Running can be a great time to allow the mind to make connections and here are a few thoughts that I connected this morning as I ran out.
Our unconscious can hinder us from achieving difficult things, quietly robbing us of the resilience to keep going or preventing us from seeing how far we’ve come. I was watching a brilliant lecture on TED the other day where Benjamin Zander was talking about Music & Passion. He showed how children are able to hold bigger and bigger musical phrases in their mind given time, allowing them to play more smoothly and competently. Sadly, he pointed out that many don’t reach the final, more satisfying level, instead giving up just before they do.
In a marathon, this is the wall that people speak about – having run 22.2 miles, your unconscious tries hard to persuade you that you can’t run the last four.
I’ve been using my running blog to galvanise me to run for 20 months now, whilst also exercising my writing ability, one week at a time. Both writing and running slowly improve and the resilience it has developed spills positively out into other things.
It is a different matter if you decide not to do something. A friend recently closed down one of his companies as their key client no longer had a requirement. His colleagues would have been happy to continue, part-time and unpaid, to see if they could bring in more work. But a clear decision cuts off the slow drain created by overheads and allows (or forces) everyone to focus on other more profitable things, probably to better effect.
I practice Chi-Kung, ancient Chinese breathing & stretching exercises, every morning & night for ten minutes. It would be easy to give up as there are no clear instant benefits, but I know that over time it will enable me to stay flexible and positive. I can’t see any reason NOT to carry on doing this until I physically cannot.
Vipassana taught me that you have to be gentle with yourself when you’re learning to do new things. And persistent. When you notice that you’ve lapsed in your New Years resolution to go to the gym, don’t beat yourself up about it or think how much ground you’ve lost. Instead, just accept that your mind was elsewhere and start going again. Coaxing the unconscious into a new way of working is the technique that works best, provided you keep applying gentle pressure.
So to business. Here is some thinking exercise for you.
If it were easy, what would you change about yourself, your business or the way that you do business? Now imagine that you’ve made that change… how would you behave in this new reality? Would you stand straighter, dress sharper, look people in the eye, listen longer to your employees or be more direct? Practice this behaviour, in a small way to start with, but at some point during every day if you can. And when you realise that you’ve lapsed practicing it, start again. And though it would be easy to stop going, choose not to and instead keep returning to it.
You may be surprised at how effective this very simple approach is and also how the resilience that you’re building up may start to positively affect other things that you try to achieve. Emile Coue said that If we imagine that it is not possible to do something, then it is indeed impossible for us to do it. My sense is that if we can imagine how something will look and start behaving appropriately, then we are a long way towards achieving it.
