If you want to be healthy, you must eat a balanced diet.
If you want to enjoy your retirement, you must save so your money will be there when you retire. Okay, scratch that one, some facts are momentary fictions!
But….
I don’t mean, nor want to, sound like your Mother, yet there is a human development fact of life I want to share. You must, not maybe should, or would be nice to, but MUST, develop a daily practice. I will explain more in a moment.
Dr. Success™ Challenge: Do you have a daily practice? A given time and/or activity that allows you to reflect and contemplate where you are, where you want to go, and who you have for support? It can look like writing in a journal each day at a specific time, reading spiritually uplifting material, walking in silence, prayer and/or meditation (or any one of a host of other activities). So here is the challenge: For one week – 7 days – pick a reflective activity and do it at the same time each day. Let me know your thoughts after you have completed the experiment DrSuccess@ServingSuccess.com
There is no getting around this growth activity. It has been recommended by sages throughout the millenniums. I will narrow my focus to one of the ways being reflective made its way into Positive Psychology. Long before the umbrella field of Positive Psychology was established, a behavioral researcher by the name of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi focused his life work on studying and understanding what allows humans to enter a state of “flow” or optimal experience. “Flow” is that place where you are enjoying something so much you lose track of the amount of time you are engaged in the activity.
One of Csikszentmihalyi findings was to get into a state of flow and creativity, you must devote time to some form of reflection.
This weekend I – and a group of about 20 – did just that. Members of the Stillpoint Center for Spiritual Development went on their annual retreat to Zion National Park. We met as a group and shared prayers about nature, what it means to be in the wilderness of life, how many have had a tough “winter” and the recognition that “spring” follows winter. (By the way, for those lucky enough to live in Las Vegas, Stillpoint has a class on Journaling coming up.)
From that retreat I came away with a renewed sense of where I am for now, and what I might want to commit to – for now. For me that looks like knowing I want to commit one hour a day to reading and researching in my field of expertise, Positive Psychology AND writing about resilience in business and in life.
Do you feel like you are in the wilderness of your life? Do you feel like you are on a journey with no compass? Start a daily practice. If you want some specific ideas drop me a note at DrSuccess@ServingSuccess.com
With appreciation for the Zion flow of life,
