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Is Your Reality Shifting? How To Live With Change

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How To Live With Change

Do you profess to like change, or does change fill you with dread?  I guess, your answer would be, “it depends”, which of course it does.  It depends on the situation we currently find ourselves in – good, bad or indifferent, according to our own expectations; or, it depends on the area of our lives that’s facing the change as we may be more amenable to changes in, say, the workplace than in our personal lives; or maybe it depends on whether it is expected or unexpected change and how much control we believe we’ll have over the results of the change.

But, we only usually want things to change because we want some kind of improvement.  After all if everything was exactly as we wanted it, why would we seek change?  Sydney J Harris says:

Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time; what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better.

An interesting thought in which I see some truth, although of course, application of this theory is impossible!  If we want to see changes in our lives, then by definition, we must change something.  The trick, I guess, is in making an acceptable change, knowing, that in making a change, other reactions will come into play.  This is like the cogs in a watch, with each turn of the cog pushing the next one along in order to initiate the desired result (the accurate display of the time). [Read more…] about Is Your Reality Shifting? How To Live With Change

Beat Temptation and Achieve Your Goals!

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beat temptation

I absolutely adore chocolate, which as anyone who knows me will know is an understatement!  It’s my biggest temptation, the one thing that can see me tumble from the diet/healthy eating wagon if I’m feeling even just a little bit wobbly.  So you could say for me that chocolate poses a major temptation to achieving my health goals.

I know for certain that I’m not alone in feeling this way, we all have our pet temptations, things that will tempt us away from the unfamiliar or challenging goal path we are trying to negotiate.  But, as we know, overcoming our temptations can be a difficult task.  However, keeping on the straight and narrow will have the effect of strengthening our resolve to continue, whereas slipping away from our planned path tends to make us feel guilty and sometimes also a bit devil-may-care, resulting in us giving up on our goals altogether.

We think of temptation as something observable: that (delicious) bar of chocolate; that extra half an hour in bed so it’s too late for our morning jog; that extra cigarette, but, it’s the less tangible things that can really mess up our attempts to improve our lives. [Read more…] about Beat Temptation and Achieve Your Goals!

What’s the Problem?

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globeI think it’s fair to say that we often feel that our lives are beset with problems; those of our own making and those which turn up unexpectedly due to a series of events outside of our control which result in an undesired outcome.  It’s also fair to say that some people view even trivial or routine “must dos” as problems simply because they don’t want to take the action required in order to alleviate the ‘problem’.  Of course, the dilemma with this attitude is that the problem grows –sometimes for real, because without attention the issue gets worse, sometimes just within our minds, or sometimes both.

But despite all the negative connotations associated with problems, it was very difficult to find a string of quotes that maintained this negative stance!  The nearest quote I found which could be interpreted as negative was this quote by Abraham Maslow:

If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.

But even this quote from Maslow says more about our attitude to problems rather than the problem itself.

And it’s our attitude to our problems that really makes the difference, rather than the problem itself.  As I’ve already mentioned in the opening paragraph, sometimes we treat even trivial or routine and expected tasks as problems.  For example:

  • Cutting the lawn
  • Completing our tax return
  • Planning what to cook for the family evening meal
  • Redecorating the bedroom

[Read more…] about What’s the Problem?

Should you control your reactions?

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familyEverything you see happening is the consequence of that which you are.  Dr David Hawkins.

This quote appeared on a Facebook page I follow a little while ago.  It’s a very succinct quote which covers a huge area of our lives and I think warrants exploring a little deeper, as its true meaning can be difficult to understand and most importantly, to accept.

In essence, what this quote is telling us is that we are responsible for all the things we experience in our lives now, have experienced in the past and will have and experience in the future.  No matter what has happened to us right up until this point, good or bad, we are responsible.  Harsh, eh?  After all, there will be things that have happened to us over which we had no control.  Examples where we may not feel any responsibility could be a car accident where the other driver was at fault, or the death of a loved one.

