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.

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.

Change your life tactic: Know that your sad stories are irrelevant

I got a phone call last week and when I answered the very friendly guy at the other end of the line told me he was calling on behalf of personal development guru and motivational speaker Chris Howard.

He enthusiastically asked me about my experience with Chris, I had bought a couple of his personal development courses in the past, and then proceeded in similar eager style, to tell me that he had a free gift to share with me.

Of course, by this stage my cynicism had kicked in and I was waiting for the sales pitch, but no, he not only wanted to send me a free gift by email, he also wanted to schedule a phone call for me to chat with the man himself, his mentor, Chris Howard.

‘Yeah, right’ I thought. Why on earth would Chris Howard be looking to speak to me, and yet, I decided to see how far this would go and scheduled a time to speak to Chris two days hence.

Later on, I received an email giving me links to two motivational videos, a hypnotic suggestion audio and instructions on how best to prepare for my call with Chris. Great, I thought, at the very least I have something new to listen to as I sit here and write.

The following day, same thing, another guy calls, this time to check that I’m still okay for my scheduled appointment with Chris and to assure me that Chris is very excited to speak with me. By this stage, I’m thinking he has me mixed up with someone else, because Chris Howard and I have never met and our only contact is from my buying his product several years ago.

And I noticed something weird happening while all this was going on. I was embarrassed, I was embarrassed by where I currently am in life, by the mistakes I’d made, by the restrictions I was living with financially and emotionally.

It was as if I had been noticed by the cool kids in school and suddenly none of my clothes, books, cds were right or good enough. Boy, was I judging myself and finding myself lacking, and that did not feel good at all.

And as my friend and coach, Jane Quinn said to me, ‘Why wouldn’t he want to speak to you? You’re amazing, look at what you’ve done, what you’ve survived, what you’re creating right now.’

I pulled my head out of the inferiority spiral it had started to descend into and decided I would use this call to help me gain insight and to learn from someone who had created a $100-million coaching and speaking business.

So, what did I want to know? Simply, how I get from here to there as quickly and easily as possible.

The next day, I was sitting waiting for Chris’s call 10 minutes before the hour. Five minutes past the hour and my tea’s was cold and he still hadn’t called! I went to reheat my tea and sat back down. 10 minutes past. Surely, it wasn’t a mistake? Had I imagined it all? Was I really that far gone in my dreamworld?

Ahh! the phone rang and it was another minion! Apologies to the three people I spoke to but minion was the word that came to my mind, Chris was now available to take my call, was I ready?

Whoohoo! It might be easier to get to speak to the Pope and this guy was calling me, so it felt a bit egotistical but hey if you’re really busy man maybe you don’t dial your own phone in case you get a busy signal – I don’t know (yet).

Finally, I was speaking to Chris Howard. Nice guy, and he listened to me, as I told him what I wanted to build now in my career and then he said something that rocked my little world.

I have to paraphrase as I don’t remember it exactly but it was something like, ‘Some people have horrible abusive childhoods and grow up to be successful productive adults because they don’t let their past define them, other people have an instant when their mother looked at them the wrong way and they are traumatised for life and never get past it. It’s not what happens to you, its what you do with the choices you make and the opportunities you create.’

Chris and I talked for just over 30 minutes and yes, at the end there was a sales pitch, but it was a good one and given in a way to motivate me and move me forward in reaching my goals. This had been a great use of my time, all in all. I left with some constructive ideas to work on and a book recommendation. I think I came out ahead!

Later, walking the dogs, I kept coming back to that one sentence and it struck me like a slap up the side of the head ‘Your sad stories are fucking irrelevant!’

Abusive, controlling ass of a father, worn-out victim of a mother, bullying, depression, one sad story after another, all used to justify where I am, the bad decisions I’ve made, the good people I’ve hurt, the bad people I’ve allowed in to hurt me, the apathy, the fear, the lack of motivation.

We bond with other people over our sad stories, we listen just long enough to their sad story until we can interrupt them with our even sadder story! We repeat them over and over to people who have heard them many times and to people who have only just met us.

We hide behind them because then when things don’t work out, its not our fault. And for all my self care and personal development, I’ve been hiding behind this CRAP for far too long!

As I walked through the park, I started saying to myself, ‘it doesn’t matter, none of it matters, let it go,’ and truly, I could feel a massive weight get lifted off me, it simply dissolved away.

When your sad stories become irrelevant, they no longer have power over you, they can’t hold you back any longer. Because, it’s what you take from them that counts, and what you do now that matters.

Stop letting the past hold you prisoner, don’t spend your energy and emotion in that place, look forward and push for a brighter, better life now, free of sad stories. They’re simply don’t matter, they’re not fucking relevant!

