Being Here Now

Do You Like Me?

I was talking to a friend the other day about all the ways my life has changed in the past few years (a conversation spurred by a previous blog post) and she said to me, "But what's the one thing, the biggest thing, the most important thing, that is different?"

I had to think for a minute but the answer was right there.

The biggest difference is that I care about people. I really, truly care.

This is not to say that I never cared before, no, of course not...but somehow, before, mixed up in my caring for others was the more powerful force of me caring about what others thought about me.  So if I did something nice for someone, sure I did it because I cared about that person, but it was probably more because I cared what that person would think of me. I wanted my actions to be worth some "Now You'll Like Me" points. I didn't really do this in any conscious way, but that's the way it was. I see that now. And it means my actions were never pure, never NOT motivated by some deep, deep desire to be liked.

And now, while I don't want others to DISlike me, I don't live my life wondering if people like me, what I can do to make people like me, how I can change how I look, how I act, how I listen, how I talk, and on and on.

This freedom has, surprisingly, somewhat paradoxically, created a space for deep caring to spring. Because I am not always constantly monitoring others for what they think about me, I am free to really know them. To really love them. To really care for them as people (and not as objects reflecting my own low feelings about myself).

It feels like being released from captivity. It's freedom.

 

Taking Care of the One You are Most Responsible For

What does your life look like?

• Are you busy all the time, constantly looking after those around you to the detriment of yourself?
• Are you busy all the time and seemingly getting nothing done?
• Are you sitting around with lots of time wishing you had more to do?

The issue here is time management, but it's also a little bit of self-management. I know people who are always busy running from one thing to the next, but they eat terribly and sleep terribly. I know others who have almost nothing to do and also eat and sleep terribly (I was that person!).

The question is: is your life allowing you the time you need to take care of the one entity you are most responsible to and for?

(If you're really feeling clueless, that entity is YOU!)

Part of becoming a responsible adult is doing the necessary things to be a whole, properly functioning being.

This means: eating right, sleeping enough, getting physical activity, and having some purpose in the world. You might also include (as I would) making sure my surroundings are tidy, participating in some spiritual endeavor daily, and other such things.

These are things meant to nourish you...from the inside out.

So what should do if you're not doing your best at taking care of you?

1. Look at the places where you are doing things that make you feel bad. These might include: constantly following up on other adult's errands (even if that other adult is a spouse or an adult child), sitting around on the computer for hours on end, eating too much, sleeping too little, watching too much TV.
2. Change the negatives gradually. If you watch too much TV, gradually reduce it. If you find yourself getting sucked in by the computer, give yourself a time limit. If you aren't eating well, make better plans.
3. Take pride in yourself and that fact that by taking responsibility for yourself you are increasing your personal integrity. When you take care of yourself you actually make time because your efficiency increases and you eliminate the time-wasting things. You can proud of that. Most people will never try.

I find that most people I talk to are fundamentally unhappy with the way their day-to-day life is going. I have, too. But it only takes a decision to change the trajectory. And you only have to make that decision once every day.

You can do it.

Acting with the Best Intentions Means You Never Have to be a Pushover

Here's something I know: If your heart is always in a good place, if you always live with the intention of NOT hurting others, you never have to be afraid of speaking your truth.

When we are the target of gossip, or when we hurt another's feelings unintentionally, if we are absolutely sure our intentions were not malicious, we can never be afraid to address the issues directly.

In the past, I have always been deathly afraid of confrontation, mostly because I knew my heart wasn't always in the right place. I did do things to hurt others, or to leave them out. I did act in ways that did not live up to my highest ideals for myself. But I don't do that anymore.

These days, I live with a pure heart and with the intention to cause no harm. Sometimes I do cause harm, though, but it is not because I set out to do so. In all cases, it is a mistake.

Sometimes others are hurt by my mistakes. Or are annoyed by them. They may act in ways that are unforgiving and unkind. But because I know there was no malice in my heart, I can voice my truth without guilt.

