Tips & Exercises For Living A Better Life Part 2
The Past Is Done But The Future Is Just Waiting To Be Written
The way you think about life influences how you feel about it. Going back to my previous article in the Tips & Exercises For Living A Better Life series I would like to expand on how changing how you think about your life and yourself will in turn change how you feel about life and yourself. Your thoughts and feelings are tightly interlinked.Understanding the effects in your life will provide the insight into why you feel and act in the ways that you do. With this knowledge in hand you then have the ability to choose if you want to change your viewpoints to those that are more likely to bring you the results you want in life. To take an example from Life Coaching: A Cognitive Behavioral Approach by M Keenan and W Dryden - ‘You are anxious about public speaking and avoid it because you fear that your performance will be less than perfect’. If you change the way you think about it you can change the way you feel to ‘Competance and confidence will come through actually doing it. Doing it as well as I can is far more important than doing it perfectly.’ This is wonderful advice for someone like me who is a perfectionist!
There are no ways to quickly achieve personal change or taking away of personal difficulties, but with sustained effort and commitment it is possible to have a successful outcome to challenges and difficulties in your life.By keeping your ways of thinking sharp by getting involved with new ideas, welcoming opposing viewpoints and seeing them as a challenge, not being afraid to change your thinking processes and actively seeking out new opportunities for self improvement are the key skills for re-evaluating and improving your life. Getting ready for change is partly about getting into the right mindset and feeling confident about your promise to yourself to achieving each goal you set on the way to becoming the new you. These goals don’t have to be anything mountainous, getting the little things right is just as important as the larger things. It’s also important to understand each stage you go through on your journey to achieving your goals.
Tips & Exercises For Living A Better Life Part 1
Life is always evolving, what is important is that we equip ourselves properly to evolve with it in a way that suits us best and keeps us content. Life also goes in cycles, times of good and times that are bad, what we need to do is expand on the positives in our life while reducing and spending less time on the negatives.
The unexamined life is not worth living - Socrates
To grow as people we must continually question, we by human nature question everything anyway - we question ourselves and those around us. It is not only natural but essential that we question everything, otherwise how will we know if things are working or can be improved. If we didn’t question we would live in a constant state of acceptance, taking everything - good and bad - that gets thrown our way. A handy first step to living a better more fulfilling life is to wake up in the morning and set goals for the day ahead. What is it you really need and want to get done in the upcoming day? For example, this morning I woke up and my goal for today was that I want to embrace it with a positive attitude and make it count, just like I want to make every day count.I have an awkward meeting coming up this morning, I spent a few minutes when I woke up playing it out in my head, what I want to say, ways of keeping calm etc. I have now thought about it as much as I can and have put it to the back of my mind until I walk into the meeting and feel much more confident about it as a result.We are all products of our thoughts, if I think about falling to pieces in the meeting I probably will because the thought is already there and our actions follow our thoughts. Before we act, there has to be the thought of taking action first, whether we are aware of it or not.
Similarly, if I think of myself as a morose, miserable person then my behavior will follow that way of thinking. The first step to being a happy, confident person is to picture yourself in your mind how you would like to be. How many times have you heard the old advice to look in the mirror and tell yourself you are successful, happy, confident etc? Or to tell yourself 10, 20, 50 times that you are beautiful, likeable and content? This is just another way of creating an image in your head of how you would like to be so your actions follow that way of thinking. It’s a way of reshaping your thoughts so you will be whatever you are telling yourself you are.
There is way too much to cover in one article so I am going to break it all down into parts. Each part of this series is going to cover one of the following:
- What makes you happy? How to increase doing the things you do like and spend less time doing the things you don’t enjoy
- Identify areas for change
- Examine personal motivations. Look at personal beliefs and values
- How to create the right mindset for change to achieve success in obtaining what it is you want for the future
- I’ll introduce some fresh approaches to helping you perform at your most efficient on a daily basis. Looking at ways of mastering your own destiny and engaging fully in everything you do.
- We’ll take a look at ways of how to look your best and feel your most confident.
- Look at personal fitness and diet plans that suit you on a long term basis so you can get the body and the energy you want and keep it for life.
- We’ll look at ways that you can assess your finances - Do you have enough money? How much would be enough? I’ll help you figure out how much you want and ways of making sure you get it. There are different ways of saving money, increasing earning power, what to do when you achieve financial security and how to put a stop to your money worries once and for all.
- We’ll take a look at how you choose to spend your time with others, how you interact with those around you and the effect those relationships have on you.
