From the Change Blog
Don’t settle for a relationship that won’t let you be yourself. – Oprah Winfrey
When it comes to change, people are more apt to do it for others than for themselves. It was no different for me when I morphed myself to be the “right” kind of friend, the “cool” girlfriend, or the “most dependable” employee. In each of those instances other people really liked me, but I didn’t like me very much…(read the rest)
Chalked outside our office the other day
“Never go to sleep without a request to your subconscious.” – Thomas Edison
Your subconscious loves to do work while your body performs other tasks that are easy. I can prove this very easily by asking you how many good ideas you have had while driving or in the shower. When you are relaxed yet slightly distracted, your mind is often at its best.
Using subconscious requests will…
You’ll see improvement in less than a month.
My last request was…
“Please give me more patience when commuting to work and allow me to even enjoy my time in the car.”
Within a month I was enjoying my ride to work.
My latest request is…
“Let’s find creative ways to grow my blog.”
I took this approach because it’s going to take a request to my subconscious and action in my waking life to make this happen. This request is only a few days old, but it’s already working. Instead of just asking people to help vote for my blog on social sites that rate articles such as Stumble Upon and Digg, I’ve change my communication. I now friend someone, give a compliment (only if they are worthy) and tell them that they ever need any help to shoot me a message. They are much more willing to help me out.
My mindset is changing by setting my subconscious on a certain issue. I start to see new angles that I’ve never seen before. This subconscious request works for personal issues as well as work related concerns.
The 3 step request only takes five minutes:
Step 1: Before you turn out the light, close your eyes and take one minute to make a request to your subconscious. It can be anything. I would start small and make it open ended. I wouldn’t request to be an astronaut by the end of the month. Your subconscious is good, but not that good.
Step 2: Take two minutes to visualize yourself actually able to do this thing. Whether it is getting the motivation to jog before work or eating a healthy snack, you must visualize yourself doing the request that you asked your subconscious. Let’s say you want to jog before work: imagine yourself getting up a few minutes earlier than usual, putting on your exercise clothes and jogging shoes, and heading out into the crisp air. Then you start jogging, watching the sun rise over the buildings, the birds chirping, and you are feeling good.
Step 3: Take two minutes to imagine the feeling that will occur when you are able to accomplish this new thing. How do you feel when you walk back in your front door after a morning jog? Energized? Whatever feeling you want to achieves imagine that you have already created this emotion inside of yourself. Let it sink in, then go to sleep and let your subconscious do the rest of the work.
Your subconscious mind wants to help you improve your life; you just have to trust its vast resources and allow it to do its thing.
You may not want to go jogging after the first subconscious request, but try to visualize yourself going through the motions the first couple of weeks. Then just start putting on your exercise gear and go for a five minute walk. Taking these baby steps will set you up for your jogging routine. Then after a few weeks just go for it. Now that you have your emotions geared toward jogging it should spur you into action.
By allowing the emotional momentum to build, you can create motivation that will help you accomplish things that make you happier.
Original Post from the Change Blog
Another amazing article from the zenhabits blog
‘You will never change your life until you change something you do daily.’ ~Mike Murdock
Start with a simple statement: what do you want to be?
Are you hoping to someday be a writer, a musician, a designer, a programmer, a polyglot, a carpenter, a manga artist, an entrepreneur, an expert at something?
How do you get there? Do you write your intention on a piece of paper, and put it in a bottle and launch it to sea, hoping it will manifest? No. The universe isn’t going to make this happen. You are.
Do you set yourself a big goal to complete by the end of the year, or in three months? Sure, but that doesn’t get the job done. In fact, if you think back on most examples in your life, it probably doesn’t work very often. How many times has this strategy been successful?
I’m going to lay down the law here, based on many many experiments I’ve done in the last 7 years: nothing will change unless you make a daily change.
I’ve tried weekly action steps, things that I do every other day, big bold monthly goals, lots of other permutations. None of them work except daily changes.
