Making Peace with Surrender

In a world where commitment, persistence, determination and battling through obstacles is an operational norm, and not just an aspirational  state of being it can be difficult to know when it is appropriate to change a planned course of action, and even harder to go through the process of admitting defeat.

‘Quitting’ or ‘Giving Up’ is not an attractive prospect for someone who views being ‘bloody minded’ as a compliment!

But sometimes, we need to step outside of ourselves and take the view of someone in our corner with our best interests at heart.  And sometimes that means we need to give ourselves permission to throw in the towel.

Knowing when that point is however is never easy especially when you are immersed in the delusional, one dimensional mentality required when single mindedly pursuing a goal.

A fighter has either the ref or his trainer to bring an unwinnable  bout to a premature end, an army has it’s General to declare surrender in a battle with no hope of victory, and a business has a CEO to decided when it’s time to shut up shop.

As individuals though in life, we must make our own decisions regarding when continued determination is detrimental and when persistence needs to give way to peace.  Reinhold Niebuhr recognises the difficulty of making these decisions in his serenity prayer:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can and wisdom to know the difference.

Making the decision to move on from a goal before we have reached the specific end point which we set ourselves, can be more palatable if we remember 3 things:

1. Success is in the doing.  It is in the pursuit of a goal.  It is in what we learn along the way.  It is in how we grow as a human being as a result of identifying something we want and then going after it.  Even if we do not reach our end point, none of that can be taken away, and it is this that is arguably the most valuable part of the process of goal achievement.

“There is no failure in pouring your heart and soul and energy into something that didn’t work.  Failure is not trying at all.” Jim Rohn

 2. Releasing one thing can often make room for something much better for us in the long run.  It is possible to become so focused on the mechanics of something  that we fail to realise we are just spending time fixing problems just to stay afloat and are not in fact making any forward progress.  Sometimes in order to move forward you must change tracks entirely.

“When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.” Alexander Graham Bell

3. Losing a Battle does not mean Losing the War.  “Life aint a track meet, it’s a marathon” is a lyric from rap star, Ice Cube’s track, You Can Do It and sums up the fact that despite the inevitable disappointments, failures and losses that we will chalk up as we make our way through life, the outcome of one goal doesn’t form the whole story of our life.

And so in life, if we find ourselves in the position of having to raise the white flag and hold our hands up in defeat, we might take some timely comfort from The Olympic Creed:

The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph, but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered, but to have fought well.”

For me this is a personal blog written shortly  after I took the decision to abandon my pursuit of a place on the Barbados Olympic Team.  I had to concede defeat after an injury hit winter turned into a nightmare spring and when my right foot suffered an injury last week that left me unable to run for 4-6 weeks, I knew that this was one big goal I was going to have to let go.

But I do so confident that I fought a good fight.  And in that knowledge I have made  peace with my decision to surrender.

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I would like to thank some very special people who joined me in what became quite a battle over the last few months and gave so generously of their time, skill and resources:

Charley McConnell

Charley McConnell – My Coach – patiently persisted with me to the bitter end!

Rhiannon Jones

Rhiannon Jones – Chiropractor and Aquatic Therapist who also became my master motivator over the last few months and gave freely of her time and skills to work me to death in the pool!

Mark Buckingham

Mark Buckingham – Physiotherapist Extraordinaire. Has been in charge of rehabbing me through an interesting collection of injuries for over 7 years…this time though, we just ran out of time.

Romany Gurner

Romany Gurner – taught me all I know about Pilates and joined me in my battle for fitness with her laser machine in an effort to keep me in one piece!

Mark Cheetham and Adam Baker – Performance Consultants who I began working with in September 2010…they made a massive difference to my racing last year and were on hand again to help out this season

National Champs 2011 – Photo Courtesy of Ron Lawrence

I am eternally grateful to you and numerous other sponsors and supporters for supporting and believing in me – Thank you x

The 7 P’s of Disciplined Activity – Part 1

For some reason, lots of the words associated with ‘successful’ living seem to begin with the letter ‘P’.

Positivity, Persistence, Productivity,  Personal Philosophy, Principles, Potential,  Patience,  Proactivity,  Personal Power (to choose, respond and act) and the ultimate ‘P’ word, Peace, are some examples.