I am actively involved with this site and update daily, check back tomorrow for the next part, or even better still click on the subscribe link in the upper right menu to subscribe to my RSS feed so you’ll never miss an installment, or for greater convenience enter your email address to receive each update direct to your email inbox. It is NOT a newsletter, you can unsubscribe at any time and I guarantee your email address will never be passed on.Until next time…
Being Proactive Rather Than Reactive
There are two ways people can veer towards when faced with challenges or events, they can be proactive or reactive, most people being reactive. Being reactive means taking action only after the event, while proactive means to be responsive before the event. Both are vigilant responses, when a person is in a reactive state they are forever defensive and anticipating. Proactive people are always busy and alert. In a perfect balance you would automatically know when to be either reactive or proactive. If one was always in a state of reactivity they would be swamped with the negativity of their own mindset, a person stuck in proactive mode would soon burn out from the stress of always being on high alert.I am going to take one scenario that I know a lot of people can relate to, as a self employed single mother I know this applies to me too. How often does it happen when you have a to do list a mile long but events conspire against you and you constantly feel like you are being pulled in different directions while not geting anything done that you need to.
Say you had to spring clean your entire house or you had to file a big influential report within days but the phone kept ringing, people call round, or it’s that particular day when you have a lot of ‘must reply to’ emails hit your inbox. A reactive response would be to get busy cramming in everything you needed to do at the end of the day when you are short of time and short of energy after spending the day doing other comparitively menial tasks.
A much more appropriate method of responding to these distractions would be to act proactively. Let the answer machine take messages from phone callers so you can sort and prioritise who you need to get back to once your work is done, politely drop into conversations with friends that you will be busy on such and such day/s to make it known that personal callers at the house will not be convenient for you and turn reminders off for your email.
If you feel like you are constantly being pulled in multiple directions you need to think about setting boundaries about what you deem is and isn’t acceptable, ie friends calling round on certain days, communication is key here.
Rather than acting reactively to pressures made on your time by other people by getting stressed or upset after your plans have been thrown into disarray, be proactive by thinking in advance what distractions may occur and what you can do to avoid them. How proactive you are depends on your own personal boundaries and how strict and regimented you want to be.
Learning What Works From Those Who Are Successful
A study of successful psychotherapists which led to the formation of the now commonly used technique of NLP (neurolinguistic programming) found that they all had similar traits in common.I have been reading about this with great interest as I feel there is a lot to be learnt from looking at other people, taking inspiration from what they do well and avoiding making the same mistakes that they may have made.I think the traits the successful psychotherapists shared can apply and be learnt from by everyone, they are not mutually exclusive to those working in the psychotherapy field.
Those who were successful were found to be proactive not reactive. This is a very important point and one which I will be discussing in much further detail in future articles.
They were very flexible in their behaviour and their approach, not staying rigid and keeping to one set of beliefs. This allowed fluidity in their thinking and their actions. It also allowed them to keep trying different approaches until finding one that worked, avoiding the one size fits all mentality. By keeping sight of the end goal they wanted and working with precision and purpose kept them much better focused and achieved better results.They enjoyed challenges rather than dreaded them, seeing them as opportunities to learn.This last point I find very useful as it is so easy to fear challenges and find them daunting.
I remember reading a book a while ago The Testament of Gideon Mack
I’m Sorry - The Art of a Good Apology
We have all done it, said things we shouldn’t, spoken behind someones’ back and got caught out. Said hurtful things in the heat of the moment and other things we’re ashamed of ourselves about. The only right thing to do in this situation would be to apologise. Yet a lot, if not most, people don’t know where to start when it comes to apologising. What makes for a good apology? How does one go about apologising in the right way. The last thing we would want is to botch our apology and make the situation worse.Things to avoid when apologising is making the other person responsible for their hurt feelings. Don’t ever say things like:
- I am sorry *you* misunderstood what I said
- I am sorry *you* didn’t understand that I was only joking with you
- I wouldn’t have said it if I had known *you* would take it so seriously
All these things will make the situation worse and the hurt person will respond angrily and the cycle will continue.
Take responsibility for your actions when you have said or done things to upset others. Don’t try and pass off the upset as a result of the other persons over sensitivity, lack of understanding or inability to automatically know what it is you were trying to say.
After saying ‘I’m sorry’ you should always say ‘I’ not ‘you’, therefore a correct way to apologise would be
- I am sorry I didn’t make myself clearer
- I am sorry I said what I did
- I am sorry if I didn’t make it clear I was only joking
- I am sorry I hurt you
- I am sorry for upsetting you and making you angry
Blaming the other person by following the apology with a ‘you’ only prolongs an upsetting episode. It is hard to swallow ones pride and admit you have made a mistake, but a prompt sincere apology taking responsibility for your actions will always be more likely to lead to resolvement, forgiveness and better relationships.
Me Special?! HA! How to Receive Special Treatment
There are a few simple techniques that can help you get what you want.First of all be likeable. When requesting something aim to get the listener on side beforehand. If they like you they are much more likely to agree to a favour. Asking someone how they are, what they have been doing, finding common ground and interests with them all helps to build and instant connection.You can increase your chances of having your favour granted if you are courteous, make the person you’re asking feel good about saying yes. Don’t be demanding, begin with a softly softly approach and always emphasise how much you appreciate their efforts. A request sounds less like an imposition if you think of it as problem solving, this will stop you from feeling uncomfortable and encourages the other person to focus on a positive outcome. Explain what you would like and then ask the other persons’ opinion on what would be the best way to achieve it.
