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Newsletter June 17, 2010 Empower Your Work By Being Still |
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We live in an age when “doing” is prized more than “being”. We live frantically busy lives where time is our most precious commodity. The thing most of us yearn for is work/life balance. Work/life balance has many faces. It certainly is not one-dimensional. There are many ways to manage its demands. In today's newsletter, we explore some more ways we can do that by bringing stillness and quiet into our lives. Featured in this newsletter:
Try this and be amazed. 
Maree Harris. PhD.
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Quiet Time and Stillness can Be Empowering.
We live in an age when “doing” is prized more than “being”. We live frantically busy lives where time is our most precious commodity. The thing most of us yearn for is work/life balance. Yet when we become overwhelmed by all this “doing” stuff, when we become stressed and need to stop and just “be”, we find it the hardest thing to do. Being with ourselves, resting in ourselves, is very difficult for most of us. Instead we turn on the TV, plug the iPod into our ears, listen to the radio and distract ourselves from what is happening inside us with a coffee, a beer, glass of wine, chocolate or even a cigarette. Now, there’s nothing wrong with any of that as a way to switch off from a difficult day at work – unless it becomes our habitual way of relaxing and unwinding. What happens when we “relax” that way all the time, is we lose contact with what is actually happening within our bodies and, in fact, our minds, not to mention our spirit. We become tireder and tireder over time. We wake up each morning still not feeling rejuvenated. I can hear you asking: but isn’t that what is supposed to happen? Isn’t that why we have holidays – to rejuvenate ourselves? What if I told you it did not have to be that way.
Discover the Power of “Being” with Yourself. Many great people throughout time made this discovery, that you can empower yourself in an extraordinary way when you stop, be still, be quiet, be silent, contemplate and meditate. Once empowered you can achieve amazing things. I remember hearing the great and late M Scott Peck
interviewed once. For those of you who don’t know him, he wrote one of the very
first self help books back in 1978 – The Road Less Travelled. It sold more than
6 million copies in the He was commenting that his colleagues ask him how he can fit so much into his life. He had a private psychiatric practice, travelled the world lecturing, wrote books and was involved in community building work. He told them that the reason he could do all that was that he took two hours off in the middle of every day just to be with himself. He would read and reflect, sit in his garden, listen to music, meditate and do a whole range of things that allowed him to be still. He called it his prayer time because that was the only way people would not interrupt him. Their response was that they couldn’t possibly take two hours off in the middle of every day. They were too busy. “Well, that is the reason”, he said, “that you cannot fit as much into your life as I do.”
When we learn to stop and be still and do it on a regular basis, we can make the same discoveries that M Scott Peck made.
Learning How To Be Still and Quiet - A Most Important Soft Skill
The most significant part of developing the art of being still and quiet – a very important soft skill – is what we learn about ourselves. It is an optimum experience for developing and enhancing our self-awareness. Becoming self-aware is one of the top soft skills we need to develop to become successful in whatever we do. Self-aware people are self-confident and self-motivated. They manage themselves very well – their emotions, their time, their stress. They are positive and pro-active. In other words, they are empowered and empowering people that are good to be around.
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How Do I Begin to Develop Stillness and Quiet in My Busy Life?
Many people have found the answer to this question in disciplines like, for example, meditation, yoga and tai chi. Trying these by doing some short courses with experienced teachers is highly recommended. This will give you a sense of whether it is something that resonates with you. If this is all new to you, however, that may be too much of a leap. You may need to take smaller steps as you test whether what’s being said here will really make a difference to your life. Why Do It? The world in which we live and work is complex and challenging. It is the same world in which our clients live and work. Yet, they expect us, the professional, to not only have excellent technical skills but also to have skills that will help them negotiate the complexity of their lives and work for them, show them the way through, provide certainty where there is none and produce clarity from ambiguity. That’s a pretty tall order. Of course, most of us cannot do it. We can, however, take that responsibility seriously and do everything we can to bring focus and clarity to our work with our clients. That’s a highly developed soft skill. We can achieve this by making “being” with ourselves something we value and practice. When we do we slow down the busyness in our heads, our bodies and our lives so that we can clear out the unimportant, what’s left is what is most valued. It is also the source of our inner power. Living from out of that space makes an enormous difference to our life. People who make time to be still and quiet
Where Do We Begin?
There are a couple of really basic things we can do that
make a big difference if we take them seriously and do them consistently.
James’ Experience – All of Us with
Children have been Here.
He remembered a workshop he’d been at with me where we’d
talked about the “two-minute stress breaker” so he thought he would try it.
When James arrived home from work that night, he did the same thing before he got out of the car to go into the house. He wanted to leave what had happened with his son that morning behind and go inside and greet his son from out of his energised space. James is now sold on this and uses it frequently in his very busy work-life. This is another small introduction to creating stillness and quiet in your life. I have used this for years and it never ceases to amaze me just how powerful it is. Many of us have work days that are full of a great diversity of activity. We have a meeting, then we answer emails, then we have phones calls, then we have to produce a report, then we have a mentoring session with one of our staff, then we have to deal with the computer technician about the problem on our computer, then we have the receptionist wanting us to talk with an angry client on the phone…………..and in the midst of all that we have a client coming in for a 2 p.m. appointment. Sound familiar? We are prepared for the appointment with our client. We did that a few days ago. If we, however, go into that appointment with our client straight from the telephone call with the angry client, or the frustrating session with the computer technician, it is very doubtful we will perform optimally with our client. For example,
Before every consultation with a client, or even before an important phone call:
When you begin to first do this, you may find it feels false. You may also find it very difficult to stop and be still and divest yourself of tension and distractions. You may feel you just want to get on with it. If you stay with it and practice, you will find it really makes a difference. Draw On The Power Within Yourself To Power Your Life. What we’ve been talking about here is not some kinky strategy. This is about becoming aware of the power we have within ourselves that so often we don’t use to our advantage. Often we have neglected it for so long that when we do tap into it again, it is, at first, hard work. When we continue to do it every day, it becomes an energising dynamic in our lives. ______________________________
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A good example of how this can make a difference is the story James told me recently. He was late for work because his adolescent son
would not get out of bed to go to school. When he did get up he had missed the
bus and James then drove him to school, but not before they had had a verbal
stoush. While he was driving from the school to work his son phoned him on his
mobile to say he had no lunch so James turned around and took him back some
money to buy his lunch. Next time James says he will leave him to take
responsibility for his own actions, but this time this was how it was. It
didn’t end there because, now late, James was booked for speeding. By the time he
gets to the car park at work he is drained, frustrated, fragmented and very
stressed. It is only