Interestingly, the letter ‘P’ represents the same sound as the Greek letter Pi which is also a mathematical symbol used in equations to describe fundamental principles of the Universe…

Obviously for someone who writes a blog on Rules For Life based on Fundamental Principles of the Universe, this can seem to be hugely significant…but I digress…

The Focus of this post is to give an overview of what I have found to be 7 useful steps to creating disciplined activity on a daily basis – a process I have called the 7 P’s of Disciplined Activity: 1) Passion, 2) Purpose, 3) Planning, 4) Preparation, 5) Preview, 6) Play and 7) Presents.

1) Firstly Passion. Passion has got to be the foundation of any activity that you are going to take.  If you are not passionate, at least about the bigger picture of what you are doing, then it will be really difficult to motivate yourself to take the necessary actions required to progress towards your goals in that area.

Therefore it is essential that you take some time to really clarify what you are passionate about.  If your Passion is not already apparent to you (and for many people this is the case) then you may need to consciously go through a process to discover where your Passion lies.  You may find it useful to re-visit the post on Thinking to start you off as well as using tools to determine your core values, and the vision that you have for your life.   Your Passion will oil the wheels of the rest of the 7 P’s thus creating a greater sense of ease when it comes to committing to the discipline required for your daily activity.

2) Once you have determined what you are Passionate about you need to bring some clarity to how you will direct that passion by defining your Purpose.  What are you on a mission to achieve?

It may sound a little morbid but one of the best ways to really bring some focus to your self determined Purpose is to write your own obituary!  When your life is over, what would you want to be said about you? What would you want your legacy to be?  Once you are clear about this you are in a much better position to create this legacy in reality!

3) Planning – Here’s where we really have to get down to work.  In order to create disciplined activity you will have to have a plan – a Blueprint for your Life if you will.  This part of the process involves setting some very clear goals for each area of your life and breaking those goals down into steps and tasks that will form the basis for your daily activity.

Your goals will be key pieces of the jigsaw that will eventually form the finished picture of your life. A fundamental part of getting all the parts of your jigsaw to fit together in reality, is by pre-determining, on paper, how you intend for them to fit together. Your Plans will keep you ‘on Purpose’.

4) Preparation is really just another element of planning and goal setting.  If we stick with the jigsaw analogy, once we have all the pieces needed to create the picture, to complete the image we need to have a pre-identified strategy of action for putting them all together.  Once we have our strategy, completing the image becomes much easier.

In order to properly Prepare for the execution of our strategy in life, we need to integrate the actions from our Plans and goals into daily, weekly, monthly and annual routines. The best way to do this is by creating habits that serve your Purpose.  The creation of pre-determined habits, is the Preparation that will set your Plans alight.  Once habits are created and ingrained into a routine, disciplined activity begins to flow almost on auto pilot.

In the next post we will look at the final 3 ‘P’s, Preview, Play and Presents!

Until then, have a Positively Productive week!

Karen : )

 

The 7 P’s of Disciplined Activity – Part 2

 

Thinking – The Space Where Power Lies

It seems to be becoming increasingly clear that we are being absolutely and completely drowned in distracting ‘entertainment’,  or could that be entertaining distractions?

A deluge of endless soaps, sitcoms, glossy mags, simulated computer realities, phone aps, gossip TV, reality shows, gadgets and games wash over us in a seemingly unavoidable tidal wave on a daily basis, all the while preventing a moment’s peace unless it is specifically and consciously carved out of the day as we gasp for air and try and catch our breath.

The upcoming generation has become so programmed to avoid being with their own thoughts that should all of the available sources of entertainment prove insufficient to satisfy their craving for distraction, there is a place called bored.com where they can retreat to.  Really???

A conspiracy theorist might go so far as to say that this mind numbing reality is a systematic attempt to distract  you and I from useful, constructive, actionable thoughts that might threaten the positions of control held by the powers that be.  A strategy to keep us from getting to the space where Power lies – our own minds.

We’ve all heard that the ‘mind is a really powerful thing‘, and that ‘you can do anything if you put your mind to it‘ so why do we seemingly then spend so much time avoiding spending quality time with just our minds?

For many people the idea of Meditation, Prayer, Thinking Sessions (as advocated by Vincent Peale in Lead the Field), or even just spending time alone to do nothing, may still seem somewhat alternative rather than mainstream.  The idea of a Personal Communication Room as used by the inventor Dr. Elmer Gates, might seem positively bizarre (his room, used exclusively for the purpose of thinking, is where he came up with over 200 patents*).

And yet it is in the space of such activities, that balance is brought to our increasingly busy lives.  It is in that space where we get to hear the instructions that will often guide us to peace, joy and satisfaction, towards our true self and towards our purpose and therefore towards fulfillment.

