Lifestyles in our culture leave many people feeling exhausted, stressed, overwhelmed and functioning below par.
Have you ever read Michael Gerber’s book The E Myth? In it, he says entrepreneurs fail because they are too busy working IN their businesses and not ON their businesses.
The same applies to life. Most people are so swamped with all they have to do, balancing home, work and time for self that it’s all they can do to stay alive, to exist. Instead of fully LIVING.
Take a moment now to reflect, or wait to finish this until later when you do have time, and ask yourself, ‘am I existing from week to week, or am I actually LIVING?’ And you may need to reflect on what LIVING would actually look like for you.
Once you start to work ON your life, to take a little time out and reflect and if you then choose to do these 3 things, everything changes and life becomes more meaningful, joyful and easier! You begin to REALLY live!
1. LIVE…ACCEPT that YOU are creating the life you are living. YOUR choices and decisions create the environment in which you work or live. Take responsibility for where you are and consciously work on what actual living would look like for you and make different decisions that actually create it! How would you like your life to look and how would you like to feel, in all areas. This means you have to take time to work ON your life, to set aside time for you and this important action. Not only does this make living more joyful, but it also influences your work life and improves it.
You will then develop a growth mindset, where learning, flexibility, consciousness, taking
responsibility and wanting to be the best version of you are all important.
2. OBSERVE your thinking. 95-99% of the time we are totally UNconscious of our thoughts. Yet, who is in charge of what we think? Of the stories we tell ourselves? Once you make a decision to become aware of and observe your thinking, your choices may change dramatically. This weekend, we had some friends visit. The husband had been struggling with depression and feeling he was not good enough and was full of fear of failure. Over time we helped him understand that his thoughts, HIS thoughts were creating the feelings he had. He was able to identify the source of those erroneous thoughts and challenge them, in this time. He recognized he was living now, and not back at the time the ‘thought virus’ was implanted (by himself!), that things were different and that he had a choice. Observe his thoughts, acknowledge their source and act in the present based on what was happening in the present. He was transformed, literally!
3. Live with GRATITUDE. No matter what happens to you or what experience you have or what is going on around you, FIND gratitude. Consciously CHOOSE to find gratitude for something in the current circumstances. Another way of looking at it is to be a good finder! Be someone who finds good in every person or thing or place. Remember we are making choices (and decisions) every minute of every day, either conscious OR UNCONSCIOUS choices. Because these choices profoundly influence the quality of our living, whether we truly live or not, we might as well make them consciously! So consciously choose to find an aspect of gratitude in everything and focus on those aspects. There is loads of research now on gratitude and it’s benefits, physically and emotionally. Try it, you might be surprised!
So there you have it, the LOL approach to creating the life you want, at work and at home.
Amanda Gore
