Tips to Change #5: Practice Self-Compassion

When you think of changes you'd like to make in your life in the coming year, think of them with self-compassion. Each step of the way - even when you're tempted to give up - remember that being kind to yourself will give you the strength to change for good.

Every resolution to change begins with a burst of hope. You feel great when you exercise, so you vow to do it every day. Or maybe you realize that you're too critical of others, so you pledge to check yourself when negative thoughts start. When you make these promises, you feel light-hearted, elated, aligned with the real YOU. You're ready to honor your longing for health and happiness, and deep down, you know you're up to the challenge. But after the initial enthusiasm wears off and you hit your first setback, your inner critic raises it's ugly head. The voice gets louder and meaner, and soon self-doubt creeps in. Perhaps you try a different strategy, like setting stricter goals, or maybe you decide the resolution isn't so important after all. Either way, your inspiration fades and your old habits return.

Practice Self-Compassion.   Self-compassion is the degree to which people treat themselves with warmth and understanding.  Having compassion for oneself is really no different than having compassion for others. Think about what the experience of compassion feels like. First, to have compassion for others you must notice that they are suffering. If you ignore that homeless person on the street, you can’t feel compassion for how difficult their experience is. Second, compassion involves feeling moved by others' suffering so that your heart responds to their pain. When this occurs, you feel warmth, caring, and the desire to help the suffering person in some way. Having compassion also means that you offer understanding and kindness to others when they fail or make mistakes, rather than judging them harshly. Finally, when you feel compassion for another (rather than mere pity), it means that you realize that suffering, failure, and imperfection is part of the shared human experience.

Self-compassion involves acting the same way towards yourself when you are having a difficult time, fail, or notice something you don’t like about yourself. Instead of just ignoring your pain, or mercilessly judging and criticizing yourself for various inadequacies or shortcomings, self-compassion means you're kind and understanding when confronted with personal failings. Nobody's perfect. Don't mistake the behavior you want to change for who you are, rather than see it for what it is - a pattern or a habit that's not serving you. You may try to change in ways that allow you to be more healthy and happy, but this is done because you care about yourself, not because you're worthless or unacceptable as you are. 

Maybe most importantly, having compassion for yourself means that you honor and accept your humanness. Things will not always go the way you want them to. You'll encounter frustrations,  make mistakes, bump up against your limitations, fall short of your ideals. This is the human condition, a reality shared by all of us. The more you open your heart to this reality instead of constantly fighting against it, the more you will be able to feel compassion for yourself and all your fellow humans in the experience of life. When you recognize yourself as fundamentally perfect instead of focusing on your flaws, you can see your negative patterns without judgment.

Learn to view failure as a challenge to be overcome.  Don't give up - try again and work harder the next time. Remember to practice self-love and then start over. The truth is that the more times you try to change a behavior, the more likely you are to succeed in making that change.  Repeat your affirmations  - "I can do this!" - rather than focus on thoughts of deprivation. The problem is not the initial mistake, but the misery you create over it.  As a result, this tempts you to turn for comfort to the very thing you're trying to quit, or to give up a goal so you don't have to feel bad about failing. Studies have shown that whether you're trying to lose weight, quit smoking, or start exercising regularly, accepting yourself where you are - and forgiving yourself for setbacks - makes you more likely to succeed.

One of the world's leading researchers on the topic is Kristin Neff, Associate Professor of Human Development at the University of Texas, Austin. She says, "There is a strong belief that we need self-criticism to motivate us. Meaning, 'If I'm not hard on myself, I'll let myself get away with everything.'" This, says Neff, reflects a fundamental misunderstanding about what self-compassion is: being kind and supportive with yourself when you're confronting personal weaknesses, challenges, and setbacks. "Self-compassion goes beyond self-acceptance," she says. "It has an active element of caring, of wanting the best for yourself. It means saying to yourself, 'I want to heal, to be happy, to be healthy,' and knowing that sometimes requires you to make a change." She says that if you view the change you're trying to make as an act of self-care instead of trying to motivate yourself with anger or rejection, you'll be more likely to succeed. When you're self-critical, you treat yourself in ways you would never want to treat someone you love: beating yourself up for every imperfection, punishing yourself for any weakness, and discouraging yourself from going after what you really want. Instead of criticizing yourself, find a positive motivation for change. "Remember that you are a person who deserves unconditional love and deserves not to suffer," she says. "You can make any change from this point of view. Just say to yourself, I'm changing this behavior because I deserve to live a healthier, happier life."

