How will you react or respond in those moments of a critical decision? Will you have the awareness and consciousness to make a wise choice that serves your long term goals and happiness? Will you jump to a conclusion or get caught up in an emotional reaction that could derail something you worked hard to achieve?
We don’t always get to see those critical moments of decision coming. We can’t prepare for them once they arrive. If we are to make wise decisions in those moments we will have to prepare for them before they arrive.
To give yourself the best preparation for those moments of milliseconds, develop your awareness so you make better choices. Awareness will allow you to maintain your perspective of important strategic goals in moments where you would otherwise react.
Being able to maintain perspective in potentially life changing moments is what can make the difference between success and failure, or between happiness and regret.
I’ll use an example about basketball to make my point. It’s a bit of a long story but I think it illustrates how you can destroy a lot of hard work in a matter of milliseconds.
In game 4 of the NBA basketball playoff series between the Phoenix Suns and the San Antonio Spurs there was an incident that changed the course of the Suns playoff chances.
The Phoenix Suns had the win in hand and only 18 seconds left when Robert Horry of the Spurs flagrantly fouled Steve Nash of the Suns. It was a senseless hockey check of Nash into the scorer’s table. It cost Robert Horry a two game suspension.
But in the spark of a moment, what the Phoenix Suns players did to themselves with their emotional reaction was far worse.
Seeing their floor leader get hip checked, Boris Diaw and Amare Stoudemire got up from the bench and headed off to engage the enemy. Diaw and Stoudemire are two of the Phoenix Suns top players.
They caught hold of themselves shy of any confrontation and returned to the bench area but damage was already done. By leaving the vicinity of the bench during a court incident they had violated a well known NBA rule to prevent brawling. Both Boris Diaw and Amare Stoudemire were suspended for critical Game 5 of the best of 7 series.
Without the play of Diaw and Stoudemire the Suns were crippled in game 5. They lost and went down 3 games to 2 in the series. The next game was in San Antonio where the Spurs had the home court advantage that helped them win the deciding game and close out the series.
The San Antonio Spurs are headed off to play for the NBA championship. The Phoenix Suns will sit in front of their televisions and watch other people live out what they dreamed and worked hard for an opportunity to do.
What’s the difference between playing for the NBA championship and going home early? Milliseconds.
What does NBA playoffs and championship basketball have to do with you and your life? Milliseconds.
You and everyone else you know makes decisions in milliseconds. Sometimes they are snap decisions. Often they are emotional reactions where the bigger consequences are not considered. The direction of your life changes depending on what you do, and what you refrain from doing in those milliseconds.
In the period of milliseconds two players lost their perspective and ran on the court to fight for their friend. Did Steve Nash need their intervention? No. The hip check was over and the opponent was walking away. Referees were on the scene to put things in order. Trainers were going over to check on Steve Nash. Stoudemire and Diaw’s involvement wasn’t going to improve anything about the situation. But they lost the perspective in the heat of the moment to consider any of that.
I understand helping and protecting team mates and friends. But what I wouldn’t want to do is jump in unnecessarily, get suspended, and cost my team mates an opportunity to win an NBA championship. That’s not helping my team mates. I’m not sitting in judgment condemning what they did from my vantage point days later. I’m just using the incident to make a point about the difference between choices and reactions in your life.
By losing their perspective they lost the ability to make a better choice. That loss off choice for a split second added to season ending consequences.
It’s easy to see where milliseconds matter to NBA players, but where do milliseconds make a difference in your life?
What happens in the moments leading up to firing a comment at your boss or an employee that sets the relationship off balance? It might send you looking for another job?
What happens in the milliseconds that lead up to an angry outburst? What if you could shift to a different point of view and make a different choice in that instant?
What happens in a moment of emotional reaction like jealousy when you say something you regret? Perhaps you say something that you can’t take back.
What happens when you are considering asking someone out, but then tell your self, “No they probably wouldn’t be interested in me?” In those milliseconds the mind creates a feeling of insecurity, and then that feeling determines your actions, and inactions? You talk your self out of taking action for what you want.
What happens during those holidays with family where in milliseconds a family gathering can turn into an emotional blow out?
In milliseconds reactions happen that cause relationships to break up. In flashes family members decide not to speak to each other and are estranged for years. In milliseconds people quit their jobs.
Paying attention to milliseconds may not seem like a big deal until you see the chain reaction of consequences for years afterwards. When you see the link between milliseconds and consequences, the milliseconds become as important as years of your life. You discover that you want control over what happens in those milliseconds.
The more self awareness you have heading into those unforeseen moments the less chance emotional reactions have to overpower you. When you learn to manage and master the choices made in milliseconds, everything else about your life becomes much easier.
For an excellent read on understanding decisions and reactions made in milliseconds I suggest reading the best selling book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. Malcolm Gladwell does an amazing job of detailing the process of choices made in an instant. He points out that with practice you can change how you react and make a better choices.