In these examples it’s difficult to see how we could be responsible for the outcome, but this isn’t really what the quote is trying to convey to us.  The reality is that in whatever situation we find ourselves, we are responsible for our reaction, and that’s it, in a nutshell.

There’s a further difficulty with this concept and that is that we believe that our reactions are justifiable, and this may be true, but, the point we often miss is that our reactions will create our ongoing reality.  To put this another way, the thing we need to understand is that we are our behaviour, which is the same as saying we are how we react.

But, just to confuse things a little further, believing our reactions to be justifiable doesn’t mean that those on the receiving end have to or will accept them in the way we intended.  That’s down to their perception!  If you think back I’m sure you will have experienced situations where misunderstandings arose between yourself and someone else because others’ perceptions of our behaviour may not be in line with what we intended for them to understand from our personal conduct.  Frankly, it all sounds like a nightmare!

Take a look at this simple multiple choice question, and choose which response you would be most likely to follow: [Read more…] about Should you control your reactions?

Dealing with Negative People

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lightsStarting any kind of new venture can be stimulating, nerve-wracking, scary, exciting, daunting, overwhelming and many other adjectives that we may choose to apply, but the one thing that it’s not likely to be (particularly in the long-term) is easy.  For this reason, it’s always beneficial to have support from our families and friends.

Support can be in many forms, like being given the time and space necessary to learn what we need to know, encouragement to keep going when things aren’t progressing as well as we’d hoped, maybe a ‘sounding board’ for when we just need to let off some frustration, or someone to share our successes with when things are going well!

But unfortunately, support for our goals isn’t always forthcoming, especially in the early days.  In fact, quite often what we experience is the opposite.

How often have you been excited to embark on a new goal or project only to be discouraged by those you thought would share your excitement with you?  Unfortunately this experience is very common.  In fact, a lot of people seem to take delight in attempting to stop others pursuing their dreams and we have a whole array of words to describe these people: they are the Debbie-Downers, the Naysayers, the Pessimists, the Redlighters, and the Doubting Thomas(es)…

Sometimes their reactions can be hurtful, but before judging their response as an attempt to hold us back, let’s take a look at some of the reasons why they might react negatively to our plans.

They might think you will change

Some of your friends and family might have a subconscious fear that you might change, and if you change, you might not like them anymore, or they might not like you!  Well, it’s inevitable that if you continue to pursue your goals, you will change.  How could this possibly not be the case?  If you diet, you will lose weight, if you study, you will learn more, if you buy a house, your financial commitments will change, if you have a child, your time commitments will be different.  In other words, either you will have changed directly or you will be changed as a result of your changed circumstances. [Read more…] about Dealing with Negative People

Ways to Beat Procrastination Now

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ways to beat procrastination

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Do you struggle to find ways to beat procrastination? It’s a common problem which  frequently crosses our paths.  We often think that we’re doing the best we can in the circumstances, but often we pay too much heed to our perceived obstacles that then hold us back from achieving our goals.

One of the things you’ll often hear me saying is that nothing will happen until we take action on our goals.  However if you often find yourself wondering ‘why do I procrastinate‘ then you’re in good company!  To illustrate this I’m using some famous quotes which will hopefully emphasize the fact that slow or no progress can be common to us all.  Frankly, we’ll never cure procrastination, but there are ways to beat procrastination!

So check out these 5 ways to beat procrastination quotes and work with the one (or more) that resonates with you the most!

Ways to Beat Procrastination #1 – You Don’t Follow Through

Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one’s thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world.  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

It’s commendable that we take the time to define our goals; that we’re happy that they are appropriate for our lives and where we want to be, and that we follow up with some definite plans.  But having taken the time to identify our goals and put some meticulous plans together, we then appear to stall.  Taking that first action step becomes a stumbling block in itself and the goal dies even before it’s been started. [Read more…] about Ways to Beat Procrastination Now