What is success? This is an interesting question because everyone has a very different notion about what constitutes success. For some it is financial, for some it’s lifestyle, and for others it’s reaching a certain position in a company or in society. However for most of us, it’s a combination of all these in varying amounts, perhaps with a dash of something more esoteric added to the mixture. And on some days, I know, I feel successful if I’ve just made it through the day without any major disasters! But, this blog is not really focused on the science or yoga of success, it’s focus is on what gets in the way of success.
1) Stop Multi-Tasking
As all of us in the developed world know, we are constantly bombarded by information, which creates a situation where most of us are multi-tasking. But, multi-tasking is not something that most of us actually do – we just switch, quickly between all the tasks, not doing any of them very well! Research by Dr Poldrack at Stanford noted that when we multi-task, the new information that we are learning goes to the wrong part of the brain – instead of going to the hippocampus where it is categorized in more than one way (therefore, making it easier to retrieve), it goes to the striatum, an area designed to store new skills/procedures, not facts and ideas. This tells us that multi-tasking does not help us with success. Turn off your smart phone, the radio and the TV when you’re working!
2) Set Limits
Related to this issue of multi-tasking, is the importance of setting limits on your time and what you will and won’t do at particular times of the day. One of the best rules I have found is to ban my smart phone from my bedroom. This prevents information-overload from being the way that I start and end my day and creates a tech-free space in my house, away from the constant demand for my attention. Emails and texts and IMs get in the way of productivity – whether it’s folding the laundry, paying the bills or working. Knowing you have an email or text that is unread can apparently reduce your IQ by 10 points! Setting limits about when you respond to these can help you a) focus your attention on the task in hand and b) give yourself a reward for finishing off the work you had set your mind to complete. For example, checking your messages between 10-1030 am & 4.30-5pm every day – not starting the day with it, and giving yourself a clear and defined time to do it.
3) Look to the Future, Not Just the Past
Sometimes one of the most difficult aspects related to success is getting started. We have the idea. We know we need to do something. We have an idea about where we want to be, but we don’t really know what that looks like. Alex Kaiser, from the Vienna University of Economics and Business – the largest Business School in Europe – gave a talk last week at Weatherhead School of Management, at CWRU, here in Cleveland. He talked about his research, and in particular how passion and engagement, specifically sustainable visions – are enacted by people in business. People intuitively look to the past to consider what they did and didn’t do and how successful they were, however, they do not naturally look to what he terms the “envisioned future,” which is your imagined future life and where you want to be. So do this: think about where you want to be in the future – what will your life look like in 10 years? Where will you be living? What will you be doing?
Part of this process of looking to the future involves considering self-transcending knowledge: knowledge that is not yet embodied. An example of this is Michelangelo who saw David in the marble, where the rest of us, would have just seen a block of marble. The word used in the wonderful book “The Agony and the Ecstasy” by Irving Stone, which I read last spring, is terribilita which translates into the terrifying awesomeness of the creative power, or frightening power – which Michelangelo’s contemporaries applied to him! Can you see something before it becomes reality? Are you willing to try?
4) Jump Before You’re Ready: Don’t Get Stuck in a Holding Pattern!
Life is a journey. We can get stuck in the place where we think: I’ll do this when… I’ll be happy when… I’ll try that when… Stop over-thinking and just have a go! Richard Branson, the incredibly successful entrepreneur behind the Virgin Group – which includes an airline, a phone company, music and space travel (and who was a high school drop-out) says that successful people start before they are ready. So, give it a go!
Stop multi-tasking, set limits, look to the future: cultivate your terribilita and jump!
“Knowledge creation is a continuous, self-transcending process through which one transcends the boundary of the old self into a new self by acquiring a new context, a new view of the world, and new knowledge. In short, it is a journey from being to becoming,” Nonaka, 2000.
Copyright Tamsin Astor, PhD. YogaBrained 2015.