Ceiling Unlimited Personal Coaching, INSIGHTS

GROWTH RESULTS EMPOWERMENT

INSIGHTS

QUALITY OF LIFE 17/05/2010

“Quality of Life” – there’s a well-worn phrase! How often do you hear people mention quality of life? Usually it’s in conjunction with “wanting more quality of life” or “better quality of life”, but what do they really mean? What do they really want? How do you get it?

Quality of life is an intangible, you can’t just go out to the shop and buy some. Interestingly though, that’s what many people attempt to do. For some, quality of life manifests itself in some external way – a bigger house, a different job, a new car, whatever. The belief here is that acquiring the “thing” will give them a better quality of life. Will it? In the short term - yes, very likely. There’s that initial feeling of “wow, this new car is brilliant”, but what then? How long does that last for? Especially when it starts to change over from a good feeling to one of stress over the repayments! Seeking an external solution for improving one’s quality of life is at best a short-term fix and is unsustainable over the longer term. In the end, it’s still the same person, regardless of what car they’re driving.

Let’s be clear, there is nothing intrinsically wrong about wanting to acquire something new. It becomes an issue when we believe that by doing so we are improving our sense of self and how we live our lives.

So what is a more sustainable way to improve our quality of life? I would suggest that the quality of our lives is directly linked to the quality of our thinking and the subsequent quality of our actions. This is the crucial difference between Being and just simply Doing. Remember, buying the car is something you do, it hasn’t changed who you are.

There are four levels of thinking at which we operate. At Level 1, we are engaged in behaviour that: feels good; is good for us; is good for our loved ones; is good for the world at large. At Level 2 the behaviour: does not feel good; but it is good for us, good for our loved ones and good for the world at large. Level 3 behaviour: feels good, like at Level 1, but it is not good for us; not good for our loved ones and not good for the world at large. Finally at Level 4, the behaviour does not feel good and is no good for us, our loved ones or anyone else.

It could be said then, that the quality of our lives is determined by how often we operate at Level 1. The more time we spend in that realm, the better our lives will be. Seen this way, it’s a no-brainer. For what purpose would you want to be at any other Level?

For many though, there is a fluctuation back and forth between Levels 1 and 3. Why? Because the common denominator is that it feels good. And we love to do stuff that feels good! Even when we know it’s not good for us or anyone else, we’ll still operate at Level 3 for no other reason than that it feels good. Examples? Smoking, eating too much, drinking too much, whatever. We can all think of examples specific to us where we are fully conscious of the fact that we are doing something purely on a feels-good basis.

The key to all this is Level 2. That’s right, the bit that doesn’t feel good, but which we know is good in every other way. If we accept that the best quality of life is achieved by operating at Level 1, you need to release yourself from the need to feel good all the time and push through the door at Level 2. By committing to this, you can change a Level 2 experience into a Level 1 experience and thus improve your quality of life. What’s more, you can do it today – right now. What is one aspect of your life that you would like to improve? What is one thing you could do that would be a step forward towards that improvement?

Here’s an example: to be fit and healthy would be a Level 1 experience and in order to maintain that Level, who do you need to be? It’s likely you would need to be the person who eats sensibly and exercises regularly. However, exercising regularly is a Level 2 experience for many because it doesn’t feel good. More than that, it can make us feel sweaty, feel sore, feel painful! So you operate at Level 3 where you eat too much, (or too much unhealthy stuff) and you don’t exercise at all or if you do, it’s sporadic and inconsistent. It feels better to stay tucked up in bed than to go out to the gym and hot chips are more appealing than carrot sticks right? And you tell yourself that it’s all too hard and maybe you’ll start again on Monday.

It’s not too hard though. The only hard part is you letting go of your need to feel good all the time! Funnily enough, by doing so you actually increase your chances of achieving precisely that: feeling good all the time. The difference is that by letting go of Level 3 and by pushing through Level 2, you reach Level 1 and have...quality of life.

What about Level 4 then? This is the pathway to destruction and it manifests itself in extremely negative behaviour such as drug-taking. Even with something like over-eating at Level 3, by doing it enough even the good feeling of the taste of the food is gone and it’s now just a thoughtless pattern.

So have a look at your life. Celebrate those aspects at which you are at Level 1. Ask yourself, “When am I at Level 3? Who do I need to be to change that and get to Level 2? Who do I need to be at Level 2 to push through and add another Level 1 experience to my life?” Lastly, ask yourself, “How good will it feel when I succeed?”

FOCUS 28/12/2009

Imagine this: a golfer steps up onto the tee and looks out towards the green where the flag flutters gently in the breeze. The sun is shining and it’s a warm beautiful day. The only problem is that between the tee and the green, there is a vast stretch of water just waiting to swallow yet another golf ball and all that the golfer can see in his mind’s eye is his ball making a diabolical splash as it falls short.

