Alignment

Alignment is about fine-tuning between efforts, factual circumstances, and personal skills and characteristics. Usually it is an intuitive quality, related to sensitivity. But it may be strengthened and fostered. What can be done about it?

The first thing is to be perceptive. In any situation that requires your own judgement, go to the spot, whenever possible. See the real situation and the real people working there. Look and hear and listen and feel. Get the smell. Hold things in your hand. Don’t be in a hurry. Take your time.
The second thing is to combine concentration with ease. Accomplish any task with undivided attention and a minimum of distraction and interruption. Avoid over-involvement if you can. Retain always some slack and ease. Pay attention to your bodily reactions - and those of others.
The third thing is to get rid of obsolete procedures and practices. Seek always the course of minimal resistance which brings you to your goal. Piggyback on available facilities and opportunities.

There is a simple recipe that covers all this, although it may be difficult to attain that simplicity: be in flow. Alignment brings flow. Flow brings alignment. How do you know that you are in flow? Because you forget the time.

Remove everything that hinders you to be in flow. If you can. If you can’t, at least minimize the frictions. Minimize your inner frictions: irritation, disappointment, deception, worry. If you can’t, consider to remove yourself. No use staying somewhere where alignment is made impossible. They say that wherever we go, we are always taking ourselves with us. That is true, but only a half-truth. Because wherever we stay, we absorb a lot of the conditions around us. The main thing is the irritation, disappointment, deception, worry of other people.

What are handicaps for alignment? The worst are also handicaps for all other aspect of Personal Mastery that I discussed before: clear-mindedness, decisiveness, equanimity and energy. This is my shortlist of common horrors:

  1. Dominating, condemning, manipulative bosses.
  2. Overly rigid systems. Too many rules and regulations.
  3. Sad dogs spreading gloom
  4. Your own over-qualification or under-qualification for the job.
  5. Bad health.

Get moving. get back into flow.