‘Be true to yourself. Be true to those you lead.’ John Wooden Loyalty to me crosses all sections of your life, however it is grounded in a loyalty to yourself. Without being loyal to who you are you can not be real and authentic to your friends, family and those you lead in work. I have been on a rollercoaster ride since 1st December last year. I finished work with my previous employer on November 30th after taking voluntary severance and I have been looking for a new job ever since. Let me tell you, this is not an easy path to walk. The amount and the severity of the peaks and troughs of emotions I have been going through are so opposed that I find within short periods of time going from being elated, feeling things are going my way to feeling so down and depressed that I wish I could curl up in a ball and not deal with anything anymore. However I still have responsibilities to my wife and kids, to the basketball team I coach and to my other friends and family who are going through tough times of their own. I don’t think I would have survived the last couple of months without the loyalty of my wife, because the loyalty to myself has wavered, however I have finally made a conscious decision to go back to basics and begin to be loyal to myself once again. By being disloyal to myself I found that I was not exercising, I was not writing and I was not eating very well. All these things I was not doing have massive benefits for self esteem, energy and my own self worth. My spiritual life suffered also, but again I have recommitted myself to getting these things right, so I can get the rest of my life sorted. In this article I will discuss how being loyal to yourself will give you the foundation to move forward and be successful. I want to take the time to explore being loyal to yourself before moving on and looking at loyalty to others. This will therefore be a two part article which I will cover over the next couple of weeks. Ok, let’s get stuck in then…. Loyalty to yourself For me being loyal to yourself comes in three parts. Being loyal to your mind, to your body and to your soul. All three are interconnected and when one suffers so do the others. The late, reknowned yoga teacher B.K.S Iyengar wrote, ‘The rhythm of the body, the melody of the mind and the harmony on the soul create the symphony of life.’ What great words. In an orchestra if the brass section are too loud they will drown out the wood winds, or if the drum section is not in time they will disrupt the beauty of the music that is being played. As the conductor pulls all the different sections of the orchestra together so must you conduct the symphony of your own existence. So let's explore this a bit further. The Mind I did not read for enjoyment until much later in my life. It was in my third year at university that I started to read for enjoyment. I was taught for the first time at university how to search for information, how to make sense of all the information I was gathering and how to sensibly report this information in a succinct way. When I reflect on my high school learning I often feel this was a massive failing in my education as it took me a couple of years at university to grasp these research skills and to utilise them properly. Once I got it there was no going back. Ever since then I have had a thirst for knowledge and reading became something that was fun and enjoyable, and not just a chore. I am a slow reader, so imagine my pleasure when I found out about podcasts and started listening to these on my car journeys. With great podcasts from inspirational people like Tony Robbins, Lewis Howes and Michael Gervais I can now feed my mind whilst driving my car, listening and learning from a diverse field of experts. New ideas, new ways of thinking, new perspectives on life. It is all there, all accessible to me in a format that really benefits my style of learning. For learning is the important thing, whether I learn from articles on my Flipboard feed, from a new book or a podcast, or simply seeing something on my way to dropping the kids at school, it really doesn’t matter. What matters is that I am engaging my mind, taking time to think and explore new ideas and then working out how to implement these ideas for the betterment of myself and those around me. Engaging the mind, and keeping it agile is so important with recent studies showing the long term health benefits of doing so. I find when there are periods when I am not reading before bed, when I am not reading regularly and when I am not taking time to think and contemplate, other aspects of life are more demanding. The brain is a muscle and needs to be trained, regularly and often. So start being true to yourself and go out there and start reading, thinking, taking in information and learning. Exercise the mind muscle and everything else will fall into place. With the mind it is also equally important to talk to yourself in a kind way. It is so easy to be negative to ourselves and I have had to learn, on my own, how to talk to myself in a positive manner. I have had to learn what truly is important and worth me getting upset about and what is not important and should not take up any time in my thoughts. Our brains are pre-wired to sort and deal with negative (and potentially threatening) thoughts or stimuli first. This is an evolutionary way for us to kick into fight or flight mode in order to deal with danger. For our cave dwelling ancestors it was important to know when you were under threat and to quickly respond to it. Due to the rate we have developed the world around us to make life more comfortable and less dangerous our brains have not adapted to allow for our safer lifestyle, and therefore our poor brains spend countless hours worrying about someone’s latest status update, what some celebrity said or what did that person really mean in that text. In this instance evolution is not helping us as we spend so much time sitting on our bums, stuck to our phone worrying about things that actually hold no real threat to us. Although we are hard wired to search for the negative there is good news. Our brain muscle can be trained, over time to be more positive, therefore making us generally more optimistic. The even better news is that this training can all be done for free. Ways in which we can train our brain to become more focused on the positive are:
