Sou Nudges #13 Your next 5 minutes

Soul Nudges 13 // Your next 5 minutes

 

How will you spend your next 5 minutes?

Five minutes are often not enough to do anything significant – not enough for a proper conversation, a game with your kids, a meeting, a walk, a run or just to try and finish an important piece of work. You cannot accomplish much in 5 minutes, right?

In a recent coaching discussion, I conversed with somebody about ideas to bring “the positive” into the present – Shawn Achor (The Happiness Advantage) mentions ideas to bring positive stories and thoughts into the present, and one way is by keeping a gratitude diary. By writing down each day, what you are grateful for and keeping track of that, focuses you into the positive instead of just being negative and reactive. Our coaching conversation centred on the theme of significance and the person’s need to experience significance and she came up with the great idea of a “significance diary”– to have a separate journal or space in her diary and capture moments of significance every day even in the most ordinary situations. What a great idea!

A few days later I received an email from her (with feedback) and a quote of Tom Peters –

“Excellence is not an aspiration. Excellence is what you do in the next five minutes”.

Excellence is what you do in the next 5 minutes even if it is simply to be awake for a significant moment in your day or whatever you are grateful for.

This is such a simple concept in life and work. Be deliberate about how you spend the next 5 minutes, be it leading your team or organisation, having a conversation with a child, seeing the beauty in nature, taking a breath or even just the way that you are driving.

Excellence is not in a specific position, or status, or bank balance or the next business deal. Excellence is simply how you spend the next 5 minutes and recognise the significance within that.

Why don’t you start a significance diary or just take 5 minutes each day to be more deliberate?

Five minutes can make a significant difference!

 

Go well

Soul Nudges #12 Re-treat yourself

Soul Nudges 12 // Re-treat yourself

 

I am preparing for a day retreat at the end of May to create space for people to stand back from life – and treat themselves with space and time in God’s presence. Although this specific event is taken from the perspective of Contemplative Christian Spirituality, it is a good habit for anyone to slow the pace and re-treat now and then in your own way.

The word “retreat” as a noun means:

 the act of moving back or withdrawing…

It might feel like a treat just to move back or withdraw for a few seconds in a day or once a month or every six months – try and make a small decision how you will do this for yourself in the next few weeks. You can either book the retreat or try any of the following:

Gratitude diary:

Write down three things that you are grateful for and go and tell somebody about this. Keep up this habit for 28 days.

Space:

Think about one area in your life where you need/crave space at the moment. What would one simple step towards that look like? It might be a deliberate 10-minute walk over lunch? Or a longer, deliberate pause between meetings? Or a prayer? Decide to take one step to create this space and schedule time to get back to this.

Treat yourself and re-treat!