Developing a new way to respond to yourself will take time, effort, and experience to replace your old ways. But as you attain increased self-compassion, you will enjoy a new openness, increased resilience, and sense of well-being that you can enjoy for a lifetime.

"If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we aren't really living." - Gail Sheehy

Tips to Change #4: Have a Support Team

You don’t need scientific validation to prove that the amount of social support we receive, in addition to our thoughts, can lead to improved health and success in reaching our goals. If we have a healthy social support system we have a network that makes us stronger.

Have a Support Team in Place.  Let your family and friends know what you are trying to accomplish and enlist their support. Share your plan with trusted others, not for approval, but to make it more real for you. Whether it be a friend, co-worker or family member, someone else on your journey will keep you motivated and accountable. Maybe it's someone who will go to the gym with you or someone who is also trying to stop smoking. Talk about what you are doing. Sometimes being able to talk to a friend about our feelings is all it takes to turn things around. It's important to have a few people you can count on for support in your life. It takes some work, but cultivating a circle of truly supportive friendships can make a huge difference in how you handle stress and life.  

Consider your Friendships.   If there’s someone in your life who makes you feel bad about yourself, doesn’t share any of your interests or values, or is someone that is preventing you from reaching your goals, it’s perfectly acceptable to put that relationship on the back burner or let it fade altogether.

Consider joining a Support Group until the change is firmly in place.  Being truly listened to and understood can have profound effect on your success in reaching your goals.  Perhaps the thing you're trying to change is embarrassing, or extraordinarily difficult - like addiction - having people with whom to share your struggles and successes makes the work easier and the mission less intimidating.

Consider a Therapist.  Therapist's are uniquely trained to understand the connection between the mind and body, as well as the factors that promote behavior change. Asking for help doesn’t mean a lifetime of therapy; even just a few sessions can help you examine and set attainable goals or address the emotional issues that may be getting in your way.  

Evaluate your Surroundings.  You might need to stay away from places where you're likely to backslide. Shaking things up a bit from the routine also helps you from reverting to the old familiar patterns.

It’s easy to make excuses when we have no one holding us accountable. If we have others counting on us, we’re less likely to let them down. So, find someone who you respect and who can keep you motivated.

"Could we change our attitude, we should not only see life differently, but life itself would come to be different."   - Katherine Mansfield 

Tips to Change #3: Be Present and Honest

This next tip is possibly the hardest. 

Be Present and Honest.  Living your vision means being aware of your choices as you move through the day. Get clear about what you want your life to look and feel like. As you bring the behavior you wish to change to conscious awareness, pay close attention to your thoughts and feelings surrounding this behavior. Notice the physical and emotional responses that your unwanted behavior evokes. Again, start with one particular behavior rather than overhauling your whole lifestyle at once. Practice mindfulness, being in the moment, or a meditation exercise for a few minutes every day. This will train your mind and body to react differently to the usual stimuli that can trigger the unwanted behaviors.

Do Not Distort Reality.  When we live on a conscious level, we become hyper-alert. This insures that our actions, our decisions, and our communications are not influenced by the myriad filters we apply to life. We don’t look through rose colored or black glasses; we choose to look through crystal clear ones that do not distort reality. The key to changing our habits is training ourselves to be more and more conscious of what is really happening. When we do this, we free ourselves from doing the same things over and over again. We learn from our heightened sense of awareness. We begin to see things differently, in a much more objective and clear way.

