So Much Happier Blog
Your "Get Up and Go"
“Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.”
We all have chores and tasks we avoid until they’re absolutely necessary. These are usually either the ones we’re not good at, or the ones that for whatever reason are just the least fun to tackle. It can be agonizing to try to scrape together the motivation to confront them head on, and I was staring down the barrel of one of these recently, so I thought I’d share a few ideas for handling such things. Here are my suggestions:
· Remind yourself of why you’re going to do this task. How will you and others benefit from the results of it?
· Remember where it fits into the big picture of your larger goals. Will it make other tasks easier, or even make new things possible?
· Imagine having the results now. How will that feel? Will you be relieved? Excited about what comes next? Grateful to yourself for getting it done? Proud of yourself for your achievement and contribution? Euphoric that you don’t have to dread it anymore?
· Here’s a little secret for you: One of the most effective ways to motivate yourself is to learn to enjoy results before you’ve actually created them. This may seem impractical, but it’s actually just the opposite; indulging in this creates happy, enthusiastic feelings that you can use to go about your daily tasks with a better attitude, more enjoyment, and less resistance. It’s an invaluable skill that you will understand better the more you practice it
· Take note of which result, of the ones you imagined, most motivates you. Is it that your task will make things better for someone else? Is it your own future relief that makes you feel the best? Is it having others see and acknowledge your success that excites you? Knowing what tends to motivate you most reliably is truly empowering, because once you know, you can automatically prime yourself for action by imagining how great it will be to have that result whenever it's time to take action
· When you know you’ll be taking on something you resist, promise yourself a reward of some sort, if that helps you. It can be something as simple as allowing yourself some guilt-free time to enjoy what might normally be a guilty pleasure, like an embarrassingly terrible T.V. show. How about a nice long catch-up with a friend who you haven’t found time for lately? Whatever you can look forward to so that you keep your task moving ahead will fit the bill
Re-engaging your sense of purpose regarding your task is a powerful beginning. You deserve to have those happy results, so take a few minutes to connect with what’s important about getting this done. It’s so much more helpful to motivate yourself through anticipation than through attempting to guilt or bully yourself into action. Give it a try and see how it goes. You may have to repeat this a few times in order to really get yourself on board for something really difficult, but making this a daily habit is a good thing. I think you’ll find that the minutes you spend here will buoy your willingness to take on those more dreaded tasks in surprising and enjoyable ways.
When You Assume...
“One of the most sincere forms of respect is actually listening to what another has to say.”
Ok folks, here we go with more on communication skills. This is an area in which improvement gains you greater power in all areas of your life, so time devoted to it is never wasted. Unless you're a hermit on a mountaintop, you need these skills every day, so we're going to stick with the subject until we've covered what I think are the most helpful general ground rules to remember when talking with other people, whether they're your closest loved ones or perfect strangers.
This next one can prevent combustion when your discussion is approaching a flash point, so don't disregard it because it seems too simple. Here it is: Make no assumptions. Now, you might be thinking, "Right, sure, I get it." But this is much harder to do than it seems at first glance. To really hear what someone else is saying, you often have to continue listening past when you might think you've gotten the message. No matter how close you are to another person, they remain distinct from you, always changing, and ever surprising; it pays to remember that. No one likes for you to assume you know everything about them, because today something may have changed. Sometimes people change so slowly that we don't see it happening, but conversation will reveal new viewpoints.
In order to be part of an authentic exchange, we need the courage to be willing to hear about others' changes, even if they affect us. It's natural and good for all of us to continue to learn, change and grow throughout life. We are supposed to progress, with the accumulation of experience, toward wisdom. Each person with the necessary health and capacities is on their own adventure toward this end. It is ungenerous to try to hold someone in a stagnant place because that's more comfortable for you. If you fear the ways in which others' changes will affect you, that means you have work to do. If you don't do your personal work around that, you'll be unable to truly hear and understand another person.
The prospect of change can be frightening, no doubt about it, so you will be best served by finding ways to handle your fears. Feeling fear is part of the human experience, but like all emotions, it's a signal with a message for you. If you can hear and acknowledge the message, you will usually feel better immediately to some extent. Then what remains is the work of deciding which actions you will take to remedy the cause of the emotion. I cannot emphasize enough how much EFT/Tapping can help you with this kind of work—finding both clarity and the willingness to respond to your emotions appropriately. EFT is an amazing, free tool that is gentle and easy to use. I suggest that you and become comfortable with using it. Even just using the basics can give you significant support in dealing with your emotions.
It's great to acknowledge when someone else's communications strike fear into your heart once the other person has had a chance to say their piece. That helps you not to expend energy hiding how you feel, and it gives the other person the opportunity to consider your place in their process so that you can work out a plan that works for both. However, generally I suggest that you start by checking what you've heard to make sure that you understand. Put what you think they've said into your own words and see whether they agree that you're on the same page. If you are, then you can explain your immediate reaction, as well as your willingness to compromise or work together—or your need for something else entirely. If you immediately spin out when you think you may have heard something you didn't like, you'll tend to get lost in your own thoughts, and any hope of really understanding and finding common ground with the other person goes out the window. It's all too easy for unfortunate misunderstandings to ensue. If you think they're being a jerk, and you repeat back what you think they've said calmly to make sure you understand, they'll appreciate the opportunity to rephrase if they did not communicate clearly. It also gives them an opportunity to hear how what they said sounds, and sometimes people will rethink their position when they realize that it sounds mean or inappropriate.
Reminding yourself that it's your job to allow others to be who they are, and that it's right for them to have the opportunity to follow their own path, may be necessary. So may be the willingness to keep revisiting a subject if understanding can't be reached immediately. Sometimes the greatest leaps in our facility with communication skills come about because relationships with those we care most about challenge us to step up. This process may not always be fun, but it is rewarding if you refuse to give up. The ability to listen calmly and remain open to communications from others is a valuable life skill that will enable you to understand others on a deeper level, make better choices, and relate to them in ways that ultimately work for you.
Communication Tips for Introverts
“Often confused with shyness, introversion does not imply social reticence or discomfort. Rather than being averse to social engagement, introverts become overwhelmed by too much of it, which explains why the introvert is ready to leave a party after an hour and the extravert gains steam as the night goes on.”
After last week's blog about communication skills, one reader asked about tips for introverts, so here are some ideas for those of you who find it somewhat draining to interact with others. The skill sets required for effective communication still apply to you, and you may be excellent at them. You just might need to do some additional thinking about modifications that will take your particular style and needs into account.
Because introverts need more time alone or with only those they feel closest to in order to recharge, they have a tendency to avoid in-person communication more than extroverts. As a result, over time, they may gain less practice in using important communication skills than others, and end up less confident in this area, because there is no substitute for experience. With some concentrated effort, it is possible to bump up your skills by challenging yourself to add interactions here and there, but without overwhelming yourself.
One of an introvert's strengths is that time alone allows an opportunity for learning new information and thinking deeply about it. Introverts may have more patience for inquiry than others, and this can help you to be better prepared for interactions when they do occur. My first suggestion is to embrace this power and do your homework! A great deal can be learned from books, audios and videos about the skills you need to successfully navigate communications with others. One can never predict how someone else will choose to communicate in return once you're in an interaction, but you can plan out what you have to say, and even rehearse how you can best react to a number of different responses. That doesn't mean that your in-person attempts will be without surprises—that will never be the case, even if you're highly intuitive—but putting time and effort into preparation really will help you to feel more confident about using your skills both in specific situations and in general, as in whenever they're called upon unexpectedly. It will also help to make your interactions a bit less stressful, and therefore, less draining.
