It may be a relief to know that almost everything you think about yourself is wrong! This is because you are always so much more than your self-image. Let me show you.

We are brought up to apply labels to ourselves and others, labels such as ‘I am a shy person’ or ‘she has a caring personality’. We use labels as shorthand for longer and fuller descriptions.

But labels can never be fully accurate. They are often misleading because they become out-dated and they are always limiting because they tell half-truths. Like a magician’s illusion, they are believable misrepresentations.

When we can see past our labels, a wealth of new possibilities opens up in front of us. We become free of self-imposed limitations. 

But we have to recognise the labels in the first place. They come in many forms such as: personality traits, types of behavior, habits, roles, CVs, qualifications, prejudices, beliefs.

We like the good labels, the ones that reflect status and achievement. But even so, these labels can be limiting if you don’t look beyond them. They don’t define you – there is always more.

This is why psychometric test results can backfire. They can be helpful when seen as a single perspective on your behaviour and preferences. But they become a handicap if you adopt them as a personal definition and then curtail your future options in order to be consistent with this adopted definition.

Labels that we categorise as bad bring us down. They bring unwelcome feelings. And if you don’t see past the label, you are stuck with it.

So how do you see past a label?

Simply be seeing it for what it is – a way of thinking about yourself. A label is a bunch of thoughts that shape your self-image. And as a bunch of thoughts, you get to choose how seriously you take them.

If you focus a lot of attention on them, they get bigger and blot out the view beyond. Withdraw your attention from the labels and they shrink so you can see past them and into the infinity of possibilities beyond.

The nice thing is that spotting labels can be fun. You lighten up when you see a label that you have been taking really seriously for a long time is actually just a way of thinking. And you can withdraw your support and allow it to be replaced by new thinking.

Instead of the rigidity of labels, you may notice a pleasant feeling of fluidity encompassing your experience, rather like the distant days of childhood. As the hard-edges of your self-image dissolve, your sense of self comes from a deeper place. It is from this deeper place that you see past the illusion to the truth of who you really are.

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Swimming is an excellent analogy. Because of a connection with the local swimming club, I’ve spent countless hours watching swimmers. The best ones are the most elegant and graceful as they glide through the water. They have learned how to be streamlined in the water to minimize resistance and they have tuned their technique for maximum efficiency.

Contrast this to the average member of the public who thrashes and splashes with great effort from one end of the pool to the other yet goes twice as slowly. They soon wear themselves out while the club swimmer can keep going for another hour or two!

The efficiency effect applies to all walks of life yet we are all prone to forget it.This week I’ve been busy developing new aspects to my business. It’s been an exciting time but I found a certain diminishing of returns because I kept adding effort, forgetting that the project will go much further and with less wear and tear, just like a car does, if I back-off the throttle a bit.

More broadly, if we adopt the press-on-at-all-costs mentality, we are courting stress and health issues. By contrast, personal efficiency feeds our powers of resilience because it conserves energy.

So if it is so desirable, how can we maximise our efficiency?

The key is self-awareness because if we are able to notice when our efficiency is falling off, we can do something different. If we remain oblivious, we have no choice.

Become aware of your feelings – efficient action feels good. Then your mental load is high enough for the task in hand but no higher.

On the other hand, inefficient action feels draining. Then your mental load is far higher than is helpful as you worry about outcomes, struggle with confusion and puzzle over problems.

Yet when you realize what is going on and you back off the throttle, your mental load reduces, clarity begins to appear and your feelings move to the better end of the spectrum.

There you are much more resourceful. Fresh thinking can flow into your mind from the greater intelligence that is behind all life, bringing you new perspectives and options to draw on. You will be able to see what really matters and avoid wasting effort elsewhere.

Whatever is going on around you, you will have a centre of energised calmness. You are no longer thrashing around in the water but gliding purposefully towards your goal.

But don’t just take my word for it – watch for what happens when you feel the presence of inefficient action and back off that throttle…

The post How To Get The Most From Your Effort appeared first on Inspiration at Work.

