Personal and Leadership Development

No: 492 - September 14, 2016

It’s part and parcel of what I do for a living… trying to organize the kind of suitable venue that will enable my clients clear their minds. The challenge is not so much finding the right venue (although most hotels simply won’t do) but managing to get someone competent to take my booking.

I was recently finalizing the arrangements for one of my every-so-often “Advanced Workshops” – for people who are already on the road to purposeful mindfulness. I spoke to five carefully chosen leading hotels in Ireland. OK, one was fully booked, no meeting rooms available but the other four assured me, on the ‘phone, that they had just what I needed and that they would confirm all the details to me, by email “within the next two hours” – they all said exactly the same thing, they were all perfectly precise… and they all lied.

None of the four hotels came back by email when they said they would. One came back eight hours later. Three simply never came back to me at all!

And, what of the one that I picked? I confirmed by email within a couple of hours and awaited their confirmation… and waited and waited. Eventually I got through to the Events Manager by ‘phone who, two days after my emails said “Oh yes, Willie, I’ve been very busy, I’m just getting around to that now.” And, yes, confirmation did arrive... two more days later!

	A Quick Tip
	HURT YOURSELF TODAY
	Hurt yourself! When you meditate sit on the floor cross-legged. If you are not used to this posture, it will hurt. And, as the physical hurt is real, it provides you with a real reality on which to focus all of your mind. When you hurt yourself, you up the ante, you further challenge yourself and, like anything else in life, when you go the extra mile, you get the extra benefit.

	MAKE IT YOUR MAIN CONCERN
	Little things impede us - the piece of grit in the eye, the stone in the shoe, the small stuff of everyday life that deflates us, knocks us off course. We can start our day, our job, our next meeting, or even just our cup of coffee, with the best will in the world, only to be derailed by the small niggles that drag us away from perfect and purposeful mindfulness. And sometimes it's even hard to know just why we're feeling a little annoyed, rattled or grumpy! Nobody's perfect, there's no such thing as a perfect day and, certainly, no such thing as a perfect life! Seek perfection and, not only will you be sorely disappointed, you'll drive yourself even madder than how we are when we're normally mindless. And, normally mindless we are! It's how we're wired - no need to elaborate further on this, I've been banging on about it for nearly two decades, psychology has been exploring the problem since the early 1930s at the very least. So, when we do get derailed, when we find ourselves many mental miles away from the reality of the present moment, there's no need to compound our innate mixed-up mindlessness with a further dose of stupidity... feeling guilty, getting annoyed, chiding ourselves... all simply further useless thoughts - as if we didn't already have enough of them rattling around in our heads. My aim is to be present now. I cannot account for the next now - it hasn't arrived yet - and I will not wallow in the possibility that I wasn't fully present in the last now. My presence, now, is informed by who I am (not who I think I am, my personality, an illusion) and by what I have determined to get out of this now in the furtherance of by bigger objectives. You might consider the difficulties of aiming at a moving target - because now keeps changing, time keeps moving, events keep unfolding - but all I can concern myself with is now. If I don't, I'll never experience any of my own life and that would be a waste of a whole life.

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