Getting the best out of yourself!

Tuesday, 09 April 2013 14:40
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“In a very real sense we have two minds, one that thinks and one that feels.”
Daniel Goleman

So here we are, we've taken a good look at our lives and come to the rather startling conclusion that we are not quite living the life we want. Maybe you are one of the over achiever types who constantly strives to be good at everything, or you have swung to the other extreme and don't do half of what you need to because quite honestly, you don’t give a damn anymore. Or perhaps you are one of those creative types who has come up with a personalised programme of self-defeating behaviour unique to you and your life?

Whatever your modus operandi is, living the life you want starts with learning how to get the best out of yourself. And what does that mean? We all have bad days where nothing goes right and fabulous days where we are inspired and magnificent, but on many of the in-between mundane sort of days we are more likely to notice what is going wrong rather that what is going right. We mess up one small task, forget something important, or snap at an undeserving person and it is all too easy to remember every mistake we have ever made and berate ourselves for being a hopeless failure.

What we have done is taken the small ember of painful feeling in our heart and fanned it into a raging forest fire with our thoughts. Our mind that thinks and our mind that feels have worked together to take us in a direction that harms and weakens us. Instead, take a moment and imagine using the intelligence of your mind to balance and calm the emotions in your heart, how your life would be then?

It works both ways, at times when we get too critical or results focused our hearts remind us to be kind and gentle with ourselves and others, we encourage ourselves to move forward, to take that next step. When we get too emotional, the coolness of our head calms and steadies us by reminding us of the consequence of our actions. So to get the best out of ourself we want our left and right brain or heart and mind are working together in a way that supports and benefits not only us but also the people around us.

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