What’s the most precious commodity in the world?

Many people would say ‘Time’

Others might say ‘Love’

Right now, I say ‘Energy’

I think the thing that is most precious to us is often the one we’ve been most without. That’s why energy is so very precious to me.

For the past twenty-one months I’ve been struggling with low energy combined with constant pain caused by injuries from a car accident.

I recently read an interview with Tony Robbins and he said (and I paraphrase) that having enough energy is the most important thing in his life.

You can have the best time management tools, heck like me, you can have all the time in the world, and yet, if you don’t have energy then you do nothing and worse, nothing ever gets done.

Last night, I reached the end of my rope. I was fed up with wasting my own time, I was fed up with wasting what energy I had on stupid, inconsequential things and so, I wrote this on a clean page in a new journal:

‘Its my choice how I spend my energy.’

And below that, I wrote:

‘I choose to spend my energy in ways that serve me.’

And below that I made a list of the ways I would spend the energy I have. Here’s what’s on there:

• Distribute my dogsitting leaflets
• Post my notes and research on my blog. Yes, this sadly neglected blog will be revisted regularly once more.
• Create new books from these notes
• Follow up on the recent job applications I’ve made. (First time since I was knocked down that I feel able to face the idea of going out to work again.)
• Call my solicitor for an update on case
• Take photos of the clothes I’ve been meaning to sell on ebay
• Do my physio exercises, including the tough ones, every day.
• Prepare and eat good, nourishing, heathful food. That also means avoiding processed food and sugar.
• Walk the dogs with energy, love and a sense of joy that I get to do this every day, 3 times a day.
• Read books that make me think and make me smarter.
• Meditate every day and throw in some creative visualisation now and again.
• Go inside to that place within where the Divine lives and be at peace. Communicate with that voice – I wrote that and then I realised, I don’t want to communicate with it, I just want to listen to it, for it is wise and I am not.
• Go to bed early and get good sleep. 9pm most nights please.
• Switch off the tv and internet. Stop filling my head with ugly images.
• Be committed to being a better version of myself, even if only by 1% every day.
• Show up! Show up every day as my best self.

And whilst today hasn’t been as disciplined as I imagined last night, I am actually here posting my notes from last night.

And now I’m taking a break to do my tough physio exercises. I’ve eaten well, I’m drinking water and staying hydrated; I’m helping my energy stay high and I’m using it well.

I choose to spend my energy in ways that serve me.

 

 

 

 

Take the follow…

Take the following mental challenge:

1) Ask yourself “The Question”:

“Where you would like to be and have known you would like to be but aren’t?”

2) Be brutally specific and honest.

3) Now list why you are NOT there.

4) Next, identify the changes you need to make.

5) Then take massive action!

Don’t let another year go by stuck in the same place!

Craig Ballantyne

“Now is the tim…

“Now is the time to get serious about living your ideals. Once you have determined the spiritual principles you wish to exemplify, abide by these rules as if they were laws, as if it were indeed sinful to compromise them. Don’t mind if others don’t share your convictions. How long can you afford to put off who you really want to be? Your nobler self cannot wait any longer. Put your principles into practice – now. Stop the excuses and the procrastination. This is your life! You aren’t a child anymore. The sooner you set yourself to your spiritual program, the happier you will be. The longer you wait, the more you’ll be vulnerable to mediocrity and feel filled with shame and regret, because you know you are capable of better. From this instant on, vow to stop disappointing yourself. Separate yourself from the mob. Decide to be extraordinary and do what you need to do – now.”

Epictetus

Change your life tactic: Know what makes you happy

We all want to be happier, more satisfied with the lives we’re living, but what does that mean to each of us?

How do we make these lives of ours richer, fuller, happier?

A good place to start would be, rather than dreaming of a lottery win, or Prince Charming, or Princess Lovely riding up to sweep you off your feet to a new exotic life, to figure out what could make us happy right now!

So, what’s made you happy in 2013 so far?

