An Easy Way to Shake Things Up

Here's another way to shake yourself loose when you're stuck and not making progress toward the life of your dreams:  Do something different.  Do something VERY different.  It doesn't have to be a big deal - just very different.

I have a daughter who has many disabilities, and her development as a young child was severely delayed.  That was the bad news.  The good news was that when we found ways to help her move forward in her development, she responded marvelously.  A brilliant occupational therapist worked with her, and I carried out her suggestions at home.  At one point, progress had completely stopped for weeks, and we were at our wits ends.  We had no idea why she was stuck and no idea what to do about it.  Finally the therapist said, "Let's shake things up - WAY up."  Her suggestion was to clean the bathtub really well, make a whole bunch of chocolate pudding, put her in the bath tub with it and let her play in it.  Well, I can't tell you how much fun that little 18 month old had with that!  And what was more important, she began to make progress like a race horse at top speed.  What the chocolate pudding in the bathtub had to do with her sudden ability to stand up, we had no idea.  But whatever... we didn't care.

Since then I have discovered that doing something VERY different when I'm stuck in my progress works for me too.  Some ideas:  change the environment I'm working in - take my project to a friend's house and work in her kitchen.  Do my hair in a totally different way every day (need lots of hair spray) that I'm working on a project.  If the project lends it self to it, lie down in the grass to work on it.  Eat some dark chocolate with every meal on the days I'm working on the project (chocolate seems to cure everything).  You will have your own ideas.  Something about doing something VERY different can break loose your motivation.