Getting More Out of Life

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"Reality leaves a lot to the imagination" -John Lennon"

Welcome!

To this edition of Getting More Out of Life, the ezine that is
designed to give you "Knowareness" and "helicopter perspective"
about what is going on in your professional and personal life.
Awareness and self reflection are THE keys to success and
fulfilment, combined with a system of understanding yourself and
others.

Perception = Reality!

One of the things I really learned in my years as a litigation
lawyer is that there are as many views on reality as there are
parties in the legal process. It is up to the judges to
ultimately cast a verdict based upon all these different views,
which I now, after years of study, think is a (near) impossible
task.....

In Neuro Linguistic Programming, a major principle states that
reality can only be our PERCEPTION of reality. It is impossible
to see, hear, feel everything in our personal and professional
lives. Still, we make decisions on a daily basis, and feel
emotions on a daily basis, all resting on these generalised,
deleted and distorted bits of information.

There is nothing wrong with that in itself, we've been doing
that for centuries. It can go wrong, though. One of my
"Knowareness" principles dictates that we want to be very
careful with judging situation others, because we may not have
sufficient information to do so. If our own perception on
reality makes us feel bad, we may have to self-reflect, and
check whether we are justified in feeling that way.

Imagine this:

Parents punish their child for bullying other children at
school. Later on it turns out that their child wasn't the bully;
names got mixed up.....

A presidential candidate makes a statement, and the press takes
that sentence totally out of context, spinning a picture,
detrimental to that candidate (happened to Barack Obama recently
when he was talking about Sarah Palin....).

There are many examples to show that our perception may not be
the most effective and honouring perspective, neither for the
"perceiver", nor for the "perceived".

I had it happen to me recently, and again, it proved NLP to be
right: reality is our perception of reality.

We wanted to go for a BBQ, together with our 8-year old
daughter. We then found out we had to look after our daughter's
best friend too, as her mother had to work. This being the case
we decided to invite even more of her friends to the same bbq;
the more kids, the merrier. Most of the mums wanted to come
along, which was fine of course.

Now here's the spin: a dear friend of ours, who joins in most of
the social gatherings, wasn't invited -as she is not the mother
of one of our daughter's friends. When our friend found out she
wasn't invited, she was very upset. Various other
interpretations about earlier events had made her think we were
avoiding contact, and something was wrong. The "BBQ-invite", or
at least her perception of it, was the straw that broke the
camel's back. She was seriously thinking about cutting all the
ties with us, and was deeply hurt by our actions.

When I explained why we hadn't been in contact that much lately,
and why she wasn't invited to a party with a bunch of 8-year
olds, it turned out that all her negative emotions and bad
feelings weren't based on all the facts, but on just some of
them, combined with her interpretation of what had happened.
Again, we all work that way to a certain degree, but when that
makes you feel THAT bad, there may be reason to delve a bit
deeper, and check whether you know all the relevant facts, and
if your interpretation of them holds any water.

The Knowareness Principle for this month is this: when you feel
strong (negative) emotions about aspects of your personal or
professional life, check the facts, and check your
interpretation. Realise that your perception creates your
reality, and your reality creates your emotional response.
Often, what you think and feel is going on, is not what's really
going on!

Set a Landmarc:

Firstly: always make sure that you have as much information
possible as you can reasonably acquire before you make important
decisions in your life or business. This is what's called
informed decision making.

Secondly: when you have a reaction to some happening in your
life or business, STOP! Check whether you know all there is to
know about the event, and whether your interpretation is the
right one to have in that specific instance.

Thirdly: be vigilantly aware that YOUR interpretation of reality
creates YOUR reality. What you consider to be true, may not be
someone else's truth. The "I am right, you are wrong" attitude,
is the ultimate recipe to global conflict.

Lastly: go easy on yourself. we all make mistakes in our
judgements. Hitting yourself over the head for having made
mind-error is not honouring, and not effective. Commit to
deciding more carefully from that point forward.


Can we ever know reality as such? Well, I'd really like to
discuss that with you over a drink, but my reality says we
cannot. The only thing we can do is be aware of that, and do
our best to make as informed a decision as we can. That is good
enough for me.

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And for a bit of humour: look at these motor insurance claims;
interesting tacks on reality......


"I collided with a stationary truck coming the other way"

"The other car collided with mine without giving warning of its
intention."

"Coming home I drove into the wrong house and collided with a
tree I don't have."

"As I approached an intersection a sign suddenly appeared in a
place where no stop sign had ever appeared before."

"I was sure the old fellow would never make it to the other side
of the road when I struck him."