The next suggestion I have for introverts is that you work on owning, loving, and being willing to explain your introverted characteristics to extroverts. Many introverts feel that the world favors extroverts in that it's set up for people with spontaneous, in-person people skills, and stamina forlonger social interactions, to win. Introverts may have heard many times that they are anti-social, selfish because they don't want to join in, or weak because they are sensitive in ways that others aren't. None of these assessments is fair; introverted people just naturally have a different makeup than extroverted people. Neither is better or worse, but each culture will have opinions about these basic characteristics. Depending on where you were born and what your family was like, you may have had vastly different experiences than someone else with the same characteristics. No matter what you were told, you can learn to celebrate who you are.
At first, it might seem odd to be completely forthright about yourself, but once you start to see that it helps, it will probably become easier. You might begin a conversation with something like, "Because I'm naturally introverted, talking with other people tends to wear me out, and I sometimes prefer extra time to think things through. I want to have this conversation with you, but it might be most productive if we could have it over time. I also like e-mail, so we could do some of it that way. Would that work for you?" Being open will keep others from guessing incorrectly about what's best for you. It helps them to help you, which people will often be willing to do if you give them a chance. Your willingness to explain what you have to offer that is positive because of your introverted nature will also help others who are wired differently to stop and take note of your value. If you're not sure how you would represent this, spend some time thinking about it, and do some research on the topic. Every characteristic brings gifts if you learn to understand and leverage its positive side. You will feel more confident in interactions if you don't feel the need to apologize for who you are.
If you find yourself struggling in the midst of a conversation, for instance when someone misunderstands what you're saying and you don't know what to do, stay calm, breathe, and try again. I promise you that building communication skills through practice with other humans is challenging, frustrating, and tries the patience, at times, of all who attempt it. It's not just you! This is a human thing. But the effort is worth it. This is a skill set you will use on almost every day of your life. The better you are at wielding it, the easier and less stressful so many areas of your life become.
While you will always need plenty of time to yourself, your interactions with other people can become a much greater source of satisfaction as you represent yourself and your needs more clearly. When you can represent your needs and your value calmly but firmly in your communications, you make it much more likely that you will achieve a result that works well for you; you can also help to focus others in on the brilliance they may otherwise have missed, in you and in others they know. And that's a win for everyone!
Timeless Communication
“To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others.”
Last week we looked at some of the ways ways to become more comfortable with uncertainty and vulnerability. I suggested that one helpful exercise toward this end is practicing your communication skills, which can involve you in feelings of vulnerability more quickly that most things I know—not just for the sake of just feeling vulnerable, but in order to demonstrate that it’s possible to feel vulnerability and to live through it just fine. You may even come out of the experience with valuable knowledge that will help you in the future, plus greater confidence that feeling uncertain doesn’t mean anything very bad is happening. This week we’ll look at some basic ground rules for engaging in communication in a constructive way so that your practice can be more rewarding.
Do you ever feel like no matter what you say, you're not being understood? When this happens, it may be that the framework, the assumptions, the methods you're using are getting in the way of what you're trying to get across. Think about how differently you react when someone approaches you calmly and respectfully versus when someone ambushes, pressures or screams at you. It may be that there's valuable content that the person is attempting to relay in the second scenario, but you are unlikely to hear it because of the unpleasantness inherent in their attack. Numerous skills may be lacking in such a case, and while we'll only cover a small number today, here are some thoughts on methods that will affect your communication styles for the better with consideration and practice.
- One of the most helpful guiding principles for skillful communication is the ability to acknowledge and represent that your feelings are no one else's fault. This may seem like a radical idea, because it often seems that our feelings are a direct result of how others behave, i.e., if he would just listen, or if she would just stop nagging me, I wouldn’t have to be so angry…etc. But this line of thinking puts you in the position of the victim, and predicates your happiness on the choices of others. This suggests that you are powerless to change the situations in your life for the better, which is rarely the case.
- You have choices in your thoughts, which do much to give rise to your feelings; you also have choices in your actions. You have the option to do the internal work necessary to understand and handle your own emotions on a daily basis, then take any appropriate actions so that they don't spiral out of control. It takes two to tango, and (unless you've been kidnapped) you always have a part in the creation of interactions with another person, if only by choosing to be there and interact at all. In your communications, it is often important to share how you feel, but this is best done without blame. You might say, "When you slam the door when you come in and out of the room, I jump every time, which isn't pleasant for me. I end up feeling irritated, and then I end up resenting you." You are explaining the situation from your point of view in a somewhat mechanical, logical way that is less likely to put the listener on the defensive. It represents how one thing leads to another in your personal experience. This makes it more likely that the listener will actually see the problem you describe as understandable and, hopefully, be willing to participate in finding a solution. (Timing is key here. Ideally, you will find a time to attempt a communication like this when you’re calm and can remain solution oriented.)
- This may be pretty difficult to do depending on the situation. When we haven't practiced this skill, we have a tendency to get lost in thinking things like, "You're stupid. You're selfish. If you cared about anyone but yourself, you would pay attention to what you're doing and think!" Yet it's possible for someone else to have a viewpoint sufficiently different from yours that it has very sound logic, based on their unique experience and goals, that you would not have been able to figure out without their explanation. If you allow yourself to presume that the other's viewpoint is valid and seek to understand it, you may be surprised how much there is to learn, and how much cooperation then becomes possible.
- It's essential to allow others the space to have their own reactions. This is often one of the hardest skills to learn for numerous reasons. We have a tendency to react to others’ emotions, whether out of a desire to help the other to feel better, or out of fear of certain outcomes, which can include fear of aggression or abandonment. These fears can be based on ingrained past experiences, including in childhood, such that primal survival instincts kick in. This may seem automatic, inevitable, and activate your physical fight/flight/freeze response even if you're just discussing who is going to walk the dog. You may not even know consciously why you're getting so stressed out, and it's not easy to work with an issue you can't even see. Psychological work like traditional talk therapy is designed to help you understand why you behave in certain ways so that you can spot these seemingly automatic reactions and practice responding differently when you choose to. It may take some doing to recognize that flash point when old patterns start to smolder, but it can be done. Somatic modalities like EFT can also work to release stress regarding both old situations and recent ones from the body, which helps you to stay calmer when facing something that triggers a disproportionate reaction.
- Allowing someone else to express difficult emotions without immediately trying to “fix” them or defend yourself from direct or implied (or imagined!) blame absolutely takes practice. Depending on your upbringing, your values, and the roles you tend to play in social groups, it can feel downright painful. Yet everyone else’s emotions are created from a complicated mix of elements just as yours are, and no matter what someone else claims, they are not your fault, nor yours to fix. Obviously if you love someone, you don’t want them to be in unnecessary pain, and you certainly may be able to help them to feel better in some ways, including by taking responsibility for your motives and actions. But they have a right to feel their emotions and work through them. If you try to be too involved in that process or take too much responsibility for how they feel, you are depriving them of important experiences. Meditation and other calming practices help you to solidify states of mind that you can learn to recapture when you’re in challenging situations, which is part of why such practices are so valuable. When you have a well-practiced state of calm that you can call upon when you’re being tempted to get drawn into emotions that are not your own, you have a lot more power to communicate in helpful ways.
These are just a couple of skills you can practice to improve your ability to communicate effectively and respectfully with others in your life, and they are definitely among the most challenging. I didn't start with the easy ones, but with the ones that may take the longest to master! I hope you'll dive into some area of these and see if you can make some progress. When you can be more skilled with your communication and remain calmer while doing it, it's incredibly empowering.
A White-Knuckle Ride
“The future is no more uncertain than the present.”
