Guiding Principles

I found myself spiralling down over the weekend, but as I sit here on Monday morning, I'm feeling okay. Mindset is a funny thing.

On Monday mornings I like to do my weekly review of the past week. Part of that includes reading through my Guiding Principles. It's a thing that's so easy to skip. I mean the weekly review itself is highly skippable, and then there's the urge to get through it as quickly as possible because busyness, right?

But the whole point of doing this is to stay on track, or to get back on track after slipping off. And it all seems to distil down to mindset.

The end of last year was quite an eye-opener for me. I learned a lot from watching August Bradley's YouTube channel. Then I took his course. And this is where all of these ideas have come from. My life was NOT on track and I had no idea what my WHY was, my guiding principles, my motivation.

What did I actually WANT from life?

It's funny, because during the live course, when August was presenting his LifeOS and talked about his Guiding Principles, I and many others on the course kept asking him to show us what his were, and he responded that there was really no point in that because they were HIS. We should find our OWN. And, of course, he was right about that.

But still, it's not an easy thing to do, to figure out our reason and then align all our actions towards that. It has taken me months to distil it down, all done on a single page in my Notion database. It pops up every week as something to review. I get to see what things I thought were important to me that actually weren't, and more importantly I get to see what things I KNOW are important to me but that my actions have not been aligned towards.

Examples of my Guiding Principles

Let me give you some examples.

Two of my guiding principles are to be a good husband and a good father. Actions I can take towards that are simple things like making meals with love, being kind and helpful around the house, reading with my son at bedtime, being aware when resentment is creeping in and nip it in the bud. These are things that I know will guide me towards being the human that I want to be.

Then I consider my actions through the week. I look for instances when I've been that person. They are usually few and far between. Then I have to wonder why that is. What is it that makes me feel that I'm so busy watching reviews of tents on YouTube that I couldn't possibly read to Hamish tonight? I don't know. I really don't. But I have to keep thinking about it, because that is where my serenity lies.

This is why I've found it so useful first of all to write my Guiding Principles down and then to read them through at least once a week. It's grounding.

So this is really a message to myself, to remind me that I should not skip my weekly reviews and that I should make sure at least to read through my Guiding Principles in order to remind myself that they are there and that they are my path to serenity.  

Look who turned 15!