What made you happy last year? What made you happy in the last 5 years?

What made you happy in your past?

Can you do any of those things today, to make this day you are now living happier?

I made a list of the things that make me happy now and those things that made me happy in years past, and here are some highlights from it:

• My beautiful, loving, funny dogs, Reilly and Amelia.
• My niece and nephews, and my brothers and sisters (but not as much as the kids)
• Having a walk in nature and really seeing the beauty around me
• Having spontaneous conversations with people I meet in line at the shop, bank, coffee-house, wherever
• Sharing my knowledge about self-care to overcome mental health issues online and on the radio
• Having people react to what I say/write/do, and it helps when its positive!
• Helping people live better lives through coaching and teaching and speaking
• Inspiring people and sharing ways to live better
• Hot sunshine melting into my skin (living in Northern Ireland, we don’t get a lot of that)
• Being tan – see above
• Flirting with attractive guys and having fun without being misunderstood about where its going
• Learning new things, today it was new behavioural science knowledge from the great Mark Waldman
• Having a strong social network
• Dancing
• Meeting up with friends for a laugh and a drink (not too much because I’m not a regular drinker these days and too much makes me ill which makes me feel bad)
• Autumn leaves and the smell of fire smoke in the air
• Giving gifts that people love
• Making new friends and reconnecting with old friends
• Greeting the doggie pals we meet on our walks every day
• Being productive and achieving career success
• Travelling to foreign countries and meeting and eating with and learning from the locals
• Having a nice home that is clean and clutter free
• Singing badly to loud old school rock’n’roll as I clean on a Saturday morning
• Long hot showers
• Head rubs and massages and facials and manicures and pedicures
• Pink (I’m talking about the colour but I also like the singer)
• Laughing out loud
• Cake, chocolate, lemon meringue
• Being appreciated
• Liking myself and what I’ve just said and done – nothing worse than cringing because you’ve just said something that hurts another person
• Appreciating my life

And then, instead of a ‘to do’ list, I made a ‘be happy’ list, of the things I could do in a day that would raise my sense of wellbeing, general satisfaction in my life and all round level of happiness.

None of it costs very much, and when I do something from it, I feel great at the end of the day. When I miss a day, I really notice it and feel lower.

So, it’s now one of my daily practices to do at least one thing on my ‘Be Happy’ list. What will be on yours?

 

Awareness: extreme pain relief you can gift yourself

Oh, Sweet Baby Jesus, but this one is hard, so hard. But it really does hold the key to releasing all the pain, anger. bitterness, hurt, disillusionment and whatever other agonising emotion you’re currently held tight in the grip of.

Although Acceptance is hard, there is a process that’s even harder and I hesitate to name it but I must because there are parallels to them both, the relief they offer you and the work you must do to access it.

The other process is Forgiveness, Yep, I went there and you damn well don’t want to forgive do you?

I think that’s why Forgiveness is so hard, because we’re involving other people in our story, people who contributed to the injustice that happened to us and its hard as hell to let go of our sense of betrayal and our condemnation of any immorality we see surrounding the event that caused us great and ongoing pain and suffering.

And to be honest, it feels good to blame someone else for the FURBAR BUNDY* you’re now living.

Let’s take a step back from the presently inconceivable quest that would be Forgiveness and work towards Acceptance.

As I said, Acceptance follows a similar process as Forgiveness, however its all about you and you being able to consider the event that caused you calamity to be something that simply happened to you. Just one of those things.

Its not personal, its not the end of the world and now you can pick yourself up and learn to live in your new circumstance.

I said it wasn’t easy! What it is is challenging and incredibly powerful.

It is possible and it will give you relief from physical, emotional, mental and spiritual pain. I did say it was powerful!

I was knocked down in January 2014 while I was walking my dogs. It was wholly the driver’s fault, she wasn’t looking where she was going and she was driving too fast. She almost killed me and one of my dogs.

To make matters worse, she lied to the police about what had happened and tried to blame the accident on one of my dogs. BITCH!