If you want to live a life that feels exciting and fulfilling, it's extremely important to define your goals. I hope you've taken the time to do that so that you have a basic roadmap for the path you want to tread. Once you've done that, you have many decisions to make regarding your preferred pace and methods in working toward them. One of the most difficult things about working on long-term projects often turns out to be the discomfort of becoming someone new, someone who has and can confidently use the skills necessary to achieve your stated goals. It can be equally difficult to communicate the changes in progress to the important people in your life, and to unveil your plans and results to people who may display mixed reactions to them for any number of reasons.
Sometimes the best course of action will be to fly under the radar as you begin to make your initial steps toward your goals. Change can be messy, and you don't necessarily need others poking at you with their opinions about what you're doing in the early stages. Your choice here should have a lot to do with your personality—how much do you like to talk over your daily experience with others? How much support would you like from others as you work? Would you rather not have to deal with the endless advice of others who may have your best interests at heart, but tend to be fearful or don't know much about your subject area?
But eventually, you'll need to come out into the light of day with your projects and be willing to unveil your changes and be seen in order to fully succeed. This process can be scary when you don't yet have it all together, and don't relish the idea of being judged. Knowing that others are watching as you stumble through things you're not yet expert in can leave you feeling pretty vulnerable. And yet, no one ever achieves new things without navigating this situation. You don't have to love it, but the more comfortable you grow with being seen to be imperfect, the more free you'll be to keep moving through all the uncertain moments in your projects—and there will be many!
You can practice gaining comfort with vulnerability by working on your projects and learning new things. (Continually stretching beyond your current abilities and knowledge also keeps you from getting stuck in any ruts and becoming bored. It also keeps your brain working, which is great for its long-term health.) Every time you research your next steps, attempt to move forward through trial and error, or experience an inspiration leading to new possibilities, you acknowledge what you don't know, while at the same time reaffirming that it's ok not to know everything, and you can and will get where you want to go anyway.
Another one of the ways that you can practice being ok with uncertainty is by choosing to be more communicative with others, and this requires no special situation. All of our interactions with others offer fertile ground here, and most of us encounter numerous other people every day. It's rare that anyone can say that they never encounter discomfort in communicating with others; unfortunately, most of us were taught in some way or other that honest communication is dangerous. This may have been through experience, by noticing that our parents vastly preferred it when we were "good little children" who expressed no opinions or desires (they were busy, and raising kids is hard, so it's not hard to understand why our parents sent the message sometimes that silence is golden). Maybe you asked innocent questions of teachers and didn't understand their disapproving reactions. Maybe as a child you communicated without a filter, as kids do, and sometimes hurt friends' feelings without meaning to. Or maybe you learned to avoid communication because you got one too many bombshells dropped on you at some point, and decided that it was better for everyone to keep things to themselves and refrain from rocking the boat. Whatever may have happened to slow down your interest in owning your truth and communicating openly and confidently, when you're an adult, it's incredibly empowering to work on taking back your ability to share what needs to be said in timing that is appropriate for you.
There are many wonderful sources of information about helpful communication techniques that you can learn from, but in order to become competent in using them, you must practice. Because this practice will offer you plenty of awkward and uncomfortable moments no matter how smart you are (because every person and situation is different) it will serve to help you acclimate to that feeling of stumbling through the use of new skills, and finding that the world will not end because your performance wasn't flawless. As you find out what works well for you, you'll also be gaining confidence in your ability to learn and keep going through uncertainty and discomfort—important skills for any kind of success!
Honest communication can be more frightening than skydiving, and working at it can bring up similar amounts of fear and adrenaline depending on your skill level. If the thought of just calmly and openly stating how you feel and what you want makes you feel like you're about to keel over, then start small. You might ask clarifying questions next time you're buying something in a store or ordering food in a restaurant, explaining what you're trying to accomplish or what you prefer. You could try asking people for the time or directions just for the sake of interacting on topics with little importance. Or try asking someone you care about to do something minor that they normally do with you in a slightly different way, because it seems like fun. When you become willing to express opinions about small things, you start becoming more aware of what you want and what you have to say. You also get used to others responding reasonably to minor requests, as most people will, which will build your confidence in considering tackling larger issues.
Next week's blog will continue where we've left off here, and suggest the most helpful principles I've found for communicating well with others. This week, I hope you'll remind yourself that change is often uncomfortable, but it can become less so as you become familiar with the process. So much can be gained when you're willing to keep going even though you don't know everything about how to climb your mountain.
Graceful as a Feline
“Learn to... be what you are, and learn to resign with a good grace all that you are not.”
What does it take to move through life gracefully? And is that something that's even worth putting time and energy into? Ready examples of people who can both be productive and handle life's ups and downs with serenity seem to be in short supply. Many of us were taught by our relatives and others that life is hard, we have to work hard and never let up, and getting anything done means pushing and shoving all obstacles out of the way with brute force. The concept of grace exists in a whole other realm than this kind of thinking. Isn't it selfish, or frivolous, or self-indulgent, or even downright stupid to want something else when this is just how life is?
I submit that it is not any of those things to want to experience more ease and less drag in the course of your daily activities. The masculine-energy-dominant paradigm of the last couple thousand years has glorified battle and conflict as fighting the good fight, in other words, the best and most glorious way to get things done and to live. But taken to an extreme, this thinking causes us to want to fight everything that moves. It keeps our stress hormone levels high, reinforces the self-sabotaging idea that everything worth doing must nearly kill us, and blinds us to solutions that could be implemented calmly, cooperatively, and expediently so that we can move on to other exploits with a minimum of unnecessary drama and injury.
Note that I'm not saying that feminine energy encourages no extremes! If feminine energy and thinking dominated planet Earth for millennia and dismissed the wisdom inherent in masculine energy, we'd just be likely to have a whole host of different problems. But that is not the scenario we've been exploring. In order to concoct a better balance between masculine and feminine, one that acknowledges all the wisdom we have access to, regardless of our gender, it helps to make a habit of focusing on where bringing in qualities associated with the feminine can smooth out our experience.
The truth is that it is possible to accomplish many of our daily tasks with less tension than we're probably used to holding. It is possible to be more focused in the current moment, and to worry less about the future. We can, in fact, give up animating the voices of our detractors in our own minds and choose to celebrate our goodness and our accomplishments while avoiding arrogance and continuing to learn and grow. In making these choices, we open the way to greater expression of what we truly have to offer.
- Someone who is graceful exhibits fluid movement that can also be precise; grace implies a high degree of awareness and conscious intent. How can you bring more focused awareness to your activities?
- Grace requires control that is based on practice, but not over-muscled inflexibility. How can you let go of tension even as you continue to accomplish your tasks?
- Its maintenance requires the ability to adjust while in motion. How can you become more comfortable with shifting course based on feedback you receive from all of your senses?
- There are internal qualities without which these abilities are not enabled. How can you build these within yourself?
- enough coping ability to register emotions without being immediately disabled by them;
- enough optimism (and determination) to remain open to creative solutions before they are visible;
- the willingness to keep flowing in some direction even when the way forward is blocked.
Before swinging into action, try taking a moment to ask yourself:
- How can I complete this task without struggle? Maybe this could be easier if I allowed it to be
- Is now the best time for it, or have I decided to try to put my head down and try to ram it because I've let stress and habit cloud my vision? Is there anything I could take care of right now that would allow me to return to this with greater enthusiasm and a grounded sense of readiness?
- Could it be done more cooperatively, more calmly, more enjoyably somehow?
If you want insight, you have to make space by allowing a few moments to elapse in which ideas might emerge from your own wisdom. If you want help from anyone, including yourself, you usually need to ask. Cultivating the ability to hold still and wait for a better idea will serve you over time in ways that might surprise you. A meditation practice of some kind will help support your ability to do this as well.
