Preferences

I love the word, "preferences."  I have learned that letting that word guide me has improved my quality of life to an almost unbelievable degree. 

I used to think that there was a right way and a wrong way to do everything.  I wasn't alone in this belief.  I noticed that a large part of what people said to each other was pointing out that somebody was doing something "wrong."  I certainly include myself in that. 

After I began to become informed about some things that I had never known before, I realized that most of what I thought about "right" was merely a matter of personal preference.  I had confused my preferences with "right."

I had been going through life noticing all the things other people were doing "wrong."  It was my main thought process.  Sometimes I pointed it out to them. 

I began to notice when I was putting other people "under surveillance" I was one very unhappy person.  It made me feel kind of righteous (which counteracted my internal criticism), but I mostly just felt grumpy.  And one thing was definitely and for sure - other people really began to avoid me.  Why would they not?  I don't like hanging out with critics - why would they?

Here are some examples -

• I noticed that I didn't like how some people dressed.  I thought they were doing it "wrong."  Then I realized I just had preferences about clothing and that applying those to myself made me happy.  Then it become very easy to ignore other people's preferences about clothes.

• I also discovered that I didn't like some kinds of cars, furniture, hair-dos, foods and on and on.  Somehow I had decided that my "preferences" were the "right" ones and declared everyone else wrong.  Oops!  I did it again!  The same solution applied - enjoy my own preferences and respect other people's preferences.

• When other people were not doing things "perfectly" (according to my definition of perfection), it annoyed me.  For example, when my husband drove a different speed than I thought he should, I pointed it out.  All my "back seat driving" habits did not improve our relationship. 

• I learned that everyone has his or her own definition of perfection and that doing things my own way and shutting up when in the presence of someone doing something differently than I did, would improve my quality of life.  For example, I stopped putting dishes away in the places I thought they should go when helping in someone's kitchen, and started asking where they kept them instead.

My focus on my own preferences and enjoying them certainly improves my quality of life.  But being mentally peaceful instead of being on the alert for wrong-doing improves my quality of life even more.  Most of all, my relationships with other people have improved and that's the best.

Action vs. Reaction

Somehow I came to believe that my life was mostly about just reacting to what came my way.  I had vague notions of what I thought my life should be about, but a great deal of the time, I was reacting - reacting to what was going on around me, other people, and to my emotions.

The death of Nelson Mandela this past week, called to mind the opposite of reacting to life.  He chose a life purpose - freedom for his people - and carried it into prison with him.  He certainly had plenty he could have reacted to, but  instead he chose to act in a strategic way - beginning with insisting that the prison guards call him Mr. Mandela or he refused to respond to them. 

Of course, I'm not Nelson Mandela and I don't have a big life purpose that affects the world like he did.  However, like every person, I have an opportunity to choose a life purpose and create the life I want.  Most of the obstacles I will come in contact with are within me rather than outside myself.  In order not to sleepwalk through life, just reacting to what's around me, I must take the time to consult my higher self and my higher power for direction.

Why and How I Cured my Sleep Deprivation

"You can sleep when you're dead." 
"Sleep deprivation is a spiritual practice." 
"Important people don't sleep very much." 
"Lazy people sleep too much." 
"If you sleep as much as you want to, you're sleeping
 too much."

For a lot of my adult life I believed that sleep deprivation was my badge of honor.  I thought it communicated to others that I was so busy with important things that I didn't have time for mortal stuff like sleeping.  Lack of sleep also made me feel like I was a little bit saintly.

Unfortunately, lack of sleep also made me feel cranky, frantic and unfocused.  I used to fall asleep pretty much every time I sat down.  Going to movies was a waste of time because I fell asleep within the first few minutes.  I fell asleep at work after lunch. (I had to hide in the women's restroom.)

By the time I was in my 40s, I had so much sleep debt that it took me years to catch up when I finally made a commitment to sleep as much as I needed to. 

I might never have given in if it hadn't been for a terrible wreck I had several years ago.  I was pretty badly injured.  As soon as I thought I could, I went back to work and kept my usual too-little sleep schedule.

Fairly soon I began to experience simply being unable to get out of bed in the morning.  I used all the will power I could muster and I still couldn't get out of bed. 

I missed a lot of important functions, and people were mad at me.  I just had to deal with it - I really couldn't get out of bed.  Finally I gave in and quit working.

