Real living and real productivity as a human being is about having inner peace or real peace of mind. The current label for this is ‘mindfulness‘. Plato, a Classical Greek philosopher, once said that the beginning of wisdom is in the definition of terms, so how do you define inner peace?
The definition that I have used for many years is “inner peace is having Serenity Balance and a Harmony in our lives achieved through the appropriate control of events”.
Real peace of mind comes through balance and control, and using our most precious resources, which are our energy, attention and time.
Time management is an oxymoron, you cannot manage time you can only manage yourself. Can you put and extra hour in the day? Can you make a minute shorter longer? No!
Everything in life is an event
Sometimes on training courses I ask a delegate ‘what time is it?’ Easy question, but then I say ‘let me ask you a different question but I use the same words, time what is it?’ Big question! (Unless you’ve seen the recent movie, Interstellar). Several hundred years ago, Sir Isaac Newton said ‘that time was absolute; that it occurs whether the universe is here or not’. On the other hand, Einstein stated that “nothing is absolute, everything is relative” He furthered this by suggesting that “time is just the occurrence of events in sequence one after the other’ – a rather fancy way of saying if nothing ever happened we would have no sense of time.
Everything in life is an event; getting out of bed this morning was an event, getting to work was an event, picking up the phone was an event. Big event? Big problem. Time is just the occurrence of all these events in sequence one after the other. Have you ever heard anybody say ‘I’ve lost control of my life’? Or maybe you’ve said this at some point during your life?
The question is, what are we really saying when we talk about ‘losing control of our lives’? We say we’ve lost control of the events that make up our lives. As human beings, we are reactive. We do what everybody else thinks we should do, and when this feels out of our own control, it doesn’t feel very nice.
What’s your next event?
What’s the next event you’ll get involved with? Ask yourself, is my next event an email? Is my next event a phone call? Or is it a face-to-face meeting? Whatever the event may be, we need to continue asking ourselves the Key self audit question before we do anything, ‘what is the best use of my time’? Then stop and listen internally for the answer. Listen to your conscience, and then act.
So, if you feel that you’re not experiencing a sense of serenity, balance and harmony within your life right now, and you’d like to get into the driver’s seat (moving from reactive mode to proactive mode), then feel free to give us a call, we can help!
Content credit: Jim Hetherton