For Optimum Performance — Forget About Yourself
I was having a conversation about an upcoming three-day leadership development training and during the conversation, I was reminded that the executives are human just like the rest of us. In another conversation with the owner of a company, he affirmed the importance of everyone being of equal value in the organizational culture no matter what their position.
Both of these conversations reminded me of the value of remembering not only do we all work the same way, but we also come from the same source. There is no hierarchy when it comes to our humanness. The ordinariness of our commonality takes the pressure off. The need to prove ourselves through being special or better than no longer makes sense when we are all equal. And rather than this leading to despondency and lack of motivation, it takes the pressure off so we can thrive.
It may seem paradoxical, but as we let go of the pressure to be special or better than, we perform our best. It is when we are being ourselves, when we are relaxed in our own skin, that we experience optimal performance. Why? Because we aren’t taking up mental bandwidth worrying about ourselves.
I was in another meeting this week and realized as I was sitting there I was feeling tense and pressured to say something of value and importance. I hadn’t noticed it until that point, but my body was tight, and I wasn’t sitting naturally. In this state of mind, nothing was occurring to me to share. I took a restroom break and came back and got comfortable. I relaxed. I didn’t do this as a technique, I genuinely knew that my mind would work better if I was just me and not trying to be smart. And sure enough, as soon as I relaxed, I was naturally able to join the conversation. I had questions I didn’t realize I had. I saw where I was putting dots together through assumptions and was able to clear that up. And through the clarification process was able to be additive and generative to the conversation.
All that happened was I stopped thinking about myself. I no longer existed in that moment. When I was wearing my leadership consultant hat, I had nothing. When I forgot about me, all of a sudden I had common sense and saw things they were not seeing.
Freedom of mind is the most important variable when it comes to effectiveness and performance. The more freedom of mind we have the clearer we see things and the more we are open to the creative thought that is beyond our logical mind.
What it takes to have more freedom of mind is to get us off our mind. The more I think about myself and wonder how I am doing, the less freedom of mind I have. The more I am present to what is and not thinking about me, the more freedom of mind I have. This plays out very obviously in my life.
What do you notice when you reflect on your own life? Are the moments when you experience the most inner freedom when you were not thinking about yourself, and how do you see this relating to your performance?
Even though I have got much better I still have me on my mind more than I would like. The how am I doing, how did I do, how did I sound, did I do well, how did I come across questions. They can be a litany.
The blessing of having some understanding of the nature of thought and how it works is that I recognize the litany of my self-conscious thinking is nothing to worry about. It isn’t wrong or harmful. Nor does it need to be paid attention to. And no matter how gripped I get, I know it will always eventually settle down. This allows me to be with my insecurity in a more relaxed way when it occurs. This is invaluable because when I am less reactive to it, it has less power over me. And I get the benefit of it being a signal to let me know when I am not thinking straight because I am caught up in me.
What I want you to know is, you are enough exactly as you are! You don’t need to worry about you and put pressure on yourself. This is just beating yourself up!
You being you is all that is ever needed. Your natural state is your most effective state because you have a free mind.
Do you recognize when your mind is free? It is when you feel relaxed, content, peacefully, happy. Do you recognize when your mind is not free? It is when you feel stressed, insecure, tense. Do you know what creates the difference between the two?
Thought
Do you control your thought? No.
But how you relate to your thoughts makes a huge difference. If you understand you have thoughts but they are not you, it is easier to take them more lightly. If you understand when you are gripped by negative thoughts that you have simply lost your bearings and will naturally regain them because that is how you are designed it is easier to be comfortable in the discomfort as you ride it out. If you look to the source of thought and see beyond the content of your thinking to the power you have to think, you open yourself to experiencing the formless essence of who you are, of who we all are.
The experience of greater inner freedom comes from understanding not controlling or changing thought.
The understanding points to your wholeness, your completeness, your innate value, your goodness. As the Human League wrote, You are only human and born to make mistakes, but this does not take away the essence of who you are that cannot be damaged or tarnished in any way.
Seeing just a glimpse of this, having just a taste of this, feeling a moment is enough to to take you off your mind more so you can be in your life with more freedom and enjoyment. Optimum performance flows from there.
