Читать книгу Real Ambition - Magazine Psychologies - Страница 8

If you believe that success is either down to luck or working at your goals non-stop that’s not surprising. This is the society we live in. Our TV is dominated by reality TV stars who’ve become famous for not really doing anything, the media is full of overnight success stories, yet all around us we see people working hard to find jobs or keep their jobs.

“ We live in a dynamic, forceful, moving, active society. We have to constantly do and achieve. Yet this is a burnt out and stressed society. ”

Kele Baker, mind-body-movement coach

As somebody now working to help people find inner peace and maintain this peace in their outer lives, mind-body-movement coach Kele Baker is acutely aware of how stressed people are in modern lives. Her long-time interest in Chinese medicine and philosophy helped her deal with her own stress and breakdown as a young actress in New York and she maintained this interest through moving on to different occupations as a ballroom dance teacher, Alexander Technique practitioner, co-director of a dance school business, as a choreographer and working on one of the UK’s most popular TV programmes.

Baker believes that our Western lives need ancient wisdom to realign them. ‘We need balance, rest and rejuvenation.’ It might seem odd to talk about resting in a book about achieving success. After all, shouldn’t that come later? Might rest not turn into laziness? Does rest really fit in with ambition?

That’s the thing about real ambition: you can evaluate what you want. If there’s a way to achieve your dreams without burning out from exhaustion, wouldn’t you rather do that?

“ Ambition needs balance and it might take a while to get there. ”

Dannie-Lu Carr, creativity specialist, communications consultant & creative practitioner

There’s no doubt that the pace of our modern lives, especially in cities, is fast and demanding. It’s also inevitable that one of your desires, more often than not work, will become all consuming, particularly in a competitive field or an economic climate where jobs aren’t easy to find. But if you only feed that strand in your life, what will happen to the other areas? If you had a garden and only looked after the roses and ignored the rest, it wouldn’t be a very pretty sight would it?

BOOST YOUR BRAIN

Recent research by the National Institute of Mental Health¹ in the USA showed that the more successful people are, the more key parts of the brain tend to ’talk’ with each other during a resting state. In other words, success and satisfaction with life boosts the brain and makes it stronger.

You can start thinking success and boosting your brain right now. Can you learn something new? Can you improve your finances by striking new deals for your utilities? Can you give yourself a new mental challenge like learning some basics in a new language so you can speak when you’re on holiday? Can you make a simple lifestyle change that will make your days even marginally better?

As a coach working both in business and the arts, Dannie-Lu Carr observes people exhausting themselves hoping this will lead to what they want. Yet she’s adamant that ‘over-focusing’ is counterproductive and working to the point of exhaustion is not what gets you from ambition to success. ‘It could take time to achieve your main dream, so you need balance in your life in order to keep going and not give up. Things have to be in balance: love, self-respect, leisure, self-nurturing, friends.’

Anyone who has made the transition from unhealthy to healthy probably recognizes that balance is far from easy. Getting into the habit of shopping for fresh food, learning to make wholesome food, finding a fitness routine that doesn’t feel like a regime, resisting anything digital before sleeping – none of this is easy when it’s new. On a larger scale, a balanced life requires thinking, planning, trying, doing. The process can feel a little sticky to begin with, but then this is what you will want to embrace all the time.

By addressing all areas in your life, what you are effectively building is a sound foundation that will boost the bit that might be toughest to achieve. In other words, you are creating an inner support system that nurtures you.

Are we really saying that ambition can be nurturing?