For exercises in self awareness so that you can gain control over those milliseconds I suggest the Self Mastery Audio program. The first few sessions are free for you to sample. They will guide you to focus your attention on those critical moments and prepare you to choose more wisely.
All of life happens in the smallest of moments. The opportunity to change the direction of your life lies in the smallest slices of time.
While I usually write for the reader on topics of self awareness and enhancing happiness this post is a bit different. This post is a personal confession and contains some logistical information to my readers. I’ll get back to important matters like happiness in coming articles.
I confess that I’m new to this blogging thing. It’s very much an on line experiment I don’t know if I’m doing it well and there is a lot that I don’t understand. But I do know that action is the best way to learn.
The first big confession I want to make is to the registered subscribers that sign up on this blog.
If anybody knows what I’m supposed to do with the registered subscriber thing or could help me understand what it is all about, please let me know.
I don’t know what a registered subscriber is and I don’t know what happens when you sign up. The link for this is in the upper right hand corner of the blog page. I don’t know why people do this. One guess is that these posts are emailed to them so that they don’t have to go to my site. But I don’t know if this is true.
I know blogs have feeds that allow you to do many cool things. I don’t know what these cool things are but I hope to educate myself out of this ignorance over time.
If there isn’t a good reason to have this subscriber feature, perhaps someone will tell me how to disable it. For now I just figure that the people signing up know why and that it is worthwhile for them.
I found out I could change subscriber access settings that would allow them to do things like write and post articles. I don’t think it’s a good idea to just let anybody post whatever they want so I disabled this feature. If there is someone that would like to guest author an article, I’m happy to post it. It must of course be relevant to improving the emotional quality of people’s lives.
My motivation to write
There are a number of reasons that I write articles and post them here to the site.
One of the reasons is that writing is a creative outlet. When I coach individual clients, teach seminars, or take people on spiritual retreats I always do something different. If you show up to two classes, even if they are advertised the same, you will find that I present different material. This is true even for things that look straight forward like Four Agreements classes.
I would be bored teaching the same canned material. I prefer to do what inspires me for each event. In my old life as an engineer I didn’t know I had such creativity. However something happens when you unmask your authentic self. You find a joy in creating and expressing your self that wasn’t there before. Life just wants to burst out in so many different ways. Writing in this blog is a way to let out some of my ideas about happiness, the mind, and insights on changing the emotional quality of life.
These articles are also a way to promote the collection of exercises that make up my Self Mastery course. These exercises are downloadable mp3 audio that you can listen to on your computer or in an mp3 player like an iPod. They are an ordered progression of steps for getting a hold of your attention, becoming the witness observer, and dissolving the stories and emotional drama. I figure that the more I write helpful material, the more people will want to explore further and see just how far this journey can go.
This whole process of promoting my online self help program has led to this blog experiment. It’s also led to finding out that I don’t know what I am doing. It’s a fascinating process of discovery through trial and error. It’s also just like the process of finding happiness and learning in life. In all of these cases thank God someone has run down the path ahead of us and can help guide us on our way.
One of the things that I have attempted in promotion of this website is to submit my articles to Blog Carnivals. Blog Carnivals are where bloggers list a number of articles from various blogs on the same topic. This allows a reader who is interested in a certain topic to find a lot of articles on that topic in one place.
If you are interested in reading what people are writing about on Happiness you can go to the Happiness Carnival and find links to multiple blogs with articles on that specific subject. Below are some of the places that I have submitted my articles and have been referenced in blog carnivals. If you are looking for more material to read, check out these blogs for their articles. You can also go to the carnival posts to find articles from other blogs.
The world is a big place. And it seems that this internet thing can be used to connect us a little bit closer instead of just isolate our selves in front of keyboards.
At the Carnival of Powerful Living you will find personal development articles.
The Think Happy Thoughts blog surprisingly enough is about Happy Thoughts.
The Carnival on Be Conscious Now focuses on Meditation, Yoga, and Spiritual Growth
The Chakracises Blog focuses on healing. The carnival posts there will lead you to articles on energy healing, emotional healing, and alternative medicine.
The Balanced Life Center Blog focuses on issues relevant to applying spiritual principles to your life.
The Urban Monk writes articles on Bliss Success, and Love. His carnivals are related to personal, emotional, and spiritual development.
Anja Merret has a carnival just for the Observations of Life.
At Widow Quest there is a carnival on Positive Thinking
At the Dragon’s Slayer Guide to Life there is a conglomeration of articles on Courage.
At Creating a Better Life there is a Carnival of articles on Personal Development
That’s enough of a personal confession and shameless promotion for now. I’ll get back to writing and posting some more focused material on developing self awareness and gaining self mastery this week. It should be up before I head off on my Spiritual Retreat to the Ancient Pyramids of Mexico at Teotihuacan.
Thanks for listening to my confession. I suggest 5 minutes of solid laughter for penance.