Yes, I still hold anger towards her. Not for the accident as much as for the shameless lying she did afterwards, as if she hadn’t hurt us enough.

Yet, I’m happy to say my anger has lost most of its heat.

Surprised? I am.

Just after the accident, when the police informed me she was claiming I was at fault and that I could face criminal proceedings, I was beyond furious. I was filled with a hate fuelled rage and righteous indignation. As far as I was concerned this woman was dispicable, dishonest and had no moral decency. I trapped myself into being her victim and a victim of my own sense of injustice and injury.

I pretty much ate, slept, breathed anger, hate and victimhood and I was constantly in pain which fuelled the anger, which fuelled the pain. I had myself trapped.

I had to pull myself out of that downward spiral otherwise I’d have forever been a victim of that careless driver and the story I told myself about the injustice and unfairness of it having happened to me.

The truth is accidents happen everyday, and many people are left in much worse shape than me. I was lucky and I refuse to give that woman any more power to hurt me further.

I needed a few months distance from the accident and for the worst of my physical injuries to have healed. Yet before I gained Acceptance, I was still in near constant pain; because the story I was telling was still all about the accident and how this woman had done me wrong.

When I started physiotherapy in June, I started to turn it around. Partly because I was taking active steps to aid myself in my recovery, but there was something else too.

At the start of my physiotherapy treatment, my therapist and I were talking about how soft tissue takes longer to heal than a broken bone. And then he said, ‘The body always heals itself, the problem is we hold onto the memory of our injuries and our pain, even in our very cells.’

This comment triggered some long forgotten knowledge in my mind, something I’d read years before about the mind-body connection and the incredible influence each one has over the other and how little Western medicine understands and acknowledges it.

I went back to my books and did more research into the mind-body connection and found many scientific studies and personal accounts that all verified the claim that stress creates pain in the body and we can feel real physical pain long after the body has healed the original injury.

Stress causes pain and my thinking caused my stress. My anger, my disgust for this woman’s lack of moral decency, my sense of injustice, my desire for vengeance all were contributing to keeping me in pain.

I spoke again to my physiotherapist about my research and what I was feeling and I admitted that I found the idea of forgiving this woman impossible; not for the accident itself, that was easy, after all accidents happen all day, every day.

What I found impossible to forgive was that she hadn’t even gotten out of the car to see if we were okay when she’d knocked us down, it was other passersby who stopped to help and offer their support; that she never expressed any remorse for hurting me and my dogs; that she’d nearly killed my beloved Reilly and then blamed the accident on him instead of accepting responsibility for her actions; that she lied and continued to do so as the legal process grinds on.

You can tell I feel very justified in holding onto my injured feelings, just as I’m sure you’re equally as justified in holding onto yours.

So, for me, forgiveness was out.

Martin, my lovely physiotherapist told me that if I found forgiveness too hard and he could understand why, then could I reach acceptance with what had happened and its aftermath?

Could I?

Could I look at this life shattering event and say to myself, ‘Shit happens!’ shrug and move on?

I’m here to say that I have and so can you.

First, I made a conscious effort to change my story. When I meet people now, I stop myself from introducing the story of the accident, how it was the driver’s fault and her dishonest, dishonourable actions. I’m still judging her 9 ways to Sunday but I have stopped speaking of it and that has actually lessened its hold on me.

I changed my story and now I say that yes, I’m recovering from an accident however I talk more about the great relief physiotherapy has given me and how much my recovery has progressed. I talk about how I’m getting better little by little, day by day.

Changing my story has made a massive difference to my recovery. I’ve been able to manage pain better and found that I was able to reduce the medication I was taking. I’m feeling strong enough to walk the dogs in the park and I enjoy my time with them instead of worrying about whether I’ll fall and hurt myself again.

The biggest change was the relief I eventually started to feel from the negative stew of emotions I’d been boiling in. The poisinous brew of anger, bitterness and sense of injustice waned as I stopped living as a victim of what had happened and instead opened myself up to fresh feelings of hope, peace, happiness.