If you are feeling stuck or jaded, here’s how you can become refreshed.

Just recently I spent a week in the Swiss Alps. Each morning on my travels, I took a bottle of water in my rucksack. The weather was warm and, because I did a lot of walking, the water didn’t last all day.

But you don’t need to go far before you see a water fountain. It seems that in every village square and railway station there is a fountain flowing continuously.

One afternoon when I was buying a cup of tea from a café, I asked about the fountain outside – was it safe to drink the water?

The proud reply was that the water from every fountain in Switzerland is drinking quality.

From then on I was able to refill my water bottle wherever I went. And I must say that cold, direct from the mountains, it tastes delicious!

It reminds me of how we get refreshed in life; there is always a fountain on hand. The energy of life that is continuously flowing through us is the fount of fresh perspectives.

A new perspective brings a refreshing experience. New options become visible and new choices are possible. Like sunlight breaking through, everything looks different even though nothing has changed.

There is an infinite supply of new perspectives because there are always thoughts that we have not yet thought.

But you can’t refill a bottle that is already full. If you want to be refreshed, then don’t take your current thoughts as inevitably true. Spend less time with them; leave room for new thoughts.

Just like I did, you can rely on the fountain. There’s nothing special you need to do – knowing that the flow is always there is enough.

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It’s dawned on me recently why we have a lack of lasting success in our search for these qualities – we are looking in the wrong place!

Let’s use an analogy. You know how it is when you apply for a job. You get to that stage where you have to list your qualifications. There are the academic ones, the professional ones and the incidental ones.

Because you know there is competition for the job and a standard you need to reach, you work hard to make your qualifications look as impressive as possible. You probably wish you had more. The strength of your application depends on it.

The trouble happens when we take the same mentality into other areas of life. Take self-esteem for example – we think we have to qualify for it. We think we have to earn it by what we’ve achieved, who we know and what we own.

We also think we need extra qualifications in order to be confident. So we aim for new skills in voice projection, body language and repartee.

It’s the same with creativity. We ‘know’ we are not creative enough and seek to repair the omission. Therefore we consume books and videos, and go on brainstorming workshops.

The biggest issue we have is well-being. We believe we need to complete a never-ending list of things to do or to acquire before we can feel happy and fulfilled. The motto we use is ‘I’ll feel happy when …’

The common problem is that we think we have to qualify to get the qualities we want. Yet the truth is that we already have them. It might not seem like it but bear with me a moment.

Small children are naturally confident. They are instinctively creative. They don’t have problems with self-esteem. They spend most of the time in their well-being and, when they come out of it, they are quick to return.

In other words, the qualities we search for as adults are actually those we were born with. So how is it possible to lose them?

Well, we didn’t lose these qualities; they got hidden and then forgotten. Over the years, a complex web of thinking hid them from view. Call it conditioning, call it limiting beliefs, call it the illusion of the ego, it doesn’t matter. It is just a load of thinking.

This thinking creates our experience and that experience seems very real. People make statements like ‘I’m really not a creative person’ or ‘I can’t be confident’. But it’s just thinking that’s talking; it is not you.

When you see the difference, you don’t have to keep giving those thoughts your energy and attention. Simply by recognizing them for what they are – thoughts – your relationship to them changes.

Even if the thoughts hang around for a while, you know they no longer identify you. You don’t have to take them seriously. And without the energy of attention they will fade. With less on your mind there becomes room for new, inspiring thinking.

The brilliant thing is that it works like this for everyone; we are truly equal. No qualifications are necessary. You already have what you are looking for. When you see this, the natural qualities you never lost will reappear.

The post No Qualifications Necessary appeared first on Inspiration at Work.

My seaside holiday this year had a dramatic start. When I arrived, waves were crashing against the sea wall, throwing spray high into the air. The rebound often collided with the next in-coming wave to hurl more spray skywards.

