Values, Beliefs & Mindsets

– #9 What Fears Drive Me?

• Fear is a fickle companion.
• Some fears can drive us on whilst others hold us back.
• Feelings as a whole are an expression of our psychological reality so can resist logical realities.
• The first step is acknowledging the place fear plays in our lives.
• So, ask yourself:
• What fears drive me on?
• And equally, what fears are holding me back?

– #130 What Can I Do Today to Shape My Legacy?

• This is an edgy question for me and precisely because of that I am leaning into it.
• There can be a tendency to make our worlds too small, too tactical and big questions offer perspective.
• They can also give permission to trim down the to-do list and focus on the essential.
• And what could be more essential than the lasting impact, or ‘ripples’, our lives create?
• In a sense, we are living the legacy of our past actions every day.

– #136 What Have I Settled For?

• Our life choices say a lot about our innermost longings, expectations and needs.
• They speak to what we think of ourselves, and what we think we deserve in life (or will settle for).
• They are an indicator of our priorities and values.
• So, what have you settled for?
• And what does it say about you?

– #141 What Story Have I Told Too Many Times?

• Stories are a central part of the human experience.
• Indeed, our identity is an evolving story of who we tell ourselves we are.
• Some of these stories free us to be superstars, others imprison us into a smaller version of ourselves.
• These may be the stories we need to stop telling if we are to be free of our past selves and flourish into who we are now.
• So, what story may you have told too many times?
• What story might you tell instead?

– #175 What is Beyond My Control?

• Do you ever find yourself worrying about things beyond your control?
• You are not alone. And yet, this means placing our happiness at the mercy of fate.
• The first step in taking back our power is acknowledging our inherent powerlessness.

– #177 How Badly Have I Failed?

• We have all failed in some way but only the truly ambitious rack up big failures.
• So, how ambitious have you been?

– #179 What Are My Values?

• The idea of values is a widely abused term, particularly amongst corporates and brands.
• The reason for this is that values go deep.
• They are the basic (mostly unwritten) rules that allow us to process the world and live our lives.
• They are the rules for which some people are willing to die or dedicate their lives to furthering.
• What about you? What do you hold dearest?

– #199 What Can My Stress Teach Me?

• Thinking back over the most stressful situations in my life and what triggers my stress in general, I have a question:
• What can I learn from it?

– #201 Who Is the Master and Who Is the Student?

• Zen masters often bamboozle new students by saying that they have nothing to teach.
• By contrast, in Western cultures, knowledge has long been the mark of mastery.
• How does the concept of ‘having nothing to teach’ challenge your understanding of mastery and the acquisition of knowledge?

– #202 How Am I Being Defensive?

• There can be a tendency to identify ourselves with what we do or who we are.
• Any criticism can therefore feel personal.
• What if we didn’t?
• How might we respond?

– #206 How Am I Being Impatient?

• Impatience is a patient teacher.
• Regardless of whether we listen, it keeps showing us where our psychology is still tripping up us.

– #213 What Really Interests Me?

• Imagine a life unconstrained by the need to earn a wage—

  how would you choose to spend your time?

• This is effectively what happens when people retire so imagining we have just retired can be a helpful exercise.
• While some dream of lounging on sun-soaked beaches or enjoying leisurely days on the golf course, that’s not the only path.
• What about you? What drives you? What fascinates you?
• What might you do today to bring more of your passions into your life?

– #237 How Am I Deluding Myself?

• Being human inherently involves self-delusion.
• From the moment we open our eyes, we interpret the world in ways that may not mirror some objective reality.
• For instance, do colours truly exist outside of our perception?
• Our brain processes such an overwhelming amount of sensory information that it has to be selective about what it presents to us.
• And this is just regarding the tangible, objective world.
• What about our internal, psychological realm?
• How might we be deluding ourselves there?

– #255 Why Don’t Good Things Last in My Life?

• We don’t control what happens to us, but we do control how we respond.
• That is the only thing that is within our power.
• In short, we get to write the story.
• We can decide to classify everything as “Good” and “Bad” and put our fate in the hands of fortune or we can embrace life no matter what it throws at us.
• Which do you choose?

– #257 Who Do I Feel I Need to Be?

• Ever find yourself in a new situation where nobody knew you?
• Did you feel you could be a little freer and behave differently?
• Be someone different in many ways?
• If you have, you already know that your normal persona is just that – a persona.
• A role or set of roles you play.
• The question really is:
• Who would you be if were free of your own and other people’s expectations?

– #294 What is My Relationship with Feedback?

• Reality, as David Whyte the poet says, is the frontier between our own stories and other people’s stories. Feedback lives on that frontier!
• Its purpose is to puncture our own stories and bring us precious insights from the outside world.
• The key is how we respond:
• If you find yourself classifying the feedback as positive or negative, ask yourself how is this helpful?
• If you find yourself resisting the feedback – being defensive or feeling this is unfair – ask yourself how is this helpful?
• Just be grateful and then mine the feedback for whatever insights it might offer!