MINDFULNESS
Mindfulness is topical. I won’t write about Mindfulness
but will recommend a book by local well-being entrepreneur Glenda Rivoallan. No
instead I will write about something related, but not the same.
Some context is useful. I was part of PhD study on Mindfulness for Entrepreneurs
and I can tell you that entrepreneurs or high performance athletes can all be a
pretty stressed out bunch with many things to manage and a significant about of
self-reliance and solo dependence for success. That’s not to say we don’t value
colleagues and coaches, but in the end if you are launching your business or at
the start-line of a triathlon it is a pretty singular experience.
The PhD study sought to see if Mindfulness
can help entrepreneurs or high performance athletes. The answer is YES.
Interestingly most performance athletes
already perform mindfulness when they zone-in and focus, exclude everything around
them and in that moment of performance show flow with the precision and control
that comes from single minded concentration and rehearsal that they switch-on
at show-time.
We didn’t call it Mindfulness, but all the attributes
that were called meditation, contemplation, and thought and are now branded Mindfulness
and advocated to busy people consumed with the demands of friends, family,
social media and work.
BUSY DOING NOTHING
The challenge for entrepreneurs or high performance athletes
is to demote everything in favour of your goal. The opposite is to try and do
everything and achieve nothing.
Link
Bob Hope apparently once said: I dont know the key to
success but key to failure is surely trying to please everyone
Therein lies the problem. If our lives are empty of goals we
fill them with distractions, with drink or drugs, with chores, with the
millions of small tasks that steal our time and offer little reward. With likes,
friends and followers.
However, I am not an advocate for heroic dedication to goals.
That isn’t for everyone. Nor do goals need to be serious or noble. George Best
said: “I spent a lot of money on booze, birds, and fast cars. The rest I just
squandered.” Nobody said your goals cannot be fun.
Most people seek a purpose in their life and being a parent,
author, sportsman or friend are all equally worthy.
The challenge for the lost is to find their goal.
For some that goal may be the pursuit of meaning and truth. Buddhism,
Meditation and Mindfulness all allow for periods of reflection that may help
you find that path. But so does Music, Reading and any other pastime that
consumes you wholly in the moment free from the demands, obligations or
expectations of yourself or others.
KNOWING WHAT YOU WANT
Knowing what you want is much harder than getting it. I know
plenty of people who think they want money, cars, qualifications, houses.
It is naïve at this point to go hippie and give up all
material things in pursuit of your charity, community or soul. But it is worth
thinking what will you do with those things?
Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics says “these virtues are
formed in man by his doing the actions”, Durant sums it up this way: “…we are
what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then is not an act but a habit.”
Replacing “Excellence” with life or goals it isn’t about a single
event but an approach.
So if we are identified and valued by what we DO whether
that it benevolence or buildings, teaching or technology we should not give-up
on money, cars, qualifications, houses but think how should we use them, or
more fundamentally: why.
KNOWING WHY WILL DRIVE YOUR WHAT AND GUIDE YOUR HOW
Image
So if you are thinking about what you want to do with your
time, energy and money perhaps start with why and begin from within.
There is a quote: ”All endurance athletes are running away
from something inside themselves”
I think however this existential crisis is not just entrepreneurs
or high-performance athletes. Many people who have such anxiety channel that
into Leadership (Churchill) Comedy (Spike Milligan) Creativity (J.K. Rowling)
Now that we have passed the agrarian revolution, the industrial
revolution and the technology revolution most of us have food on the table and
a roof over our heads and an existential crisis – what should I do now?
But before you rush to fill that time, perhaps think WHY lest
you achieve your goals and then find they have no value because you’ve forgotten
why you wanted them (if indeed you ever knew)
CONCLUSION
if you have knowledge, experience, qualification of any type
(especially opposing views) please add to the comments and provide a different
perspective to readers. If you can recommend books, videos or blogs please do so.
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