The sea surface was broken in confusion, dancing in heaps and hollows, floating with froth. When the heaving water disgorged a particularly big wave, the thump made the whole house shake.

Yet by the next tide, the wind had dropped. There was just the lightest of breezes. Little wavelets rippled gently onto the beach, twinkling in the sun. This was when the swimmers appeared and people started to launch boats and canoes.

It seems to me that this is what happens to each of us sometimes. We go through ‘thought storms’ when our mind is a confusion of wind and waves. We try to follow one track to make some sense but then it collides with other thoughts and we are thrown off course.

Our efforts to make order get nowhere; in fact they add to the wind that is fueling the storm, making it worse. This is the paradox. When things are tough because our mind is stormy, we choose that very time to try and fix things. We try to launch our boat in the worst conditions.

But remember that the sea returns to calm when the wind drops. This is your natural resilience – your mind will automatically settle into calm when you are not whipping up the wind by thinking a lot about your thinking.

Nature provides an obvious clue – your calm, quiet mind feels really good! This good feeling is the signal you are in touch with your natural resilience. It’s restful and revitalizing; it automatically puts you back into balance; it’s the source of creativity and inspiration for what comes next.

Now you know where your natural resilience really comes from, it means that you can enjoy the recharging effects of a holiday wherever you are.

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Even from a young age I was aware that life seemed to fall into two categories. Most of the time, life was normal. Most things that happened were variations on the familiar and my thoughts and feelings stayed within a certain range.

But every now and again, I would have times of bliss, times that went far beyond normal happiness. I would feel elated, filled with joy and wonder, as if lifted up to see much bigger horizons. Sometimes the beauty in belonging to this universe would take my breath away.

These times were very special to me. They became defining moments – high points from which I could navigate through the lowlands.

I noticed that my energy and motivation would shoot up and my confidence was boosted. Creative ideas arrived without effort and I found solutions to vexing problems. I gained the clarity to see what is truly important in life which helped me make wiser decisions.

Because I was curious, I began to take a deeper interest in what was going on. As I explored further, I became aware that I wasn’t alone. Apparently other people had similar experiences. Perhaps you too?

I liked these special moments a lot and decided I wanted more of them. This is when the term inspiration came to me – the literal meaning of inspire is ‘to breathe life into’ and that is what seemed to be happening. Being inspired is like awakening from a kind of sleep-walking.

This is why we all love hero stories. We are drawn in because we see an ordinary person ‘wake up’ and do extra-ordinary things. We feel a personal resonance because we would like to rise above the ordinary in our own lives.

We all have the ability to wake up to life, to become inspired. I used to think that this is something we have to strive for, to attain. But now I see this ability is part of our nature. There is no qualification necessary; it applies to everyone.

There is no need to feel stuck in our lives, putting up with habitual stress, frustration or failure. Being inspired gives us a glimpse of our latent powers and talents.

It’s then we can see that we already have the means to escape from our particular prison. We see our role in putting bars on the window and locks on the door. Then we can move out and live in a more life-affirming and rewarding place.

The post What’s So Important About Inspiration? appeared first on Inspiration at Work.

Making a ‘To Do’ list is a typical human activity – I’m sure you’ve done the same. It can help us feel better organized and less likely to forget important things.

Yet as I looked at my list, I could see that a whole lot of work was involved. Anticipating all the effort that would be needed was hardly motivating. I tried to imagine what it might be like at the end of the month. Perhaps when everything had been ticked off the list, I would feel a sense of satisfaction?

A sense of satisfaction is a great feeling. It seems to combine the feeling that life is complete, with nothing missing, with the feeling of peace now the hard work is over.

But experience tells me that finishing a ‘To Do’ list doesn’t bring anything more than a flicker of satisfaction. More likely the ‘reward’ is the writing of the next list, and then the pressure to achieve starts all over again.

What if it could be different?