My heart and mind are free to address the situation calmly and with a firm grasp on my emotions, whatever they may be: anger, hurt, sorrow, fear. 

This doesn't mean that I allow myself to engage in malicious talk, gossip, name-calling, or other deeply negative actions in order to avenge my hurts. That would only make me bitter and mean. I discuss my feelings with the person at the center of the misunderstanding, the person who I've committed a mistake against, the person gossiping about me.

And when I allow myself the gift of releasing my negative emotions, I don't have to be bogged down by them. I can let them go, give them up, and go back to living with a whole heart.

The whole point of personal transformation is to live with integrity in as many ways as possible. To always do the right thing. But we have to understand we are also human. We make mistakes as we interact with others in the world. However, when we decide that we are going to live with integrity, we have to figure out how to also have integrity to ourselves. We must make sure we are always kind to ourselves. And so it is important not to be a pushover when others might be unkind, but it is also important not to perpetuate the negativity.

Just for Today: Accept that There is Nothing You Cannot Do

I want to share a Truth with you (this is a big T truth because it is that powerful and that...well, TRUE!):

You Can Do Anything.

You can dance and sing in front of others. You can give a speech. You can run. You can do yoga. You can do whatever it is that you say to yourself you can't. You CAN do it. YOU CAN.

How do I know this? Because I know the Truth. The Truth is that the only limitations we put on ourselves exist in our own minds. It is our own mind that psyches us out, our own self-talk, our own negative impressions about ourselves.

But what if those magically disappeared? What if all those negatives were gone? What if the only thing our mind could convey was:

YOU are great! You have such empathy. YOU can DO THIS. You are so brave. You a sharp thinker. You can run past that tree 1000 ft away...and then you CAN keep on going. You are caring. You are beautiful dancer. You have amazing style. You know just what to say and when. You are kind to others. You are organized.

Imagine that. Imagine the only things you heard in your mind were the positive. No negatives. No over-building, but no tearing down.

You would be able to do anything.

And so, just for today, I want you to turn every negative thing you hear about yourself in your head into a positive. If your mind says, "You always screw that up!", I want you to say, "Oh, I made that mistake again, I CAN learn how to do it right." If your mind says, "There is no way you can speak in front of that group.", I want you to say, "I am interesting, I have lived an important life, and what I have to say is valuable and people want to hear it." 

Even if you don't necessarily believe it yourself, you just keep telling yourself that You Can Do Anything.

Today, I had a negative thought about myself and I was positive I was not going to be able to do something. But I changed my internal dialogue. AND I DID IT. I remembered that I know the Truth.

And here's another Truth: Tomorrow, when you wake up, it will still be today.

You Can Do Anything.

 

Living a Life of Purpose

I'm not going to sit here and tell you I've got this figured out. If you've read some of my posts, you'll know this. However, I have made significant progress towards living a life that is mostly full of purpose, learning, development, and joy. It's taken a long time to move from days of not really ever getting things quite right to days of feeling (for the most part) secure, motivated, serene, and passionate about life.

I can't give you a few years of wisdom in one post and have you absorb it in an instant. Unfortunately, life doesn't work that way. For what it's worth, it probably wouldn't be exactly what you needed. But I can offer the insights I have and maybe they will provide some clues to help you get to living your life of purpose.

Ready? Let's Go!

1. Be willing to consider that doing things differently will get you a different result.

In a nutshell: If you're doing the same things every day and feeling the same low feelings, don't be surprised. Be willing to shake things up, to look for a new way, to try a new approach. I guarantee you will run in to new results. If you always react to a request for a certain report with the same sense of anger and annoyance, try reframing your thinking about the value of what you're doing. Even if it resembles the TPS report of Office Space, if you change how you think about the doing of the task, you will change your result, even if it's only in your own state of mind for the rest of the day.

2. Accept that the way you've been doing things doesn't work.

This is a close cousin of #1. Not only might you try doing things differently, try admitting to yourself that your method, your approach, your philosophy was WRONG. Really let that sink in. It can be a real pride issue to want to assume that every thing you do is right. But that's not reality. When we can acknowledge that they way we've done something was wrong, we open the door for new and innovative ideas. We evolve. I still struggle with this one. I absolutely know I am always right. Except when I am proven to be wrong. It stings. But when I get over myself, I often find that there are better ways to do things out there.

