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Dec
An exercise in vision
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Let’s begin with an exercise:
Read through these instructions and then take 5 to 10 minutes on this activity.
Get yourself comfortable, in a chair, or lying down or for some, sitting in the lotus position or any position that is comfortable for you.
Take several slow, deep breaths. Concentrate at first on your breathing, inhale for 4, hold the air in your lungs for 5 and then exhale for 6 or 7, keep repeating this. Then close your eyes and whilst continuing to take deep, slow breaths, focus on your heart and slowing the beat along with your breathing. Continue this until you feel relaxed and at ease. You’ll be able to continue hearing everything that is going on around you and can safely ignore those distractions, knowing that if anything needs your attention, it will make itself known. So now, as you focus on your slowing heart beat and deep, slow breaths, you feel at ease and relaxed.
as you become gently relaxed, you’ll find that you’re mind can develop clear pictures, so place yourself on your favourite golf course on your first tee, you know this tee well, you know the fairway, you can see the lie of the land, the trees, the bunkers, the green the pin. Notice how you can change the weather to be anything you like, perhaps a beautiful sunny day, one of those days when it’s so great to be alive and out on the course, playing your favourite sport. with your best friends with you and a feeling of complete ease and tranquility. Oh, it’s good to be alive. and now as you prepare for that first drive, you can feel the wieght of your chosen club. You know exactly where you want to put this ball, you align your self with your target and allow your beautiful swing to make perfect contact with the ball and watch the flight exactly how you planned it, soaring through the air perfectly on target. The ball drops to the fairway, exactly where you want it, ideally placed for the second shot up to the green for a birdie 3. You collect your tee from the ground, and turn to look at your friends as they continue to stare in admiration of your drive. They break from their reverie to offer their words of admiration, ‘great drive’, ‘nicely done’, whoa, fantastic. You accept their compliments with grace, smiling inwardly and treasuring the feeling.
Take this feeling, and stroll around the whole course. What do you see each time you take that perfect swing, and ht that perfect shot. What do you feel? Where is that feeling, physically within your body? Is it large or small, moving or static? What word do you use to describe that feeling? What do you hear when you make that shot? The swish of the club, the ‘thwack’ of the club on the ball? The admiring comments and expressions from your buddies, your own inward or outward yell of triumph? What do you taste or smell? Some people have the ‘sweet smell of success’ or the ‘taste of victory’ what is it for you?
At first, use this technique to help you develop your visioning of your goals, take it gradually, just practice using your ‘mind’s eye’. We will use this technique more and more in the programme.
So, how do you feel? If you’ve just completed the exercise above, you’ll have a lingering positive feeling. Whatever you want to call that feeling is OK, this is entirely for you. And if you teach anyone else to do this, and I wholly and entirely and completely support you in doing so – for anybody to achieve anything – it doesn’t have to be golf – and when you do teach someone else, let them call their feeling whatever they want to. This word, as you’ll discover, becomes a personal trigger.
Now, why would you want to do this?
Well, why do you want to do anything?
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<p>deep philosophical stuff huh? Not really. As human beings we share more similarities than differences. One thing I know for sure, is that you will only do something if it has value for you. Before you start with the objections, let me explain, and then I’ll come back to your objections.</p>
<p>You play golf. If you don’t play golf, you have another basic reason for being here, but for the moment, Golfers… you play golf! You play golf because in playing you gain something of value to you. Your ‘reason’ for playing may include, enjoyment, fun, exercise, peace, challenge, winning, battle, frustration, proof, friends, business, networking, gambling, status and many others. Some of you may even have ‘forgotten” why you play, but do so anyway. One friend of mine tells me ‘because I can!’ which covers a nice multitude of possibilities, can physically, financially, socially etc.</p>
<p>Whatever your reason, you find value in it</p>
There are times when you choose between playing golf and doing something else. The one that you choose provides more value, for you. For example, your buddies ask you to join them on Saturday for a game, you call to your spouse who reminds you of a family visit on Saturday. You choose… golf with buddies vs family visit? Either you value golf with your buddies over the family visit or vice versa. Not forgetting of course that there are many many subtleties in the choice. The obvious is ‘I’d prefer to play golf because I really can’t stand this part of the family and it would be a great excuse to be out of the way, but then if I do that my better half will be upset or even angry that I appear ti be putting my golf and my buddies over the family and my relationship and my marriage, so in order to keep the peace and earn some spare points, I’ll choose not to play golf, perhaps even sacrifice my game…’
however you end up deciding, you will always choose the option that, on balance, provides the greatest value for you. As in golf, marriage is a long game and a short game.
So, there’s your first objection dealt with. Then there are the extremes, so let’s take a very extreme example. You are being held at gunpoint and offered ‘your money or your life?’ You choose – again there’s the complication of ‘well what if I give him (it usually is a him) my wallet and he shoots me anyway, so I may as well take the risk, or should I’ conversation inside your head. But the chances are pretty high that you will choose to keep your life in exchange for your wallet. You place a greater value on your life than you do on your wallet. It is, by the way, still a choice that you made – it may not feel like a choice, but it is nonetheless, a choice.
Ah but you don’t understand how complicated…
Oh indeed I do, I am after all, a human being just like you, and face similar dilemmas. But here’s the thing, I’m learning what is really important for me. And I’m learning to keep some track of the hierarchy of what’s important to me. I call it the hierarchy of values – and once you know what your is, it makes decision-making sooo much easier. Dilemmas become less, choices become more straightforward. How do you know if your values are the ‘right’ ones? That’s for you to establish within your whole being, your beliefs and your culture and what is considered acceptable within your society. It’s quite likely that you would frown upon eating a fellow human being even if the choice was to starve – easy to say until you are the one who’s starving. In some places on this earth they wouldn’t consider this to be a dilemma at all. You may not agree with someone else’s values, but that does not make them wrong and you right.
I digress enough. For more debate on this topic, please join our programmes, I love to debate this (ie I get value from it!) Suffice to say at the moment, that values (and beliefs) are the drivers of our motivation to achieve a goal. They are the guidance system by which we live our entire lives.