Notice when you don’t follow through. Ask yourself why, but be careful not to beat up yourself over a lapse. Do you need to alter the motivation or the steps to your new strategy? Was there something that created some doubt in your mind? If so, change it back. The results you get are the product of your thinking, so if you continue to be disappointed at what you achieve, you must be willing to ask yourself some hard questions and change your beliefs. 
This ties right back to the Journaling I mentioned in my last post.  When you actually document something in writing, you make yourself more accountable and you're more likely to do better. 

Keep an Optimistic and Successful Attitude. Changing habits is difficult when we don’t keep ourselves inspired and confident.  This is easier to do when you become present and mindful. Being an optimist or a pessimist boils down to the way you talk to yourself. An optimist views a backslide as a temporary setback, not a cause for giving up. An optimist feels that nothing can hold them back from achieving success and reaching their goals. The good news is that even a pessimist can become an optimist with enough practice. All you need to do is to reframe how you define events. Instead of dwelling on the bad experience, or blaming yourself for the failure, think about the outside influences that may have affected your it. Virtually any failure can be turned into a learning experience, which increases your potential for success in the future.

“The key to change... is to let go of fear.”  - Rosanne Cash

Tips to Change #2: Keep a Journal

As I mentioned in my last post, changing a habit takes practice and commitment.  Write down a realistic plan for the habit you want to change, establish a start date and deadlines, then add them to your daily planner.

Keep a Journal.  This gives you a place to record your thoughts and feelings. It will also help you to stay the course and to see patterns and progress. Journaling can be as simple as a brief paragraph noting what days you performed a certain habit or task and what the outcome was. You can also use a journal to record specifics of your diet and exercise regime as well as how you’re feeling as a whole, and any emotional events that are occurring. It's important to do this daily. The more specific you are with your journaling, the better reference tool it will become.

Start with the Positive.  Each and every day, think of 3 new things you've accomplished, or are grateful for.  This develops a pattern which views positive experiences first.  Even if you've had a horrible day, or have backslid, there is always something to be grateful for.

Make it Nonnegotiable.  Promise yourself that you are absolutely going to do it. When you do it. Where you do it. How you do it.   Making it nonnegotiable is a tool for overcoming backsliding after your initial enthusiasm fades. You don't negotiate with yourself about brushing your teeth. You just do it. Honor yourself, and your commitment.

“Your life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change.” - Jim Rohn

Tips to Change #1: Start Small and Be Specific

Over 90% of New Year’s resolutions will be abandoned within just 3 weeks.  Studies show that it takes anywhere from 3 weeks to 3 months to establish a habit. So what do you do?  

The fact is that many of us spend more time planning a vacation than we do our life. It's impossible to change our habits and make real, lasting change when we put so little effort into it.  In many cases we're trying to break habits that have developed over a long period of time. Replacing old habits with new habits that will eventually become ingrained takes both time and consistent effort.  Often, we give up too soon before the new habit becomes embedded.  You may even be in denial that there is a problem, or a need to change.

If you're skeptical that goal setting has little to do with what happens in your life, then try this simple test. Write a list of all the major events that have happened in your life, this year and last year. Then ask yourself, “How much control did I have over those events?” In most cases, you'll have to admit that you held the major influence of what transpired.
 
Start Small and Be Specific.  New habits require determination, and the setting of specific, attainable goals.  After you’ve identified realistic short and long-term goals, break them down into small, manageable steps that are specifically defined and can be measured.   Generalization doesn't work.  Your goal shouldn't be "I'll do more/less/none of that in 2013", or even "I'll do X one day a week."  Be specific about the date, length of time, whatever.  The more specific you are, the more likely you'll be to make it a routine.

Write them down.  Written goals carry more mental weight than the fleeting goals set only in our minds. Remember you are writing goals down not only for reinforcement, but also to add to them, modify them, and to delete them as you make progress and achieve success in completing them.  