Change your life tactic: Be mindful of what you feel

What do you do when an unwanted thought, feeling or emotion rises up in your awareness?

Mostly, we want to stop whatever it was we were doing that was causing this new and/or unwanted sensation. I head to the fridge or the cookie jar, some people switch on the tv, some have a drink, and others do some action that may be even more harmful to their wellbeing.

We switch off our consciousness and fall back into old habits and behaviours, the ones we want to change, that don’t serve us, and keep us stuck in a place we don’t like.

Once we recognise what we’re doing, we give ourselves a new choice, making the new sensation the focus of our attention. We can delve into it, stay with it as it rises in our body and see just how it feels.

Start by examining where you feel tension in your body. If you want to quit what you’re doing, where exactly do you feel that, what does it feel like? And if you simply observe that feeling without taking action, how does that then change what you feel?

Changing how we react to such feelings from something we want to suppress or avoid or stop to something we are interested in exploring further enables us to ask, ‘What might this be?’

Is there another feeling behind this one? One that has been suppressed and submerged even longer?

Asking questions in a moment of stillness when you are exploring your feelings will reveal some sort of answer you can use to explore further and release other suppressed emotion.

There will be some old sadness, anger or a fragment of a memory that we don’t want to remember that will come up for us. And when we pay attention to our feelings and emotions, we can watch them change as we observe them and then they dissolve away.

This is a truly transformative process that changes stuck old feelings into new energy you can use to propel you forward.

Start noticing when you use your avoidance tactics and discover the emotions you are avoiding. Start allowing yourself to feel these sensations and through that process, everything will change.

Change your life tactic: Live into your highest value

What is your highest value?

Do you know what it is? Are you sure?

I was thinking about my highest value the other day and I thought I’d discovered I had two, because you can have two Highest Values right?

No. You can’t and here’s why. One of your ‘highest values’ will be a lower value, a fear based value, even though it might not seem that way at first glance, and you’ll use it to hide from the harder choice of living into your true Highest Value.

The two values I had identified for myself were security and freedom. And at first, I thought they were opposite of each other, after all security, feeling safe and secure is not about being free, it’s more about locking yourself down tight and staying with what you know.

And then I pushed deeper into it. What is security? I earn enough to get by, I live in a nice house, I’m doing okay. I have my beliefs about the world, about religion, about myself, I know my limits intellectually and I know my place in the world.

Wow, how’s that for staying in a comfort zone? Staying somewhere that sooner or later starts to restrict you and strangle you. My need for security if actually fear based and keeps me small, it limits me.

And when you think about freedom, the absoluteness of it is terrifying but only in total freedom is there real security.

Think about it. Financial freedom is a much greater concept than financial security. With one there is no limit, and you have the power to choose how to spend your time, your money and your efforts. Financial security instead has a definite feel of budget and restriction and denial to make sure your money will cover your expenses for the rest of your life.

Intellectual freedom has a much greater sense of pushing boundaries within and without. Challenging yourself to open your mind to new ideas, new information and assimilating new concepts about the world, its inhabitants and the incredible multitude of possibilities. To me, this means not just reading what I’m comfortable with, not sticking with the tried and true but pushing myself to explore new scientific research in fields I don’t know well, and new challenging research in those I thought I did know well, to check out new artists, new writers, new musicians, not judging but learning and experiencing and in doing so, making my life experience so much richer.

Spiritual freedom is going beyond the safety of the religion that defined my upbringing and the hodge-podge of spirituality and world religion pieces I have absorbed over the years to asking, what else is possible? And seeking answers from enlightened sources from all over, including the religion of my upbringing but without its rigid social structures. Spiritual freedom is being open to the belief that anything is possible and holding myself, not in conclusion or even in cynical denial, but in awe and wonder at the power of people to create stories to explain the unseen and to allow myself to feel the possibility of what could be everything or nothing at all.

Physical freedom is having a fit, healthy body that does what it was designed for, enabling me to enjoy the experiences of a fit, healthy body. That is so much more exciting than physical security which plays safe, and in which your body may never get beyond the couch in the living room!

So, after some lengthy internal debate, I reached the truth of my highest value: Freedom. It is no longer obscured by my fear value of security. And it is only by living into freedom through the choices I make, that I will gain the security my fear craves.

Ask yourself, ‘What is my highest value? Be prepared for a false start and question the first few that come into your mind. When you have settled on a highest value, examine it and ask yourself if it is fear based or love based. If fear based, it’s not your highest value, and is probably hiding your love value from you. Dig deeper.

When you make choices so that you are living from your highest value, you life will improve dramatically, you’ll feel better about yourself and like yourself a whole lot more.

It just makes me better when I choose to hold myself to the bigger, more awesome Freedom choice than the one that shuts my fear up with a  temporary sense of security. 

