The mind of a man can lift anything

Earl Nightingale, Lead the Field

I like the above quote because we usually think about using our muscles to lift things. Our mind can also lift us up when faced with a problem or challenge.

Earl Nightingale in his book Lead the Field, says that even successful people have problems, but they think about them as a ‘a problem only waiting to be solved’. In session 4 of the book he talked a lot about present goals and how to solve them. As I’m currently studying for my coaching qualification, this caught my attention. I love new ways to look at things.

He suggested getting a blank sheet of paper and writing down your present primary goal at the top of the page. I wrote To live in a clutter-free organised house. Then underneath the goal, he suggested writing down ‘as many ideas as you can for improving that what you now do’. He said that if you spend around an hour a day writing down 20 ideas and do this for 5 days a week, you’ll have 100 ideas by the end of the first week.

I did this today and it was difficult thinking of 20 things; however, he did mention that it would be. He also said that some ideas wouldn’t be any good. After doing this exercise earlier today, my mind has been continually thinking about what I’d written (which I believe is his point). A lot of ideas are in our subconscious. If I’ve learnt anything in my coaching training, it’s that deep down we have the answers to our problems.

I like that this process wasn’t just about creating a list of ‘actions’ or ‘things to do’, as I have a lot of those, but instead I now have 20 different ways or improvement areas to consider that may help me resolve the problem that’s been consuming me for years.

I have put the sheet of paper on my new whiteboard that I wrote about yesterday.

Hope you’ve all had a productive day.

Until next time…

Sandra