Yes, I still hold anger towards the driver of the car but I don’t go looking for it anymore, repeating the story and working myself into an emotional wreck. After all, she could easily have killed us.My dogs and I are alive, we might be battered and scarred but we’re still here.

You are still here too. You can still change your story, you can stop being a victim of whatever and whomever inflicted wounds on you.

Something happened, it was awful, and yet you survived. Change the story you tell about what happened and you’ll change your life.

*FUBAR BUNDY
FUBAR BUNDY is an ambulance term meaning fucked up beyond all recognition but unfortunately not dead yet.

Over it!

Photo by Zuhair Ahmad

Whoa! Before you get all defensive and ready to kick my ass, ripping into me about how ‘I don’t understand what you’re going through’ and how the situation you’re facing is ‘the worst ever!’

I didn’t tell you to ‘get over it’, I’m saying Be over it. There’s a big, big difference.

Be over it, because in any real sense of the time you are in, you already are.

Yes, you are! You are over it.

I can say this quite definitely, because I know that whatever it is that you’re fretting about, you’re not in the middle of it right now, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this!

You’re over it, yet you’re still living it. What you’re doing is putting yourself back in pain, back in the situation that caused you pain or you’re putting yourself in a future disadvantageous situation, creating pain now for something that has not and may not happen.

You’re not alone in inflicting damage on yourself, nearly all of us do. But its time to stop it. Let it go and be over it.

Let me show you what I mean with a personal example. This summer, whilst I was recovering from my injuries caused by a fool driving a car and not looking where she was going and colliding with me, (self serving pity party – sorry), I was unable to work. And I spent all my time worrying about how I was going to heat the house this winter.

The sun was beating down outside and all I could do was make myself sick with worry about November, December, January and how cold I was going to be if I didn’t recover and get back to work.

I decided to be over it. I changed into shorts and a tank top and took the dogs to the park in glorious sunshine.

When our world seems like its falling down around our ears and we have no sense of control, we often then go to the worst case scenario in our heads and make it even worse, until it gets so big and overwhelming, its all we think about and we’re paralysed with fear.

That’s when we need to rethink what we’re thinking about.

Scientific studies have shown that worrying about an event, whether real or imagined, increases the intensity of your negative emotions and makes them last longer too.

We didn’t need science to tell us that but the confirmation gives me even more motivation and even justification to tell you to ‘Be over it’, because all that worrying is just making your feel worse.

The good news is that those same scientific studies have shown that there are techniques to reduce the impact of a life altering event, and one of the best is Reappraisal; looking at the event from a different perspective.

When times are tough, its time to lighten up and stop taking yourself and whatever is going on so seriously. To help, start looking at the big mess in your life, whether past, present or future, with a number of different perspectives.

Take on the view of an uninvolved bystander and replay the event from their perspective. Be an on the spot news reporter and give a blow by blow account from that perspective. Be Zeus or Athena or Aphrodite or whomever your favourite Greek God is. Be Superman or Catwoman or Wolverine. Be a school teacher. Be a zoo keeper. Be many different random people looking at the same event and see how many different ways there are to explain it, feel it, judge it.

The important thing about this is, the more different ways you can see the event that has so traumatised you, the less you can attach the meaning you originally gave it that disempowers you.

Its never the event that destroys your life, its the meaning you give to it. After all, every trauma and tragedy you’re suffered, someone else has been there too and survived and gone on to live a fulfilled life. So why not you? Its because of the stories you have attached to the event.

Imagine that you’ve been sacked from your job. This has happened to me, far too many times in the past 8 years than I feel comfortable telling you. At first, I used to think ‘Crap, what’s wrong with me? I shouldn’t have done that, or I should’ve been more like this’ and it spiralled down into, ‘I’ll never work again, my best days are behind me, I’m too old, too fat, too over qualified to get another job.’

