Creating a Sense of Gratitude in your Life. Every Day.

To start the year off right, try these simple practices to cultivate gratitude.  When you're feeling blue or frustrated, use them as tools to get you back to a positive head space.

Stop Complaining.  About people, situations and events that make you unhappy, sad or depressed. Nobody can make you unhappy.  No situation can make you sad or miserable unless you allow it to.

Commit To Your Goals.  When we look for positivity in the little things that make our lives worthwhile, we leave no room for negativity and our goals come to the forefront. Instead of recounting all events of the day, filter out only the positive ones and make a note of them. It could be anything trivial, from your bus arriving on time, your mom cooking a delicious breakfast, to remembering to pay the bills on time. You would not believe how this helps you achieve your goals — by clearing the mind.

Be Kind.  To yourself and others.  It's scientifically proven to make you feel good.  Helping someone selflessly releases serotonin in your brain and hence makes you feel good about yourself almost instantly. Try doing one act of kindness every day to flush out the toxins of depression from your system.

Practice Forgiveness.  Hatred is a negative feeling and harboring it will have nothing but negative effects on your well-being. Stop thinking about the hateful emotion/person and let it go. Remember to forgive yourself too.  

Release The Past.  When you find yourself thinking that the past looked so much better than the present and the future looks so frightening - Stop.  Remember that the present is all you have.  Be present in everything you do and enjoy life. After all life is a journey not a destination. Have a clear vision for the future, prepare yourself, but always be present in the now.

Be Optimistic.  Treat failure as an opportunity to learn a new and better lesson from life.  Never give up trying. Once you start harboring an optimistic attitude towards life, success will automatically follow.

Don't be Afraid to Dream.  Dreams motivate, inspire and expand our sense of self. They also make us happy because they give our lives a sense of purpose. Happy people usually love what they do, and if they don’t, they love who they are. Dreams remind us who we are.

Care For Your Body. Your physical condition has a direct connection with your well-being. A fit body and healthy mind is reflective of happiness. Start working towards the
health of your physical, mental and emotional energy by caring for your body.  Exercise and meditation help calm your nerves, soothe your mind and elevate your mood.

Give.  Cultivate a habit of sharing with others — your money, knowledge, service, wisdom, care, love.  Giving has many unexpected benefits from attracting more happiness into your life, to inspiring others, and changing the lives of those you touch. In the end the whole world is made into a better place. Ask, “how can I serve?” Pay it forward. Give freely.

By practicing these steps daily and being conscious of them, you will learn gratitude at a level you could never appreciate before. You’re made out of love, and there’s an opportunity at every corner to show it.  Excerpted from wake Up World

 

“Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude.”  - Denis Waitley

Overcoming Fear of Change: Step 4

Step 4 - Be flexible. Be flexible and available to take on any new task that might accompany the change.  Approach change with an open attitude of learning.  The more you know, the less you'll fear it.  Become an expert on that "new" thing.  Remember that it's just as much about the process as it is about the result, so enjoy the process.

If you’re on the fence about a big decision, then you might be worried about getting locked into a position that you can’t escape from.  Think about it a different way. New choices rarely limit your options.  In fact, new pursuits often open up even more opportunities. One of the best things about going after important goals with passion is that they open up chances and options that you never could have expected in the beginning.  If you pursue the interesting opportunities that arise along the path to your goal, then you can be sure that you’ll always have choices.  Excerpted from LifeHack.org

If you never start, you'll never get anywhere. You will fail, you will make mistakes, but that’s a part of the journey.  Failure is an inevitable way station on the journey to success.  Being flexible will allow you to wrap around, under, over and through the obstacles in your path.


“Every accomplishment starts with the decision to try.” – Unknown

 

 

 

Overcoming Fear of Change: Step 3

Step 3 - Stay positive. Fear can come from creating negative (or even catastrophic) scenarios about the future in your mind.  We often create so much negativity around something that it's important to step back and ask ourselves a few questions - What are my negative beliefs about this change?  How many times have I successfully navigated change in the past? What worked in how I handled the change?

Be curious, rather than being scared. Be curious about what a change would mean. And focus on the facts, instead of the worst-case scenarios you are congering in your head.  So often we worry more about getting rid of fear of change than learning how to live with it and move on.  Just accept that you can't control the external events in your life and embrace what you can control – your attitude.