3. Take a break if you need it.

You might come to a point in your life when you are completely confused about what to do. You go to work but you're unhappy and becoming more so every day. You're a stay-at-home mom but you're going stir crazy and are finding your spirits flagging. You're a college or graduate student and you just aren't sure what you're doing is meaningful to you and you're feeling trapped by your decisions. I say: take a break. Take some time to figure it out. Take some days to think about absolutely nothing, and then talk to people, take online quizzes about what you like, do some psychological tests that assess your strengths. Just learn about yourself. If you're the stay-at-home mom, obviously, you can't just stop taking care of your kid(s), but maybe you take a break by going TO work, or doing some volunteering. The idea here is to take a break from what you are doing. The student might take this approach, too.

4. Do something with your life.

I know this sounds like the exact opposite of #3. And it is. But once you've had your break, or even during it, it's really important to remember that it is nearly deadly to get caught in the trap of a life-long break. There's research that shows that people with too much time on their hands deal with greater instances of depression and are more unhappy. So, this point means: have some sort of mission. I am not saying that you need a job. But I am saying that there needs to be some thing that makes you feel like you have a place in the world. Maybe you have a hobby that you spend a lot of time with, maybe you're a volunteer or part of a volunteer organization, maybe you're working on figuring yourself out though recovery work or self-help, maybe you're going back to school. It doesn't matter what it is, but have one thing that you make your purpose.

5. Surround yourself with people who are living lives of purpose.

There's a quote that goes: Tell me who your friends are and I'll tell you who are. I believe this with all my heart. If we surround ourselves with people who are doing great things, living fulfilled lives, being useful to the world, I'll likely find myself doing the same things. It's really hard to have motivated, purposeful around you and still be lazy and unproductive. I've tried it. Trust me, it's hard. For one, those people don't really want to suffer lazy people for long. They're busy living and if you're not wanting to be living, too, they'll be off and running. I say: Run with them.

6. Hold yourself to a higher standard.

This one really goes back to one's own sense of self and integrity. When I decided I wanted to care more about myself, I had to hold myself to a higher standard. All of a sudden, it wasn't okay to spend hours on the internet. It wasn't okay to just eat anything. It wasn't okay to never get exercise. It wasn't okay to not look at the way I lived my life and try to make changes. I knew that in order to live a life of purpose I had to have to have the energy and drive to have the experiences that would make my life feel purposeful. For me, that meant doing things that other people might not. It meant having integrity for my own body and my own mind. And after all is said and done, that has made all the difference.

10 Tips for Meeting New People

For some, meeting people seems effortless. It looks as if they pick up new friends and acquaintances every where they go. Other of us have a much harder time with it. It can be very daunting, especially if we are shy or are generally fearful of being judged. This much is true, though, social relationships are absolutely vital to our happiness and even our good health.

Just before I sat down to write this piece, I checked out CNN and saw this article: Social relationships key to survival, study says. The point of the article is that, based on looking at the results of 148 different studies, those with more social relationships survive longer.

I've already talked about my lack of relationships in the post The Importance of Women in Our Lives, but I didn't tell you how I got to that point. It happened when I realized I was entirely too dependent on my husband for all my needs: companionship, happiness, love, support. There was no way he could do it all, and I believe the weight of that responsibility for my entire emotional well-being really took a heavy toll on our marriage. Instead of getting closer, we were drifting apart because he couldn't possibly be everything I needed, but I continued to nag him, berate him, and beg him for more and more attention.

One day I realized that I needed to start doing more for myself and start figuring out ways to get my emotional needs met in other ways. I came up with an action plan (I actually still have the email I sent myself about it somewhere--and, yes, I do send myself emails, it's very effective for remembering things!).  The action plan said something like: "Taking control of you emotional health: make new friends, volunteer, join meetup.com, care about yourself". That was it. It was a simple little email, but it was revolutionary in terms of how those four things transformed my life. Using those four things, and the other things in the list below, I was able to make new friends, and you can, too!

