This Week's Insight...

Make Space for Inspiration

At the dawn of the 21st century, the American journal “Science” concluded that the relative slowdown in scientific discovery in the latter half of the last century was due to the fact that scientists were thinking too much and, as a result, not allowing themselves the space to be inspired.

Legend has it, that after decades of searching, the Buddha became enlightened whilst simply sitting under a tree.   Similarly, Sir Isaac Newton is reputed to have made his greatest discovery doing exactly the same thing – just sitting under a tree.

Taking time out to “sit under a tree” is anathema to the daily orgy of activity that is modern living.  As a result, we’re constantly on an automatic treadmill, minds numbed to the possibilities that are before our blinded eyes.

You’ll never go beyond your boundaries if you don’t step off that treadmill once in a while – you’ll never be inspired if you don’t make the time.   Go and find a tree – you will be amazed at the consequences.

Outside events don’t determine whether or not you’re successful.   You do.   The challenges thrown up by day-to-day living, particularly in the current business and economic environment, are not the real challenges that each of us face.   The real challenge in life is within.   How you act in the face of external negatives or positives is what makes the difference – it is, as I said to a client recently, the measure of the man (or woman, of course).

And yet all the psychological evidence available points to your being unable to act in the face of external events.   Sure, action appears to be taken – but it’s not real action, it’s reaction.    Decades of research proves beyond any doubt that the normal mind reacts automatically to every single person and event encountered in adult life.   Our evolved ability to complete repetitive habitual tasks without their impinging on our limited ability to pay attention results in us adults being unable to pay attention to anything at all – at all, at all!    After all, everything in life becomes habitual sooner or later.    After seven years living on the shoulder of Mont Blanc amongst some of the world’s most captivating scenery, I have to pinch myself from time to time to make sure that I don’t simply take it for granted – and I practice what is generally referred to as “mindfulness” every day.

When you were in the first flush of love with someone with whom you’ve now been sharing your life for six months, six years or twenty years, the novelty wears off.   When you’ve been bouncing off the same colleagues or clients for months or years on end, the attention to detail diminishes.   It’s a fact of adult life that everything becomes routine and habitual – and that we end up being unable to give our “undivided attention” to anything.

It is also a fact of adult life that we don’t evaluate people or events – good, bad or indifferent – for what they are.  Rather, we use another psychological trick that helps us conserve our attentional resources.   We categorize.   From before the age of two, we learn to match people and events up to previous experiences – it enables us make “sense” of the world around us without having to pay attention.    Vast amounts of psychological work prove that we pigeonhole new experiences and new acquaintances based on categories that were established, as part of our programming during our formative years.

These so-called abilities of ours actually disable us from doing anything other than going through the motions.   But Harvard University reckons that 96% of people (so-called normal people) exist this way – so, it’s OK, we’re all in the same boat.

Some people, however, are actually paddling their own canoe!  We notice them because they’re different – maybe they seem to be able to achieve success more easily, maybe they’re often the right person in the right place at the right time, maybe they live a “charmed life”, maybe they have charisma, maybe they’re “born leaders” – maybe they have presence.
That’s it – they are more present in experiencing what’s actually going on (without automatically reacting, without categorizing) to a greater extent than the 96%.   The University of Chicago belives that the 96% only use 1% of their attentional capacity in the present moment.   The independent canoers are  simply more present.

If you are more present, you will experience what is actually going on around you.   You won’t knee-jerk react like the rest of the herd.   You will stand out and be the better for it.  How?   You will see things and people for what they are – not what “accepted wisdom” would have you believe.  You will know that all external “challenges” are opportunities too.   You will know that everything external – good, bad and indifferent – is transient, cyclical.   That everything, to use a Buddha-ism, “arises and passes away”.    The only thing that is permanent, is the part of you that realises this.   Grab a hold of that part of your being and everything will change.   You will rise to life’s and business’s challenges effortlessly, you will stand head and shoulders above the mindless crowd – you will have mastered the ability to devote more than 1% of your attentional capacity to what’s actually going on in the present moment.

You choose.   You can choose to be one of the crowd – if you don’t get peace of mind and effortless success as a result, at least you’ll be “not too bad”!    Or you can choose effortless success – in your business and personal life.    You choose.    Moment to moment, each of us has a choice to make – will we let our automatic mental functions divorce us from life’s opportunities or will we grasp control of our innate ability to actually pay attention.   Normal people don’t realise that they actually, subconsciously, choose “not too bad” moment to moment.   Normal people don’t realise that they can actually, deliberately, consciously choose.

You do – you’ve read this article.   So, what’s it to be – more “not too bad” – or effortless happiness and success?   You choose.

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