Another way to stay positive is to reduce your stress. Meditation and spending time outdoors are great for that.  Doing either, our better yet both, will make you feel more calm, relaxed, and peaceful.

Remember that change is an opportunity. Have faith in yourself and your ability to be resilient.

 

Overcoming Fear of Change: Step 2

Step 2 - Acknowledge your fears. It may seem obvious, but acceptance of your own vulnerability is necessary to move through fear.  You need to learn how to use fear, instead of having fear use and control you.  Part of this acceptance is clarifying a few important facts in your own mind -

Accept that you’ll never have all the information
We often avoid making important decisions because we want more information before we make a tough call.  Research is important, but don't let it become a stalling tactic.  Make the best decision you can at the time and continue to move forward.

Trust yourself
We make all sorts of excuses for not making important changes, but the limiting belief that often underlies many of them is that we don’t trust ourselves.  We’re worried that the uncharted territory of the future will be too much for us to handle.  Think about it - you've dealt with unexpected change before.  And in the end, it probably all worked out fine.  Have faith that you can handle it again.

Anticipate the worst that could happen
I'm not suggesting that you dwell on it, but have a backup plan just-in-case.  Don't be caught like a deer in the headlights, be a Lara Croft or a MacGyver and troubleshoot your way through anything.  When you actually sit down and think about the worst case scenario, you’ll realize that there are actually very few risks that you can’t recover from.  Once you realize the worst isn’t that bad, you’ll be ready to crush it.

Accept your feelings and seek support
When you’re going through a transition, it is natural to feel uncomfortable.  Expect and accept your feelings and reach out to others to share your experiences, reactions, and emotions. Talking with your partner or your friends will make you feel better and remind you that you’re not alone.

Try this exercise: When you fear change, write down your fears on paper so you have them in an objective form and can stop dwelling on them. Then go through each one and jot down what you would do in the event that fear came to pass. Knowing you have a backup plan can be a key to navigating past the fear.

What is familiar is comfortable. Even though the familiar might be worse than the unfamiliar, we still tend to hold on to it, because going into the unknown is uncomfortable. Having the courage to go into the unfamiliar can be tough, but not impossible. It requires a shift in perspective. Become curious. Become an explorer of life. This is an adventure.


“Courage is the power to let go of the familiar.” – Raymond Lindquist

Overcoming Fear of Change: Step 1

Navigating the twists and turns of life requires changes - changes in where you live, new relationships, life-stage transitions, changes in behavior, changes in attitude and many other modifications that typically bring some level of stress. How many times have you found yourself dreading any change - whether major or minute - because the uncertainty ahead was nearly too much to bear?

And how many times have you gone forward despite that uncertainty and realized your dread was worse than the actual change? Realizing that change is often necessary, and totally manageable, is the key to overcoming the fear of it.

One trick to overcoming this fear is to practice breaking out of your standard routine. The more routines you have in your life, the harder it is to embrace life-enhancing changes. Routine can be good, but it can also be energy-zapping and provide a false sense that the norm is what's best.  This may not be the case.  Even athletes know it's best to mix up their routine if that want to get stronger because otherwise your muscles begin to get lazy.  Change will actually help you grow, as it often does in your emotional life as well.

Step 1 - Acknowledge the change. Recognizing and accepting change will be the first steps toward managing it.  Then, make a conscious effort.  It sounds simple, but one of the of the big reasons we don’t make change is because we don’t try. And we don’t try because then it’s easy to make excuses for why we don’t get what we want.  Face reality and be honest with yourself.

Here are some ideas to help keep the fear of change at bay by limiting the routines you perform in life. Use them to stimulate your own ideas:

• Eat lunch at different times each day, and where you eat lunch. Can you vary the routes you take to and from the workplace?
• Try a different cuisine every week. It's fun, and tasty!
• Visit somewhere new every month. This could be a new restaurant, museum, theatre, park, country, whatever!
• Break the TV routine - do something new at least a few nights a week.  Read a book, take a class, go to the gym, work on something artistic, anything!

Take it slow by making small adjustments to make life less of a routine and to slowly get the mind to accept changes when they come.  It’s so important to demonstrate to the subconscious that you are in control and that you will not let fear of change control you.

The bottom line is, change isn’t going anywhere—so you’ll need to learn how to overcome your fear of it.  Change is life, so embrace it, and grow.

