Is your life perfect?
Yes, your life is a perfect example of what you have done with excellence throughout your life and so is everyone else’s around you.
In the last article I introduced the concept that each of us has own unique ‘model of the world’ and we can often get the best results by sharing maps. In this article I aim to get you even more curious about how to improve your understanding of yourself and others and to use this increased understanding to help you improve your own life.
As part of my overall coaching methodology, I am one of the minority of coaches who pay particular attention to the effect of a client’s environments. I believe that many people underestimate the effect of environments of all types, and today I’d like to share one way you can begin to use one piece of your environment to your advantage.
The environment I’d like to talk about today is the people around you in your life.
I know lots of coaches and personal development types encourage people to surround themselves with positive upbeat people and I generally agree that this is a good idea. The people you associate with has a very powerful effect on your level of aspiration and success in life.
However, today I’d like to encourage you to look at the people around you in a very different way. I’d like you to look at them and their lives as perfect manifestations of their internal thoughts and resultant behaviours.
So what do I mean by this?
Well, simply that the results don’t lie! If someone is at the centre of a fantastic social network, it will be the result of their internal thoughts (both conscious and unconscious) and the behaviours they drive.
If someone is alone in the world, the same holds true - they are simply very skilled at manifesting this through their thoughts and resultant behaviours.
As an example, I have new friend who is full of life and at the centre of an amazingly varied and supportive social network. If you met her you’d think she’d lived in our town her whole life.
But, you’d be mistaken; last week we held a barbeque at our house and while chatting to this person I mentioned her social network and asked if she’d lived in the town her whole life?
She replied she’d only been here a couple of years; apparently she is a single mum, who several years ago moved to our town not knowing a single soul.
During the conversation it became very apparent how this young women had become a hub of the community so quickly and created such a great life here.
She described how when she’d first moved here, she’d looked for local interest clubs etc. but had found a limited choice, so what did she do? She went about setting up two new clubs. Our town now has two more very well attended clubs a knitting circle and a book club and our new friend had begun to create the social network she desired.
But, the story doesn’t end there, two days after the barbecue a small simple ‘Thank You’ card came though our door. What a great and simple way to show appreciation and leave a positive impression on people.
What could someone who is looking to build social networks, learn from this person?
- The value of being proactive and taking responsibility?
- The effect of an attitude of gratitude?
- The value of expressing this gratitude?
Imagine the effect on her life if she’d been walking around with the opposite beliefs and values?
How different do you think her experience of the new town would be?
Now it doesn’t matter what you want in life, people who are manifesting who they are and what they think in their everyday lives surround you.
So maybe as you begin to look at the lives of the people around you, you can get really curious about ‘how’ they are creating the experience of their lives.
Your skill in noticing these qualities both useful and not so useful will greatly affect the quality of your own life.
Initially your ‘job’ is simply to decide what you’d like to improve and begin to notice what and how people who are good at this actually do.
If you want to be more influential in meetings, pick someone who has this skill and get really curious about what they do and listen really carefully for their underlying beliefs and values and then practise them for yourself.
As you continue to practise these skills of noticing how people are achieving the results of their lives, you’ll probably get increasingly curious about how you are creating the results in your life. If your not getting what you want, it may be worth remembering that:
- Procrastination is a skill
- Lack of Motivation is a skill
- Letting other people control your life is a skill
- Maintaining low self-esteem/confidence is a skill
- Not setting and achieving goals is a skill
- Lack or Purpose is a skill
These things do not happen naturally, you have to create them and understanding how specifically you are doing these things, is the first step to learning how to do what you’d prefer.
Accepting this can be incredibly empowering, think about it, if you don’t practise a skill you lose it! The more you fail to practise, by doing what you have modelled from others, the harder it will be to procrastinate etc. Quite simple you won’t be as good at it anymore!
Bye for now,
Anth.
April 6th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
My first internet- experience was not successful. But anyway I keep posting from time to time. All information online is for people to discuss. I think this is the most important thing why internet is so popular everywhere