Buffeted by recent local and global events? Here is a way you can respond.
I have lived through a tank battle in the 1994 civil war in Yemen.
I have lived inside the tumultuous upheaval of Tanzania entering its first multi-party elections in 1995.
I’ve been hustled off the plane in Addis Ababa at brutish speed because of the close-by assassination attempt on the life of Mubarak.
Yet this morning I saw a news clip I wish I’d never seen – desperate Afghani people trying to exit Kabul, clinging to a plane as it took off down the runway. I found myself sobbing and remembering my friends in Afghanistan.
It’s easy to feel pummelled by this onslaught from external sources. It’s like being pulled around in wild surf rolling in from multiple directions. Get me to shore fast!
So what to do? How to take care of ourselves and those around us also craving some stability, calmness, laughter?
One way or another, many of us are leaders – in our extended families, our communities, for our teams, for our organisations. Those around us look to us and are affected by our way of being. Our state is contagious!
We can train ourselves to notice and invest in the transition points in our day. These are ready-made opportunities to step back from the world even momentarily. These are potential access points where we can re-energise, re-connect with our own calm, our own joy.
Transitions between different tasks in our day are moments to:
🔹 take a short walk around the block and connect with nature
🔹 take a home-schooled child to watch birds on the balcony
🔹 direct our awareness within by investing our attention on the movement of our most intimate companion, our breath
Join me in September to notice and celebrate the transition zones in your day as places to reclaim stability, to in-spire ourselves.
GENERATE ENERGY: Master Transitions. Four sessions of 90-minutes, grounded in the neuroscience of habit-building. Register here.