The good news is that it will automatically be different when we separate two things:

1. We can make lists whenever we like. We can choose what to put on these lists and what to leave out. But simply doing things on a list will never bring a sense of satisfaction – see 2 below.

2. All our feelings – including the sense of satisfaction – come from whatever we are thinking at the time. So the feeling that life is complete comes from life is complete thoughts. In the same way the feeling of peace comes from peaceful thoughts.

It is tremendously liberating to see this distinction because it means that we can feel good (eg. satisfied, complete, at peace) at any time. The feeling is independent from wherever we’ve got to on the ‘To Do’ list.

I know that it often looks as if finishing a task makes us feel satisfied but this is an illusion. You can sometimes spot the illusion when you feel satisfied for no obvious reason, or, conversely, when you feel bad even though you’ve completed a significant task.

So now, when I look at my list for July, I smile because I know I can feel good before I finish the list, or even before I finish the first task. Phew!

It’s the same for you. Whatever you have on your list (or in your diary), your feelings come from your thinking. You may well want to achieve everything on your list for other reasons but feeling good doesn’t have to be one of them.

The post Feeling Good Despite The Workload appeared first on Inspiration at Work.

Whenever you feel pressurised or stressed because of a problem, your mind is busy trying to work out a solution. It tends to go over the same thoughts again and again. People talk about ‘cudgeling their mind’ or ‘racking their brains’ which makes it sound like a kind of torture! And in one way I suppose it is – it certainly doesn’t feel nice.

This happened to me the other morning. Soon after waking, my mind started buzzing over a problem with the design of a training programme. I could see a gazillion options to move forward and they kept parading themselves for evaluation. I went from one to another and back again, trying to choose the best one. The parade got faster and faster and my head went into a complete spin.

After an hour or two of this, I was getting worn out. It all seemed so complicated and I was not a jot nearer to a solution. So I decided to give up. I saw the futility of what I was doing and just decided not to bother with it anymore. With the decision made, I felt a sense of relief sweep in. Then I got on with something completely different – I think I put the bins out :-)

As I went through the rest of the morning, I got on with other things and my mind was no longer bothered by the problem. Yet, sometime in the afternoon I suddenly saw the solution. There it was as clear as day! And I hadn’t had to work hard to find it – it arrived all by itself.

I realized afterwards that giving up when I did had made space for new thinking – fresh thoughts that I had not yet thought. The solution arrived as a fresh thought – inspiration!

This experience is also an insight into the question that I’m often asked – how do you ‘let go’ of unhelpful thoughts? The answer is that you can let go by giving up.

Giving up is not half-hearted; it’s the full monty. You do it when you are at your ‘wits end’, in other words, when you are fed up with the unproductive thinking going round in your head.

You know when you have really given up (not just kidding yourself) because of the feeling of relief it brings. Then you can get on with living life more lightly, knowing that new thoughts can arrive at any moment. And it’s these new thoughts that provide by far the best solutions.

But don’t just take my word for it – try giving up for yourself. Let me know how you get on

The post When It’s Smart To Give Up appeared first on Inspiration at Work.

One evening after dinner, just as I was pleased to be indoors out of the rain, the phone rang. It was my son saying that his car would not start. He said he was at the swimming pool, so I set off on the 5 mile drive to help him.

The rain seemed to be easing and I began to anticipate a dry interval to get his car working again. But when I got to the pool, I couldn’t find him. I drove slowly around the car park a second time and he definitely wasn’t there. When I called him on the phone, I found out that he was at the pool in a different town!

I will admit to more than a moment of frustration – I was cross with myself for not checking. But I could see no other option than drive the 10 miles to the other town. Worse still, the sky looked ready for another downpour.

Fortunately it was at this point that I remembered the key principle – all my experience is created by my thinking. Remembering this turned the ten mile trip into a revelation.

To be honest, at first I was still feeling cross and frustrated because of what had happened. In other words, I was thinking about how past events should have been different – how I made a wrong assumption; how I should have checked the location; how I’d made a wasted journey, and so on. It was this thinking that was creating feelings of anger and frustration.

