by Lori Milner
Think back to the last time you attended a buffet dinner. Despite the array of choices available to you, it's human nature to stick to what you know and probably go back for several helpings of the same thing. Another way to approach a buffet is with curiosity. Wow, why haven't I ever tried this before? Let me take a small portion to try, and who knows, I may even love it.
Advice is like a buffet. You are given plenty of opportunities to sample different ideas, but it's human nature to stick with what you know. Here are some of the 'dishes' I have presented over the years that would make a significant difference to my clients; perhaps you can sample some yourself and be the ultimate judge.
Meditate
When clients tell me they are very anxious and have spiralling thoughts all day or can't sleep because of their racing minds, I always default to starting with a few minutes of meditation in the morning. The classic response is, 'I'm terrible at meditating because I can't stop my thoughts'. Or 'I'm too busy or stressed to think about it right now'. If you feel too stressed to meditate, this is exactly why you need it.
Why is it good advice? Meditation is not about stopping thoughts. It creates space in your day to sit quietly (you can sit in a chair if you don't want to sit on a mat) and focus on your breathing or a mantra, a phrase of one or a few words. When your mind wanders, which it will constantly because that's what the mind does, it is to notice it and bring your awareness back to your breath. That's it.
Why does it work? It's easy to be zen on the mat; meditation is about bringing the tools to your everyday life. If you make this a daily ritual, you will begin to get less triggered by the external things around you, like the guy in the meeting who always wants to show off or the person in traffic who drives like a snail in front of you.
More than that, you can notice the anxious thoughts, question them and choose a better thought. If you don't hear the inner critic's narrative telling you you're not enough, you can't shut it down. You don't need to do twenty minutes, how about two minutes to start? You can download apps to help you with guided meditations, so you don't have to do anything but listen and enjoy. It also eliminates the fear of doing it wrong or not being perfect.
If it sounds too good to be true, I challenge you to try it for yourself, and you'll be astounded by how much less emotionally reactive and calmer you will feel. Sure, stress will show up, but you are now better equipped to handle it and respond confidently rather than react mindlessly.
Be your own best friend
You have two choices – encourage yourself on the journey to your goals or be your own worst enemy and try and sabotage yourself as much as possible to make it unpleasant, fearful and stressful.
Why would you ever choose option two?
Choosing to be your own best friend is about adopting the attitude of unconditional friendliness towards yourself. It means you can be kinder, less judgmental and more encouraging of yourself.
Unconditional friendliness means allowing yourself to rest when you are sick, not waiting for yourself to be so ill that you eventually feel it's justified to go to the doctor.
Being unconditionally friendly means praising yourself when you do a good job and acknowledging your progress. It means internalising other people's praise of you rather than telling yourself It's not true or they didn't really mean it.
The kinder you are to yourself, the less judgmental you will be of others, and the gentler your days will become.
Spend time with the project
In author Steve Chandler's book, Creative, he shared the best advice he was ever given – spend time with the project. At first, I never understood what he meant until I applied it to myself. There was a project I was avoiding because it brought up much uncertainty on the best way to structure it.
Once I sat down and started and just spent time with it, did it begin to flow? Avoidance or thinking about it would never bring me closer to a solution. Staying in my head created anxiety, and taking action created progress.
Most people struggle with procrastination not because they're bad at managing time but because they're not skilled at managing discomfort. We avoid things because they bring up insecurities like fear of judgement, not being perfect or failing. Rather than avoid the task to avoid the feelings, spend time with it to give yourself confidence by creating micro wins. If you need to prepare a presentation, spend twenty minutes and create slide one. You can even write one heading and two bullet points.
The point is that now you have started, and momentum creates motivation. If you place the future of your career on this presentation, you will create any reason to avoid it.
Even if you label yourself a perfectionist, done is still better than perfect. You have to spend time on the project to complete it. Then you can focus on improving it.
Even if you allocate ten minutes to start, you'll immediately feel more charged to continue because we suffer more in imagination than in reality. It's never going to be as painful as you think it is.
Replace fear with faith
Why faith? It is the 'break in case of emergency' tool when life feels too much, or your challenge is bigger than you can handle. When you cultivate faith, you can see a situation as happening for you rather than to you.
It is trusting in something bigger than yourself that life is happening exactly as it should, even if you can't see it. Faith allows you to sit in the question – how can I now appreciate this as a gift, or what is this situation here to teach me?
If you look back to something challenging in your past and at the time felt unbearable, the gift of hindsight reveals why it was a gift. Perhaps a relationship ended, but you met someone even better suited to you, or you lost your job, but now you've started a new business that you would never have done.
Faith is how you move through uncertainty, especially when you cannot control your external world.
There is no one way to cultivate faith, and you don't have to be religious. It is a knowing without knowing and trusting that life is always happening for you.
If you don't want to create faith in something bigger than yourself, how about creating faith in yourself? How about building up that sense of inner strength and confidence that you always make a plan and figure things out no matter what life presents?
Fear and faith are both intangible, but one will raise you to whatever challenge arises, and one will prevent you from taking the growth from the situation.
Final thoughts
Advice is a buffet; you can choose what you want to fill yourself with. The more you expose yourself to new tastes, flavours and options, the more your world expands. What once repelled you may be your staple that you always return to and encourage others to try it.
The last piece of advice that will unlock everything else is to give yourself permission to change your mind. When you hold a belief so firmly, it can feel like you are being inauthentic to go back on it. Rather than view it as a negative, take a step back and marvel at how much you have grown and can now see a new perspective you couldn't previously.
Here are some new flavours to think about:
· Meditate.
· Be your own best friend.
· Spend time with the project.
· Replace fear with faith.
· Give yourself permission to change your mind.
Here's to the power of choice.
Warm wishes,
Lori
Lori Milner is the engaging facilitator, thought leader and mentor known for her insightful approach to being a modern corporate woman. Her brainchild, the successful initiative Beyond the Dress, is the embodiment of her passion to empower women. Beyond the Dress has worked with South Africa’s leading corporates and empowered hundreds of women with valuable insight on how to bridge the gap between work and personal life. Clients include Siemens, Massmart, Alexander Forbes, Life Healthcare Group, RMB Private Bank and Unilever to name a few. Lori has co-authored Own Your Space: The Toolkit for the Working Woman in conjunction with Nadia Bilchik, CNN Editorial Producer. Own Your Space provides practical tools and insights gleaned from workshops held around the world and from interviews with some of South Africa’s most accomplished women to provide you with tried-and-tested techniques, tips and advice to help you boost your career, enhance your confidence and truly own your space on every level. Own Your Space is the ultimate ‘toolkit’ to unleash your true power. It’s for the woman who wants to take her career to new heights and who is ready to fulfil her true potential.
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