Purpose

I just read "Heroic Leadership: Best Practices From A 450 Year Old Company That Changed The World" by Chris Lowney.

He is a former Jesuit priest turned corporate investment banker. He describes Jesuit practices of how to become a better leader and one of the practices is to meditate for 5 minutes three times a day.

I wish to record the meat of my meditations...to keep me focused and moving forward.

The first focus is that divine love pours out into the world without end. It is not a limited quantity. This means knowing I and everyone around me is a "loved person of unique dignity and potential...". I don't have to respect the person but I do need to respect their divine spirit.

The next focus is to meditate on my key personal goals. Career, Relationships, Financial, Home.

The next focus is to take stock of my actions thus far in the day to see if they helped me reach my long term goals or moved me in the opposite direction. In the words of Al-Anon or AA, take a "fearless moral inventory" twice a day based on my actions. And if they were in the opposite direction to ask for divine help in moving me in the right direction.

The final focus is a "restless drive to imagine a greater project, or a better way of accomplishing the current problems". It also touches on motivation. What goals motivate you that you would go beyond 100% effort to achieve them. That idea of athletes going beyond what they thought possible to achieve the impossible.

So the meditations are:

-Key goals
-Divine Love
-Fearless moral inventory
-Motivation

Monday, April 25, 2011

25 April 2011

LOVE:

Nothing to comment on this today. Just an awareness in the back of my mind that the divine's love is ever-present.

GOAL:

I am employed full time based out of New Orleans working in the oil and gas sector helping to save lives by engineering safer systems, through reliability engineering! With a supportive boss and an environment which promotes continual learning.

What happens when I achieve this goal? Have I set up this goal instead of setting the goal?

INVENTORY:

So I was thinking last night/this morning about setting goals and achieving those goals. I often will set a goal with a specific plan of how I am going to meet that goal and what the successful completion of the goal will look like. When I do that I do two things. I limit how I can complete the goal. That is if a better way to complete the goal gets dropped in my lap I will ignore it because I "know" the right way to achieve the goal. And second I set up internal limits for myself. I don't let life dictate how much I will accomplish, I don't allow for the possibility of blowing the goal out of the water by accomplishing something truly amazing because I have reframed the goal because of life experiences. So I will turn over this idea of setting up goals and just set general goals without having specifics in mind.

MOTIVATION:

Still struggling with this one and I am almost done with the book and still don't think I have any truly great answers. Looks like this one is going to have to come from within. Ugh...that means some serious meditation time on this topic! By next Monday I will have spent at least 60 minutes on this topic.
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