Rohini Ross is passionate about helping people wake up to their full potential. She is a transformative coach, leadership consultant, a regular blogger for Thrive Global, and author of the short-read Marriage (The Soul-Centered Series Book 1) available on Amazon. You can get her free ebook Relationships here. Rohini has an international coaching and consulting practice based in Los Angeles helping individuals, couples, and professionals embrace all of who they are so they can experience greater levels of well-being, resiliency, and success. She is also the founder of The Soul-Centered Series: Psychology, Spirituality, and the Teachings of Sydney Banks. You can follow Rohini on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and watch her Vlogs with her husband. To learn more about her work go to her website, rohiniross.com.
Christine Heath & Judy Sedgeman – Spirituality and Resilience
When you no longer give authority to the fear-based thoughts in your consciousness, all you are left with is happiness. Through the teachings of Sydney Banks, you can see how your psychological functioning works, which makes you less compelled to follow those thoughts that do not serve you. Becoming more aware of the wholeness and integration of both your human and spiritual natures helps to ground you in the unchanging essence of who you are, and ride out the ups and downs of your emotional experience more gracefully. Accepting the normalcy of your humanness will naturally reduce your anxiety and fear and enhance your joy and happiness in each moment. By placing less pressure on yourself to feel a certain way or be hung up on self-improvement, you may find that low moods do not derail or debilitate you; instead, you will become much more attuned to your innate wellbeing and peace of mind and experience more happiness as a result.
Greater psychological freedom is the gift that keeps on giving. How grateful would you feel if you no longer had to listen to your negative, self-punishing and painful inner narrative, day in and day out? Understanding the role of thought and recognizing how it creates your feelings of insecurity and self-doubt is truly liberating! You will be better able to hear and heed your inner wisdom and become less driven by the noisy thoughts of fear and constriction. As an ongoing practice, this allows you to more fully experience your resilience and reach a greater sense of clarity about how you want to move forward in your life. As a result, you can live in a way that feels authentic and true in every area, including your career, family, home, creative expression, play, relationships and overall well-being.
Your ability to enjoy life comes from being present in the moment rather than caught up in habitual, negative thoughts that take you out of the Now. Sydney Banks’ wisdom supports you in becoming aware of how you get seduced by your limited personal thinking and thus, create a painful reality of misunderstanding, fear and restriction. When you recognize how and why this happens, you can step free of the pattern. This understanding assists you to dismiss unhelpful thoughts and not take them seriously. Unlike traditional self-help or therapy, experiencing more psychological freedom and enjoyment does not rely on techniques. There are no magic bullets on the path of well-being. All you need to do is follow an internal compass that points to the truth of who you really are—beyond transient thoughts to your unchanging, formless essence.
In our culture, success is often associated with hard work and narrowly defined as material gain. However, authentic success, as shared by Sydney Banks, includes such intangibles as happiness, well-being, love, joy, compassion, and peace of mind that are innate in each one of us, along with outward goals and achievements. It honors the whole person in all walks of life, whether you are a professional, leader, executive, solopreneur, employee, mother, teacher or student. From this knowing and experience, you can access the infinite wellspring of love that is your essence, then share your gifts with the world from a place of fulfillment and meaning, through a profound understanding of the interaction between your psychological and spiritual natures. While conventional success can deplete you, authentic success only fills you up.
Are you self-critical, hard on yourself, and constantly trying to “fix” whatever you think is wrong with you? Perhaps you have tried all kinds of different personal growth techniques and spiritual practices in the hope of solving all your problems. This cycle can be exhausting and never-ending, because there will always be something to improve about yourself, from that mindset. Sydney Banks’ teachings can help you to see how your humanness is normal and not something that needs fixing: as a spiritual person, you don’t need to change or eradicate your humanness! Seeing yourself as normal allows you to love and accept yourself exactly as you are—warts and all. Adopting this perspective naturally brings out the best in you and helps to find peace with your personality. Self-love and self-acceptance is your natural state, and any disconnection from your true nature is only temporary. What a relief!
One of the first areas people often experience profound transformation from the teachings of Sydney Banks is in their relationships, both personal and professional. While it often seems like another person’s irritation, anger, indifference, insensitivity, rudeness, etc., directly affects your experience, in reality your disturbance is a product of your own individual thinking. By making someone else responsible for how you feel, that person automatically becomes the cause of your suffering. Once you understand that you always have a place of well-being inside, independent of another’s behavior, it is easier to maintain equanimity through their changing moods and behaviors. Romantically, you may experience deeper love and intimacy with your partner, but the teachings benefit all relationships. This awareness supports more authentic connection and expression, while facilitating greater understanding, improved communication, reduced reactivity, more acceptance of self and others, and improved ability to work out differences and find common ground. Best of all, just one person shifting in a relationship is enough to transform it.
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