I went to bed when I felt sleepy and got up when I was finished sleeping.  For several years I slept a minimum of 12 hours a night and sometimes as much as 16 hours. It was frustrating.

But as soon as I started trying to exercise self-discipline by going to bed later and getting up earlier, I went right back to not being able to get up in the morning.  So I would surrender again.

Finally I arrived at the point I am now - I go to bed around 9:00 p.m. and get up about 7:00 a.m.  That's about 10 hours of sleep.  It varies a little from day to day, but that's what I usually need to function.

If I'm more physically active than usual, I will usually sleep longer the next day.  That's necessary for my well-being. 

As far as I know, there is absolutely no virtue whatsoever in sleep deprivation - not for physical health, emotional and mental health, nor for spiritual growth.  I'm against it.

So, besides going to bed when I was tired and getting up when I woke up, I also used sleep hygiene, relaxation exercises, guided meditation, and melatonin to regulate my sleep patterns.

Sometimes I wonder whether the world might not be a better place if everyone was getting enough sleep.  Less crankiness, fewer wrecks, more productivity at work, fewer divorces (maybe more sex because people might actually have the energy), less child abuse, less conflict in general.  Wow! 

Who am I really?

In order for me to have any idea what I really wanted for my life, I had to have at least an idea of who I really was.  For a good part of my adult life I've been confused about the answer to that but didn't even know I was confused.

I had accepted what other people told me I was beginning with my parents, then my friends, then my spouse, then my children.  It wasn't until much later that I realized that who I thought I was was an amalgam of other people's perceptions.  Then I started reading books and taking personality tests. 

Everything I learned was helpful.  My favorite personality tests are Enneagram and the Myers-Briggs.  I highly recommend taking them.  They're fairly easily accessible on line.  The part that interested me the most was that when I took them more than once, separated by a considerable period of time, they came out quite differently.

Personality tests made me think about how I really behaved, how I made choices, how I changed from one kind of situation to another.  That was very helpful because I could also identify which situations were the most enjoyable and which were the least enjoyable.

Of course, personality tests were far from the only options for learning about myself.  Some of the books I read suggested looking at magazines in order to identify what types of outdoor scenes stuck out to me and what type of interiors caught my attention.  What seemed odd to me at the time, but doesn't any more, was that whether indoors or outdoors, I was strongly drawn to scenes that looked peaceful to me.

My attraction to peacefulness began to show up in my clothing choices - calm colors, clothes with no patterns.  Little by little I began to change my surroundings in small ways to reflect my attraction to peacefulness.

After awhile I realized that peacefulness was what I wanted at the center of my life and for the foundation for my life.  Then I had a real goal.  Something that lifted my heart and gave me direction.  The more I worked toward peacefulness as a goal, the more I loved my life.

3 Ways to Build a Foundation for the Life of Your Dreams

Trying to roof a house before you're finished with the foundation is obviously futile.  But I used to try to set goals and achieve them before I actually knew who I was and why I wanted to achieve those goals.  I usually only put a few days of effort into working toward them before I gave up.  No wonder.  I was definitely trying to work without a foundation.

I finally realized that I was choosing goals that I thought I SHOULD choose instead of goals I actually wanted.  I didn't actually know what I wanted either because I was so busy trying to be who I thought I SHOULD be.  It had never occurred to me to ask myself who I was or who I wanted to be and what that person, whoever she was, would want for her life.

So...it was evident that I would first have to discover who I really was...

Step 1 - Discover who I really am (or who I really want to be).  Oh boy!  This is not as easy as it sounds. However, you can make room for a little time with yourself on a regular basis to ask yourself some questions, and you can gradually get acquainted with yourself.  Make it a time when you don't have anything else you have to do or people you need to be with.  You don't have to start with the big questions like, "What do I want my life to be about?"  You can just start with making a list of things you love to do.  Then make a list of things you love:  like what colors, food you love.  Check your closet and select your favorite clothes.  This is a way to start getting better acquainted with yourself.

Step 2 - What do I REALLY want?  Go ahead and make a list of the goals you think you should want to achieve.  Now - notice that what you REALLY want is the feeling you would get from achieving those goals. 

For example, I'd like to have a convertible.  I've seen them on t.v. and in the movies.  The people driving them look happy and carefree. (Except for Thelma and Louise driving off a cliff!)  So what I really want is to feel happy and carefree.  This exercise will help you separate the goals that give you the result you REALLY want, from the goals you think you SHOULD want.

