Why Attend to Our Default Settings?

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Dear Why Team member, 
I hope this message finds you well and enjoying …Fall. You must’ve noticed the cooler temperatures and shorter days. Depending on where you live you see nature changing at least twice a year and each season has its own joys. Notice how this happens automatically, habitually.

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Audio: 🗣

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Mahatma Ghandi said,
“Be the change you want to see." 
Why is this statement so important and so powerful? Because our lives, and how we see them, depend wholly upon our attitude, on who we are being. Anais Nin said, 'We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are." 

Does your current default setting on your attitude propel or limit your life? Do you like how you are currently responding to the challenges in your life? Lots have happened this year, which is yet to be over, and lots we have learned about ourselves and our capabilities during the past six months. I feel that more articles on how to tend to both our mind and body have been written in the past six months than before. If you are one of those working from home now, how often do you reluctantly get out of bed in the morning? When you awake, do you look forward to what your day will bring and what you will bring to your day? Or do you find yourself hitting the snooze alarm more and more?

I think it’s important to remember Socrates’ saying, “The unexamined life is not worth living." I once heard that on average we have 55,000 thoughts a day and that 95% of them are a repeat from yesterday. Does this not define a rut?! Why is so much of our life driven and dictated by habit? Because habit is efficient- it works well for Nature. We simply could not accomplish very much if we had to consciously think about everything we do. And while habits support us, and can propel us, they can also weaken and limit us. It often depends on the specific habit and how it was developed - reactively or proactively. While our culture focuses on habits of behavior, know that all action is born from thought, conscious and unconscious.

It is habits of thought that largely determine the quality and benefit of our lives, to ourselves and to others. How do we best develop and embrace habits that empower and also effectively address those habits that limit? Recognize that you have a default setting on your attitude. Your attitudinal default setting has been set either more by the culture in which you live or more by the intentional habits you've consciously developed. Why pay attention to your default setting? Because it will largely determine your behavior in the heat of any given moment. 
When is it best to fortify a Castle? 
Not when it's under attack, but rather before the onslaught. How can you better fortify and strengthen your Castle? By exercising, with more intention, your daily life disciplines of thought; how you think daily.

Develop better habits of thought and you will see better habits of behavior. 

Your thoughts determine your attitude and your attitude, in turn, directs your thoughts; all of course affecting your experience of life.

There are many things that are out of our control this year, but we still have the power to set and reset the default settings that determine the quality of our life. 
Why is this important? 
Because your behavior will be born from this setting, if not set where you want it in advance, behaviors that are less than that in which you aspire may ensue. Intentionally think on a higher plane and you'll find your behaviors reside there as well.

Consider taking more time to think about what you think about. Make time to be more intentional with your thoughts about your whole self- body and intellect. Why? Because we become most what we think about most. Think about attending more to your attitudinal default setting and the actions you can take to raise it.
Make time to observe your thoughts, time to improve your thoughts, and you will become more for yourself and those you seek to serve.

Make it a great week!

Steve Luckenbach