Moving On

All relationships end  - some with separation, some with divorce, some with death.  This means that in entering a relationship we implicitly accept that the other will leave us, or that we will leave them.  Grief is a normal and healthy part of this ending.  At the end of a relationship and afterward, we remember the grief we felt during the relationship and not only that we're feeling at the end.  So ironically, the worse a relationship was, the more we will grieve.  Often too, we're grieving for more than this ending, but the many others that are stacked inside us waiting for their chance to be cried out.

Grief hurts, but don't avoid it by partying or jumping right into another relationship.  Grief gives us impetus for growth and helps to ensure that we won't make the same mistakes twice.  Therapy is crucial during this time - it can assist us in addressing, processing, and resolving issues.  Since we're never mourning only the current issue, therapy will also help us work on buried issues from the past.  If you've been left, it's normal to have doubts about your will to live and your lovability, or even to want revenge.  And it's normal to talk to anyone who will listen.

Grief can't be willed away.  Don't attempt to let it go, but rather let it happen.  Allow it - yourself - to take all the time needed, regardless of friends who tell you to "get over it."  The scars left by brief can be ugly for years or can heal reasonably well.  The outcome depends on how well we work through the process.

It can be incredibly helpful to write letters.  These letters should never be sent, but are therapeutic through the process.  This is especially sage advice if you have the nagging need to tell your partner "one last thing" or give them "one bit of advice" which is often just a way to manipulate them to whatever response you desire.

"We become whole through relationships and through letting go of relationships."  - Sigmund Freud

 

Dealing with Change at Work

Many of us desperately crave change at work, and yet we’re uncomfortable and terrified when it occurs. But change is inevitable (and necessary for businesses to survive and thrive), so you’ll need to learn how to overcome those fears.

“There are many people who fear change at work for a variety of reasons,” says Michael Kerr, an international business speaker, author and president of Humor at Work. “Fear of failure, fear of success, fear of looking stupid and fear of the unknown.”

Most employees respond to internal changes in their work environment with nervousness and resistance because change for most people “raises questions about contribution, and they associate it with negativity,” says Sara Menke, the founder and chief executive of Premier, a boutique staffing firm in San Francisco.  “They think, What am I doing wrong to make my employer think that things should change?”  Excerpted from Forbes

It’s perfectly normal and healthy to be a bit fearful, confused or unsettled by workplace changes at first. The unhealthy part occurs with inappropriate or unhelpful responses. Fighting change or presenting a negative attitude will not help you transition through the process. The intelligent and mature strategy is to look for avenues to adjust to the change and thrive in the new environment.

It's also helpful to talk with colleagues, your partner, or your friend.  This will not only make you feel better, but remind you that you’re not alone. And designate “worry time.” Worrying interferes with your productivity and overall mood, so don’t let it spill over into every part of your work day. If you’re worried about the changes, designate a time each day when you’re going to focus on those fears - preferably outside of the work day. But also use that time to overcome those fears.

Change is hard - hard enough when it's self-imposed, but much more nerve-wracking when it's brought on from where you earn your livelihood. By applying these insights, you really can navigate change gracefully and use it to your advantage.

How To Change Your Life: Step 5

Step 5 - Enjoy the change. If you don’t do this, you might as well give it up. If the daily action feels tedious and chore-like, then you're doing it wrong. You've got to find a way to enjoy the change, or you won’t stick to it and make it a permanent habit. Habits can't be changed changed overnight - remember, it takes 30 days to 3 months to establish a new habit. Check out this TED talk to hear more.

It can be quite a process to change the way you have done things your entire life. Don’t give up and don’t get down on yourself if you aren’t always able to follow through. Consider each relapse a chance to learn what to do more effectively next time. Trust that change will happen when you really want it to.  You may doubt yourself when it comes to following to your heart, but the more you do it, the easier it becomes. The sooner you embrace an attitude of curiosity, the sooner you will start trusting yourself. So what if you make mistakes or relapse? Who cares?

Make a commitment to yourself and really find that motivation to make change a priority. Stick with it, and keep working to recondition behaviors. Notice what’s working and what’s not working. When it is not working, change your approach. Keep changing until you finally achieve what you are committed to.

What daily change will you make today?

“Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.” – Benjamin Spock

How To Change Your Life: Step 4

Step 4 - Have consequences.  One of the best motivators for following through on your new daily habits is to have consequences.  These need to be determined by you, and be something significant enough to be a real motivator.  Maybe it's giving up something you really love (a series episode or a favorite food), donating to a cause you hate (opposing political candidate), or creating some sort of humiliation (singing karaoke to a crowd or dressing like a freak for a day).  Think of it as a type of "grounding" you had when you were a kid.  Remember, those tactics worked!
  The consequences can also be positive — a big reward each week if you don’t miss a day. Make the consequences bigger if you miss two straight days, and huge if you miss three.

"Nothing is worth doing unless the consequences may be serious." - George Bernard Shaw

Effective consequences need to be proactively built into the contract, and it's best to put them in writing. Post them. Review them and give general reminders when you sense that a little prevention could be valuable. 

Having consequences is also a great strategy in wise decision making. Remember that every single decision you have ever made, or will ever make, has consequences. Once you learn to evaluate your decisions based on consequences, all the other considerations fall neatly into place. All you need to do is think before you decide. Regardless of your past decision making abilities, you can quickly become a wise decision maker. This simple practice will help you avoid untold pain and regret.

What daily change will you make today?

"There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences."  - P. J. O'Rourke

How To Change Your Life: Step 3

"And now we welcome the new year, full of things that have never been."   - Rainer Maria Rilke

Step 3 - Be accountable. How you do it don’t matter - you can post to Facebook or Twitter, email someone, mark it on a calendar, report in person - just make sure you’re accountable each and every day, not each month. If you get public with it, and know eyes are on you, you'll be more likely to stick with the change.  Having another person out there that is expecting you to be updating them on your success can make all the difference in how you plan to tackle those goals.

When we're accountable to someone else for doing what we've said we would do, we get stuff done.  When we tell our boss we are going to get that proposal done by the end of the week, we do it.  When we tell a client that we’ll write that report, we deliver.  When we promise our kids we’ll throw them a birthday party, we keep our word. However, when we tell ourselves – and no one else – that we’ll ask for that raise, quit smoking, or start exercising, we are less likely to do it. It can be as simple as asking a friend, a colleague, a spouse to help you.  Make sure you're specific in telling them - what you've committed to and what you'd like them to do if you don't follow through.

Accountability cultivates integrity and responsibility. It makes you face the truth and helps you to make the necessary changes in your life, and helps to make those changes more sustainable.

Another great way to make yourself accountable is to team up with someone with similar goals. Mutual accountability is extraordinarily effective, as demonstrated by groups like Weight Watchers and Alcoholics Anonymous. Another method is to use a website like StickK which helps you share your goals.  You can also put money on the line and designate the recipient of the money if you don't achieve your goal - it could be a friend, a charity you like, or even more motivating, a charity you hate.

What daily change will you make today?

"If I could give one tip for people - it's not an exercise or nutrition regimen. It's to walk your talk and believe in yourself, because at the end of the day, the dumbbell and diet don't get you in shape. It's your accountability to your word."   - Brett Hoebel

How To Change Your Life: Step 2

Step 2 - One Change at a Time. We need to accept that things don’t change overnight, that there’s nothing wrong with us, and that other people’s changes weren’t as easy as they might seem. A common element of failure to change is that we take on too much at once. Do yourself a favor and start with one change for a month before considering a second. Only add another change if you were successful at the first.

"If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading."  - Lao Tzu

As a society, we glorify huge life overhauls. TV shows like The Biggest Loser give us the impression that we can completely transform ourselves in a relatively short period of time. This kind of rapid change is not only unrealistic, but unsustainable.  The problem is that we tend to deceive ourselves  - "I'll start on Monday!" and "I'll never do that again!"  The biggest problem with these types of self deceptions is that they don't really address the problem. The focus is on the end result instead of on the individual habits we need to change in order to transition from our current lifestyle to the lifestyle we actually want. And that’s the key: transition. The single biggest reason our attempts to change fail is because we don't give ourselves the time needed to transition.

So, start small.  Remember, one change at a time.  The time you spend daily can be as little as 10 minutes, but commit to it every day.  And try and stick with the same time every day.  This is often how our minds works with habit anyway, and makes it just that much easier to remember a new routine.

What daily change will you make today?