By being more conscious of your thoughts you can start to check the negative thoughts that come into your head and quickly start to challenge ones that you don’t like. For me, I have always been quite judgemental, so I have been on a journey of listening to my thoughts and challenging mean spirited and negative ones. The result, for me, is a quieter, happier mind with clearer and more positive thought patterns. As I said before though, the brain is a muscle and needs to be trained, therefore it is important to constantly be on top of your thoughts and work to be more grounded and mindful. The Body Being loyal to your body is equally as important as being loyal to the mind. The body is a very complicated machine, however it is a brilliant adapter. If you decide to drive to work, sit at your desk all day, drive home and sit on the sofa all night, your body will adapt to this lifestyle. Posture quickly becomes poor, energy levels reduce and positive hormones dry up and get released less often and in less amounts. However exercising the body will cause it to quickly adapt too. Our bodies are made to get us from A to B in the most efficient way possible and due to our current lifestyle the efficiency of the machine is often reduced by how we choose to move, or in many cases not move. When moved right and fueled right the body becomes a self perpetuating motor. Exerting the body through exercise will build endurance, strength and ability, which in turn allows the body to do more. The more you put in the more you will get out. Exercising releases chemicals in the body, such as dopamine, that benefits the mind and produces feelings of acceptance and happiness. I find that when I exercise I am more able and willing to do the house work, tidy the garage and generally am more productive. I also have a more positive outlook on life and am better able to take on any of the small challenges life throws at me. Actually feeling strong and flexible in itself makes me feel better. The mind and body are inextricably linked and therefore looking after one will look after the other. So get out there and exercise. The bad news about exercise is it takes effort and willpower. The benefits are too much for you to not exercise, so my advice to you is to make it as easy as possible. I hate wasting time, so I work out at home. I either start a run or cycle from my front door and finish there. That means I can jump straight into the shower and then get on with the rest of my day. I also love kettlebell classes, but I hate having to get in my car, drive to the gym, get changed, do the work out, get in the shower and then get home. A 45 minute workout takes over an hour and a half from start to finish. I therefore went and bought a couple of kettlebells and I use videos on youtube (my favorites being Fitness Blender) and I do my workouts in my bedroom. Even better I do them in my pants so I not only save time and money, I also only have a pair of pants to wash after my workout. Win, win, win for me here!!!! My point here is that to be fit you don’t have to buy into the multimillion pound industry that really only wants your money. Think of ways in which you can get your fitness buzz with less cost and with less time constraints. The Spirit I find that this is often the elephant in the room. I live in central Scotland where spirituality is almost a taboo subject. Most people do not want to think about it, never mind speak about it. I often find also that spirituality and faith in something bigger than oneself is often confused with religion. When you start to speak about any form of spirituality a lot of people that I have worked with or am acquainted with instantly think about church. Their gut reaction is fear and therefore the discussion ends. What are they afraid of? Normally they are afraid of what they experienced at church when they were younger, or they have never been to church, but their parents spoke negatively about because they had bad experiences when they were young. Many people in central Scotland experienced church that was often boring, stuffy, full of ritual and does not easily relate to living life today. Why listen to stories about some guys thousands of years ago who went round fighting each other and then sing dreary boring songs, and then where does this Jesus guy sit with all this? I feel that this reaction is all too common here in Scotland and unfortunately most people decide that they don’t even want to spend time thinking about this stuff. Which is a shame. This coupled with people believing your belief system should rest either with science or spirituality has left a lot of people spiritually void. Carl Sagan wrote, ‘Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.’ Rather than being confrontational science and spirituality are actually intertwined inexplicably. For me spirituality is vitally important as it is our spirituality that feeds our soul. However it is more than that, our spirituality is our way of making sense of where we are from, how the universe began, how we have evolved, how we should interact with each other and how we should help build a better future for everyone on the planet. I am a Christian, it is through this paradigm that I explore all the questions I have just posed and I feel this framework helps me understand all this. My loyalty to this tradition and my faith in God helps keep me grounded when times are good and helps pick me up when things don’t go well. My faith helps me try to understand other people’s points of view and I don’t use it as a way to separate and show how much better I am than others (which a lot of people do!!!). As with the mind and the body, spirituality is to be practiced and built up over time. Each of us has a spirituality muscle inside of us that we need to flex and train. So my challenge to you is to go and train your spirituality. Now let me be very clear here, what I am not saying is that I want you to believe everything I believe, or else you are wrong. What I am saying is go and do some research, do some reading, have conversations exploring your beliefs and make sure that whatever you believe you actually believe. Don’t just say you believe something that you really haven’t given any thought to. You may end up believing something similar to me, or you may end up with a different conclusion, but at least give it some thought. A lot of people say they are atheist, however they don’t actually know what that means. They haven’t given the time to explore and understand what they mean by this. Conversely a lot of people say they are Christians, Buddhists, Muslims (and the list goes on), however similarly they have not fully explored this internally. It may be part of their family or social culture, so they do all the ritual, but don’t delve into the spiritual application of their faith. Ok, now that we are all sorted and have a strong and aligned mind, body and soul the next article will explore how this should influence your personal and work relationships. I appreciate that this article does not delve into any real depth in the subjects mentioned, but is meant to start you thinking about these things in order to go and formulate your own thoughts and actions off the back of this article. So please join me next week when we will start to look at how loyalty to yourself is expressed in the loyalty shown to those around you in your different walks of life. Peace and Happiness.
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AuthorMy name is Andy Smyth, I have spent the last decade working in the field of Sports Development, where I have had the pleasure of working to grow leaders within local community sports clubs in Scotland. Archives
August 2017
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