The last 12 months has given us so much time for reflection that many people are asking themselves, “is there another way?”
Many of us have been forced to stop on our little hamster wheels (even if it was just for a minute) and wondered if the pace we were going at, (or what we’re actually doing) mattered anymore.
Maybe the dream you started chasing when you were twenty-one is not the one you actually want today. You’re looking in the mirror and at 48 realizing that maybe it never was. Your means to an end is now just plain mean and has to end in itself.
Perhaps you’re leading the life that someone else wants for you or maybe you're part of someone else’s dream. Maybe you're simply bored and requiring a new challenge.
In those moments of introspection, you may consider the lifestyle you’re in isn’t the one for you anymore. You may question yourself and be contemplating, how happy you are and if you’re getting what you truly desire out of life?
Sometimes we get so entrenched in our dogmatism that we’ve forgotten what we actually want out of life and as the years have rolled on, we simply got stuck on cruise control…
Trying to figure out change can be difficult because for many it’s easy to know what we don’t want, rather than what we do. Ironically, whilst we’re focused on what we don’t want, we attract more of the same into our lives and therefore the life and happiness we desire gets further and further away, eluding us and making us sadder than a flipflop salesman in February.
I think it’s handy to understand what we don’t want in order to eliminate it from our thinking. Curiously though, when we think about what we do want, we can unconsciously think about what we don’t want too…so you have to watch that.
It’s ironic, you can’t think about what you want without thinking about what you don’t, so whatever is most dominant in your mind will be arriving on your doorstep. That's why it’s so important to have clarity around this.
So, if you’re thinking about being healthy and focused on not wanting to eat that plate of biscuits that’s being passed around the office (i.e., the lounge), only to wonder why all of a sudden you have crumbs all over your jogging bottoms and chocolate round your mouth, you now know why!!!
Removing what we don’t want from our consciousness and replacing it with what you really want, is the solution (a stick of celery in the above scenario, obviously) and easier said than done, but achievable through willpower or simply practicing mindfulness on a daily basis.
Practiced first thing in the morning, before you start your day, mindfulness allows you to slow down your thinking, catches the old or negative thinking and keeps us on track as you create new thinking habits and compound those thoughts over time. They have the ability to help change your thinking and create new, positive behaviours and outcomes we truly desire in our lives.
In a previous life, BC (Before Corona) I was on a road trip to from Florence to Siena, my friend Sandra and I were talking about this, here are some of the questions that were part of our conversation.
I’d love to share them with you…they may help you remove some blocks and give you the focus to appreciate where you are right now and propel you towards what could make you happy – take some time to consider these questions and the commit to paper your thoughts…
STEP 1
· What do you absolutely not want?
· What do you absolutely not want to feel?
I imagine that was simple. What we don’t want comes to us easy but what we want to do is ensure that we appreciate what we really desire…
· What do you want?
· What do you want to feel?
These questions can be applied to relationships, career, money, health & spirituality. It starts with us.
STEP 2
· How do you want others to feel?
· What are you committed to no longer doing that is not serving you?
If you’re being committed to change then honesty goes a long, long way…our ego’s the enemy and it often pulls the wool over our eyes, it drives us with fear and clouds our judgment…
If you’re completely open to change, you take full responsibility for your own feelings and actions, then you can change how you think and feel.
We can choose how we react with others and thereby notice how people start to respond and feel different with us.
STEP 3
Once you know what you want and how you want to feel the hard work begins, you have to be true to yourself and unshakeable with your desire and how you want to feel different…
· 7. How much do you really want this?
· 8. Why do you really want this?
· 9. What sort of level of discipline are you prepared to exercise to get what you want?
· 10. What are you going to do on a daily basis to support this?
· 11. How are you going to monitor this?
STEP 4
Keeping yourself on track on a regular basis helps create the new thinking, habits and behaviours, you can do this with an app, or set yourself a reminder on your phone that pings up several times per day, saying, “How did I do?”
· How will you know when you are successful?
· How will that make you feel?
· What do you want from your life?
· When do you want this?
Visualization combined with an emotion will help you keep what will make you happy out front and central in your mind, picking you up when your down and a constant reminder that the work will be worth it in the end.
Vision boards are very motivational, and I use one on a daily basis to support this.
Change them up regularly and move them around the house or they become part of the furniture.
STEP 5
The final piece of the jigsaw and often a large part of why you’re not where you want to be is letting other people take control of your purpose…if you don’t have your own dream, you’ll simply become a component in someone else’s.
Be strong, get support if you need it, enrol a mentor, friend or join a network of like-minded people to help you stay on track and choose to see clearly what this is going to take…
· Do you have the correct tools for the job?
· Do you understand what you’re going to do entails?
· Are you REALLY doing this?
· What’s stopping you?
Once you realise and remove the blocks and address what’s stopping you. You can begin to affirm that whatever you think will happen, WILL happen and lead you to your last question:
STEP 6
· When are you going to start?
Energy of action follows thought, and you’ll find you’ve got the ability to change your life RIGHT NOW when you act on your new resolution.
I believe firmly in possibilities and I believe that you have what it takes to live a full and bounteous life by taking it one step at a time.
Set your new goals for your future happiness and act on your new resolution today. Don’t wait for the right time. There’s no such thing!
Achieve your goals and as get the job done your self-esteem will grow and you’ll start to feel so much better about your life.
Choose to fast track it, the more you procrastinate and the longer your take it and the harder you make it for yourself –
it’s like going to the bikini waxers on trainee day…five minutes or five hours…It’s your choice…just rip the flipping strips off and get on with it…it might be painful…but doing something painful for a short time in order to get what you want forever is worth the OUCH-Factor!
When it all boils down to it, the only person who’s going to make the change and achieve the success and happiness that you deserve is you…so put the wax in the microwave, get out those waxing strips and get ready and get to work– I believe in you and I know you can do it…
Wax on Wax off…Let’s make it a hair free 2021!!