I know I SHOULD lose weight.  But the feeling I would have by losing weight is a feeling of accomplishment, looking better, and feeling better.  When my goal is how I want to feel, I'm a lot more motivated than by a "should."

Step 3:  Begin to add the things you love to your life on a daily basis. 
Here's the easy part.  The fun part.  Start adding the stuff you love to your life.  Don't spend a lot of money; just add the simple, easy things.  Wear the clothes you love, eat healthy food you love, do some of the activities you love.

By making these changes you're telling yourself that you really are capable and ready to build the life of your dreams.  You are building a foundation of self-knowledge and are learning what you really love - invaluable for moving forward.

Changing Focus

As I've changed my focus in my personal life, my focus has changed a lot in my professional life.  Right now I'm in a transition period as I work on discovering how to transition my professional focus from goal setting to  more inner work for the purpose of creating the life of our dreams.  More will be revealed.

Why I Love Being Over 70 years old!

I've never really dreaded getting older.  I've always been short in stature and looked younger than I was.  I attributed my perception that "I got no respect" (Rodney Dangerfield's joke), to being short and young, so I always wanted to be older than I was.

Now that I'm technically an "old lady," I've reached my objective - I'm finally "old enough."

I'm old enough to truly not care that I'm not sexy.  I'm old enough to realize that getting enough sleep and general down time is vitally important.  I'm old enough to know that my spirituality can come first.  I'm old enough to know that prestige is pretty much worthless for happiness.  I'm old enough to know that being busy is not the same as accomplishment.  I'm old enough to know to realize that social convention will not bring me love. 

Of course, it's too bad that I didn't know all that when I was 20, 30, 40, or 50.  But I'm grateful that I've got it now!

Getting Rid of a Bad Habit

I used to think that how you got rid of a bad habit was that you just stopped.  Slam on the brakes.  Try to avoid the whiplash.  Then get out of the old car,  get a new car and drive a different direction. 

For the first half of my life that was the method I tried over and over.  It did NOT work.  Some other driver seemed to be driving my car.  I felt like a loser. The more I tried the method and it didn't work, the more I was sure I was a loser.  I found myself back in the old car like a night terror.  New Year's Resolutions, daily resolutions - nothing but failure.

Only in these new years have I finally found resources so I could learn about how to get rid of a bad habit.  It's not that I didn't dig but what I found didn't work. What I turned up was, do something for 21 days and you will have formed a habit.  I couldn't do something for 21 days.  One to three was my pattern.  Put a rubber band on your wrist and snap it when you do the bad habit.  I couldn't remember to do it. 



Here are the basics:

1)  I had to have a good habit to replace the bad one. 

2)  The good habit had to be one I truly wanted - not just something I thought I "should" want.

3)  I had to start ridiculously small.

4)  I had to have lots of support from the people around me.

5)  I had to make sure I understood what the bad habit was doing for me.  I believe everything we do has purpose, but often the purpose is unconscious.  For example, when I stopped smoking I learned that part of the reason I smoked was because I felt sophisticated and I saw non-smokers as kind of boring.  That had to change.

6)  The new habit needed to be in place every single day.

7)  I needed to reward myself for the progress I made and stay off my case when I had a slip. 

8)  I learned to start over and never, ever, ever, give up.

Habits that Enhance Our Lives

I just finished reading "The Power of Habits" by Charles Duhigg.  It's been a best seller and I can see why.  The author has included a lot of fascinating information about how habits influence both individual lives, social movements and companies.  It's a very interesting read.

On the down side, I thought some of the examples were off base and somewhat forced when it came to organizations.  I am familiar with some of the examples and just didn't see what they read into it.

However, there are some really useful ideas about habits in the book.  My experience definitely agrees with what they say about how habits affect our lives.  The percentage they used was 40% of the time we are operating out of habit.  I would have said more than 50% of the time but whatever.  Since we are on automatic pilot when we're acting out of habit, those habits had better be good ones or our lives will not be what we would wish them to be.

The difficulty comes when we try to change our habits.  According to the author, our brains actually change when we form a habit and the change is there forever.  In order to change a habit, an overlay has to form to obscure the old habit and form the new one.