Whatever your spiritual beliefs, and even if you have none, it is only in that quiet space, alone, where we can communicate without speaking audible words, or without listening for audible words with our ears.  Instead, by listening with our minds we can hear powerful messages that can ultimately transform lives, both our own and that of others.

Depending on the belief system you have come to choose up until this point in your life, I am certain that you will be able to identify with one of the following, all of which can be attributed with delivering the messages found in the space of pure thought:

Spiritual Guide, Inner Voice, Guardian Angel, Infinite Intelligence, Still Small Voice, Spirit, Something Inside, Source Energy…

Whatever you want to call it, this powerful resource is there for the taking for each individual.  But to access it we have to Skip the Junk.

Of course we all need rest and leisure time to switch off and relax but in the words of Jim Rohn it should be ‘a necessity not an objective’.  Don’t let junk fill the space where you get to listen to your inner you.  A space where you can find true fulfillment and peace.  A space that will ultimately guide you to the satisfaction in life you desire and deserve.

*From Think & Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill

Next Post: The Illusionary Flexibility of Reality

Rule 6 – Create Some Balance

6. Create Some Balance
Just as a car won’t work so well if one of the tyres is flat, humans will also malfunction when trying to operate without looking after each of the 3 components that make us human: Body, Mind and Spirit.
Creating balance in these areas simply involves specifically spending time making sure each area is being catered for so that you can operate as optimally as possible leading to a pleasing sense of ongoing satisfaction with your life as a whole.
Body – our physical self is nothing more than a set of systems which all work amazingly well if treated right. In summary this would involve:
•    getting at least 30 minutes of exercise 3 times a week

•    eating a nutritionally balanced diet
•    drinking 8 glasses of water a day getting enough rest skipping the junk (or at least keeping it to a minimum)
Mind – in a way this is part of our body as it deals with our brain but it is so important that it has come to deserve separate recognition. This may be because this is where everything originates – the choices we make regarding the other two components originate in our brain as a thought.
That’s why it’s so important to control as far as possible what goes into your mind. The same principles regarding a healthy body can be applied to your mind:

• Exercise – your mind is stimulated and exercised by the ongoing education we have already talked about in Rule 4.  30 minutes 3 times a week isn’t a bad place to start a new Attitude Education programme!
•    Balanced diet – your mind needs variety also – we all know how boring someone with a 1-track mind is!  Make sure you are feeding your mind a good balance of useful information.
•    Rest – this means taking time to switch off and think about nothing – that doesn’t mean watching TV!  Try staring out a window, closing your eyes for 10 minutes or killing 2 birds with one stone by going for a brisk walk (physical exercise & rest for your mind)
•    Skip the junk – mind junk comes in the form of trash TV (the clue is in the name!) tabloid “news” papers, and excessive internet surfing to main a few sources of mind junk.
Spirit – this is perhaps the hardest component to identify and therefore balance due to it’s intangible nature, but balance it you must if you are going to avoid it throwing your otherwise well balanced plans out of whack.
Your spirituality doesn’t necessarily refer to anything religious, although religion does provide spiritual balance for those who believe in it.
Instead your spirituality (and we all have it whether we choose to acknowledge it or not) refers to why and how you choose to think what you do, your personal philosophy if you like, and is closely aligned to the Attitude you develop by following Rule 4.
Like everything else we have talked about, you will experience a much greater satisfaction with the spirituality area of your life, and therefore with your life as a whole if you consciously identify, acknowledge and embrace the nature of your spirit and feed it so that it can grow and develop along with the rest of you.

Your spirit will be very personal to you as it is in effect, the essence of who you are. It will be influenced by all your experiences to date and it will be the driver behind all your emotions.
Those who choose to ignore this area, either by denying that it exists or by mistakenly thinking that it doesn’t matter, are those who are experiencing some of the greatest discontentment and frustration with their lives. This will often manifest in physically self destructive behaviours such as drug abuse, eating disorders or abusive relationships to name but a few. These are examples of the result of living a life without balance.
You should note that balancing these 3 components doesn’t necessarily mean spending equal time on each. It does mean recognising that you need to be spending time on each and then identifying how much time that each needs to operate at it’s best.
Once you have made these conscious choices for optimal performance of your Mind, Body and Spirit, and are acting on them on a regular basis, you will have created some balance in your life.

Happy Balancing Folks! : )

Rule 7 – You Must Have a Blueprint for Your Life