I recently attended a one-day business workshop and I was surprised at what I took away that not only applied to business but to every-day life. Two of the key messages highlighted during the day were the importance of ‘continuous education’ and ‘our personal environment’.

As the rate of change continues to accelerate in the world today and if we want to keep up with the speed of life as we know it, it has become crucial that we stay educated. Let me clarify here, I don’t just mean traditional school or university education, or even diligently watching the news or current affairs, I mean life skills and dare I say personal development and enhancing our Emotional Intelligence (EI). I read the definition of El as “the capacity to be aware of, control, and express one’s emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically”. I understand this to simply mean the ability to choose our attitudes and reactions under any given set of circumstances and therefore determining and shaping the most favourable outcome.

Einstein is famous for saying “you cannot solve problems with the same thinking that created them”. So, if we take Einstein’s theory, perhaps sometimes we need to adopt a different thinking if we want to achieve a different outcome.

I was brought up to believe we can be whatever we want in life and achieve whatever we put our efforts into. So, what makes the successful person different from the unsuccessful person? I believe the successful person is just prepared to do what the unsuccessful person is not. And whilst I accept that the definition of ‘success’ is a very personal one and no doubt different in various areas of our lives, I think it can be summarised to this – deciding on an outcome (setting a goal) and achieving it! The objection “but I’m SO busy” pops into my head, if we are truthful, people will ultimately always make time for who and what they want to.

And so, resilience and adaptability to change, are quickly becoming mandatory characteristics to survive in today’s ever-changing world. Our ‘internal dialogue’ or ‘self-talk’ will always influence what we believe we can achieve and become, as will our current environment and the people we associate with. What we feed our minds is just as important as what we feed our bodies. This mental nutrition will determine our results in the end, regardless of challenges or obstacles that arise.

So where does this leave us today? Well that depends a lot on how clear our WHY is, for doing what we do, AND the direction we are heading. We can drive as fast as we like heading North and concentrate as hard on the road as we like, but this won’t help us if our destination is South. Or perhaps put this way, ‘rowing harder doesn’t help if our boat is facing the wrong direction’.

Things will happen in life, this will never change. If you had have told me my life would be the way it is today, 13 months ago, I would never have believed you, but here I am. So, what are our options? I have been listening to the topic of ‘living in the now’ or ‘living in the moment’ recently and it has been a concept that has varied from completely holding my interest to totally frustrating and almost annoying me. This week I have decided to put a personal understanding to it once and for all. For me, living in the now means driving ‘deliberately’ and facing forward.

We can safely glance in the rear vision mirror (the past), as often as we like but, if we analyse it for prolonged periods of time we are guaranteed to crash. If we take the view of where we have come from and make it the purpose for where we want to go, being deliberate about creating our personal environment and being open to learning and growing, we can not only achieve our definition of success but perhaps still be somewhat emotionally and mentally strong and intact.

And who knows who we will be able to give a lift to along the way. Much Love Dalya xx💙