To form a new habit, it must be attached to a habit we already have and want to keep.  For example, if we want to form the habit of exercising, the first thing is to determine when we want to do it.  Right after our first two cups of coffee, for example.  The coffee is firmly in place and exercising immediately after anchors the new habit in time.  That's called a "cue."  Without a cue to start a new habit, it's not going to happen.

Then by repetition a routine develops.  The more it's repeated, the more ingrained it becomes.  Then the new habit shows up in the brain as strongly as the old habit.  Of course, if the routine stops, the old habit comes to the surface and fills in the space where the new one was.

There has to be a reward for the new habit to stay in place.  It's not good enough that we "should" do the new habit.  That doesn't work with our brain chemistry.  For example, with exercise, it takes awhile for us to reap the rewards of being stronger and healthier.  So, we'll need to find a way to reward ourselves for carrying out the habit if we want to stay motivated.

I wonder why more attention isn't paid to the skill of developing habits since so much of our quality of life is bound up in our habits.  I know for myself I've often had really good intentions but forgot to carry them out.  I put myself down and felt ashamed but I really didn't know what to do about it.  This new information is a huge help.

The Upside and the Downside of Habits

My habits have always seemed to be barriers to my heart's desires.  Eventually, I realized that it would be a good idea to actually research what's known about habits so I've been in that process for awhile now.  I have learned a lot, and the more I learn, the more I find I need and want to learn.

Here's what I think, so far, about "bad" habits: 

• I don't believe bad habits happen because I'm a bad person.  I believe they serve a purpose.  They developed because, unconsciously, I thought they were helpful.  Overeating is an example.  Eating pleasurable foods is a great antidote to emotional pain.  I unconsciously used it as a tool.  A better way would be to notice when I have emotional pain and learn how to comfort myself in ways that don't have such negative consequences.

Here's what I think, so far, about "good" habits:

• I believe that forming "good" habits is a lot harder than we believe.  I was taught that you just start doing what you should be doing anyway and not make any kind of a fuss about it.  Well, so far in my life I haven't met anybody who has done that.  Learning to form new habits is an art and requires study and support from others.  The formation of habits, new research indicates, has evolved as a survival tool.  For example, we can't possibly think about everything necessary to drive a car.  The process of learning is to a large extent dependent on putting the actions necessary into unconscious mind. 

At this stage of my life, one of the most important tasks I've taken on is to discover how to build a life that I enjoy and that has meaning for me.  Building that life is simply building a series of new habits.  Simple.  Not easy at all.

Mindlessness

Several years ago I took a seminar on "mindfulness," and they told the students that most of us go through life like robots, operating mainly unconsciously. We often give almost no thought to how we feel, what we're thinking, what we're doing, why we're doing what we're doing, what's going on around us - mindlessness.

My mind was usually worrying about what I "needed" to do next and what terrible things were going to happen if I didn't, my personal shortcomings, what somebody else was doing or not doing.  I was either living in the future or the past.  It would have been extremely unusual for me to actually notice my body, my feelings, or my environment. 

When I heard that mindfulness was preferable to "mindlessness," I wasn't sure why it was.  I really thought it was just how human beings were and there was really no choice in it so why does it matter anyway.  The answer to "Why does it matter, anyway?" was that when I lived in my head, thinking about the past or the future, I was totally missing the present - which is where my life is actually lived.  It would be possible for me to go to my grave without ever having really participated in the life I have been mysteriously given!  It's also possible, however, to make a choice to live in the here and now and actually experience my life.

I realized I didn't want my life to have been about housework and whether I was pretty enough and whether I had enough money, and whether the people in my life were doing what I wanted.  Those were the things that revolved in my mind every day and were, therefore, my life as I was living it.  Yuck!

They mentioned that the choice to live mindfully was one that had to be made - not just daily but moment by moment.  It's a very difficult discipline.  However, I can testify that as I continue to make that choice in my life, I continue to be more and more in touch with my heart and the love in the universe.  What else could be more important? 

Nothing Changes Unless There's a Plan

Ah, insight!  It's so exciting!  It promises a new life and new happiness! 

But here's the thing - it's temporary.  Usually.  There are a few exceptions but mostly it's temporary. 

For example, I just finished reading Cheryl Richardson's book, The Art of Extreme Self Care.  She's divided the book into twelve months with tasks to do each month.  She's actually presented me with a plan for improving my self care.  However, it's up to me to decide what I will do to improve my self care on a daily basis and then remember to actually do it.