"No one was to blame for the accident but it would never have
happened if the other driver had been alert."
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Product of the month:

The key to living a more fulfilling professional and personal
life lies in becoming more aware, more "present". Aware Presence
transcends all time, is not bound by past or future. It means
living in the now. This is the concept my clients have been
imbued with since I started coaching and mentoring; more and more
people are latching on to this idea!

To facilitate becoming more aware and present, I recorded a CD
called "Zero Field". It allows you to do just that: become more
present, more in the NOW.

Check it out on http://www.landmarc.info/28.html

Until next time, go well, be well, and live well.

Marc

Getting More Out of Life

Return to www.landmarc.info


"Putting off an easy thing makes it hard. Putting off a hard thingmakes it impossible." -George Claude Lorimer

Welcome to this edition of Getting More Out of Life, the ezine that is designed to give you awareness and "helicopter perspective" about what is going on in your professional and personal life. Awareness and self reflection are THE keys to success and fulfilment, combined with a system of understanding yourself and others.

Action!

A great Australian singer called Delta Goodrem brought out a song called “One Day”. She’s sings about how she is going to travel. One Day. How she is going to learn to speak Japanese. One Day. How she’ll learn to like herself. One day. How she’ll play the guitar. One day. One day it’ll be okay, is the tenor of the song.

Too many times we plan, visualize, budget and think about what we are going to do (one day), but it never really happens.

Action is what makes things happen. Not just any action, though, which is where many people slip up.

Too many people still think that “failing forward” is the way to go when it comes to creating results. Within the personality profiles it’s the Kangaroo type that’s most prone to this approach. Action, action, action, until they drop.

Admittedly, this approach can work quite well, but always comes at a price, whether it’s physical or mental wear and tear, or neglect of people around you.

Many coaches, mentors and consultants emphasise the importance of action RIGHT NOW. Now is always the right time, tomorrow is too late, is their motto.

I agree with them when we look at procrastination in relation to goals we really want to achieve. Not doing anything NOW would be really silly.

What we generally find, though, is that we don’t have any procrastination issues at all when we know what we want, and the desire is in line with our values. Just think back to a time when you were absolutely on track, and you knew what was driving you. Was there any procrastination? Probably not, or hardly any!

Action is awesome and can be successful, but it does presuppose there is a “thing” you are after, a goal you want to achieve.

Advanced Awareness in our lives dictates that we FIRST find out what it is we truly want, in relation to our values, and THEN make a plan to achieve it. As long as we are in line with our values, and have an actionable plan, we usually achieve what it is we desire.

More often than not we are not living out our own dreams. We let our goals be dictated by society, friends, family, bosses, partners, etc. THAT’s where procrastination becomes a problem. The desire is not ours, our motivation is low, and therefore our actions are scattered and few in numbers.

The solution? Well, here are a couple.

Set a Landmarc

Firstly: be open and honest: where and on what do you spend most of your money, time, energy, focus, etc.? Is it your family, work, relationships, your body, your finances, your personal development, your spirituality? Have awareness and look closely where most of your daily attention goes. I know, for instance, that most of my energy goes to personal growth, reading, and finding ways to make a passive income.

Secondly: as much as you can, prioritise your current values and goals list: what is your number 1 attention item, your number 2, etc.? Also, do you like the way this is set up? In other words: is your values list and the order of priority correct?

Thirdly: set some tangible, short, medium and long term goals in the top 3 of your list. Be specific, and make the results tangible.

Lastly: start walking! Take baby steps (or major ones if you’re really committed) towards your goal, and commit to doing SOMETHING each and every day, until you reach your destination. You’ll find you will hardly have any procrastination issues at all as, if you’ve done it right, you are living your life or treating your business according to your values.

The next step is applying the same technique to goals you want to kick, but have some resistance with. I know, for instance, that I have resistance in building an e-commerce business I am in. On the other hand, I also know that I really want the results from it, which drives me forward. I know what I need to do, and am putting it into practice. The next issue of this ezine will be focused on tackling this!

And for a bit of humorous wisdom, here’s The Roman Rule:

The one who says it cannot be done should never interrupt the one who is doing it.

Product of the month:

The key to living a more fulfilling professional and personal life lies in becoming more aware, more “present”. Aware Presence transcends all time, is not bound by past or future. It means living in the now. This is the concept my clients have been imbued with since I started coaching and mentoring; more and more people are latching on to this idea!

To facilitate becoming more aware and present, I recorded a CD called “Zero Field”. It allows you to do just that: become more present, more in the NOW.

Check it out on http://www.landmarc.info/28.html

Until next time, go well, be well, and live well.