You can see why this becomes a self defeating prophecy and of course it would get you down. But I hope you can also see that it wasn’t getting fired that stirred up my negative emotions and wreaked havoc on my equilibrium.

Whilst being fired may have been the catalyst, its the story being told about why its happened and what’s going to happen next that fires up all the negative emotions and has them churning away.

Take any experience in your life, good or bad, and examine it carefully so you can see the stories you’ve told yourself and the beliefs you’ve created; beliefs that you then assign to otehrwise everyday occurances.

Taking my example, many people start a job only to find they don’t fit in and either leave or are asked to move on, only the self defeating start believing they’ll never work again. Most people simply start a new job and find a better fit for themselves.

If its happened to anyone else in the history of the world, then you can be assured that there’s no global conspiracy to spite only you. Imagine your worst nightmare and google it, you’ll probably find someone has already lived through it happening to them and they went on to live an amazing life. You are not being singled out for particular punishment.

Start giving events which you have labelled as catastrophic, new meaning by seeing them with a different perspective.

I looked at losing my last job through the eyes of my boss and imagined her saying, ‘Wow, she’s too good to work here and we’re holding her back, I’m too small minded and our company’s too small for her to really shows us her skills and talents. I can’t hold her back and I’m so jealous because she’s so gorgeous.’

It made me laugh and took the drama out of the event.

I also looked at how my friends viewed it and saw that they were relieved that I was no longer working there because I’d been constantly undermined both personally and prefessionally. They all knew I would find a great job with a great employer who would value me and nuture my skills.

Seeing that made me realise my fear of never working again was totally unjustified.

Have fun with this when you are able to. I sometimes look at fraught situations from my dogs’ perspective and when I do that, there’s nothing remotely more important than my time with them, walks and dinner and treats.

Switching your perspective changes the story, which changes your belief, which changes how you feel.
Then you can work through whatever is going on and move on without carrying forward old pain and the stories that cause more. You give yourself relief.

Be over it.

Do you think about what you are choosing every day?

Every choice you make, from whether to get up early to meditate/exercise or lie in bed, what to have for breakfast, whether to lose your temper or not. Every one is a choice and its always the same choice, just dressed up differently.

Love or fear? Are you acting from love or fear?

What are you choosing today?

Are you waiting for a miracle?

Photo by Mark Menzies

When I was a little girl, as a teenager and even into my twenties, I always had this secret dream to be discovered and become a famous actress.

I often lay in bed or even in the middle of my work or sitting pretending to read a book and I’d be transported in my dreams to living the life I imagined of a movie star: the fame, the recognition, the accolades. I would even act out movie scenes and have people congratulating me on my amazing talent like I was an Irish Meryl Streep!

I didn’t have a clue how to go about being an actress, but I didn’t try to find out either and I certainly didn’t do anything to make this dream come true. I didn’t join a drama club or participate in school plays or take acting lessons.

This really was one of those dreams I think a lot of us have where we expect some act of the divine to make things happen for us. I dreamt that some big Hollywood producer or director would one day knock on my door or walk up to me in the street and tell me I was exactly the talent and look he’d been searching for.

An idea just as ridiculous as waiting for Prince Charming to come knocking – I did that too!

I had another dream, this one probably started in my late teens, to be an international businesswoman. Again, I had no idea how to make this come true and yet in my imagination; just as I saw myself arrending film premieres as a leading lady, I also saw myself walking through airports with my sleek suit on, boarding planes and sitting at big tables ‘doing deals’ – whatever that meant!

Still, as most people do, I got a job and went to work every day. Not a job that I had thought about or really wanted, it was the one I had successfully interviewed for and been offered.

And yet, I found things I loved about what I did every day, problem solving, negotiating with both clients and suppliers, making things happen. And I worked hard and whilst there were blips, redundancies, poor decisions and bad bosses along the way, I steadily moved up the career ladder.

Hard work produced great opportunities, as well as generating great ideas and identifying the right projects and the right people to work with.