1. Don't pass up an opportunity: See someone reading a book you have? Make a comment about it. Is someone looking at a blouse you have? Mention that you also have it. Learn to strike up conversations. Eventually you can start adding things like, "I'm looking to start a book club, would you like to be a part of it?" and take their email. Asking might feel weird, but it can mean the start of a wonderful friendship.

2. Be a good conversationalist: Make sure you have something to talk about when you do get in to conversation with a new person.  I always hate when I meet someone and have nothing to say (not that I often have nothing to say!).

3. Explore your passions: Meet like-minded people doing what you love (singing lessons, cooking lessons, etc.).

4. Mine your address book: Used to be friends in high school? Knew a cool person in college? Send them an email, call them, find them on facebook and make a connection. Arrange a reunion or a girl's night. You may realize you still have lots in common.

5. Start a book club/poker club, knitting club with a few ladies/gents you do know and encourage people to invite anyone they know. Have a couple great friends? Have each person bring 1 or 2 new people to the next get-together.

6. Check out MeetUp! It worked great for me and there are meetup groups getting together all over the world. Chances are there are several where you live, too.

7. Maintain relationships once you make them. Once you get an email or a phone number, USE IT!

8. See what events are going on in your town and start attending.  Here in Indy, there's a Slow Food group that gets together a lot. The same people tend to attend the events with some new people every time. It's a great way to meet people if you are shy because you'll see the same faces over and over.

9. Constantly be on the lookout for new experiences. I now make sure I am always planning to do things that will put me in the company of new people. I know that making friends requires work and opportunity (meaning you have to see new people in order to make new friends).

10. Volunteer: think of something you really care about and donate your time. You'll not only meet new like-minded people, you'll also be improving your self-esteem.

Now go out and meet someone! And then tell me about it.

 

The Proper Care and Feeding of Boundaries, Part 1

I first mentioned boundaries in part 2 of my post on Forgiveness (here’s The Transformative Power of Forgiveness, Part 1 and The Transformative Power of Forgiveness, Part 2 if you want to read about forgiveness and ways to do it).

Boundaries are a tricky, tricky thing. Hard to figure out exactly what they are, hard to figure out how to have healthy ones, and hard to figure out what to do when yours have been crossed. I also have a different spin on what boundaries are in a person’s life and how healthy boundaries are actually maps that define your personal responsibilities to yourself.  If you read something that sounds suspiciously like your own behavior here, don’t immediately try to defend against, or justify why you don’t have a problem. Be open to learning, be open to trying a new way, you may be surprised at the results.

What are boundaries?

First things first. “What are boundaries?”, you might be thinking.  Boundaries describe the place where you end and another person begins. Physically, mentally, emotionally, in terms of responsibilities, and so on and so forth. Boundaries define how you act and how you treat others.  Boundaries also define how you permit people to act around you and how you permit/allow people to treat you.

 

How do I know when a boundary has been violated?

When you are doing something that someone should be doing for themselves, or when someone is doing for you what you should be doing for yourself, that is a boundary violation.

A boundary violation can occur when:

• Someone talks to/touches you in a way you don’t want them to, or they ask inappropriate questions about things that are not their business (probably to embarrass you or get a rise out of you).

• Someone makes you feel guilty and you agree to do something you’d rather not.

• Someone neglects to do something on time and then begs you to drop everything you’re doing to help them (and it happens a lot).

• In a romantic relationship, someone constantly drinks/does drugs/cheats/gambles/spends too much and despite repeatedly saying you’re not going to put up with it, you do.

• You feel badly because someone is being mean to you/you’re being treated unfairly/your work environment is hostile/you always seem to be the butt of the jokes with your family or the group you spend time with and you don’t feel like you have ability to speak up for yourself.