As a life coach, I've learned that I'm not the only one who has trouble making a plan and then remembering to carry it out.  The call of my unconscious routines seduces me.  So, I post sticky notes everywhere to remind me to floss, to call friends, etc.  I set the alarm on my phone to remember to do evening meditation. 

For me, planning is not a complicated process.  I've read many, many books on the subject of planning and some of them are long and detailed.  I got lost and gave up.  So now I just brainstorm a list of possibilities and choose what seem to be the best ones.  (Brainstorming just means spitting out all the stuff that comes to mind without judging.)  Then I put the best of the possibilities on my to do list every day.

I deeply believe that simplicity works best for me and for a lot of other people too.  I also deeply believed, even before reading Cheryl's book, that taking care of myself is my first responsibility and if I do a bad job of that, nothing else is going to go well.

Making Room for my REAL Life

Clutter exists in time as well as space.  No one ever told me that.  I had to figure it out for myself.  There are innumerable time-wasters that can clutter up my life.  With the advance of the internet and electronic devices, we have many more time clutter problems than before.

I thought the way to get rid of time clutter was to figure out what to eliminate, but even though that sounds logical, it's actually backwards.  It doesn't work the way eliminating material clutter does. 

With material clutter I can just make a pile of stuff I want to simplify, and then divide it into: 1. a pile of trash  2.  things to give away or sell and 3.  things to put away.  With time clutter I just use what I've learned about what moves my heart and put those things into a time slot.  Of course, that means heart activities will crowd something out, but once I know what the heart activities are, I find it really easy to see which time clutter things need to go. 

It works just fine for me to check email and Facebook only once a day and use that time to write posts for my two blogs.  I've completely given up ironing.  I still have a little ironing board but I just use it to iron labels on my daughter's clothes and to let company iron their stuff.  It's a lot easier to do dishes as I go along rather than making a big production of it once a day.

When I'm living from the heart, writing, taking pictures, spending time with people I love, cooking new dishes and just enjoying my peaceful life easily crowds out stuff that really doesn't matter in the long run.

Creating a Beautiful Life by Using Intention

I believe that many of us just get up every morning and do what's in front of us to do - chores, work, sleep, eat, dress, errands and on and on.  Every once in awhile we might have a minute where we think about what our life is about, but it's probably unlikely that we think of ourselves as the a creator of a work of art, but that is what we are whether we realize it or not.

We are either creating our lives consciously or unconsciously.  In order to create a beautiful life, we are probably going to have to become conscious of what we're doing.  That sounds so simple!  In my experience it is simple, but also one of the most difficult things I've done.

Let's say that we've already done the work of discovering what a beautiful life looks like to us.   (This work is of the right brain and definitely not the left brain.)  Then what happens is that we forget about it in a day or two and then go back to our normal, unconscious way of doing things.

So how can we make sure we remember that our lives are a marvelous gift from our creator that we can make beautiful every single day?  When I take a step back from my daily rounds and think about the gift I've been given, I know that if I were my creator, I would be sad that the life I gave is being used as an unconscious round of chores.  Maybe it's as simple as writing down and memorizing an intention every morning. 

If I set the intention every morning that I am creating a beautiful life today and honoring the fabulous gift I've been given, my to-do list miraculously changes.  Ideas often come to me about how I can make that day a beautiful day.  Other ideas about actions I could take to lay groundwork for even more beautiful days in the future.

Intention has great power.  It gives me the opportunity to tune in to my creativity.  It provides the energy to take action.  Inspiration stems from it.  Certainly it is worth the two minutes it takes to focus each morning.

EXTREME Self Care

Cheryl Richardson who has written several books that focus on self care, always adds the modifier "extreme."  She says that her reason for that word is that just regular self care isn't nearly enough - especially not for women.  We tend to think that self-care is taking our vitamins and exercising - things we will get to as soon as we get everything else done.  But there's a lot more to self-care than that.

Luckily I started watching Oprah in the 1990s and Cheryl was a regular guest.  As a result I started buying and reading her books.  I may have all of them.  I was amazed at the kind of self-care she was recommending -  things like a weekly massage, leaving the office during lunch and going for a walk outside.  Ideas like that were completely foreign to me at the time.

