the optimal next steps without clarity?
Here is practicing our tool, Self-reflection via questions, once again:
What do you value in Life?
What is meaningful to you?
What moves you to take action for certain things?
What do you find worthwhile?
What can uplift you and get you out of any funk any time?
Finding Meaning, whether subconsciously yearned for or consciously explored, seems to be common in all of us humans.
We all have a long list of what we value. Various degrees to it too.
The invitation here is to have your most important steering points readily available, to utilise them not only at intense decision points, but when envisioning the Future and planning the realisation of it. Increasing Self-/Awareness.
Core Values help prioritise choices and navigate our Self-discovery.
Essentialism.
Our choices express us.
What we prioritise expresses our current level of Awareness, our current state of Self-concept.
We may make choices influenced by unfavourable subconscious patterns. The more we become clear where choices and what we truly want are misaligned, the easier we can manoeuvre into the desired direction.
How can you create the most value and realise that most effortlessly?
How can you peel away not only choices that go against your Values and are more obvious, but the convenience choices that may seem harmless, but eat your energy quietly in the background?
Whenever you feel, the time is now, to ask yourself what you truly want from your Life: to remain as is, to be released or to be changed for the better.
This is a journey, a process of Self-discovery. It is our growing Wisdom that helps us value it as much as we value the Destination(s) – all the tangible and non-tangible results we are wishing, planning and aiming for. All add up to the Life Vision we are steering towards, for it to become a state of being every day.
"Living in the end", as Neville Goddard put it.
Conquering and transcending doubts and challenges we come across in this journey, becoming the (more) ideal vision of ourselves we persistently hold.
Committing time and energy into the practice of Personal Evolution, raising the quality of our Life and Leadership in conclusion.
If you need further inspiration, feel free to check out this post How to navigate Change – conscious language or both parts of 1/2. Habits for a better Life – how do we change?
In part 1 of this current blog post we touch upon Flow and habits, but if you want a deep-dive specifically in the nature of Flow and how to integrate it into your habits, this earlier one may be the read for you today: Integrating Flow – increasing our quality of Life.
The premise in the work here: your best answers are within, while Coaching serves a facilitator and accelerator modality to access those answers.
It is an accountability partnership that aids your goal achievement and accompanies you through the process as you may grapple with limits, doubts, fears, ambiguity within yourself.
In a trusted environment, you are learning tools and concepts to take with you for the long-term.
I bring all my learnings into my shares, reflection exercises, Coaching – a combination of my corporate international projects, entrepreneurial, including social enterprise, Leadership experience, plus my own unceasing Personal Evolution –, so that my personal investments and revelations enrich not only my Life, but through my Work all your Lives too.
explore the opportunity of working together
Reach out via message or head straight to the Coaching Session preparation form to help assess where you are at.
Recommended Resources
I list the books I regularly recommend. They helped in my Wayfinding and improvement.
If you would like to deep-dive in how the Mind works, sense-making, some more psychology and navigating the dynamics of today's world, Daniel Schmachtenberger, John Varvaeke and Iain McGilchrist have (highly academic) conversations published on YouTube that can generate useful insights as well.
Our work as Leaders here is around optimising ourselves, transforming the establishment, weeding out our systems and improving the ways we organise society so that we arrive at outcomes that are founded in much more Freedom and Fairness for all.
Contributing to improving Life on Earth essentially.
That is aligned with my Leadership and personal commitment.
What's aligned with yours?
Dr. Joe Dispenza Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself: How to Lose Your Mind and Create a New One
H. García and F. Miralles Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life
Mihály Csíkszentmihályi Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
Stephen R. Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
Eckart Tolle The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
Shad Helmstetter What to Say When You Talk to Your Self
Tim Ferriss The 4-Hour Workweek
Carol Dweck Mindset. Changing the way you think to fulfil your potential. This book is quoted by many others and is one of the most fundamental concept descriptions on Fixed vs. Growth Mindset and how they influence our level of Success.
Greg McKeown Essentialism. The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. About optimal energy investment for highest yield and disciplined thinking as a way of living.
James Clear Atomic Habits
BJ Fogg Tiny Habits
Charles Duhigg The Power of Habit. Why we do what we do in Life and Business. or Why we do what we do and how to change
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