• You’re the one who does everything for everybody, makes sure everyone is where they are supposed to be, lunch in hand, clean clothes on back, and homework done.

• You cook, clean, manage the household, and go to work while your partner goes to work then comes home and watches TV.

• When you feel that the only way for you to be in a romantic relationship with someone is if you are completely enmeshed (meaning, you do every single thing together).

By now you get the idea. There are a million more examples, but these are some pretty common things.

In my life, one of the (many) ways I had boundary problems was that I was always the kind of person who was never getting things done. My life was a perpetual emergency. If something was due Tuesday, on Thursday, two days later, I’m making excuses about why it wasn’t done. If I needed to get a visa to go to India, I‘m the one paying stupid late fees because I waited ‘til the last minute. No matter what, I was late or I had a problem. I always had some excuse to justify my behavior, and I wanted everyone around me to jump through hoops so I wouldn’t be negatively impacted. That is a boundary issue because I did not have a clue as to where OTHER’S responsibility lay in relationship to me. I had the mistaken belief that people should take care of my messes. This is NOT true. After getting burned a few times by people who had strong personal responsibility boundaries (people who said to me, you knew when the deadline was, you missed it, you’re out of luck), I learned that I had to learn to take care of things in a timely manner. Others respected me more and I respected myself more.  And in fact, the more people save you from yourself, the bigger and uglier your messes will be. By the way, those people are called enablers and all they’re doing is allowing you to be a royal disaster. Take it from one who knows.

 

How do I set appropriate boundaries?

1. Learn to Say No

First of all, setting boundaries for what is okay for you (saying no when you don’t want to do something, asserting that you need time for yourself, etc.)  can feel mean in the beginning. The truth is, it’s really kind and caring. By taking care of yourself (as only you can), you clear up your mind and heart for being there for people in the ways that are most appropriate for you and in ways that allow you to be fully present, free from resentments and fatigue.

It will be really hard the to stand up for what you want and need the first few times. Someone asks to handle a problem you know isn’t yours and you say, “No.”  After you begin to stand up for yourself and your time, you’ll find it gets easier, and people will actually begin to be more thoughtful before they just start dumping things on you. It’s pretty amazing how it works.

 

2. Get Your Act Together

If you’re the kind of person who tends to be the one dumping on others, it’s really past time you got your act together. Really. You might think you’re endearing and charming and people understand that you’re going through tough things, but TRUST me when I say they don’t respect you much. I’ll be talking about developing personal discipline in a future post. Stay tuned.

 

3. Look for Ways to Take Care of Yourself

If you’re constantly looking for others to be your emotional anchor, you’ve got work to do. One day, the anchors will likely fail and you’ll be adrift with no sense of how to take care of yourself. Work with a therapist, talk about your feelings (or lack thereof), do some inner-child work and get to the bottom of why you can’t rely on yourself for emotional support. Look, I’m not suggesting people never need others. We very often need others to be supportive to us; it’s what makes us human. But you can’t always be farming out your needs to everyone else. When times are tough, you have to also have a personal reserve of strength to get you through.

I’ve also got another perspective for you. I was talking to a friend about boundaries and she stated that she came to realize, late in her life, that the reason she has never been able to stand up for herself, or to feel like she can tell others when she’s been hurt or when she wants or needs something is that when she was growing up, it was not permissible for anyone in her household to say anything negative. Everyone had to be happy, there were never any tears allowed, and she was constantly told, “You’re okay, there’s nothing wrong, that didn’t hurt, etc.” After years and years of that kind of conditioning and never being taught how to appropriately express feelings, wants, and needs, she never knew how. As an adult, she found she never expressed differing opinions, tended to go along with the crowd (i.e., doing what everyone else wanted just to get along), and generally accepted any kind of behavior she got from relationships because she didn't think she had a voice in the matter.

Now, after years and years, she realizes her experiences growing up led to have serious boundary issues as an adult. She’s now trying to work all of that out. It’s a long and arduous process, but she’s already much more confident, much more assertive, and much more FUN than she was when I met her several months ago.

