3 things on my minds

As I sit down to think into words this week, I’m reminding myself that this is not for you :-). It can be tempting to write for you, my audience. But this practice is about transparency, about making some of my musings available to others who identify with my efforts to live with integrity. So as much as I love that you’re on this journey with me, please remember that this conversation is primary with myself.

I have three things on my mind as I sit at the start of another week.

1. Being of service is costly.

2. A disturbance in my soul is still my best invitation to do inner work.

3. My ‘experimentation’ with being present is more transformational than I had imagined.

Being of service is costly

In my morning practice and routine, I remind myself of my commitments in this season of uncertainty. One of the six is to be of service: Every morning I ask myself, ‘What is mine to do today? For whom and what?’ It’s romantic until it’s not. It’s attractive until it costs.

I’ve got two commitments over the next two weeks that are both costing me significantly: one is costing me financially (the order of $1000s), and the other is emotionally taxing. But, I’m at peace (see Being Present below). At least for now …

Don’t ignore an unsettled inner world

One of the most formative things I’ve done to work on my integrity (started on my birthday in 2020) was a discipline I set out to do for a year (which I ended up concluding in July 2021 after about nine months). Most nights, I would take my journal and note the circumstances around which I had felt an inner disturbance during the day - that feeling when something was not quite right. (Before this practice, I would inevitably just ignore it and move on from it.) The commitment had sprung from a sense I was plateauing; I wanted to keep going deeper into figuring out how to live well. At the start of the journal, I didn’t try to analyse, I just noted. How did I feel? What happened? Over time patterns began to emerge and I started asking ‘Why? What’s actually going on for me?’ ‘What would have made me feel differently?’ etc

Anyway, the point here is not to revisit that, other than to say I taught myself during that period to be alert to the inner feeling of a loss of equilibrium; the sense of inner peace being disrupted, those feelings of resentment or even anger that were often disproportionate to the event. When had I felt agitated, impatient or anxious?

That radar keeps serving me well, and I know when I ignore it, it is a signal of living outside the state of integrity I am pushing toward. Remain alert Col, remain alert. When my inner radar sweeps past that feeling and it beeps … I know there is work to be done.

Being Present

I wrote last week about a deeper appreciation of what it means to live in the present. Since the journaling discipline described immediately above, I can’t recall a single mindset having made such a difference to my sense of peace and wellbeing. And I can distil it to a single mental discipline. ‘Don’t live in the future by harbouring hope or fear about possibilities that are not real, only hypothetical projections.’

For example, I mention above a couple of examples of costly service. My normal inclination is to worry about the implications, whether financial, emotional, reputational or otherwise. I could spend hours stewing over things and frame it as ‘planning’ or some other noble activity. But I’m recognising so much mental and emotional energy being drained by thinking and feeling that robs me from being fully present in the now. And now is (mostly) freaking awesome. So rather than worrying or hoping about tomorrow, I’m trying focus on what is mine to do today. All I’ve actually got is a series of ‘nows’.

It doesn’t mean I don’t plan or prepare for what is coming. It does mean I’m learning to let go of the outcomes. It does mean I will do everything I can so I won’t look back with regret, but allowing my thinking and feeling to be consumed with outcomes that are ultimately outside my control is a waste of energy. My reputation and other things I might worry about will take care of themselves.

The training wheels are still getting a work out … but I’d love for this experience of inner peace amidst some turmoil and uncertainty to become more of my default.