The more you focus on adding grace to your movements on all levels, the more you will learn about how to surf through your days with less wear and tear and more grateful satisfaction. There will always be surprises and challenges, but this makes everything in life feel easier and more fun. You can learn from others, but only by trying things out for yourself will you find the methods that are most supportive to you. Maybe this is worth the time and effort after all!
Who Do You Need to Become?
“There are plenty of difficult obstacles in your path. Don’t allow yourself to become one of them.”
We all want opportunities. If you haven't defined goals for yourself, you might not be entirely clear on what the opportunities you'd most enjoy would look like, but I'm sure that there are certain kinds of offers that would delight you if they just showed up at your door. Once you have addressed clarification of the goals that most appeal to you, it makes sense to start cultivating a state of readiness for those perfect opportunities. After all, you can have all the opportunity in the world, but if you don't have the confidence and the skills to accept gracefully and follow through with competence, you're not likely to enjoy the kind of experience you crave.
Let's take a look at one of your goals. If someone offered you a chance at exactly what you want today, you would no doubt be excited. If you close your eyes and imagine this scenario with vividness, though, chances are you'll also come up with some misgivings as well. Those might be something like, "I'm not ready," or "People will find out I'm a fraud," or "What if everyone says I'm terrible at this?" This is a quick way of finding out what holds you back from taking appropriate action to prepare yourself for success, as well as of showing you reasons why you might be likely to sabotage yourself if and when the goal looks like it's getting too close.
Once you've spent a little quality time digging into this exercise, you can now make some choices about how to proceed. For instance, if you thought, "I'm not ready," now it's time to write out all the reasons why you're not. Really indulge here. We want to get all parts of you on board with moving forward toward that goal, so we really want to know all of the objections you're holding into. Who would you need to become physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually in order to rock those opportunities you want when they show up? Make this as clear a picture as you can, listing all the positive qualities you need to build in yourself in order to be ready—the opposite of what you currently worry that you are.
Once you have that list of positive qualities, it's time to work on one or two so that you're building your readiness for your ideal future. Sometimes you'll need to find yourself some appropriate education and a way to start building experience in a certain area. Sometimes you'll need help healing the effects of past experiences in some way. In any case, it usually helps to find some other people who can support you as you build your competence and confidence. Maybe you could really use a work partner, who will be working on their own goals and with whom you meet to share process and mutual encouragement. Maybe you just need a few people who can listen to your latest developments and cheer you on. Maybe you need professional consultation in some area. Whatever you decide, make sure that the people you choose to join your support system are positive and genuinely want you to succeed. Even a professional should help you to feel positive about yourself and the progress you're making; if they don't, perhaps they're not the right fit for you. There are also plenty of groups you can join if you're not sure you can find any of these in your current life.
As you work on growing into new, positive qualities, you'll also want to consider this: What are all the reasons why you haven't become that person you want to be, and why you may not be able to? The answer to this is also golden as far as its ability to help you address factors that can trip you up. If you don't address the things that surface in this category, your progress will be much more difficult than it needs to be. The best way I know of to handle these worries and objections is through the use of EFT, which is incredibly effective at addressing mental and emotional resistance to progress. I highly recommend that you learn the basics at least and get comfortable with them. If any of this stuff is really dogging you, consider making a larger investment of time and energy in this work. The payoff can be disproportionately huge.
It may also help you to take inventory of whether you tend to overprepare or underprepare. If you're not sure, ask your friends and coworkers, who will probably have some perspective to offer on this. Either way, you may need to circumvent your tendency when it comes to how to choose when to move on to a new aspect of work. Some people tend to admit their own progress very slowly and cautiously. Others habitually underestimate the preparation they'll need to perform with excellence when the chips are down. Either way, it's a good idea to check in periodically with someone who has expertise in your subject area to help you gauge realistically how you're doing in preparing for your specific goals. This will keep you moving forward at a reasonable rate without rushing past important milestones or getting stuck in endless contemplation of detail.
Because you will always be able to think of new goals as soon as you reach your current ones, this is a process that never ceases unless you want to become stale. Therefore, it's important to find ways to enjoy this constant learning process as well as the euphoria of reaching your goals. You can be both peaceful and content with the blessings you currently have, and fired up about the exciting future you're working toward. I encourage you to keep yourself tuned into the balance of these that you're creating for the most satisfying possible life. What can you appreciate, and what can you learn this week? If you keep doing both, you'll keep making progress, and fueling your enthusiasm and energy so you can keep going, always improving your life and your enjoyment of it.
A Case of the Blahs
“I love to listen to the music that first inspired me - I get that fresh feeling back.”
There are times in which, even when things are going well, and despite all our best efforts, we are going to feel just…uninspired. There are so many factors that go into creating our experience of each day that we can often be surprised by how things seem to display, at any given moment, a natural tendency to come together—or not. It’s impossible to predict the daily outcome of the interaction of all things that affect us; that is just how things are on planet Earth, and it certainly keeps life interesting! It can also be pretty frustrating, say when you’ve got a certain amount of time allotted for something and then the unexpected happens and gets in the way. If this happens several times in a row, it can really disrupt your momentum. Or if you’ve been down with a cold, sometimes it takes longer than you want it to for you to get back up to speed and feel your enthusiasm for life returning. For whatever reason, there are those days when you just don’t feel like doing anything at all.
What to do when you feel this way? Depending on what your day looks like, you may have more or less latitude to change up your plans on the fly. Here are some thoughts on what to try the next time you get blindsided by a case of the “I don’t wanna, you can’t make me’s.”
· Allow yourself a moment to take a couple of breaths and acknowledge what’s happening. Most of us have been taught to just push through any emotion or preference that arises unexpectedly, but over time, this habit gets us into trouble. The more we repress what’s really going on internally, the more we resent the responsibilities, and sometimes the people, in our lives. We also add a potent risk factor for actual physical illness and disease. If you just get into the habit of letting yourself be aware of how you feel, you can take it into account in some way that you decide is appropriate. Sometimes just acknowledging it and the validity of your right to feel normal human emotions is enough to improve your outlook. Sometimes taking action of some sort will also be well advised
· Think for a moment about what you absolutely need to get done today. There are commitments that are not optional—for instance, the kids and the dog need to be fed. But other items on the list might be nice to have, but not really necessary, if you’re being totally honest with yourself
· If you decide that some task(s) can move to a different day, what would you like to do instead? Sometimes what you need is a break, some breathing room to do not much of anything, some time to regroup. But maybe there’s something that needs doing that would be more fun for you than what you had originally planned. One excellent secret of greater productivity is being able to swap tasks around to harness your enthusiasm at any given time. Sure, there are some tasks you’re probably never going to want to do, and sometimes you’ll have to just do them anyway. But there are days when cleaning and organizing/filing, for instance, might seem kind of fun, and there are times when it’s going to seem like cruel and unusual punishment. How can you roll with that?
· Sometimes the best thing to “do” is something that will boost you overall state of inspiration. What are your very favorite things to do, things you would do nearly every day if you had all the time in the world? Watch movies? Go to concerts? Play silly games with family members? Have a three-hour lunch with a close friend you could talk to forever? Go play a sport that makes you forget everything else for a while? Read a book by your favorite author? Whatever it is, it can be amazing how rejuvenated you can feel after a little time spent in this pursuit. Allowing yourself this time can energize your entire week
· What signals are you getting from your body? Does it need care that you’ve been procrastinating on? If you haven’t been drinking water, moving your body, or getting decent nutrition lately, ending up in a funk of some sort is a pretty likely outcome. Sometimes we pretend we can ignore the body’s needs. Zoolander-esque news flash: We can’t.
