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.

Personal energy

For people who want to be more productive, there is nothing so effective as increasing their energy level. How do you do that, apart form taking drugs? First, become aware of what feeds your energy, what stimulates you, what makes you feel good and strong and happy. Avoid too much planning and rigidity, but go for these things. It may be music, it may be dance, it may be engaging stories, in talks, in books or movies. It is usually also good comapny. And it may be being alone in nature. "Into the wild." What inspires you? Go for that. It may be simply sunlight. Or the starry sky. Or Elliot's Four Quartets.

The next level is to find out what blocks your energy. We store suppressed energy in our body. How do you suppress and what do you suppress? Things we don't want to see, but we see them anyway. Things we want to say or to do, but we didn't. Everything we think and feel and sense and don't express, we suppress. An active body helps to digest that stress, but we can't release all pent-up energy by being active in things that have nothing to do with our frustrations.

The third level is to find out where we lose energy. Where are the leaks? Often we lose energy beacuse of other people: negative people, critical people, sad people, crazy people. We have to learn to stop our leaks.

The fourth level is to stop spending energy ineffectively or inefficently or both. Stop wasting your energy. What do you do that doesn't contribute to results or to happiness or both? Stop useless activities, at least diminish them. And if that even is impossible: spend as little energy on them as possible.
Spending energy wisely and effectively means results, success, recognition, satisfaction. Which feeds nicely back into increasing your energy level.

First of all, find your black holes: where your energy disappears inside yourself or outside yourself. What are infamous black holes? In ourselves: depression and confusion, impotent rage, pent-up frustration. Outside ourselves: dominating, condemning, manipulative people, especially bosses, partners and close family members. In the work place: overly rigid systems with too many rules and regulations. Or look at the interface between you and the outside world. If you are overqualified or underqualified for the job, you waste tons of energy.
And be particular about your health. But probably you are already aware of that.

In a program of improving Personal Mastery, improving your energy level is usually a good first step.
If you are energetic, and you are human and sane, you are inspiring. To inspire other people, does that increase or decrease your energy?

One last tip: you can't be always on the top of your energy. Use the low stretches for easy stuff and small stuff. Don't waste your good hours or your good days on the many trivia of everyday work and everyday life.

Accept that in growing older, your physical stamina may lessen, but that your mind may stay strong to the last.