Prioritize the List.  All of us have a “wish list” of things we would like to accomplish. Among them are those things that are really important to us. If you don’t separate out those things that are most important, and usually the hardest, then they often fall by the wayside. Then determine how many hours per week or month you have to work on each of your goals.

Put yourself under pressure.  With a very short list, items tend to get stretched out to fill up the time available. If the list is longer, it provides healthy pressure. On the other hand, don’t set the number of goals so unrealistically high that you set yourself up to fail by feeling that you never accomplish anything.
 
Schedule your goals.  Your life goals will not be a priority unless you put them in your daily planner. Record them in your handheld, laptop, desktop, or whatever best suits your style.  But put it somewhere where it's right in front of you as a constant reminder.

To improve your success, focus on one goal or change at a time. As new, healthy behaviors become a habit, try to add another goal that works toward the overall change you’re striving for.  Be specific about when you’ll start this new strategy and how often you'll do it. Then routinely reevaluate to make sure they are still moving you towards your desired change. Own it. Live like you have already achieved it. 

Change is hard, but it's not impossible.  It is within your power, and your reach.

"Change will never happen when people lack the ability and courage to see themselves for who they are."  - Bryant H. McGill 

Make Positive Change in 2013

change (verb, used without object): to become different; to become altered or modified; to become transformed or converted; to pass gradually into 

What change do you want to see in your life?  Your community?  Your world? 

For many of us, we take the ritual of making resolutions for the new year very seriously.  It's about making a conscious decision about what we want most in our lives and moving towards it. We resolve to change behaviors that relate to the way we take care of ourselves and our relationships. We want to be the fullest expression of our best selves.  But, inevitably it seems, over the course of the year we backslide and these resolutions fall by the wayside, so that year after year, we find ourselves making those same resolutions, over, and over, again.

But real, lasting change can be made.  To create lasting change, there must be an irrevocable shift in perspective.  In addition, we must learn a practical strategy about how to strengthen the behaviors that support and nourish our desires to be healthier, happier, and more connected. 

Don't just sit back and expect the change to happen.  Real, lasting change takes conscience thought and effort.  

Patterns are hard to break, and it unfortunately gets harder as we grow older. Anyone who has ever tried to change has struggled to sustain long-term change. But understanding the relationship between your thinking and your actions gives you more power to stay focused on your objectives and makes it more likely that you'll attain your goals. 

“If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” -Steve Jobs 

In 2013, thoughtfully consider those changes that are most important, or imperative, to your internal and external health.  Be realistic and don't try to tackle everything at once.  Then, use these 5 simple tips to help turn your desires into realities:

Start Small and Be Specific.

Keep a Journal.

Be Present and Honest.

Have a Support Team in Place.

Practice Self- Compassion.

Over the next five weeks, I'll be going through each of these points in depth for more tips to help you stick with those resolutions.  I'm no expert, but I have put a lot of work into my own personal improvement, especially over the past 10 years.  I feel it's important to share some of the lessons I've learned so that anyone reading this can know that they're not alone, and hopefully learn from my mistakes.  

So, how badly do you want to make change? Your “whys” have to be bigger than your “buts”. There is only one YOU, and you are responsible for making yourself better. Make YOU a priority. This means you must learn to love, humor, respect, and value yourself. You have nothing to give others unless you take care of yourself first. When you begin to love, respect, and cherish yourself, you will start to make healthy choices. Behind the veil of fear, doubt, and self-criticism your true self is waiting to emerge. Come to know, love, and express your thoughts, feelings, needs, and desires and commit to pushing past the excuses and obstacles to become the real YOU. 

You have the ability to make lasting change, but you must truly want it and be committed to the process. Remember that no one is perfect. You will have occasional lapses. Be kind to yourself and don’t give up. Acknowledge your mistakes, recover, and get back on track.

You are created to live out your potential. Make choices aligned with your values and surround yourself with supportive people.  Believe that in yourself and the change will come.

“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.”  - Maria Robinson