I was asked by a client why the work we had done together had been so successful. The client had already worked with a number of other professionals without success and was curious why my approach had been so effective. My immediate thought was to highlight the quality and nature of my training. It was an intense period of instruction and hard work, which left me with a strong commitment to support people in their personal development as well as the ability to carry out my work to the highest standards.

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Many years ago a colleague of mine talked to me about living life along a steady, unmoving line between the emotional highs and lows I seemed addicted to at the time. They manifested themselves most noticeably in the weekly rhythm of Fridays and Mondays, fuelling each other in a never-ending cycle of ups and downs. The purity of the joy I felt on a Friday afternoon, with the whole weekend ahead of me, would be matched 2½ days later by the despondency of a Monday morning; the weekend banished to a memory and my mood compounded by having to face another five days before I could feel that joy again.

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It was one of the most powerful questions I heard during my personal development training. We were always being told to verbalise whatever was going on inside, but not to indulge too much in the emotions attached to our issue. If such indulgences went too far the question ‘What are you going to do about it?‘ would snap us back to the practicalities of what to do next.

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In the previous post I talked about how writing allows thoughts to surface which otherwise have little opportunity to make it to the daylight of our consciousness. Writing is our chance to focus on one aspect of our lives, slow everything down and, in doing so, gain greater control over our thoughts. Meditation has a similar effect. This post looks at the mind’s restless influence and how meditation can help to quieten it.

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