 

Change your life tactic: Build a positive belief system

According to the world’s leading neuroscience researcher, Mark Waldman, we live not from what we see in the world, but rather in the realities we invent in our frontal lobes. We live from our imaginings.

And in our brains, the positive and negative beliefs we hold are both active all the time. However we are programmed with a primal survival bias to pay more attention to the negative thoughts, feelings and beliefs.

Unfortunately, a negative belief system that might have helped you live longer in more primitive times actually harms you both neurologically and physically.

Whereas, a positive belief system helps your brain grow new dendrites and neuroconnections that improve your memory and adds 2 years to your life.

Yeah, you read that right, a positive belief system adds 2 years to your life! Makes the brain retraining worth the effort, right?

Mark has detailed some ways to quickly and easily organise the frontal lobe part of the brain to serve you better, and I’ll share some of them below.

Interestingly, the amygdala which is the primitive fear causing part of the brain that gives us the fun Fight/Flight/Freeze response can be surgically removed, but when that’s done, you lose your emotional response. It seems the fear sensors give us personality but they can leave us crippled with fear.

The reward centre of the brain, the nucleus accumbens, releases the feel good basic pleasure chemical, dopamine. This is what wakes us up, this makes us conscious and give us our interests, food, love of learning new things. But when we get into something new and get excited about it, the amygdala kicks in and shuts down the forward movement.

I think this must be where the old saying comes from, ‘one step forward and two steps back.’

When you feel fear, whether real or imagined, within less than 1 second, 25 different fear chemicals get released, the most dangerous of which is cortisol. These neurochemicals flood throughout the brain and the body.

Stay with a negative thought and within minutes, you have released enough chemicals to damage the memory and the learning parts of the brain.

We need to learn how to turn down the right frontal lobe, and turn up the volume on the left. Don’t say, ‘This is just how I am’; commit yourself to change and you can train yourself to be optimistic by increasing your sense of pleasure throughout the day with a few simple things like:

• having some pretty flowers or a beautiful picture by your desk to look at every 15 minutes or so
• stretching and yawning every 15 minutes or so
• thinking of a word or mantra that instantly calms you and makes you feel good, again every 15 minutes or so

You want to bring yourself back to consciousness and to introduce pleasure into your experience as frequently as possible, Mark suggests every 10-15 minutes.

Learning to think differently is possible, even chronic depression can be retrained out of your brain through mindfulness, meditation, and acceptance based therapy.

Improved frontal lobe stimulation expands your sense of self, and your social and spiritual awareness.

The most effective ways to change your mental state is through chanting and a breathing meditation. Set a meditation bell sound to ring every 10-15 minutes to remind you to return to a conscious state, to stay in touch with the present moment.

Keep stretching in new directions and pushing yourself to learn, be and do more. This stimulates your nucleus accumbens, which then releases more dopamine. New stuff in your life, new ideas, new knowledge all stimulate the frontal lobe, increasing the neuroconnections in your brain.

Caring for yourself, for others, for animals releases oxytocin and that helps us bond and that sense of connection makes us feel good too.

Taking the time and making the effort to retrain your brain will improve your brain infrastructure, will make your feel better physically, emotionally and mentally and you’ll live longer.

You can choose to think about your life in either a positive or a negative way. As I said at the top, retraining for an optimistic outlook in every moment takes effort, I happen to think its worth it. So what will you do to start your brain retraining?

More about Mark Waldman: Mark Waldman is the author of 12 books on neuroscience, communication, and spiritual/personal development. His recent best selling book, How God Changes Your Brain, was selected by Oprah as one of the 9 “must read” books for 2012. According to Time, Newsweek, and the Washington Post, he and Dr. Andrew Newberg MD are considered the world’s leading authorities on spirituality and the brain. His research has been featured in Time, Oprah Magazine, and the New York Times.

His latest book, Words Can Change Your Brain, was featured in Forbes, Salon, Fast Company, Investor’s Business Weekly, Entrepreneur, BrainWorld, and Prevention Magazine. Mark has appeared on Oprah Radio, PBS television, Canadian National Television, and National Public Radio. In 2010, he received the Distinguished Speaker award from the Mind Science Foundation.

 

Change you life tactic: Trust yourself

This is a biggie, my peeps.

Perhaps the biggest advice I can give you, trust yourself.

Now, when I say trust yourself, I don’t mean the voice of fear that holds you hostage and keeps you stuck in situations that do not serve you. No, we’re going to get past ever listening to that nonsense ever again.

I mean that knowing, that gut feeling, that little voice that might have been squashed and pushed and shoved into a dark corner that you’re going to have to quieten down to hear, because its gotten used to you not listening to it and only whispers now.

It’s also time to stop listening to other people. Its time to stop taking polls on whether you should or should not take a certain action.

