There are days when we just feel energy-less – not necessarily dejected, disillusioned or depressed, just plain flat, energy-less and disinterested. And even though I’ve been teaching my many personal development clients how they should start the day by switching on their minds – and I do the same myself – sometimes, within no time at all, one ends up feeling, well, ‘I wish I was somewhere else!’ or ‘I just don’t feel like doing this!’ I’m not talking about things that go wrong with our day, I’m simply referring to what one client described like this: ‘I get into my office, full of the joys of spring, I sit down at my desk, open up my PC and, suddenly, I’m in this kind of daze.’
What is it that takes the wind out of our sails so effortlessly? How come we can be so fired up for the day ahead and then suddenly so flat? Actually, the answer is all too simple – flat is your default state of mind. Yeah, believe it or not, research explains that only the very rare person is tuned in sufficiently to actually be adequately focused and attentive to get through the normal day effectively. As if that weren’t enough, research also confirms that, left to its own devices, our minds slip towards negativity. It’s how we’re hard-wired – and all the personal development or self improvement in the world won’t personal development or self improvement isn’t going to change the hardware.
But what personal development will change is the programs that we run. Again, if we do nothing, our subconscious mind is content to watch reruns – to keep running the same old dysfunctional programs that make our daily lives mundane, uninteresting, repetitive and uninspiring. You need to get control of the remote control! Personal development will teach you how to switch channels and enable you stop watching the same old nonsense. It will teach you how to tune in to reality TV – the real reality of the here and now.
Sadly, this feeling of mindless-couldn’t-give-a-damn simply invades our minds by default. And that will forever, for the rest of our days, be our default way of thinking unless you cultivate a mindful, focused, tuned in state of mind – and not only have you got to do this each and every day, you’ve got to find some mechanism to make sure that you can call on that state of mindfulness when you find that you’re slipping down the inevitable slippery slope towards mindlessness – because, as sure as night follows day, you’ll start slipping and sliding the moment you take your eye of the ball.
OK, I may be mixing my metaphors, between computers, televison and slippery slopes – but you get the picture? Our mind is always waiting to mug us – we’ve got to be on the alert as much as is humanly possible.
