3 A’S OF SELF LEADERSHIP (check out the video below or on my web here
1. Ambition2. Attitude3. Selective ApathyOf all the things you might consider to be important in life. Apathy might be the last thing you’d think of. We are obsessed with diligence we want to do meditation. Well we want to do yoga well we want to do work. Well we want to do our relationship well we want to be good parents we want to be good people we want to be good at everything we want to put Christmas decorations up well we want to do everything well . But there is a moment in time where we have to choose apathy towards certain things. That’s why i call it selective apathy.
Apathy means “it is what it is.” Especially when it comes to things in the past, that are annoying us or aggravating us. We must learn the art of apathy.The most perfect apathy is gratitude. When you are thankful for something, it goes away. It doesn’t annoy you any more. It just is what it is. Therefore, apathy is the ultimate outcome of all gratitude.As human beings aspire to get more and more and more of everything. Therefore, gratitude is away of releasing what we’ve got into the trough of Not worrying me any more, but thankful for it and opening us up to the human condition of ambition.When a person is not apathetic towards certain things, then everything becomes a distraction, and everything becomes an opportunity to want more and more and more. Therefore, the ego is in total dominance of our ambitions, and therefore, in total control of everything we do. We become one of those people who run around, trying to get everything sorted out, and therefore getting nothing done perfectly .If you look at anybody who is achieved success, that success has been targeted towards something that they want infinite amounts of more of, for example, they might want more sporting success, and no matter how many gold medals or championships they win it just opens the door for more . This is the perfect example of a human being living in their spirit.But you’ll also find those people capable of achieving great success in whatever endeavour they aspire to, but have never fully embraced the excitement and the challenge, because they are trying to get everything perfectly right . Then there is a distribution of energy and effort and focus across the spectrum of so many of life’s little problems, and they have never learnt how to be apathetic towards anything.For example; your health does not have to be the same as an Olympic athlete, your health can be moderately great , as long as you’re not obese, or suffering from any terminal condition, and therefore you can enjoy life as long as you are not obsessed with how you look or your body shape or some other fake criteria. My old colleague, Chris used to say “do you know what it says about a person the number of push-ups that they can do? it tells you the number of push-ups they can do. “Apathy and gratitude, go hand-in-hand. You can’t be apathetic towards something, if you are angry about it. A great example of this is my ex-partner who we spent years developing to become an international athlete after her previously failed career , and when she hit the top mark, she decided that there was another person in her heart and moved on from our relationship. I can honestly say that if I remained frustrated or disappointed in this, and not gratitude, I would not be apathetic towards it, and therefore towards her, and that resentment or attitude would take me away from the love that I have for my partner. Apathy, which means I don’t care, about her, or anything about her means I have completely released her.Apathy is also a healers medicine. You as a business person are a healer. You will no doubt lead people at work. If you can’t learn apathy towards them, you will attach to them, wanting their approval, wanting their engagement, wanting their acceptance, wanting their positive attitude, wanting everything and therefore being led by them rather than leading them. That is the complete opposite to what they want. But most corporate training teaches you to have empathy for people rather than apathy for people . As soon as you have empathy for other people, you can’t lead them because you will get caught up in the micro environment of their personal and professional lives, and in someways become corrupted by the same things that corrupt them. What they are looking for, is your ambivalence, or more importantly, apathy towards all the problems they have replaced by , you treating them as you wish them to become. That’s leadership.So apathy is the ultimate realisation of spiritual practice. The more gratitude you have for things in a true sense of the word, meaning you see the balance and can be thankful for that, The less attached you are to it. This is the absolute definition of human consciousness. If you are conscious about something, then it is what it is, and you have apathy towards it, you won’t buy it, chase after it, run away from it, be affected by it, it is what it is In Melbourne, Victoria, Australia had one of the longest shutdown periods of the Covid era. When it first started shutting down in Victoria people screamed and shouted and complained about the government and the premier of Victoria being ignorant to their needs to get out the front door and enjoy the sunshine . But the government ignored them. There was extreme resentment and whenever I spoke to a client in Melbourne they jumped up and down about the government didn’t do this in the government didn’t do that. But after three or four months of jumping up and down, they eventually all to a person said “it is what it is, and there’s no use complaining about it because the government doesn’t listen “ now that’s apathy and mental health improved out of sight, because instead of walking around angry and pissed off, they actually decided to come to peace with the fact that they were locked in. It makes been locked in a lot. Easier to deal with when you are apathetic towards it .Every human being has a sequence of values, and your lowest value is its important as your highest. For example, there are seven areas of life, spiritual, mental, social, career, health, relationship, financial. Every single area of life is important, and if it breaks, you will be broken. so just because we have a value set that prioritises one of those areas over another does not mean that we should not have due diligence on all of them. However, and he’s the big rub the key is to work on all the seven errors of life, so they do not distract us from the area of life that’s most important to us. as an example, our highest priority might be career and what could distract us from career is our health, so we need to get our health in a minimum of want to desire to choose to level of situation so that it doesn’t become a distraction from doing the work we love . That of course would be the opposite for an athlete who is professional.So is all this leads to ambivalence, because if you get an area of life that is so rout, scheduled, practised, consistent, then there should be no reason to worry about it and you just get up go for your run and do your exercise so that You stay healthy. There’s very little need to change it much except to keep it entertaining and engaging and a level of ambition, which is why you need to have ambivalence, which is it is what it is, so that your ambition can flourish in the area that is your focus. Live with spirit stay ambivalent to those things that are not part of your ambition program.Chris