I really think this is true in terms of our health more than anywhere else. Because we’re sitting there in front of the doctor, and based on your symptoms he says you’ve got this, and you’re screaming inside your head ‘No, I don’t have that, I’m miserable, my work sucks, my relationships are falling apart and I just need someone to hold me and listen to me, and tell me its going to be okay.’

And yet, we take the prescription and we go back into our lives, and we go, ‘Yeah, the doctor says I have ‘X’ and I have to take these pills and I’ll be fine.’

We give away our responsibility in looking after our physical and mental health and swallow the doctor’s opinion and his pills and never deal with the stuff that created those symptoms in the first place.

You have all the answers you need within you. They might scare you, but its time to allow yourself to be exhilarated by the thought of following your dreams rather than frozen in fear, and hiding from what might be the greatest adventure of your life.

You won’t break under pressure. You’ll go through things in this life, you’ll be disappointed, you’ll be betrayed, you’ll be picked up and dropped a few times. But remember this, you were built to last.

So, today, trust yourself. Tell your fear thoughts to shut up and stretch to hear that little voice, and get on with living in the moment, guided by the part of you that knows what you must do for your and our highest good.

 

Change your life tactic: Practice what you learn

Ha!

You think you’re so smart, so evolved, so aware.  You read loads of personal development books and blogs, you listen to leaders and new people breaking through in the thought leadership and self-care world. You’re there.

Right?

Wrong!

Because it’s not what you’ve learned, it’s what you do. It’s not what you know, it’s what you use.

BTW: I’m writing this for me, so don’t get mad if you think I’m giving you attitude, this is all about me.

Because I do immerse myself in self-care, personal development. behavioural science, neuroscience and mental health research every day. And yet, I still forget all about what I’ve learned under pressure.

I’ll give you a little background so you can understand what happened yesterday evening. For the past 9 months, we’ve had to endure construction on a new pathway at the bottom of our street. It’s taking ridiculously long and is irritating as heck.

From January to April, I had no problem walking across the site to access the path I normally choose for walking my dogs, a pre-existing path I’ve used for over 7 years.

In April, a new site engineer decided to put barriers up all around the site, did I mention it was an eyesore? And thus, my access to my preferred dog walking route was cut off.

So, I phone the boss of the building company who I knew slightly and he organised for me to have a key so I could let myself through and walk my dogs safely and not have to go on the main roads.

But then, a few weeks ago, the men changed the locks. I asked them to change them back and was ignored. So, I took to taking a spanner and a pair of scissors with me every time I walked the dogs, using them to open one of the links between two of the barriers, creating a space the dogs and I could slip through.

This went on, like a game of cat and mouse until last Friday, with me opening a gap to slip through and one of the workmen closing it back up again, every day, twice a day.

But then, last Friday, they set up the barrier I normally use, so when I went to open it, it fell on top of me and my dogs!

That stirred up my rage, which had been quietly simmering over the past while. I was so mad because they could have hurt me and more so, they could have hurt my precious dogs. I was so mad, that taking no notice of the downpour, I got my spanner out and took every closing link of every barrier and left them lying on the ground.

Monday afternoon, when I sent out with the dogs, they had closed them all up again and I took out my spanner and opened them again. It’s ridiculous I know, but in my mind they had crossed a line and I was justified in my actions.

Walking home, I was met with the site engineer who tried to tell me that this carry on couldn’t continue and we got into a full scale confrontation with neither of us willing to back down. Eventually, I did win my victory and the lock to which I have the key was reinstated on the site’s gate.

But it was a hollow victory, because as I was walking away, I became aware that I had acted from rage, I had reacted to my anger instead of being in control, instead of practising compassionate communication, as detailed by the great Mark Waldman and whom I’d just been listening to earlier.

I had lost control of myself. But there’s no point in kicking myself for it, instead I was grateful that I had recognised so quickly that there was an alternative way for me to behave that would have served me and the other person so much better.

I’m relieved to say I did not stew on the incident with variations of ‘I should have said that,’ running through my brain, so I know I’ve made some progress down the years.

The good news is that I have progressed even further now. As I was crossing the road the next day and a car tried to cut me off, I was halfway across the T junction, so the right of way was mine and I instinctively went into battle mode, staring the driver down, but almost immediately I became aware of what I was doing and started breathing in ‘love and kindness’ like a mantra/meditation.

Instantly, my shoulders relaxed down from where they had jumped up to my ears! My posture relaxed and rage was completely averted.

It’s about awareness, becoming more aware every day and slowing down to breathe and taking control over my reactions and over my emotions.

Yay! I’m learning and doing, which is where I want to be. Always improving on the me of the previous day, the previous moment, being the best version of me I can be right now.

Isn’t that what you want, to be the best version of you that you can be? It’s why you’re reading this, right?