When I realized what was going on, somehow those thoughts loosened their grip on me. There seemed little point investing in such thinking if all it did was make me feel bad.

So for a few moments my thoughts about the past faded and I was able to notice the delightful shades of green in the trees and hedges, and the impressive layers of scudding clouds. I began to feel calmer.

But soon my thinking moved into the future – how was I going to get my son’s car started? Perhaps between us we could push-start it. Or maybe we could use battery leads and jump-start it. Or perhaps we would have to take the battery home and recharge it overnight.

While my mind ran through the options, I became switched off from my surroundings. Because I was totally preoccupied by the future, I was missing the present. At the same time I could feel anxiety building. Then, for the second time, I realized what was going on. It seemed so obvious – my thoughts about the future were creating the experience of anxiety.

The more this dawned on me, my thoughts about the future seemed to shrink. As my mind became less busy, I could feel the calmness return. And I was able to connect once more to the beauty of my surroundings.

During the rest of the journey, my feelings oscillated. When I became aware of building frustration I knew my thoughts had returned to the past. When instead I could feel anxiety welling up, I knew my thoughts had jumped into the future. But the sweet spot was in the present, when my mind wasn’t dwelling on anything in particular. It really surprised me just how good I felt in the middle of all the ‘hassle’ of the evening.

The upshot was that when I eventually arrived at the right place, my mind was calm enough to see the best option straightaway and we successfully started the car – so the story does have a happy ending.

More importantly, the story shows how we don’t have to work at feeling good or finding peace of mind – it’s our default setting! And we can only be diverted away from this when we become absorbed by the thoughts that bring unwanted feelings.

So look out for the next time you feel good for no reason!

The post Feeling Good For No Reason appeared first on Inspiration at Work.

This is important because when we feel stressed or overwhelmed with work or life, hope is the antidote. Going further, hope is also the solution to helplessness, resignation and despair.

If it was really possible to tap into an endless supply of hope, how much difference would it make to you?

In its most powerful undiluted form, hope is much more than wishful thinking. To have hope means ‘to expect with confidence’ – in other words, to count on a certain outcome. But given our inability to predict the future, how can this be?

Before we get to the answer, we need to remember where the experience of hope comes from. If you’ve been reading these posts for a while, you’ll notice a recurring theme: every experience we have comes from the thoughts we are thinking at the time. So the experience of hope must come from our thinking. So where do our thoughts come from?

Well, there’s no doubt that many of the thoughts you think are those you have thought before. Some are welcome, others less so. Either way they spring from your accumulated knowledge and experience. But what about new thoughts, thoughts you have never thought before?

Some people claim they bubble up from the unconscious mind but this is not very convincing. It implies that every new thought we have ever had and will ever have is already there.

Another attempt to explain where thoughts come from rests on the description of how the brain works by making new neural connections. But while this explains the biological changes that take place, it does not account for the origin of the content of thought.

In contrast, many spiritual traditions describe some kind of universal source of thought. They use different words – such as collective mind, universal intelligence, life energy, God – all of which attempt to point to the ever-present but formless source of thought.

Such a source is infinite and therefore gives us the potential for unlimited new thoughts. This is where we come back to hope. When you are not stuck on old thinking, new thought will always flow into your mind. You can be sure of this – you can count on this outcome.

Can you remember a time when you have had just the idea you needed ‘out of the blue’? It happened when you were not busy thinking about the problem but rather when you were thinking about nothing in particular, hence ‘out of the blue’.

So whatever problem or challenge you face, there is always the assurance that you can have fresh thoughts about it at any time. And these fresh thoughts are how solutions will unfold to you. This means that the potential solution is only a thought away. This is how you can be full of hope – hope-full. You are not on your own – you have an unlimited source of new thought to draw on!

All you need to remember is that new thought will automatically flow into your mind when you are not busy with the thoughts that are already there. A quieter mind is all it takes.

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