· Change your perspective by thinking about what’s going well in your life and what you’re grateful for. This can be as simple as the sun rising each day, or the fact that you’re still alive! Celebrate what you have accomplished, whether recently or in your finest moments. Sometimes feeling better just requires that you allow yourself some time to consciously feel good about yourself. Self-acceptance and self-congratulation can really prime the pump of your enthusiasm for life. It’s not arrogant to admit that some things about you are pretty awesome, and most of us don’t do this enough
· Ask for help. Most of don’t do this enough either. It might surprise you how often others are willing to help if you explain your situation and ask whether they can pitch in. As long as you’re not ordering them around, a lot of people actually like to feel like they’re helpful and being supportive of others
· Hug someone you love and tell them that you love them. When you don’t know what else to do, you can’t go wrong with this one, and sometimes it can very quickly change your state of mind
· What has worked for you before in the past in similar situations? Is there something you’ve been wanting to do that you could allow yourself time for?
· Be creative. If you like to paint, or write, or sing, or play an instrument, spend a little time doing that just for fun, or make yourself laugh by thinking up captions for the frowny cat picture above
· Even if it seems like nothing is boosting your mood, know that tomorrow will be different. Sometimes a night of decent sleep can change everything. Sometimes you’ll come out of a funk just as mysteriously as you went in
Feeling resistant to life’s requirements sometimes is completely normal. If you allow yourself some flexibility in how you approach your task list and your daily experience, you may find that the quality of your life actually improves as a result of these times. Any experience can be an opportunity to know yourself better and to find better ways of expressing the best of yourself in life. I hope that the next time you find yourself feeling less than enthused, you’ll be able to change something up without feeling bad about having to confront this part of the human experience.
Ready...Set...
“Observe due measure, for right timing is in all things the most important factor.”
Have you ever had a good idea, rushed to implement it, and found that somehow it fell flat for reasons you didn’t understand? This can happen for many reasons, of course, including unforeseen issues arising at the last minute. However, this week we’ll focus on a factor I don’t often hear discussed that can be hugely important—timing. There are several different components to timing I want to touch on that I think are helpful considerations when planning toward a goal. If you at least think through these before taking action, in my experience, you have better chances of success in your final product, whether you’re planning the launch of a book or other product, taking a vacation, or planning a party.
· Time needed to complete your proposed task list. Every task should be given as realistic a time frame for completion as it’s possible to estimate. If you’ve never done something like this before, it’s crucial that you consult someone who has. Otherwise, your guess could be drastically off and endanger the completion of your project if there are dependencies involved—in other words, things that need to be done before, during, or after that task that depend on it. It’s always surprising to me how many people don’t bother to even attempt to think through how much work is involved in any project or step in one, and so much can go wrong when you don’t.
· Preparation. What needs to happen before you can begin? Do you need to find other team members or brush up on some skills of your own before you set the wheels in motion? Are there fears or other resistance you’re feeling that it would be better to deal with before you get started so they don’t wreak havoc on your project once it’s in motion?
· Context. This is a tough one because the factors you could consider may be practically infinite depending on your project, but you should do the very best you can with what you have. What is going on in your life and in the lives of others who will participate in or be the consumers of your project? Is someone on your team getting married this year? What holidays, religious and secular, will fall within important periods of your project? (There are some excellent calendars online that include a wide variety of religious holidays.) What time of year will the project end—in January, when many are trying to turn over a new leaf with New Year’s resolutions, or during the height of summer vacation season? What are people generally interested in or concerned about at that time? Is there a political cycle you need to consider or other projects you need to work around? What’s trendy and cool right now, and how does your project relate to that—for instance is there a popular festival in your vacation destination that you’d like to participate in or avoid? This is a broad area that deserves research and brainstorming with others so you can turn up as many factors for consideration as possible and wisely choose your end date.
· Contingencies. What would you do if you had some bad luck, causing delays, at any point in the project? If the end date got delayed, what would happen, and is there a time when you’d be better able to deal with this? Is there a step in the process that absolutely can’t move?
· Preference. When would you rather be working on the project and when would you prefer that it be finished? If it works to do that, go ahead so as to best preserve your enthusiasm and enjoyment of the experience.
· Cost. Is there a time when doing what’s necessary will cost you less, or when the end product can earn you greater benefits?
· Intuition. This is a wild card category, but considering it can bring important factors to your attention. Putting aside what’s logical, is there any timing that just feels particularly right or wrong to you? You can choose to think of this as your subconscious mind indicating knowledge you have that your conscious mind doesn’t remember. If you have an established relationship with your intuition, you may also know this as a place of intersection with the spiritual part of yourself. Consult your own and ask others to consult theirs and just see what you come up with.
· Summation. When you put all of these together, does any particular timing become the clear winner? If not, don’t be afraid to talk it out with someone you trust to be supportive and to have good ideas when they hear about your choices. Maybe several people. If nothing stands out, sometimes you have to just pick a choice and go. That’s fine, and you probably learned some helpful things in going through this process. Who knows when they’ll come in handy along the way.
If you take the time to look at all of these factors before taking on your next project, you’ll be able to feel more confident that you’ve avoided some pitfalls and chosen the best timing for your efforts. Nothing ever goes perfectly as planned, but when you do your best to strategize intelligently in your initial choices, you’ll have removed every roadblock you could, and that’s better than the alternative! You’ll learn through experience what you might have missed, but at least you won’t be kicking yourself for not trying.
Never Enough Time!
“Time abides long enough for those who make use of it.”
Since I know I’m not the only one who often feels that there just aren’t enough hours in the day, I thought I’d write this week about how to cope with that feeling of “never enough time.” Because we live in a fast-paced and complex world, I don’t think this issue is going anywhere anytime soon, so we might as well find ways to cope with the constant pull toward busy-ness and the limitations of our daily 24 hours. For much of human history, things were different; before the advent of electric lights, the period of daylight marked the limits of productive time, but now that we can work around the clock, finding balance in our use of time has taken on a whole new dimension of complexity.
I’ve heard it said that the only truly limited resource is time; yet our experience of time can be so different from moment to moment—even our relationship to something so inevitable is not an intractable, hopeless case in which nothing can improve. Here are some ideas for adding more space into your dance partnership with time.
· Tap! Using EFT really is the most effective way I know to introduce more of a sense of calm about what is on your plate. If you’re someone who tends to live on the edge of overwhelm a lot, you might need to make a regular practice of this for a while to really see the results you want. Use it throughout the day whenever tension starts to rise, and eventually you’ll find that your responses to life events and task lists will be less intense. You’ll build an ability to stay out of crisis mode when the situation doesn’t warrant it. Our perception is shaped by our emotions, thoughts, and beliefs; when you can sustain more positive internal states, everything can feel less dire and positive change can seem much more possible.
· Breathe. Remembering to breathe deeply as often as you can, really expanding the belly as you do so, is a quick way to calm your body and mind and refresh every cell with more oxygen than you’d otherwise be getting. If you’re not breathing well, you’re not going to have nearly as much energy as you could with just a little extra effort in this area. It’s fast! It’s free! There’s no downside.
· Know that living with a certain tension in your relationship with time is a normal part of living the human experience. Everyone who has ever lived has had to contend with this. Much remains mysterious as far as why sometimes a vacation day can seem long and lazy, or sometimes it can seem to fly by in two blinks of an eye when you’re doing essentially all the same things. Some days you accomplish far more than you thought you would. Other days, it’s a struggle to do anything at all. All of this is normal, so don’t beat yourself up about it.
· But also know that as with any area of life, with attention and experimentation, you can find ways of handling it that will be more helpful for your unique personality and needs. You can also learn a great deal from others by reading, listening to podcasts, taking workshops, etc. You might want to go reread my previous blog on time management here for some immediate ideas on that subject. As you become comfortable with some best practices for organizing and focusing your efforts, you will find that getting more done for yourself is a less mysterious process. It might take some doing, but you’ll be able to set yourself up to really leverage the time you have when you need to. Still, accept that you’ll experience an ebb and flow in your experience of time, allow yourself to reschedule when you need to, and just keep moving.
