How about a few thoughts on the Life element of THPL. Life, Learning and Fitness, seems that as we pursue high performance in Learning and Fitness that we help to drive high performance in Life. And for the most part I think this is true but there are elements of Life that are much more about how we think rather than what we do. So, what are we to do to make sure that we keep our “Life” element performing well? Three thoughts.
1. It has been said that if you are in a group and you all write down your problems on a piece of paper and put them on a table and then are asked to pick one to own that you would just about always take your own “problems” back. You realize when looking at what the others wrote down that your problems are yours and they are easy to solve. So solve them and move on, right? It’s all about perspective
2. On the journey to high performance, we can often confuse the feelings of being satisfied and being happy (or content). Those who live the “best” Life see no real correlation between the two. Not being satisfied just means you know you that you can do more, be more, and Live more. And as long as you know you have put in the right commitment, effort and follow through on the way to the next level you should always be happy / content. One drives us forward the other keeps us sane
3. We tell each other to keep Life in perspective. That we should appreciate what we have, that others have less. etc. etc. So, why is it so hard to live to a truism like this? You know it, you believe it, and you see the benefit of it. Then why is it so hard to do it? I think it comes down to the fact that the measures or progress in this area are not that clear. We, members of the THPL community, do better when the measures and the related outcomes are easy to understand and keep track of. But since we cannot measure everything we need to also develop our own way of valuing those categories where intuition and qualitative measures are the soft side of analytics. We just need to hone this side of our mindset just like we do with numbers, so we feel more comfortable with it. Give it a try – once a day – take a step back – and ask is this situation really all that bad? I wonder……
And were it not for time, format and patience this blog could go on and one. Why? Because we all know that many of the obstacles to THPL are of our own making. We either hide from the obstacles or ignore them or make excuses. There really are no problems on the way to THPL. Maybe a few setbacks, a few learnings but no problems. So, practice attitude above all else. It will make the efforts effective and the “problems”, well, something less than they were before.
Loving life knowing that I can solve my problems
Ciao
joe