Final Thoughts and a Preview of Part 2

Very often, you will set boundaries and they will get crossed. Again and again. This is where the ability to set and follow through on consequences comes in. We’ll talk about these Thursday in part 2.

Just to give you a hint of where I’m going with this, here’s an example:

You’re in a relationship with someone and you decide you have a boundary that you aren’t comfortable with your partner spending more than $100 without talking it over first. Yet, your partner continues to do this. You keep talking about it, arguing about it, threatening to leave; yet nothing changes. You’ve established a boundary, it’s been broken, and you don’t know how to enforce it. This is a challenging thing. See me again tomorrow.

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Do the Next Right Thing

I have been caught up in a whirl of low feelings. I know the listlessness of feeling sad and down. I understand the melancholy, the restless blur of days spent accomplishing very little.

Here’s what I know about being in low places mentally:

1. I got very little accomplished

2. I was always thinking of myself (What about me? Why me? No one understands me, etc.).

3. I could not think of anything I could do to get myself out of the doldrums.

Today, I know a very different reality. I have been through some crazy stuff. It really doesn’t matter what that stuff is, the important part is what I have done because of it. And the main thing, the most helpful thing was: Doing the Next Right Thing.

One day I just decided I needed to take control of my own happiness and my own success. Once I truly made a shift in my thinking that no one (not my family, not my husband, not my dog) was truly responsible for putting a smile on my face, I became the one thing I struggled all my life to be: Responsible.

I was no longer waiting around for someone to come home, for someone to bring me something, for someone to do anything.

 

Here are some of the steps I took:

1. I found a support network.

2. I asked people for help.

3. I read a lot of those self-help books (and guess what? When I was ready for the message, they really did help).

4. I got right with my spiritual self

5. I started caring about my health more.

6. I started caring for others.

8. I was brutally honest with myself and others about who I was and what I was doing to contribute to my own state of unhappiness.

9. I started acting like an adult.

10. I started being present, starting caring about now, starting letting the past stay in the past, and trusted that if I was doing the right things right now, the future would take care of itself.

Doing the next right thing means that you don’t have to have a plan about what your next week looks like, or your next month. What is important is the rest of the day, the next hour, the next minute. I was very vigilant with myself. I forced myself to go to support meetings, to meet friends (even when I didn’t want to), to have experiences, to do things for others, to do anything BESIDES sitting around on the internet whiling away hours, or sleeping in the middle of day, or anything else that was not the next right thing. Sometimes if I couldn’t think of anything, I would take my dog for a walk.

Do the next right thing for getting yourself happy and fulfilled. You’ll be forcing yourself to do things. You’ll be fighting your desire to be isolated. But do it anyway. I know this: No one is responsible for my happiness and my sense of well-being besides me. No one truly can be. No matter how well they take care of me, how much they do for me, they can’t heal the emptiness in my heart and mind. That is my job, one I have to embrace and be responsible for.

Today, I am a happy girl. I have love and laughter in my life. Life is not perfect, but I am transformed by my ability to do the next right thing. The next right thing is not always the easy thing, or the fun thing. But it is the thing that will lead to your best life. And you know what it is, no one has to tell you what you really need to do. You already know.

 

Trust yourself now. Do the next right thing.

 

Tell me about it. I want to know.

Getting to Where You Want to Be

I learned about something wonderful recently. I think it's going to be revolutionary. I mean, REALLY revolutionary. I got it from the book I haven't been able to stop talking about: The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. Check out her blog at:

The Happiness Project 

As she goes through her year-long experiment of trying all kinds of "how-to" tips on being happy, she employs a very effective tool: The Resolutions Chart. So here's mine:

Download Resolution Chart

The way this works is the days of the week are listed along the top row and the resolutions I've made are listed down the column on the left. I've bought shiny metallic stars (gold, red, green, and blue!) to award myself every time I complete something. At the end of the week, I can see how many of my resolutions I have kept. For someone who likes visuals and who likes checking things off, I can tell this is going to be a fun way to keep of the things I want to employ in my life.