· Learn how to say no if you’re bad at it. There is only a certain amount that you will be able to accomplish in a day, and if you’re never leaving enough time to take care of your own needs and goals, you will always feel frustrated to some extent. Saying no is a skill like any other, and it can be learned and mastered. It may not only require making a new decision and practicing, though. Often the reason we say yes to more than is healthy or realistic is that we’ve been taught, through direct teaching or through experience, that this is what it takes to be a good person, to get love, and to be safe. Again, EFT can be incredibly helpful in making change more comfortable by helping you to more easily transform and let go of fears that are keeping you stuck in place.
· Build some time into your schedule for physical activity. Yes, this requires an investment of time, but eventually it will create more energy, enthusiasm, and well-being than it uses up. Similarly, you need nutritious food, clean water, and a reasonable amount of sleep each night to function effectively. If you’re not getting these basics, you’re always going to feel like you’re behind the ball.
· Ask for help when you need it. You may not always get exactly what you wanted, but if you don’t ask, you’re definitely going to be stuck doing much of your task list on your own. If you don’t have anyone to ask for help in your immediate vicinity, there are lots of people you can connect with online who might be willing to barter services if you can’t pay for help.
· Learn to cultivate gratitude for what’s going well in your life. Spending more time appreciating the good has a calming influence. This can help you to be less frantic about making progress, and thus more discerning about what’s really necessary or important for you to do. Maybe there are a bunch of things on your mental to-do list that you could get rid of completely, or put off because they’re not essential at the moment. Panic ensues from an inability to prioritize, and then it perpetuates a vicious cycle, because when you’re panicked, you can’t think clearly. Keep breathing and coming back to appreciation for what’s good already.
· Make sure you’re reminding yourself somehow about your goals every day. That also will help you to stay on track and resist the temptation to scatter your attention on things that don’t advance what’s most important to you.
· Celebrate what you have accomplished. It’s helpful to write down positive actions you took every day before bed, as that helps you to give yourself proper credit for all the good work you did. It’s also fun to look back at this later and see what you’ve been able to achieve, and this is a great way to build your confidence in your own abilities. Even if it’s only one thing per day, you’ll see that you’re making progress little by little, and everything counts—did you manage to make better food choices? Did you handle a recurring situation better than you have in the past? Did you realize something new that will help you in the future? Celebrate it all.
I hope these ideas help you to find more peace in your relationship to time. This is a huge subject, and one in which we continue to learn and grow for a lifetime, so we’re just focusing on some basics here. Time will always be, in important ways, a limiting factor, but it is possible to grow in your contentment with natural rhythms; you can learn to enjoy getting done what you can and then reverting to rest and renewal before doing it all again.
Do This and Thrive
“Set your goals high, and don’t stop till you get there.”
I rarely do this, but in this week’s blog I’m going to emphasize and reiterate what I said last week, because there is nothing that is potentially more powerful in your life than unleashing your own innate motivation through joy. If you have not yet made time to think through and write out your most cherished hopes in the form of goal statements that are positive, in present tense, and as specific as you can make them, now’s the time! If the thought of doing this still makes you want to break out in hives, then please reread my blog from two weeks ago for ways to relax about this and make it fun.
These are not static statements of what will happen to the letter, because life throws curve balls, and requires flexibility. You are not going to spiral down into shame if you need to modify anything you write, you’re just going to keep reminding yourself what you want and why, and work on enjoying every step that moves you closer to one of your goals, however small the step. Both the process and the result are important, but the better you get at process, the more results you can achieve.
To recap: People who have written out their goals and review them every day get more of what they want. This is not very difficult or time consuming to do. Take some deep breaths, grab a pen, and go for it. Do it now! We’re all rooting for you!
Fun with Goals
“What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.”
Last week we unpacked a bunch of reasons why the thought of defining clear and specific goals can make us cringe and run for cover. Now that we have that out of the way, let’s look into what a saner process for creating and working with goals over time might look like. How can we make use of the motivational power of goals without the inappropriate application of shame or frequent flare-ups of overwhelm that sap our belief in ourselves and our ability to cross the finish line?
The Vision
· If you’ve never spent some concentrated time thinking about what you’d like your life to be like if you could wave a magic wand and instantly have everything you want, it’s time to do that. The best idea is always to start with the ideal, without editing yourself. Don’t stand for mental limitations in the conceptual phase, because you’ll just be building in a sense of disappointment from day one of your process! Really have fun with this vision, and make it as outrageous as you want. You can be the ruler of the entire world, a movie star, and a reclusive stay-at-home mom all at the same time—you later could plan to spend some part of your time each day/month/year on each. We’re just moving puzzle pieces around at this point to see what seems satisfying. Stay in brainstorming/impractical mode and see what you come up with; how would you want to spend your time? Who would be sharing your experiences with you? Where would you live? What would you want to give to others and the world? If you’re not sure, think about the kinds of things that have delighted you in the past, starting in childhood (including things you’ve heard of happening to other people or in movies, etc.) and build on those. Write down reminder phrases at least so you’ve captured what you imagined. You can also draw pictures if that seems fun. It can work well to do this in one column of your page and leave another blank for the next step
· Once you’ve come up with some really good stuff, think about what the basic core of each item is. If you decided you’d like to live in a particular town, what was it about that place that appealed to you? Was it weather, proximity to people you love, or some other special characteristic of that place? This helps you both to be specific, and to allow yourself to be surprised later by other possible solutions that might give you a similar result
· Now think about which seems most important to you—you might start by considering them one at a time and imagining that each, in turn, is the only one you can have right away when you wave that magic wand. Which one feels the best? That’s number one. Continue to assign a number to each in turn based on which of the remaining comes up next highest.
· Then consider which seems easiest to achieve. Assign each a letter starting at the beginning of the alphabet based on this factor.
· Now it’s time to think about what to work on first. Yes, we are beginning to hint at taking action! Don’t freak out. Would you rather work on the thing that you want most, or something that seems easier relative to the other things on your list? This is totally up to you. Sometimes it helps to build one’s confidence to work on something that doesn’t seem like a huge effort. Sometimes that’s just not inspiring. You know your life and your current capacities, and you get to make this decision.
· Once you have chosen something, stop and ask yourself: Did I choose this one out of fear of something I’d much rather work on? Fear, anxiety, and self-doubt often pop up when we’re thinking about challenging the status quo. This is normal, but if you let them define all your choices, you’ll never grow or change at all, and that’s boring! Remember, whatever you choose to work on, you can do it with baby steps, and you don’t have to know how to accomplish it right now, just that you’d like to.
· Do you have one?
Your Map
· Ok, now it’s finally time to start an outline/treasure map showing how you might get from where you are to where you want to go. Be sure to do it in a format that leaves you room for changes. A digital format can be good here because it’s so easy to change or add steps, but if you like paper, that’s fine too. This is just a rough draft based on what you know right now. Let’s say you want to become a chemical engineer. First you need to define where you are. What’s your current level of education, experience, and knowledge? Would you need training or even a college degree, do you think? Would you need to get some experience as an intern? Would you need to spend time in a different location? Then what? Take some wild guesses if you have to, but map it all out the best you can. Remember to define the end goal—how will you know you have it? What will you see/hear/feel/smell/taste? What will you be like? How will people treat you? How will you feel? Put this in positive terms, as in “Everyone will be nice to me” rather than “Everyone will stop being rude to me.”