Cheryl convinced me that if I wanted to have a good life I had to put extreme self-care at the top of my to-do list, not at the bottom.  So I began to try to do it.  What a struggle that was - a war with myself and my mind. 

I felt guilty and anxious when I took time to care for myself.  Then I heard her speak at a university conference, and she said that you would know you were on the right track when you felt guilty.  It was just a sign that you were going against your programming which was exactly what you were going to have to do.

Eventually, Cheryl said, you would get used to caring for yourself and the guilt and anxiety would go away.  She was right.  There are other benefits to self-care besides a higher quality life - other people enjoy the new you - lighter, happier, and more fun.   

Why I Love Simplicity

My love for simplicity came to me both naturally and slowly.   A very, very long time ago I came across information about the way Japanese people arranged their homes.  I had a book of pictures that my aunt and uncle brought back from Japan where they were stationed after World War II. 

The simplicity of those homes seemed perfect to me; the way homes ought to be.  So maybe the desire for simplicity was just innate in me.  As time went on I was overtaken with the messiness of raising children.  There's not much desire for simplicity in their hearts and minds and I lacked the energy to even try to create it.  In addition, there's a good chance I have attention deficit disorder and am a basically messy person.  So, for most of my adult life, my environment was cluttered to the max.

The effect of the clutter was that I felt stressed by it.  It caught my eyes and attention constantly and although I always felt urged to do something about it, I was always on my way to do something more important. 

Then more time went by and I had a 60 hour a week job and a sick husband who was not motivated to put things away.  So the clutter remained and was only dealt with if I was having company.  What usually happened was that I worked like a dog to get rid of the clutter on the day that company was coming and then was so tired while they were there that I fell asleep in my chair while they were visiting.

In my search for an easier life I eventually came across the concept of doing tasks in tiny short bursts, a little bit at a time.  By setting a timer for anywhere between five and fifteen minutes, I was able to deal with clutter over a period of time.  So in this latter period of my life, my environment is pretty simple.

It really is worth the small amount of trouble it is to spend five to fifteen minutes a day keeping things fairly simple.  The result is that the inside of my head is quiet when I move through a room.  There's nothing in my way.  There's nothing to do in that room.  I enjoy the spaciousness and clear surfaces.  The fewer things that are in a room, the more I can enjoy the things that are in the room.

It makes a much easier life for me with time and energy for the things that are important.  For me there is much beauty in clear, simple spaces.

She Got a Lot Done

"She got a lot done." 

If we were being watched every day of our lives by other people, I think those watching us might think we wanted the above put on our tombstones. 

I lived that way for a large part of my life.  I woke up every day with a to-do list running through my head, vibrating with stress and adrenaline.  I ran as hard as I could, trying desperately to get everything done because I had the horrible terror that the consequences of not getting everything done would be a disaster.

There were some disasters but not because I hadn't gotten everything done.  They occurred because I was running in circles and not watching out.

Of course, I did not get everything done.  The list was way too long in the first place and in the second place I was disorganized and confused.  I had no priorities; I just tried to do everything at once.   Every moment of every day I felt like a failure because I had not done even half of the stuff on my list.

I kept up this kind of life until middle age when I absolutely could not do it anymore.  Then I had to research, study and practice to relearn how to do life differently. 

It's my belief that many, many of us are living this kind of life - a life commonly called "a rat race."  As a result we are thinking that the "life of our dreams" would be one in which we finally finished our to do list every day.  But this is not going to happen. 

It probably wouldn't have been possible to finish a to do list even in the distant past in a hunter/gatherer society although we might have been able to come close if we had the self-discipline to limit the ideas we had for things to do.  It was a much simpler life and the number of options for things to do was much simpler.  But we humans have such big brains and so much creativity, it still might have been possible to overwhelm ourselves with too much to do.

Currently, the number of things to do every day would probably take the entire population of the earth a whole year to finish.  So there's no use at all of trying to finish a to do list.  So since it's impossible, what can we do instead?

For starters:  1)  Slow down  2) Breathe 3)  Give prayerful thought to what three things you could do that would really make a difference in your life - they could be relatively small things like getting some vegetable to eat.  4) Then do those three things before you do anything else.

The Secret to Making Positive Changes for Your Life

The biggest secret, in my experience, to making positive changes is to NEVER, NEVER, EVER, EVER give up.  Change is hard - very, very hard.  I've talked to probably hundreds of people who were trying to make changes and struggling.  Plus I may be the queen of taking a very long time to finally get a positive change integrated into my life.  A lot of people just give up and never try again.  "It's too hard," they say to themselves.  "I'm a failure," they say to themselves.  I did that for a long time. 

