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Self Leadership - Your Emotional Guidance System

Written by: Ingrid Cliff

Article Overview: At work or play you're permanently being guided by an internal emotional guidance system. It's like one of the in-car GPS navigation systems. You punch in where you want to go and you constantly receive self leadership feedback as to whether or not you're on the right road. If you watched "The Secret" many of the teachers talked about listening to your inner wisdom. If you feel good inside, then you are on path and miracles can happen. If you are feeling very uncomfortable, then you are blocking your flow and making life harder than it needs to be.

Self Leadership - Your Emotional Guidance System

At work or play you're permanently being guided by an internal emotional guidance system. It's like one of the in-car GPS navigation systems. You punch in where you want to go and you constantly receive self leadership feedback as to whether or not you're on the right road.

If you watched "The Secret" many of the teachers talked about listening to your inner wisdom. If you feel good inside, then you are on path and miracles can happen. If you are feeling very uncomfortable, then you are blocking your flow and making life harder than it needs to be.

This applies in work as much as it does in life. Your body and emotions will often tell you what your logical mind will not face about your workplace.

For example - many years ago (before I started to learn this information), I started a new job. On the first day I went in to the building full of hope and happiness, only to feel as if I was wrapped in cling wrap by about lunchtime. There was nothing said, nothing explicit done, but the feeling remained. By the end of the day, as I walked across the bridge to my car, I had tears pouring down my face. I wasn't consciously sad and nothing bad had happened during the day, so the tears were strange to me. The job rapidly turned out to be one of the most stressful places I ever worked in - with regular expectations of 11pm finishes and early starts. My body knew on day 1 that this was a constricting place - I just didn't have the knowledge at that time to act on it.

So what about you ... Do you find it hard to get out of bed in the morning - with your alarm regularly mysteriously failing to go off? Do you find you race straight for a coffee before opening your emails? Do you have a good whinge to a work colleague before you even sit down? Do you feel tight or restricted during the day, with headaches or mysterious body aches? Do you get regular colds or flus? How do you feel at the end of the day - tired but happy or tired and angry?

As you think about your work colleagues - do you feel happy and grateful that they are in your life or irritated and annoyed?

What about your boss and your customers - how do you feel about them? Does seeing a particular customer fill you with dread or do you just love talking with them?

For the next few days stop and observe your feelings at work. Just do a quick stocktake of how you are feeling and what event has happened just before that feeling.

Once you have identified the feeling, you have 3 choices - accept that that is how it is and nothing you can do or say will change it, change your response to a more useful one or get out of the situation.

So, let's say you are at work and you find you hate being there. Accept that you hate it and mentally move on and shut up. You have chosen to stay there for a bigger personal reason, therefore there is no point complaining and bitching about your choice. This is like telling your in car navigation system - "yes I know that I am off the road to where I want to get to, but that's OK."

Or, you can choose to find the good in the situation, the lessons you are learning, the experience you are gaining and focusing on the positives. That will help change your response to the situation and will also change the results you see in your life. (Books by Esther and Jerry Hicks have some useful strategies to help you get from stuckness to a better feeling space.) This is like listening to your in-car navigation system and taking the next left and the right and the next left to get back on the road.

Or, you can resign and find somewhere better suited to your current approach to life and your skills. This is like asking for an alternate route from your in car navigation system.

Listen to your emotional guidance system at work and then make a conscious decision about the response you choose to take to the information your system is telling you.

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Article Tags: bridge, car gps navigation, car gps navigation systems, colds, emotional guidance, emotions, guidance system, happiness, headaches, inner wisdom, leadership feedback, logical mind, lunchtime, miracles, mysterious body, new job, self leadership, whinge, work colleague, work colleagues



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