Trainers when working out, tell you to target your mind. That is the key to a good strength workout for me: focusing on the muscles I work while I work them. During a simple bicep curl, my trainer tells me about form. He tells me as I curl the dumbbell up, “stabilize your arm and focus on your bicep. That’s the muscle you are using to do this action.” Focusing on the muscle allows me to perfect my form, to target my efforts towards the results I want.
Your mind is also a muscle that can be targeting with equal efficiency: instead of lifting a dumbbell, you make choices. The key to a life of intention is a life filled with conscious choices.
Living a life of intentionality is harder than it seems. With daily challenges, emotions flying, stressors which bend your will and upheave plans, it becomes ever easy to fly off the handle or to respond with knee jerk reactions. Our mind tends to follow that which is pressing, and small unimportant matter have the tendency to become immediate without actually being important. So the act of making choices is complex, but not impossible. To help you make conscious choices, in your practice, in your career and in your life, you must “expand your awareness.”
Expanding Your Awareness
I love meditating (although, sometimes I feel like I am not very good at it). This is because meditation is working out the mind and training yourself to be calmer and have more direction. But like all other forms of training, it is learned and it may not come easy. I have a technique I use, the basics which I learned from meditation, when life gets too chaotic to make me feel like I have a good handle on my choices. When I feel like an arrow flying through the sky with no target, I hit the pause button, find a quiet place, and close my eyes and “zoom out.” When rushing through life, days are in front of your eyes but months, years, the perspective of time dissipates. So I bring it back into focus. This can look like reading your goals, or having a vision board posted in front of you. It can be as simple as a mental check:
“What is my ultimate goal and vision? Does this serve it?”
I suggest you ask yourself this question before all decisions you make in your practice and in your life, big or small. Even something an minor as the color of the paint on your office walls can impact this (however minorly). After all, you will probably be looking at that paint more than the color of paint in your bedroom walls, at least during the work week. So when decisions need to be made, make them concisously. Make them serve your BHAG and aim yourself towards the goal you set for yourself. Then watch yourself succeed.
Your mind is also a muscle that can be targeting with equal efficiency: instead of lifting a dumbbell, you make choices. The key to a life of intention is a life filled with conscious choices.
Living a life of intentionality is harder than it seems. With daily challenges, emotions flying, stressors which bend your will and upheave plans, it becomes ever easy to fly off the handle or to respond with knee jerk reactions. Our mind tends to follow that which is pressing, and small unimportant matter have the tendency to become immediate without actually being important. So the act of making choices is complex, but not impossible. To help you make conscious choices, in your practice, in your career and in your life, you must “expand your awareness.”
Expanding Your Awareness
I love meditating (although, sometimes I feel like I am not very good at it). This is because meditation is working out the mind and training yourself to be calmer and have more direction. But like all other forms of training, it is learned and it may not come easy. I have a technique I use, the basics which I learned from meditation, when life gets too chaotic to make me feel like I have a good handle on my choices. When I feel like an arrow flying through the sky with no target, I hit the pause button, find a quiet place, and close my eyes and “zoom out.” When rushing through life, days are in front of your eyes but months, years, the perspective of time dissipates. So I bring it back into focus. This can look like reading your goals, or having a vision board posted in front of you. It can be as simple as a mental check:
“What is my ultimate goal and vision? Does this serve it?”
I suggest you ask yourself this question before all decisions you make in your practice and in your life, big or small. Even something an minor as the color of the paint on your office walls can impact this (however minorly). After all, you will probably be looking at that paint more than the color of paint in your bedroom walls, at least during the work week. So when decisions need to be made, make them concisously. Make them serve your BHAG and aim yourself towards the goal you set for yourself. Then watch yourself succeed.