· Now look at the areas where you’re sure you have gaps in knowledge as far as what might need to happen to get you to the goal. Time for research! Run some online searches, talk to people you know who might be able to inform you on the subject, read a book about someone who did what you want to do or something like it, listen to podcasts, etc. Then add some steps to your outline/map based on what you learned
· You’ll need to be detailed about your steps. You can flesh out sub-steps of each as you go, or attempt to do more of that now, but don’t get bogged down in endless minutiae, which is a clever way of avoiding ever actually doing anything. Think tasks you could do in an hour or two each
· Once you have your map, it’s time to think about how much time you will devote to your first goal each day and/or week. This is not a contract written in blood! It can and will change over time, but again, you want something to shoot for and schedule, because (for most of us) if you don’t do that, the tasks won’t get done. There should be enough time scheduled each week for you to get at least one task done every week, otherwise you’re likely to become dishearteneded by your lack of progress. However, it shouldn’t be so much that the thought of putting that much time aside makes you feel like you’re going to have a panic attack. Again, keep an eye out for fears that may be trying to stop you and ask yourself whether you’re lowballing the amount of time you can devote based on these, but also think about what will be sustainable so you don’t become exhausted and want to quit. You’re trying to create a balance here
Action!
· Take a deep breath and remember how awesome it will be to have that goal before you work on anything having to do with it, and whenever you can throughout each day. This will help to keep you happy, motivated, and creative
· As you start the first task, remember that you will sometimes become confused, feel stuck or doubtful, or want to give up. Just spend your scheduled time as best you can. Anytime you need to, you can ask for help, including from a professional—a psychologist, coach, nutritionist, etc. You can also ask yourself what you would tell someone else in your position. It’s sometimes surprising how many great ideas you can come up with this way!
· Just keep at it, but remember that, though parts of the process will no doubt be uncomfortable, there’s no need to be miserable. If you are, take a step back and shift your perspective. EFT, for instance, is fantastic for changing your emotional state and opening up new insights all along the way. Learn the basics and try it. It can be a lifeline when you get stuck
· Continue to modify your task list/map as needed
· Keep in mind that it’s probably not practical to be working toward more than two or three main goals at a time. You want to be able to see regular progress on each, not spread yourself so thin that you just become overwhelmed and scattered. However, it's a great idea to read over all of your goals/vision every day at least once or twice. That reaffirms for you what you want your life to be about, which is energizing when you allow yourself to really imagine and enjoy the idea of having those things
· If you’re someone who likes to work in groups, find one or several others who would be open to co-working or forming a support group to check in with at least once a week on tasks and achievements, and anywhere you’re getting hung up
· Celebrate every step you complete in some way. You want to keep making it fun for yourself to be on the path to your goal! When you savor each task you've completed, the whole effort is more enjoyable, and you'll feel better about yourself. Those good feelings will help keep you going
I hope this helps you to see the whole idea of goals in a more positive way than perhaps you’ve done before. They’re supposed to be a source of support, direction, and joyful anticipation, not self-recrimination and negativity. Remind yourself of this as needed, and keep chugging along! Moving toward things that make your heart sing is one of the things that makes life feel deeply worthwhile, so now actually go back and do the steps above!
Goals? Ugh.
“Joy, rather than happiness, is the goal of life, for joy is the emotion which accompanies our fulfilling our natures as human beings. It is based on the experience of one’s identity as a being of worth and dignity.”
Goals are a tricky thing. While many of us have heard about the importance of having clear goals defined to draw us forward, there are numerous pitfalls that divert us from enthusiasm in this area. The main message of most advice in this area can be summed up by the slogan, “Just do it.” We’re expected to man up, push past misgivings, write out goals, and then place timelines on them and drag ourselves by the hair, come hell or high water, toward the finish line. While I do think that this approach can inspire and work well for a small sample of the population, I think for most it’s either vastly unappealing such that goals are never written, or it’s not detailed or enjoyable enough to work any sort of magic for us over time—and most worthy goals take time to achieve. If the standard two-step idea motivates you, that’s great. Carry on! But if not, below are some things I can offer in order to help you gain access to the benefits of working with goals in supportive ways. We’re not actually going to look at a detailed process for doing that this week, we’re just considering the patterns that get in the way of our entering the process at all.
· Let’s start at the beginning. Goals are supposed to be inspiring, exciting, joyful visions of a future result you’d love to create. It’s easy to lose sight of this basic truth amidst all the “motivational” rhetoric. Thinking about goals this way sounds non-threatening and fun, right? Except…
· We think that if we decide on and/or write down a goal, that’s it. It can’t be modified, and if we don’t get to it inside of the amount of time that we’ve assigned to it, that means we’ve failed and all is lost. This “proves” that we’re never going to have the things we want. We’ve been here before and it feels terrible, especially because…
· We know how hard we are on ourselves in our own minds. Vicious, really. Usually more so than anyone else in our lives, though we doubtless learned some of this from others along the way—we just ran further with it so that no one can say anything to us we haven’t already said to ourselves
· Knowing this, the idea of having an optimistic goal brings up tension and the projected misery we know we’ll experience if anything goes wrong—which it will, because no process is ever perfect! Suddenly this seems like a cycle that’s to be avoided at all costs, because the result is not joyful attainment, but the disturbance of our peace and self-esteem
Sound familiar? And yet, people who do have written goals that they actively engage with daily are more likely to achieve the things they want; if we can just get past some of these unpalatable associations with goals, better progress might be in store. How about some improved conceptual guidelines:
· Let’s rethink. Realistic goals cannot be inflexible. That just doesn’t make any sense. In this chaotic, messy world, nothing ever goes as planned, so how is it logical to think that we can project an exact estimate of any road between where we are and where we want to be? Goals need to be living, breathing plans that we can continually adjust as the process unfolds. The act of changing them needs to be seen as a normal, even enjoyable, part of your interaction with the original idea and the realities of life on Earth. Sometimes, the unexpected will happen. Count on it. When it does, I’m not saying you need to abandon the vision—that’s what makes all the work and adjustment worthwhile—just adjust your concept of the path toward it
· Assigning time deadlines to the overall goal, and the steps you think will get you there, helps in your planning, and can help keep you on track by giving you something to shoot for—but these will always be arbitrary to some degree. What you want to do is choose an amount of time that seems somewhat challenging, but still allows you to feel excited about the project. You can and very well may change it later
· If people around you tend to be judgmental, you don’t have to tell them all the details of what you’re doing and planning. It’s generally best to share the nitty gritty only with those who you know can be trusted to be supportive and helpful
· It’s important to introduce humor into the process where you can. Working toward goals will tend to require some tasks that you don’t find enjoyable, but the whole thing will go much more smoothly if you can lighten the mood when you find yourself struggling. Also, remind yourself that growth and change usually involve growing pains, and that’s normal and ok. But you don’t need to be miserable, and in fact you’ll be a lot less productive and creative if you are. You can take breaks and ask for help, and you should do both as needed
· Many people who have become hugely successful went through a lot before that success arrived. What they did not do is give up on themselves or decide that they were failures when things went awry. Everyone spirals into negative self-talk sometimes, but only you get to decide how you will value yourself. Missing a deadline or goal NEVER has to mean anything permanent about you. While we’re alive, we can still change and learn, and doing these things is some of the most thrilling stuff in life. When necessary, you will take a break, get some perspective and some rest, and then regroup
· You will spend time every day thinking about and consciously enjoying the idea of having what it is that you intend to create. This habit is everything. It supercharges your ability to stay positive and in the game. As soon as you lose the ability to enjoy your vision, your motivation will crumble. This is actually the single most important part of the entire process, because the vast majority of people are most powerfully motivated by pleasure, NOT by pain or avoidance of misery
· You always retain the right to reshape your process or vision based on the experiences you’re having in the pursuit of your goal. You might decide that your original plan doesn’t seem to be the best way forward, or you might need to add steps and more time. You might even decide, once you’ve gotten a taste of progress, that you need to rethink the ultimate goal, because it no longer seems like a good expression of what you want. You remain in the driver’s seat. You’re the decision maker regarding what you want your life to be about. It’s ok to keep tinkering with the vision as you go even if no one else understands what the heck you’re doing. It’s your life! And we don’t always know what will be satisfying until we try it out in practice
I hope you’re starting to see that the point of goals is not to hold yourself to impossibly rigid standards or abuse yourself if all does not go according to plan. The point is to spur you toward a quest for greater achievements, and the experience of greater joy, than you’re likely to just stumble into without clarity and inspiring challenge. Making and working toward them can and should be fun! You can make it so! Let these ideas stew a bit, and next time we’ll consider the details of how to get started with a helpful vision and map out a process.