 

"A year from now you will wish you had started today." - Karen Lamb 

How To Change Your Life: Step 1

As the end of the year approaches, I'm beginning to reassess where I am with my goals for the year.  Did I actively work towards them?  What were my successes, and failures?  What changes do I want in my life in 2014?  Who do I want to be?

We are what we repeatedly do everyday – our habits.  We have positive habits, that empower us and are aligned with our goals, and we had bad, or even destructive habits, that prevent us from having the success and happiness we want. Most people don’t know that it takes at least 21 days to create a habit.  Most of us haven’t consciously created the habits we currently have.  We often just inherited habits from our peers or developed them at an early age.  

But, what if you could consciously create new habits that would compound over a period of time and transform your life?  The answer is - You can.  Ask yourself - What is something that I want to change in your life? What am I unhappy with? What would I like to add to my life that would enhance it? Whatever that area is, if you want to create lasting change, you need to make a commitment to consistently condition yourself the way you want to be for at least 30 days for it to become habitual.

Start by asking yourself - What do I want to be?  Write it down.  You can set a goal you'd like to achieve in a week, a year, or 10 years from now, but the you must make a daily change, or you'll never establish new habits to achieve your goal. You can make daily and monthly goals too and the steps to achieve your ultimate goals, but you must daily changes. The truth is, if you’re not willing to make it a daily change, you don’t really want to change your life in this way. 

So ask yourself - If my life had absolutely no limits and I could have it all and do whatever I wanted, what would I choose to have and what would I choose to do? Describe your ideal lifestyle. List what you would do throughout the day if you knew that you were bound to be successful, what kind of person you would be, how much money you would earn, and where you would live. This question allows you to realize who you would truly want to be if there were no limits. Establish a clear and specific outcome.

So, do you know who you really want to be?  OK then, now let's talk about how to get there...

Step 1 - Select specific patterns to break and replace with new behavior
When you decide that you’re not going to stand for your current situation any longer, then it’s time to devise a plan to change your behavior. The first step is to replace the old habits with new, healthy behavior. Whenever you feel the urge to engage in your old habits or are in a situation that triggers the behavior, incorporate your new behavior pattern. For example, maybe you have a drink every night when you come home from work, and want to slow down. When you come home you need something to replace that simple habit of going to the fridge and pouring a glass of wine or beer. You must have something to fill the void and minimize initial feeling that you're missing out. What new behavior can you introduce to replace your old habit?  Can you introduce a new habit you'd like to form - some stepping stone towards achieving your larger goals - into this gap?  Maybe your goal is to get fit, or start a creative hobby. This is a great chance to not only fill the void, but eliminate your initial feelings of loss.

What daily change will you make today?

"When you lose something in your life, stop thinking it's a loss for you... it is a gift you have been given so you can get on the right path to where you are meant to go, not to where you think you should have gone."  - Suze Orman

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

The Hardest Part

Sometimes, the hardest part of a project is the act of starting.  

"There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth…not going all the way, and not starting."   - Buddha

After all these years of living, learning, growing, hard choices, changing, learning, changing again... I'm ready to begin anew. 

For me, this start is about taking many of the things I care about and compiling them into one, clear story.  I do this not only for myself, to clarify my path, but in answer to friends, acquaintances, and perhaps now strangers too that ask why I'm so happy, or how I can enjoy living so simply, or afford to travel for almost 3 years.

This blog is about what really matters to me.

I'll admit that creative pursuits, backpacking, and travel in the developing world top that list too, and I know that it's all tied together in the whole of what satisfies my soul.  But here, I'm going to focus on things that are larger than myself.  Things that affect you, and me, and the entire planet.  I'm talking about much more than sustainability, but overall quality of life.  Don't worry, I'll make it as interesting and fun as possible.  

“Whatever you dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.” - Goethe

And it begins again

"Talent is an amalgam of high sensitivity; easy vulnerability; high sensory equipment (seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting—intensely); a vivid imagination as well as a grip on reality; the desire to communicate one's own experience and sensations, to make one's self heard and seen."

Uta Hagen (b. 1919), U.S. actor. Respect for Acting, pt. 1, ch. 1 (1973).

"If we confine ourselves to one life role, no matter how pleasant it seems at first, we starve emotionally and psychologically. We need a change and balance in our daily lives. We need sometimes to dress up and sometimes to lie around in torn jeans."

Faye J. Crosby (20th century), U.S. professor. Juggling, ch. 4 (1991).