If you’re not willing to make it a daily change, you don’t really want to change your life in this way. You only like the idea of learning to draw/speak Japanese/play guitar/program in php/etc. You don’t really want to do it.
So make a daily change. Let’s dig into how it’s done!
Let’s name a few aspirations:
How do you turn those lofty ideas into daily changes? Think about what you could do every day that would make the change happen, or at least get you closer to the goal. Sometimes that’s not always easy, but let’s look at some ideas:
You get the idea. Not all of these are perfect ideas, but you could come up with something that works better for you. Point is, do it daily.
This method is fairly simple, and if you really implement it, nearly foolproof:
That’s it. Seven pretty simple steps, and you’ve got a changed life. None of these steps is impossible — in fact, you can put them into action today.
What daily change will you make today?
‘A year from now you will wish you had started today.’ ~Karen Lamb
By Jeremy Newcombe
Going into the new year, it might seem appropriate to talk about the old clichés—your resolutions, new fitness plans, giving up smoking or some similarly bad habit—but that seemed a little, well, cliché. Resolutions can be all well and good, if you go about them realistically, but in all likelihood you’ve probably already been resolutioned close to death by this point. Instead, I thought I’d do some pondering on life transitions, and how to make changes in your life successfully (which is a similar train of thought, but different).
Now, just because a brand new year is just around the corner does not mean your life has to go through some great upheaval. That’s one of the classic pitfalls of resolutions, after all; starting a new calendar page doesn’t necessarily indicate that anything will be any different. That being said, many of us want things to be different, and we often use the New Year as a launching point for our planned life alterations. Maybe you’d like to make changes in your lifestyle, work on some problems you’ve been having, change your outlook on life, or maybe find your dream job (that is why you’re here after all, isn’t it?). Of course, I would encourage you to pursue these things year-round and not just in January, but if you are planning on making some modifications to your life, here are a few useful things I’ve learned about lifestyle transitions.
How to Transition
William Bridges is a transitional guru. Google him, you’ll see. One of the most important things I picked up from his writing was the difference between (how he defines) change and transition. Now, I’m not stuck on semantics, but as he puts it, change is fast and transition is slow. Change is situational, whereas transition is something that runs much deeper. Again, sticking with his definition, I’d feel that most of us would be looking to make meaningful transitions rather than quick-fix changes. I could promise myself to spend 30 minutes a day on a treadmill and change my lifestyle starting tomorrow, but to actually transition into a healthy lifestyle (which would be my ultimate goal) I’d have to see that change take effect over a long period of time and implement other changes in my life to complement it. Slowly, my body would adapt. Eventually I’d stop craving sugar as much I do, start stocking my fridge with healthier options, have more energy (which would make running on the treadmill easier), and generally live better. Of course that makes it sound easy. Anyone who’s tried to transition into a healthy lifestyle knows it isn’t.
Bridges describes first of the three stages of transition as “Ending” (loosing, letting go), wherein, as you’d imagine, you have to let go of what you’ve been hanging on to. This is difficult, unpleasant, and often painful. You then enter the “Neutral Zone,” which he describes as a period of confusion and distress (which, going back to my analogy, is exactly how I feel whenever I do physical exercise). The advice that follows during this period is to paradoxically go against your natural instincts. He says to go with the flow and stop fighting the change. Let it come to fruition. Ride out the discomfort. The rewards are sure to follow. That doesn’t mean to stop caring about what’s going on, but rather that at times we can be our own worst enemies, fighting against progress.
I think this is pertinent advice to anyone undergoing transition in their own life, be it now or any time of year. Relax. Embrace the transitions you want to happen. Don’t make things harder than they need to be. Don’t just look for quick changes either, but allow things to happen slowly. Be patient with yourself.
Whatever you find yourself doing in the days and months to come, I wish you the best of luck and a very happy new year.
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