Soon, I was in a job travelling monthly to New York and across the Eastern Seaboard of USA. I had regular trips to China, Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, Morocco, Paris, Monaco.

Wow, my dream to be an international businesswoman had come true. I didn’t even realise it at the time.

For a girl growing up in the rural north of Ireland with parents who didn’t have bigger dreams beyond surviving from one month to the next, and with a father who told me to get a ‘wee job in a factory or office’because ‘that’s all you’re good for’, my dreams of being either a famous actress or an international businesswoman seemed equally farfetched and out of reach.

And yet, one did come true. (I still daydream about my Oscar acceptance speech but accept its unlikely at this point!)

What was the difference though between the two when both seemed equally implausible?

In one, I expected someone else to make it happen for me, for a miracle to suddenly happen to me.

In the other, I went to work, I served my employers and colleagues to the best of my ability, I followed my intuition and the ideas I had, to create massive value in the industry.

In my second dream, I made the miracle! I was the miracle!

The difference was me; my attitude, my work ethic, my thoughts. I created that miracle without even being aware that was what I was doing.

I managed to make a dream come true without even knowing what I was doing. Now, I have tools and knowledge that I never dreamed of: I can set goals, visualise, plan and accept the co-incidences and syncronicities that the Universe brings to me to ease my way.

What can I do now I know what I can do? There’s an exciting future I have to start planning for myself now. What miracle can you make happen in your life today? Tomorrow, in ten years time? You can, and if you work every day towards it, then you will have your dream come true.

Lifechangers: Give it 20 minutes

Photo by casserpillar

This Lifechanger attitude continues with the premise that little and often gets the job done.
20 minutes of focused, energised attention to a task every day will see you start to achieve whatever it is you’ve decided to do in your life.

20 minutes of meditation every day will refocus your life and help you create amazing energy, clarity and purpose.

20 minutes of intense, high octance exercise will enable you to develop a body that’s fit, strong and healthy.

20 minutes of reading on a subject every day will lead to your mastery of its theory.

20 minutes of focused activity can be used to achieve in every aspect of your life.

Think about those mundane or annoying or boring tasks you hate to do; whether its chores around the house, the weeding of the garden, the reports you put off for work every week or even visiting relatives you can barely stand to be around.

We all face those times in life when we have things we must do that we just don’t like doing. I think everyone has something they dislike having to do in their work and even in their personal lives.

To be someone who makes real change in their life, you have to be willing to do those things, you have to cultivate the ability to get through these tasks, to get them done and get to the other side.

And I have an easy way for you to do it. Give it 20 minutes.

This works every time I use, I just wish I remembered to use it every time I put something off!

If I have to go to a networking event that I really don’t want to go to, then I promise myself that I’ll go and I’ll give it 20 minutes. That’s all, after 20 minutes I can leave; no guilt, no critiscm, and as a bonus, I miss out on the inner voice recrimination about how I should have gone and what I probably missed by not going.

Try it the next time you have a social event you’re not particularly excited about. Give it 20 minutes. Oftentimes, I’ve found that I end up meeting some old friends, or connecting with some great new people and I end up staying at the event for a couple of hours and having a good night. And if not, I give it my best effort for 20 minutes and then I leave. You’ve given up 20 minutes and you’ve done all you could in the circumtances; that’s brilliant and worth congratulating yourself on.

When I worked for a global manufacturing company as a corporate business manager, one of my big clients had weekly production and supply meetings with all their multi national suppliers on the call. And before every meeting I had to prepare this immense spreadsheet with data about Work in Progress, stock levels, distribution channels by size and colour for every line we made for them; the exact number we had in production, estimated completion dates, returns, quality control and available to ship to store.

It was useful data but rarely referred to and it was a monotous task chasing the factories in Morocco, China and Sri Lamka every week for this information and I hated doing it.

I would put it off every week until it was a rush through lunch hour to get the data filled in before the meeting started.

