Inspiring oneself!

To inspire others, we must first inspire ourselves

We can breathe life into ourselves, not literally, but through the practices we adopt.  Just as taking exercise can give us greater physical stamina and capacity, then cognitive practices can improve our mental stamina and capacity (and very much in a spiritual sense).

The first practice is obvious.  To get our first response to any person or event to use the global form of paying attention, we must practice using global forms of attention, so that it becomes habitual.  This is what mindfulness meditation and being mindful, in general, are both doing.

The reason for this is that the global forms of attention (vigilance, alertness and sustained attention) trigger the right hemisphere’s response which is one of empathy and an acceptance of the new or different.

This is the ideal way to respond to a person. The right hemisphere also has the capacity to switch responsibility over to the left hemisphere, if that is more appropriate. The left hemisphere is more reluctant to switch the other way, it rarely sees it as being appropriate.

When we can respond with this form of attention, whatever is thrown at us, then we have the mental stamina and capacity to remain calm and choose our response with care and consideration for the other.

Thus, we can rise above automatic fight-flight responses – accompanied by irritation or withdrawal - and we begin the process, no matter how small it might be, of inspiring others.

We have all been encouraged by our upbringing to favour the used of focused attention when responding to people and events, which triggers the left hemisphere and its immediate need to compare and judge, to find the familiar.

All of us, to one degree or another, must redress this imbalance.

Being mindful is the way to go.

John Corrigan is an expert in helping individuals to bring their whole of mind to their daily life and increase their effectiveness and the effectiveness of those around them. This expertise scales from the individual to the team to the organisation. At the core of this work is the practice of encounter.  Earlier blogs can be found here.

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