I had a friend that was trying to make a change in her behavior.  I asked her how she was doing and she replied, "Oh, I tried it for a day.  It was too hard so I stopped."  Oh sweet spirits of transformation!  She was a perfect reflection of me.  I thought to myself although I didn't say it to her, "She's totally uncommitted.  She wants change to be easy."  Then I realized I was just the same way.

Finally I got so disgusted I started researching solutions.  I've probably read dozens of books on the topics of self-discipline, organization, time management, spiritual help for sloth, how to get past procrastination, and on and on.  Each of them was a help for a day or two or three or maybe even four.  Then I would totally forget about the whole thing and go back to my usual way of living which was none too good for me.  Weeks or months later I might remember and try again.  This stuff went on for years.  It was very discouraging. 

Finally I saw that the main problem was that I was giving up over and over again, and that my bad memory about what I was trying to change was just my way of quitting.  So I started doing everything I could to remind myself of what I was doing.  Little bit by little bit, I began to change. 

For example, just simple things like taking my medicine and nutritional supplements every day were huge problems.  I was dependent for my well being on remembering to take them, but I forgot several days a week.  I made new resolves but forgot again.  I got uncomfortable and read some more books, wrote in my journal about it.  Eventually as I kept trying, I succeeded. 

It's probably been two or three years that I've been consistent about taking meds and supplements.  So I know for a fact that when I keep trying to find ways that work for me to change a habit, eventually I find something that works.  Therefore, I deeply believe that everybody can do it if they NEVER, NEVER, EVER, EVER give up.

Living from the Heart

One of the ways I honor my decision to live from the heart is to give myself just a couple of minutes each morning with my coffee to ask my heart what would honor loving kindness today.  It's amazing how quickly I move from the things that really don't matter on my to do list to the things that do.  Usually I immediately know that staying in touch with people is at the top of the list, caring for the living things in my household is next, and then caring for my own well being which usually is exercise and good food, prayer and meditation, and rest.

Please, I Beg You! Stop Making Those New Year's Resolutions!!!

It's a really, really bad idea to set yourself up to join all those people who are at the gym in January and gone in February!  Or whatever the equivalent goal is that you're thinking about setting for yourself.  If you're anything like me, the goals you think you should set for yourself are based on someone else's ideas about what would be good for you - maybe even ideas you got when you were a child or ideas you got from the media.  Ideas about how you should look, what you should do with your time and money, what kind of car you should drive, what your home should be like, and anything else you can think of that would (you think) make you more socially acceptable.  None of those goals actually originate from you - from the real you - from your heart and soul.  So maybe they aren't even what would benefit you.

Of course, there are some almost universal goals that probably would benefit you - things like eating healthier in 2013 or exercising more, or getting more sleep.  The thing is, if they are just "shoulds" in your mind, the deepest part of you isn't going to help you achieve them.   What has worked for me is a whole paradigm shift from "shoulds" to "living from the heart."

Since "living from the heart" sounds so lofty and inaccessible, I will just list a few things I've done and still do at the beginning of each year to give myself some direction:

1.  Make a collage using poster board and pictures from magazines.  I take 30 minutes (set a timer) and rip out pictures that just seem to speak to me.  I deliberately pay no attention to what I'm thinking.  When the time is up, I just make a collage from the pictures I've accumulated.  I still don't try to think about why I liked the pictures.  When the collage is done, THEN I look at them and think about what those particular pictures say to me about how my deepest self wants to live life in the next year.

2.  Spend some quiet time thinking about how I can best take care of myself this next year.  What kinds of things do I enjoy that I've not gotten around to lately.  Make a list of those.

3.  Spend a little more quiet time thinking about the people I love and what I could do that would make them feel even more loved this year.

4.  Last but not least, I spend a little more quiet time to think about what I would do with this year if it were the last one I had on the earth.  Usually some thoughts about my life purpose are part of this meditation.  I believe all of us know unconsciously what our life purpose is and even just a little time asking ourselves what we can do this coming year to advance that purpose - whatever we believe that is - will, when added to the about three activities - give us direction that we will really WANT to take - that will take very little or no willpower to acheive.