And the more I put it off, the less I wanted to do it. Have you ever noticed that? Everything you put off doing seems to get bigger, harder and even more tedious.

And yet, once I sat down and applied myself, actually concentrated on getting the job done rather than on all the reasons why I didn’t want to do it, it flowed easily for me and was straightforward and quick to do.

I got fed up of leaving this job to the last minute because I hated the scramble to get it finished before the global conference call which left me no time to actually concentrate on more pertinent issues that I would like to raise with our clients.

So, I started giving the data 20 minutes of concentrated effort every day and I’d get so much done that I was able to prepare up to the minute information to share with the client on product development and industry trends. And I was calm and professional rather than hot, distracted and frustrated as I’d been previously.

I now use ‘Give it 20 minutes’ every time I have a form to fill out, a job to do before deadline or a meeting I don’t wish to attend. I give it 20 minutes of my best effort and it gets done, easily and without pain or panic.

I also use the ‘Give it 20 minutes’ rule when I want to introduce a new habit that I’m finding it hard to commit to.

It works every time. Especially when its something I am avoiding, like sometimes I avoid writing.

There was a period earlier this year, after I had a serious car accident when I couldn’t write. My body was too hurt and my mind was focused on healing and pain management.

But then after a while, I wanted to write but I didn’t feel like I had anything to write about. I’d just had this incredible life shattering event and I survived and I didn’t feel like I had anything to write about!

So I gave it 20 minutes every day. That’s all I asked of myself, 20 minutes every day.

Some days its easy, time flies by and when I come back to here and now I find I’ve been writing for hours.

Other days I have to grit my teeth as I watch the clock tick off the minutes, barely writing a line. So I give it 20 minutes, some times the results aren’t all that great, but I do it every day.

And its amazing because the cumulative efforts of that period became a book which will shortly be available on Amazon, ‘ Universal Wisdom from Modern Day Masters.’

And the habit starts to stick and now I write every day, sometimes it might only be for 20 minutes although that doesn’t happen very often any more. The important thing is that the habit has stuck.

Giving it 20 minutes is a truly multi purpose LifeChanger.

You can use it to develop a new habit that serves you in creating a better life for youself.

Can you do some form of exercise for 20 minutes every day? Absolutely.

Can you read a few pages from a transformational book for 20 minutes every day. Totally.

Can you get up 20 minutes earliers to meditate and plan your day? I think the answer’s yes!

You can use ‘Give it 20 minutes’ to get through a tough task you’ve been avoiding, use the fact that you’re just going to do it for 20 minutes to motivate yourself to do the things you need to do that you don’t like and don’t want to do.

Whether its attending a work party, a networking event, going to the gym, a work task you dread, or revision for a college test, you can give it 20 minutes.

You can use this Lifechanger for just about anything because you can give just about anything 20 minutes of your time and best effort.

Yes, I said it. Its not enough just to turn up for 20 minutes; you’ve got to put all the energy, skill, and enthusiasm you can muster into the task for that allotted amount of time.

Imagaine you are visiting a relative or in-law you can barely tolerate; when you’re giving this visit 20 minutes, you’ll converse with interest, listen intently to what they have to say and give them all of your attention. Its only for 20 minutes, challenge yourself, you know you can do that.

Use this Lifechanger when you consider going to your office party and you’d really rather be cleaning out Santa’s reindeer stables. Giving it 20 minutes means you’ll go in a great outfit, groomed to perfection, smiling, laughing and dancing for just 20 minutes. You can give anything 20 minutes of your best effort.

When you’re training for a marathon or simply taking a walk to get started exercising again and its pouring with rain outside, you can go out and run or walk in one direction for 10 minutes and then turn around and come home. You’ve given it 20 minutes, that’s great.

Another way to use your 20 minutes Lifechanger is when trying to drop an old habit that hurts you or no longer serves you.

I used to crave chocolate and would eat three or four bars a day. I was able to give up the mid morning, lunch time and evening bars easily enough, but that mid afternoon one, when I needed a kick to wake up my energy, that was proving resistant to all my efforts.

