Is living consciously beneficial?

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Why is it important to live consciously or have a conscious mind? Do you live consciously? “I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor” – Henry D Thoreau. Many of us live our lives on auto pilot. We just flow with the wind. We find our selves and lives drifting with the wind. One of the most important aspects of personal development is to develop a habit of living consciously. This helps create a sense of expectation and builds confidence in us. Confidence also helps build motivation. Over the years I have developed a mechanism to doing things consciously and this has a really benefited me from my daily life. I have noticed a surge in my productivity and a major shift in my efficiency levels.

I have noticed that by living consciously, there is very little room for mistakes and surprises as most the work and things are done with full alertness and knowledge of the consequences. Conscious living is one of my key themes for this web site and as such I will be talking about it very frequently in the coming articles. You will agree that most of the things we do are done almost unconsciously but it is very beneficial to take control of your daily living by creating a conscious mind. You should develop an attitude of doing or carrying out your daily activities consciously as this allows you to take control of yourself and your inner being.

Habits can be learned and unlearned. I can safely say that 99% of our habits are learned over time. I know that the only things that we are naturally born with as human beings is the fear of falling and the fear of noise. That is why you will notice that most babies get very uncomfortable when you take them in noisy places. The rest of the habits are learnt over a period of time. When I say all habits can be learned I mean just that, including bad ones. Now if all habits can be learned it is therefore, very possible that you can learn the habit of living consciously. If you put your mind to it and practice the habit of doing things consciously you will notice an improvement in your daily life and execution of your work.

Practice makes perfect
To help with living consciously you must tell yourself in the morning that I shall endeavour to do things consciously to day and keep reminding yourself. Some how the brain keeps checking and alerting you when it is conditioned to carry out tasks in a certain way. Am always reminded by my sub conscious every time am performing a task. Being a conscious person has really helped me in the execution of my daily tasks. I have also developed the habit of writing down my daily tasks as a way of remembering what should be done at a particular time. I take a review of my to do list every night. This I do mentally and believe me my success rate has dramatically improved overtime. Practice living consciously for the next 21 days and it will become a habit for you. If you do something for 21 days continuously it becomes a habit. They say practice makes perfect.

Conscious living is one of the best ways to improve your personal growth and increase your productivity. Like I said before you will reduce your proneness to surprises and errors. You will do tasks with a peace of mind knowing that, what you have delivered is actually what you intended to deliver. It may not be the correct delivery as required but, then it is what you as an individual intended to deliver. When you have developed  the habit of living consciously you will also enhance the spirit of expectation. It is good practice to always double check your work as this will ensure quality production. Now don’t get me wrong there are times when my work has been terribly below par. The only comforting thing with me, is that I have also development a habit of accepting criticism no matter how hard it is.

Accept criticism
I believe that there is a lot of positiveness in accepting criticism. A good leader is one that accepts both praises and criticism. If you are in a leadership position, which we all are, you should learn to tolerate and accept criticism. A leader has a responsibility to the people he is leading. If you are a husband then you are a leader for wife, children and your entire house hold. In fact we are all leaders of our self and all work for me company limited. You are solely responsible for your life and the direction you take. Most of us are still waiting for someone to lead our lives. Now if you are a Christian like me you will say, but God is my shepherd yes he is but he is not responsible for the decision you make. Most of the times he leads as to certain places but we are always making the wrong decisions and end up in wrong places.

If you are directly responsible for leading a group of people the more reason why you should have a big heart for accepting criticism. After all we do not have the monopoly of knowledge. Some of it will be as blunt and as direct and sometimes may seem like an insult but that is what leadership is all about. It is about taking in all the criticism and providing solutions and hope to the team. You may not have the answers right away but people should have the confidence that you will guide them through the storm. Leaders must learn to create a sense of hope and trust in their followers.

Those in leadership must learn to take responsibility for both positive and negative out comes. I believe that criticism helps us grow as individuals. It is very important that we analyse it and make a deliberate effort to improve. As human beings I have noticed that we do not take criticism very well and mostly we just want to take only the positive aspects of the praises.If we have to grow as individuals we must take responsibility for all our actions both negative and positive. Leaders must realise that they have more on their shoulders than their followers. With more, there is more that is expected of you.  The more or the larger the organisation being lead the more demands placed on the leadership. “The speed of the leader determines the rate of the pack” – Ralph Waldo Emerson.

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Conclusion
“If we don’t change, we don’t grow. If we don’t grow, we aren’t really living” – Gail Heehy. Living consciously is more beneficial to individuals as it gives us control of our lives and helps with productivity. I hope this article has helped you bye for now and remember to always “standout tall and be counted”.

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Living Consciously

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