Feel free to take this template and update it for yourself. If you look at my resolutions on the left, I will tell you what my rationale was:

1. Build in some wins.

There are some things I already do every day. Since I don't deal well with failure, I've put in some things that I know I will do. Instamatic Win-o-matic.

2. Focus on the whole package.

I didn't want this to become all about my weight, or all about clutter. I wanted something more holistic. Yours can be totally different. Maybe what you really want to focus on is improving your finances. Your life should be your guide.

3. Think about your ideal self

I came up with a lot of these resolutions by thinking about the traits I would most like to have. Then I built actionable steps to get me to that place. I want to be a tidy person, thus all the decluttering resolutions.

Here's another resolution. I am going to take a picture of my resolution chart at the end of each week and post it here every Monday so you can see how I am doing. Will you share with me also? We'll keep each other accountable!

I realize it's kind of unfair for me to post this thing the day I'm starting, so if you like, give yourself a week to get prepared, and then start with me next Monday. But if you're ready to jump right in, c'mon!!

Let's do this together.

Challenge Your Assumptions about What You Think You Are, Part 2

Yesterday I talked a lot about the things I thought were hard and fast truisms about myself, but I didn’t talk much about what I actually did to get myself to think differently about those things. How I 1. actually realized I had these false “truths” about myself and 2. what I did once I realized I had them to do things differently.

 

These are things I encourage you to try for yourself so that you can start to see what “false truths” you are holding about yourself.

 

1. Be aware of what you’re thinking.

Surprise, surprise, I am asking you to be present. It really does matter that you actually stop to listen to the dialogue/monologue whatever it is that is going on inside your head. You may find it to be very derogatory (You’re so stupid! You’re always making mistakes! You’re never on time!) and you may also find it reinforcing ideas about yourself (No need to exercise, you can’t lose weight anyway. Don’t bother putting those books away, the room will just be a mess no matter what. I am too busy to start this project now. I am just a sad person. I have a bad temper. I am a bitch. I like taking care of everybody.).

 

You may find it useful to journal during this time. Write down the messages that are constantly flowing through your brain. Don’t judge yourself, don’t berate yourself for your thoughts, just write what you hear. Do this over a period of a couple weeks or longer. Give yourself the time to really hear yourself.

 

2. Stop and challenge

As you start to become more aware of what you are thinking, start to stop yourself to challenge yourself whenever you make an assertion about what you assume yourself to be. If you hear yourself say, “I am too busy to [you fill in the blank].” Stop yourself to really question if you are too busy. Think about your day and what you do. Be honest, be gentle, but be firm. It’s your own life you are looking to improve.

 

For example, when I kept hearing myself saying (in my head and to others), “I like a little clutter, it makes me feel like my house is lived in.”, I stopped myself to really question what that was about. Did I REALLY like clutter? Or was I making excuses because I would rather surf the web than put things back where they belonged.

 

3. Test the theory

Using my clutter example from above, when I began to question whether I really did like clutter, I decided to devise a challenge for myself. ? I resolved to declutter a bit.; just the living room and dining room, at first. When I did that, I found that I really liked it when the place was tidy. I felt freer and calmer. In fact, those became the only two rooms I wanted to be in. My mental state even felt more balanced. I knew then than that I been making an excuse for my laziness.

 

4. Keep it up.

I confess to struggling with the ‘keeping it up’ bit myself. I can say this. I am vastly improved on all the assumptions I have challenged. I would say a solid 65+% improvement.  That’s pretty good.  I have gotten pretty far on sheer will and discipline, but I am exploring some ways to help make these changes stick. I’ll get to the one I am testing first in a couple days (I mentioned it in part 1 of this post, it comes from Gretchen Rubin’s ‘The Happiness Project”).

 

I can tell you this, since implementing these changes in my life, even though not perfectly, I am much, much more self-confident. I feel like I can actually resolve to do something and work towards it like an adult. I feel that I am productive and intentional. It’s been great for my self-esteem. I encourage you to give it a try. And tell me how you’re doing.