So when the cravings hit, I would give it 20 minutes. I’d say, not right now, if I still feel like this in 20 minutes, then I’ll go get something to eat. And at the beginning of this experiement I’d still be craving the chocolate, heck I spent the whole 20 minutes just thinking about it.

However, as I perservered with this, I found that I got distracted by whatever I was doing and it would be an hour later or even home time before I’d think about the choclate again.

I am not sure if this would work with cigarette cravings or alcohol but it could help you cut down and that’s work a try, isn’t it?

When you are determined to change your life, then you must find a way to master doing things you don’t particularly like to do, whether it be studying, fitness training, networking or simply ignoring cravings for junk food or whatever your wished for change is.

When you start to cultivate that change, you’re going to have to overcome your natural reluctance to forming a new habit. If you give it 20 minutes; 20 minutes of your best effort every day, you will indeed see your life change the way you want it to and you’ll love the new direction you’re taking.

Lifechangers: When just one thing is just too much!

It sounds simple doesn’t it? To change your life start with just one thing.

However, sometimes when you’ve fallen incredibly low, your just one thing could be as simple and yet so incredibly daunting as taking a shower.

I had a severe clinical depression several years ago after a horrible and lengthy episode of work place bullying, which drained much of my physical, emotional and mental reserves. During this period I didn’t care what I looked like, I didn’t care if my clothes were clean, I didn’t care if my home was clean, I didn’t care if I was clean.

Looking back, I can only feel compassion and empathy for that me. God help her because she couldn’t seem to help herself.

Nothing mattered. I didn’t matter, so what did it matter if I was clean or dirty? Washing, grooming became foreign concepts, they took too much damn effort.

My one thing started with brushing my hair every day, progresses from there to showering, progressed to putting on outside clothes, to opening the front door and looking out at the world, to walking to the end of the drive, to going out to meet friends for a Starbucks.

As I said in the previous post, these simple one things start to snowball and create an amazing cumulative effect.

My recovery snowballed, I started enjoying getting showered, made up, dressed and going out again. I even started talking on the radio about depression and mental health and had a weekly slot on a local station.

I started to care again. I care now about myself, about my appearance, about my life.

I care about my community, the environment, our world,

I care about everything I can care about and I committed to every day doing just one thing to help someone somewhere.

Some days I pick up other people’s trash that they left littering the beautiful park where I walk my dogs, some days I protest about fracking or animal abuse or human trafficking.

Once I just wanted to fade away and not exist anymore, now I’m committed to living a life that matters and it starts with just one thing.

However, sometimes even with doing just one thing and celebrating every day, it can be easy to be distracted and get pulled off track.

You might get afraid that it isn’t going to work, that the one little thing you’re doing is pointless and a waste of your time and energy.

Remember that everyone who had a goal started somewhere, often nowhere close to being who, what or where they wanted to be.

You start and you move forward incrementally, keep doing your one thing and you’ll keep moving towards your goal and those daily increments soon add up.

No-one decides on a lifechanging goal and then jumps straight to its achievement. No-one!

Whatever it is: improving your golf swing, clearing clutter, improving your physical fitness, learning a new language or getting washed every day, you have to start where you are, decide on your goal, plot your route and start.

And every day you take that small step forward, and every day you get that little bit closer.

Its really easy to give up. I know, I’ve given up over and over again. But I’ll ask you what I ask myself – ‘Do you want easy or do you want better?’

Be patient with yourself, you have to allow some time to pass. Take your lifechanging project one day at a time, and day by day you’ll move towards it. and one day, you’ll find you’ve done it, you’ll be it, you’ll have it.

When you take a mis-step, and we all do, you just have to restart from where you left off.

Just do that one thing. There is no miracle that will take you from here to there. You are the miracle and you are the only one that can make it happen for you.

Try it. Just one thing – what if you don’t, what will you lose if you don’t try? Start today, my dear one. For you, for me, for all of us.