Many people feel dissatisfied with their lives, their work, their relationships - could it be that they’re just not self-centred enough?

Well not if you use the standard definition of being "self-centred" which implies greed, grasping, thinking of oneself and only oneself. For this article at least, let’s redefine it to mean being centred within yourself, being clear about your values - that which is most important to you in your life, refusing to put up with things that you can do something about (tolerations), being aware of what you’re actually feeling in different situations (making the mind-body connection). This sort of self-centredness gives clarity, stability and direction, energy; decision-making becomes easier and life as a whole becomes less stressful.

The barriers to leading a self-centred life

There are considerable barriers to being self-centred, not least of which is the speed of life in London. Travelling in the rush hour, shopping in crowded stores, trying to walk down busy streets with the traffic going by is not most people’s idea of a good time.

Other barriers include the culture of busyness that pervades many organisations: feeling pressure to not take lunch breaks, or indeed any breaks at all during a working day; working long hours; always carrying pen and paper in hand when walking through the building, and striding purposefully as though you’re doing something incredibly important (even if you’re not!). The most important thing of all though is that you are seen to be doing these things so that nobody can doubt your industriousness and commitment to the company.

Then there are all the distractions that we use to cope with all of this - coffee shops and cafes, cinemas, clubs, shops where we can indulge in "retail therapy", mobile phones so we can be constantly available. All these things are designed to take us out of ourselves (and isn’t that language a dead giveaway!). If you don’t like your current reality, if you don’t want to think about or deal with the problems in your life - just pretend you’re someone else or somewhere else. How much further away from being self-centred is it possible to get?

The consequences of not being self-centred

Every thought, word or action has a consequence attached to it. Trying to escape our current reality by pretending to be somewhere else, by numbing our feelings with TV, food, drink, drugs, sex, computer games, surfing the internet, etc takes us further and further away from being self-centred.

Aside from the longer term health consequences, living life like this is exhausting. It takes enormous amounts of mental energy to ignore the things that we are putting up with. Look at people dozing off on trains and buses at the end of the working day. Not just tired, but weary - of their jobs, the commuting, and not knowing how to do anything differently. This becomes normality - but it doesn’t have to.

Steps to becoming more self-centred

There are a series of simple steps and simple strategies that can help us become self-centred - aware of what is most important to us and aware of how we are actually feeling at any one point in time.

Become aware of your values

First of all, you could spend some time becoming clear about your values - the things which are most important to you. Probably the quickest way to identify your values is to think about how you would like to be remembered - effectively to write your own epitaph. What would you like to hear your family say about you, your friends, your work colleagues and maybe clients too, and anybody else you know? What makes you special to them, what achievements would you like to hear them describing, what difference have you made to them and their lives? Once you have written all this out in as much detail as possible, stop and check to see where you life as it is today matches up with what you’ve written. Where things don’t match up is where some of your tolerations are, and this is a key source of stress.

CASE STUDY

Paul worked for a major retail chain who’s favourite word was "commitment" - ie, commitment to the company and to its profits. This meant regular stays away from home, with a short working week being 60 hours. Paul’s response to the stress caused was to leave his job (his number one toleration), and use the time to eliminate further tolerations and identify his values which included: wanting to do socially useful work which genuinely serves others, time with his wife and friends, and the space to pursue other interests outside of work.

Once Paul was clear about his values it enabled him to search for new work in a highly focused manner. Although initially concerned about how few jobs he was interested in, the intense focus meant he could put plenty of energy into each application as he was genuinely committed to those he was applying for. Within a few weeks Paul found the job he wanted. He now brings his management and retail experience to a chain of charity shops which generates profits for something he can believe in, and which gives both meaning and purpose to his work.

 Eliminate your tolerations

Tolerations are the things that we are putting up with in our lives that we can do something about, and their very presence drains us of energy. Just think for a minute of something you’ve been avoiding, something that you really don’t want to do. It could be something as simple as wash the kitchen floor, or fix a shelf, or it could be something a lot bigger such as get up and go to work in the morning. Doesn’t it feel tiring just thinking about it? When we set out to eliminate tolerations we clear away the very things that drain us of energy, as well as building confidence and self-esteem.

CASE STUDY

Carol had spent some years at home looking after elderly parents, but wanted to enter the job market again. What held her back was a lack of confidence and self-esteem - even a job at the local supermarket felt like it was beyond her. Carol chose to start with her biggest toleration - the house she’d moved into 5 years earlier. When it was bought Carol knew just how she wanted it to look, but with her parents declining health and the increasing burden on her, nothing had happened since she moved in.

Thinking in terms of doing up the whole house was too much, even doing one room was too much, but she could think of one corner of a room to begin with. The living room irritated her most, so she set herself the goal of just clearing one corner within a week. Once she got going and saw the difference that she could make by her own efforts, nothing could stop her. In only 3 months the house that she’d tolerated for 5 years became the home she’d dreamed of and the transformation in her confidence and self-esteem was palpable. She is now happily working as GP’s receptionist.

Making the mind-body connection

Thinking takes place in the head, feelings arise in the body, and the two are often kept artificially separate. We live in a culture where it is intellectual thought and knowledge which is primarily taught, tested and valued - and yet our bodies contain not just feelings of happy or unhappy, but knowledge that we’ve simply not articulated yet. Our language says it all with phrases like "I’ve got a gut feeling", "I feel it in my bones", "something smells fishy".

There is a very simple and quick technique to start bridging the mind-body divide. Look for punctuation points in your day - where one activity ends and another begins. Check your body to find out where you are holding any tension, then let it go. Stress is a physical reaction which starts with tension around the neck and shoulders - as any Alexander Technique teacher will tell you. When our shoulders get tense they rise up, become more rigid, and this impairs our ability to breathe fully and deeply. Check your breathing - is it slow and relaxed with your breathing coming from your stomach, or is it shallow, maybe quick, with most of your breathing being done at the top of your chest? These are the signs which tell us how we are really feeling and which we need to tune into on a regular basis, especially when the thoughts in our mind are racing nineteen to the dozen.

Create the vision and bridge the gap

With clear values, decision making becomes so much simpler. With clarity about what’s important to you, saying yes or no becomes straightforward. Your real needs become clearer. It’s also easier to identify and eliminate tolerations. With tolerations eliminated you will have that much more energy available. And when you are able to listen to what your body is telling you, then you have another indicator of your true state of well being, as well as a greater sense of when you’re making a decision which is right for you.

These things can provide you with an excellent foundation from which to create a positive vision of how it is that you’d really like to live your life. With values and vision in alignment you will have both the motivation and the energy to carry things through - a new job, a completely new career, a new home (or newly redecorated home), or possibly a greater appreciation and satisfaction with what you currently have in your life - it does happen (external change isn’t always what’s needed to be happy).

So if you’re dissatisfied with some aspect of your life, with your relationships, with your work, just be as self-centred as possible and see what difference it makes.

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You may contact David Bates at Tree of Life Coaching (www.treeoflifecoaching.co.uk) , on 020 8440 4925 or by email: david@treeoflifecoaching.co.uk