The Virtues of Lazing Out
“If a man insisted always on being serious, and never allowed himself a bit of fun and relaxation, he would go mad or become unstable without knowing it.”
I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have a busy, demanding life. Some have more obligations than others, and just meeting the demands of daily life can take up all one’s time and energy, but it seems like pretty much everyone has a lot to do these days. Maybe this is because even if we’re blessed with leisure time, it’s a small world now that we can see in real time what’s going on oceans away, so we feel called to participate more than ever. Maybe it’s partly peer pressure; if everyone else is running at a breakneck pace, it seems like we should be keeping up. Or maybe it’s just because we have so many options, and trying things, having adventures, is fun. Whatever it is that keeps you busy, you are not a machine. It’s important to find ways to relax and breathe even in the midst of a full daily routine. If you don’t, you’ll burn out, get sick more often, feel less energetic and enthusiastic, and have trouble focusing on being where you are in each moment; your performance and your attitude will spiral downward, and everything will feel more difficult than it needs to.
We’re all familiar with the concept of taking time out of a busy schedule for specifically relaxing activities (or non-activities) like reading for fun, indulging in a hobby, taking a bath, going to the beach, lying around in bed for no reason, getting a massage, finding a beautiful place outside for a picnic, etc. Enjoyable relaxation is good for you in so many ways. It gives your mind a rest, helps your body unwind tension, reassures you that you deserve to feel good, and helps you to reconnect to your best, happiest self. But how often do you actually make time for this kind of thing? I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but wishing you were relaxing doesn’t have the same positive effects as actually doing it! Unfortunately, in many cultures, we’re told that wanting downtime, and particularly quiet time by ourselves, is lazy and self-indulgent—even bad, from a spiritual perspective, because when we’re not busy being helpful, we might somehow get ourselves into trouble. If we take these beliefs on, then if we choose to relax, our basic sense of identity, and of our own goodness, may suffer. We’re supposed to measure our success by the volume of what we’ve accomplished, but realistically, we can’t remain productive without renewing ourselves regularly.
It’s also possible, and, I would argue, important, to find ways to bring relaxation into even moments of the highest productivity. I had a teacher in theatre school who used to say that a muscle that is constantly tense is not useful; a muscle needs to be capable of both tensing and relaxing in order to maintain flexibility, which is required for health and proper function. The same principle holds true for our minds and emotions. If there’s always tension in these, we will be less aware, less resourceful, and less able to function at our best. We’ll be more likely to become brittle, which is not useful, rather than remaining creative and able to roll with whatever comes along, which is. In order to avoid becoming stuck in a mire of self-perpetuating stress, we can choose to keep reminding ourselves to bring an attitude of deep calm to everything we do. We can activate an intention to bring a sense of contentment and mental and emotional relaxation with us wherever we go. We can work to manage our thoughts and emotions so that they are not always spinning and grinding away at our inner peace.
I’m not going to pretend that this is easy. Most of us have not been taught how to do it efficiently, nor given the tools we need when we feel like we’ve gotten ourselves backed into a corner. Even when you’ve spent significant time on learning techniques for success in dropping unnecessary tension and remaining present, life will likely continue to challenge you such that this work remains a life-long pursuit. For some ideas on how to maximize your mental and emotional game, you might want to check out previous blogs of mine. That work is essential—and so is building sources of refreshment, relaxation and joy into your life. The human experience is already plenty difficult, and if art and written records throughout recorded history tell us anything, it’s that this is a constant. If you want to feel flexible and truly alive every day, you’ll need to break up that difficulty with steady doses of enjoyment and renewal. You know best what activities leave you with a burst of joy, energy, and enthusiasm about the future. Make sure you find a place for these in your routine to support your best possible life.
Breaking Up Is Hard To Do
“There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart’s desire. The other is to gain it. ”
Leaving behind a love partnership can be one of the greatest challenges you’ll ever face. If you know that it’s not a good match, for whatever reason, though, you must do so in order to make room for the rest of your life to renew itself and open up new possibilities. Whatever seems to be the case now, you can feel zestful, joyful, and happy again. Your efforts to move on will need to span these categories:
Emotional. You likely have wonderful memories you’re having trouble remembering without pain; you also probably have sad memories about the way things ended. In order to really process these emotions rather than just sweeping them under the rug, I recommend EFT, or Tapping. It’s tremendously useful in helping to come to a place of inner peace and soothe the sting of difficult emotions. You may also find that journaling helps, or talking to a supportive friend who can help you affirm that things will get better, as well as have some fun and normalcy in the midst of your upset.
Mental. Your mental habits play a huge role in creating your emotional states. You can learn and practice over time choosing more positive thoughts and framing. This won’t really work if you’re not managing your emotions, but when you do both, it can be astonishing how quickly you can feel better (though grieving is a personal process, and I’m not suggesting that the goal is to rush through it). At first, just notice how often you’re allowing yourself to dwell on negative thoughts. Then, practice just turning over each thought with a slightly more positive spin. Meditation is great for helping you to slow down your thoughts enough to be able to do these things. When you first start working on this, you will probably be shocked with how hard it is, but it is so worth the effort. You really do have the power to think and feel differently over time.
Spiritual. I believe that the value of each human being is inestimable, people are basically good, and life can and should be enjoyed, as long as we take care as best we can not to harm others. What are some of your most positive spiritual beliefs? Refocusing on these will help you to remember what feels most true and good about you and others, and may help you to tap into a tremendous well of inspiration that can help guide you forward when life is difficult. Writing these down and reading them at least once per day keeps returning you to the joyful expression of your core beliefs. This is so easy, yet so powerful.
Physical. Your body and its health plays a huge role in your daily experience of life. Acknowledging that you’re worthy of self-care and taking daily steps to gift yourself with good nutrition, rest and sleep habits, and appropriate exercise is absolutely key in keeping your self going throughout challenge. There is so much joy in feeling fit, flexible and at home in your body. Don’t leave that on the table. Even when you’re happily in a loving relationship, if you let this area slide, it will drag your happiness downward, so you might as well take the opportunity when you’re alone and undistracted to build good habits here.
Affirming Actions. Find things to do that make you feel better and that grant you perspective. Laugh at good comedy (nothing too mean). Volunteer to help with any cause you care about. Get out into nature and walk, run, hike, bike, etc. Go look at beautiful things in museums. Enjoy thoughtfully crafted books, movies, music.
Please do everything you can to be loving to yourself at this time. We all go through sad times in life. This is not who you are, nor does it mean that there’s something wrong with you. As we grow and change, circumstances in our lives will continue to transform, and that’s ok; getting used to this idea is an important element in acquiring wisdom. There is a great deal of life waiting for you whenever you feel ready to allow it in again. Keep taking care of yourself, and you eventually will.