So our golfer decides to counteract this and begins to tell himself, “Don’t go in the water. Don’t go in the water.” over and over again. He takes a club out of his bag and a deep breath into his lungs. “Don’t go in the water”. He swings the club, connects with the ball and raises his eyes just in time to see the ball describe a graceful arc which ends with...a diabolical splash as it falls short.

The golfer’s mates say, “Bad luck” and perhaps chuckle a bit; partly from sympathy, partly from relief that it wasn’t them this time and the golfer himself slams his club back into his bag muttering, “I knew that was going to happen”...and he’s absolutely right.

What really happened there? What was the golfer focussing on? Didn’t he expressly order himself, “Don’t go in the water”? Here’s another example: whatever else may happen in the next few seconds, don’t think of a pink elephant.

So how big is that sucker?

What these examples serve to illustrate is that what we focus on is what we get, to the exclusion of everything else. But hang on a minute, the golfer was saying, “Don’t go in the water” yet did precisely the opposite, so how does that work?

The key is in the word “don’t”. Our conscious mind can easily understand the command “don’t”. However, our unconscious mind is unable to process a negative and it is also much more powerful than the conscious mind, so what it’s doing is working on the “go in the water” part of the command. Now you see why the result the golfer achieved was inevitable. All that effort put into, “Don’t go in the water” simply guaranteed the splash.

So what might the golfer have said instead? It could be any number of things. “Swing smoothly” might be one. Or “Get on the green” or “Follow through” and with those sorts of words, the focus is set and a different outcome is now on the horizon as opposed to, “Don’t go in the water”.

What’s the difference? Simply, the language used in determining the focus is now positive rather than negative. The golfer is giving himself a clear goal which is specific and is trusting in the fact that by “swinging smoothly” the result that he wants will be a smooth swing which will lead to a good shot.

Going to the next level, the quality of the focus is linked to Moving Towards language instead of Moving Away language. When we use Moving Away language, we are only able to identify what we don’t want. We may succeed, but only after a fashion since the results will be inconsistent and therefore unsatisfactory in the long term. If we continue with the golfing analogy and the golfer says, “Don’t go in the water”, he may succeed in keeping his ball dry, but in doing so, he may have sailed past the green or sliced way off to the side. In this instance, the outcome is still poor because what the golfer really wanted was to score well on that hole.

What we must do when we apply our focus is to use Moving Towards language which clearly identifies what we do want. The golfer wants a good score and he knows that this starts with a good tee shot. So he tells himself, “Swing smoothly” because he knows that when he does, he plays well. Another scenario might be weight loss. There is a big difference between saying, “I don’t want to be overweight” and “I want to lose five kilos by the end of this month”.

Remember, what we focus on is what we get to the exclusion of all else. By directing our focus on a specific goal in a positive manner using language which moves us towards our desired outcome, we give ourselves all the power we need to make it a reality.

LANGUAGE 30/06/2009

How aware are we of our language? I mean truly aware. How much do we really communicate clearly and how much do we rely on the other person to interpret our intention? I wonder whether in our society today we have to some degree lost the ability to directly and confidently express our emotions and intentions. These days, we seem to waffle and beat around the bush in a swirl of inoffensive jargon which is like verbal bubble-wrap. It protects what’s inside, but at the cost of obscuring the true picture of what’s there.

How often have you said something like this: “I want to say what a great job you’ve done” or “I just want to tell you I love you” or “I really want to acknowledge you for that”? Well, have you told them, or have you simply expressed the fact that you ‘want to’?

So often people use these phrases and usually the recipient of those words is good enough to consider that the intention has been expressed. If an employer says to an employee “I want to say what a great job you’ve done” all he’s truly done is express the desire to tell his worker what a great job the employee has done. He hasn’t actually delivered the compliment. It’s nowhere near as clear as, “You’ve done a great job”.

To put “really” in front of “want” only serves to indicate an increased desire to express the intention, it does not succeed in the genuine expression of it. Would we rather have someone say, “I really want to acknowledge you for that”, or would it have more power to hear, “I acknowledge you for that”?

To use “just” has the effect of reducing the importance of the intention, as if it was no big deal. No big deal?! If someone said to me “I just want to tell you I love you”, I’d be asking what was holding them back! The “just” could even have the implication that a “but” is following along: “I just want to tell you I love you, but I’m in love with someone else”.

In both my coaching and my daily life I strive to remove the bubble-wrap. The effects of being so clear and direct are fantastic. Recently, when I said to a client “I acknowledge you for that”, she instantly sat straight up and her eyes blinked as though she’d just had a bucket of water poured on her! After a pause the “Thank you” that she subsequently said was uttered with a tremendous depth of feeling.

So how about trying it out for yourself? Tell your colleagues “Great job”; tell your clients “I acknowledge you” and tell your special ones “I love you”. Go on, you already know that you ‘want to’!

site powered by Chilli Websites