If all the above fails you can always try making one last direct appeal. Ask them if there is anything you can do to make them change their mind. You may be able to prompt them into telling you what it is exactly that you need to do but if the answer is nothing then be gracious and accept that on this occasion you have been unable to achieve what you wanted.
What works for you when asking for something? Share your tips in the comment box as I would be very interested to know.
Backup Or Risk Losing It All
Now for some advice that I give to everyone when it comes to computers but failed to follow myself this time.
Last week my laptop died on me and on it were lots of pictures and within those pictures contained memories. Most of those pictures were backed up except for about 200 holiday photos from my last beach holiday with my daughter, some of them really excellent. I especially loved the pictures of my little girl after she had had her hair braided. For the first three days of the holiday she nagged me incessantly to have her hair braided as it seemed to be all the rage amongst the little girls where we were staying.
I took so many photos of her newly braided hair as she was so excited and looked so adorable, and now those photos are gone along with the rest of the photos from that holiday because I had failed to back them up.
I tell people I know with computers to backup all the time, I can’t believe I was so stupid as to have not backed up those pictures and the special memories they held. Those pictures were priceless and irreplaceable.
There are so many online backup facilities, external hard drives that are falling in price all the time and not to mention the trusty blank DVDs that are so abundant these days. Really there is no excuse not to back up religiously. Please don’t make the same mistake I made and keep putting it off because the day may come when you lose something precious of yours due to hardware failure.
But to quote something my daughter told me ‘Don’t worry mummy, we’ll just have to go on another holiday and take some more photos. It doesn’t matter. I’ll draw some for you’
Just an example of another occasion when my six year old puts everything perfectly into perspective for me.
Here are some online data storage facilities where you can back up your important data and retrieve from any computer connected to the internet:
Safe Data Storage - 30 day free trial
Get Out Of Your Head
No I don’t mean to get out of your head on drink or drugs, what I mean is - when was the last time you looked up and really opened your eyes?
It’s so easy to get bogged down with the small details, the day to day stresses of merely living life. Think back to the last time you opened your mornings mail and you had nothing but bills, it was hard to think of nothing else for the rest of the day right? Or when you had to meet a tight deadline to get a report in to your anal boss.
We can get caught up so easily in lifes stresses that we can’t see the wood for the trees, we miss the little special moments that pass us by.
Next time really open your eyes and really look around. Go for a walk instead of a drive, we see so much more when we are on foot. You may discover a little park you didn’t know existed. A cute little shop that you can go in and spend half an hour looking around. Try out a new cafe with foreign food, try something different. There is no better cure to being stuck in a rut than breaking free and doing something different.
Take time to look at the trees, flowers and bushes in neighbours gardens, try on clothes that weren’t previously your style - hell, you may even discover a whole new style for yourself. A change is as good as a rest isn’t it?
Set aside an hour to sit in your garden or a local park, clear your mind and instead focus on what you see in front of you. When our minds are clear the answers to what is niggling us have a chance to enter our consciousness.
Meditate, dance, sing, run, jog, skip - do something different.
What I mean by get out of your head is to release yourself from the little thoughts that bog you down, get out of your head and see the bigger picture.
Slow down, give your stomach a chance - Healthy Eating Habits
Life moves so fast for most of us, there is always something to do, somewhere to be and as a result our healthy eating habits can take a nose dive. Personally, I had an awful habit of eating in front of my computer that I have since broken, but there is always the temptation to read a website or check emails while eating.
By eating fast we don’t give our teeth a chance to break down the food ready for digestion in our stomachs, which is what our teeth are there to do, we don’t just use them for chewing our food down into swallowable sizes. Chewing our food is the start of the digestion process, the food gets broken down into small pieces ready to be broken down further by the enzymes further down the digestion process.
Also if we eat too fast we don’t get a chance to actually *taste* our food. Since breaking my habit of sitting in front of the computer to eat I have made a point of sitting down at the dining table and I have noticed I am tasting flavours I hadn’t realised before, it also gives me quiet time to mull over the day so far and to plan ahead. A handy tip is to chew your food 20 times before swallowing, I know it sounds boring and monotonous, that is what I thought to begin with too, but it gives me a chance to really enjoy what I am eating, after all I have spent quite a while preparing and cooking it, and also it really helps you to digest your food properly so your stomach doesn’t get bogged down and make you feel weary and tired, also you get maximum nutritional benefits.
To Live By
I found this quote online, I can’t remember where unfortunately, but the words have stayed with me and I wanted to share it with you
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
