Use This One Technique To Be All You Can Be

Editors Note: This post has been written using my 30 minute practise.

The last few weeks have been intense. I barely had a moment to do anything I wanted to do. I had a thousand things that arose at once that needed my attention and/or required my physical presence.

I won’t get into all the details of what was going on but I will say that one of things that I needed to do was prepare and deliver a new workshop to some young people.

It was the night before and I had barely begun to prepare the workshop. All sorts of things entered my head like “should I call the organisers and say I can’t make it?”

Or “the workshop isn’t going to be very good, maybe it’s a good idea if I don’t do it just incase I give myself a bad reputation.”

Based on that self-talk I could’ve made any number of choices that were basically excuses I’d allowed to creep in. Generally speaking, decisions based that genre of self-talk rarely lead to good outcomes.

I had to pause, take a moment and pay attention to what I was really saying to myself. I was essentially giving myself excuses that were ‘outs’ so to speak.

This was all going on the night before I was going to deliver this workshop. Even though I’d decided the topic and done some mental planning, I had nothing down in print or on paper.

I should point out that this was all going on in my head at 3am. 😆 I was exhausted, and I had to be up by around 8am. I had to face the fact that there was very little planning that I was going to be able to do at that time.

I woke up with a thousand possible excuses running through my head of why I shouldn’t go. The occasional good thought did creep in. There was a kind of a battle going on in my head; the Jedi’s with the blue sabre’s were taking on the evil Sith lords with the red sabres.

I was approaching the tipping point of making a better decision but I wasn’t quite there yet.

Then, my entire mindset shifted. “This is my time of contributing something very powerful to the lives of these young people. Would I deprive them of my powerful wisdom? Not to mention my great sense of humour and all the giggles they’ll get.” I somehow managed to reach for the most powerful, driving thought I could in that instant.

I had a choice, fear the possibility that I might deliver a bad workshop, just because I was not fully prepared; or, I could go knowing that I may not give the best workshop ever, but instead give them the best of me.

At that moment I started to believe again in what I, Amit Sodha, as a human being had to offer all these wonderful young people.

I was out of bed like a shot. I got ready and got myself to the station.

I had a 45 minute train journey ahead of me. I knew that was probably not enough to plan a 45 minute workshop, but that I would still just give it my all. I scribbled like crazy and did as much as I could.

Whilst walking to the venue, I put myself into the right state. I remembered my purpose was not to look good, or be a great speaker, or to be a comedian, or to worry about what might go wrong, but simply to focus on them and the task at hand and that was to share something of value, from the core of everything I’d learned

I knew then that the rest would take care of itself.

I was at this event with many esteemed speakers; all very educated and very prominent within their respective fields. I looked around and for a moment I felt the insecurity of being a high school drop-out and had the thought “what can I possibly offer?” Once again, I had to bring myself back to focussing on the task at hand.

I reached for the most inspiring and powerful thought in that moment. The thought that was most in-line with what the highest purpose I could conceive of in that split second.

The workshop went wonderfully. I addressed two separate groups. They thoroughly enjoyed and I had a blast delivering them.

This method can be applied to any area of life. Before you write an article; before you go for a job interview. What is the most powerful and driving thought you can reach for in that moment?

Pause, take a moment, find that divine power that lies in a simple statement that you can echo in your head.