Healing through Self-Hypnosis

I have something that I wanted to share with you that’s actually quite personal but I hope that by telling you about it, I may be able to help others in a similar situation.

Just before Christmas 2011, my father was diagnosed as having prostate cancer.  Obviously we were devastated at the time.  We knew nothing about it then and just hearing the ‘C’ word sent us into a spin.  The hospital told my dad that they didn’t want to operate at that point, but would continue to monitor him on a 3 month basis and gave him an appointment to return to the hospital for further blood tests at the end of March 2012.

I knew my dad was more upset about the diagnosis than he was admitting, and the only thing I could think of to help was to download a couple of Andrew Johnson’s wonderful self hypnosis MP3s for him to listen to.  I’m a big fan of Andrew, his Apps and MP3 downloads really do what they say on the tin and for my dad, I thought that if nothing else they would help him to relax a bit more.  The MP3s I downloaded for him where ‘Healing’ and ‘Positivity’ and I bought him a little portable CD player to play them on.

My dad started to listen to them quite often and he said that he really did feel more positive and less stressed as a result.  He was really optimistic that the results from his next hospital appointment would reflect how he was feeling.  However, when he got the results from his next set of tests, he was shocked to find out that his blood count had gone up (we were all convinced that with all the positive thinking that it would have gone down).  It knocked my dad for the rest of that day, however, the next day he resolved to be even more positive and to listen to the CDs at least 3 times a day (morning, afternoon and before bed) which he stuck to religiously from that day forward.

Today, my dad has had his next 3 month check up at the hospital and I’m pleased to say that his blood count has gone down considerably.  The nurse asked him how he was finding the medication and if he was happy with it, he replied, “What medication?  I haven’t had any.  I’ve just been listening to CDs my daughter gave me”.  Apparently, he should have been taking medication (although the hospital neglected to give it to him) and the nurse attributed the drop in his blood count to the medication – she was amazed when he told her that medication had nothing to do with it, but listening to Andrew’s self hypnosis had.

In addition to this fantastic news, my dad has also suffered from very high blood pressure for years (he takes medication for it but it’s always remained high).  Last week he went to the doctors for a check up and she told him that his blood pressure had gone down from 140 (where it’s been for the last 5 years) to 127.  The doctor was amazed and asked him what he’d been doing to get his blood pressure so low and in the ‘healthy’ category.  My dad proudly told her that he was listening to self hypnosis CDs!  

When you ask my dad how he’s feeling now, I’m pleased to say that he’ll tell you that he’s never felt so well and so positive and has never slept so soundly as he has since he’s been listening to those CDs.

Andrew has a range of Apps (available from the App Store in ITunes) or as MP3 downloads from his website (http://www.withandrewjohnson.com/ ) including:

Success

Stress Free

Procrastination

Get Fit

Lose Weight

Confidence

Don’t Panic

Stop Smoking

Move On

Procrastination

.... plus more.

I can’t recommend them highly enough.  With sustained listening, you can really make a positive difference to your life and they aren’t expensive (but worth every penny).

Until next time, I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.  I know I will after the good news I’ve received today!

Jo

PS In case you were wondering, Andrew hasn’t sponsored this in any way and I’m sure there are other good self hypnosis Apps/CDs out there.  I just wanted to share because I have proof that they work and I thought some of you may find this information helpful.

Be Happy!

There seems to be a bit of an epidemic going on in the world – people think that they are going be happy "when...

“I get my new house”

“I get my new car”

“I find a husband/wife”

“I get a new job”

“My children go to University”

“I’m earning more money”

“I can afford to go on holiday/get that new couch/get a new kitchen/finish the house/buy what I want”

Now here’s the shocker, your happiness does not depend on any of those things.  Your happiness is right inside you right now; you just need to look for it.  What happens when we think “I’ll be happy when...” is that you project your happiness into the future.  When you are so busy being focussed on the future, you aren’t able to enjoy what’s happening now.

What also happens when we project our happiness into the future is that the happiness we think we will have tomorrow never comes.  Whether we realise it or not, we create strong neural pathways in the brain ie we condition our minds to believe that happiness is always in the future.  So when you actually do get that new house/car/husband/wife, your mind still believes that happiness is in the future and so your ‘happiness goals’ change eg “I’ll be happy when I get a second house in the country/a bigger car/two cars/an even better job” etc.

Look back at the things that you thought would make you happy.  Did they?  If they did, how long did that happiness last until you were looking for the next thing that would make you happy?  You’d be surprised how many unhappy/depressed millionaires there are out there. You hear in the press all the time about this or that millionaire film star/musician etc suffering from depression and ending up in rehab.  They have every material thing they could ever wish for (and more) and yet they are still unhappy.

HAPPINESS COMES FROM WITHIN

So how do we find out happiness right now?  Stop, stop and look around you.  Look at the good things you have in your life right now.  Get into the habit of thinking about them, giving thanks for them and loving them.  When I’ve said this to some of my more negative clients, you’d be surprised at how many times I end up in the following dialogue with them:

“There’s nothing good in my life”

“Really? So you don’t like your children - they aren't 'good'?”

“Well, yeah, of course they are”

“So you don’t like your house/your parents/your friends and you didn’t like the holiday you’ve just been on?”

“Well yeah, of course I do/did”

“So you don’t like good weather/socialising with lovely friends/walking in the country/your hobbies?”

“Well I suppose I do”

“But you’ve just said there’s nothing good in your life!”

“Well I haven’t got enough money”

“OK, but you do have good things in your life?”

“Yes, I suppose I do”

What I then do is get that person to really think about the things that they love and are grateful for.  This is the exercise with them (read through the exercise once before you start it):

Exercise

1. Think of all the things you love in your life
2. Make up little movies in your mind of you doing or being with those things eg a walk in the park on a sunny day with your children/sitting or lying on a sundrenched beach in the Caribbean (that’s my particular favourite)/having a fabulous meal with your favourite friends – whatever works for you
3. Make those movies as bright, colourful, big and noisy as possible
4. Replay each of your mini movies back to back, over and over again
5. Repeat this exercise as many times as you can during the day (especially when you get any negative thoughts appearing – it’s a wonderful technique removing those)

When you do this (and it only takes a couple of minutes each time you do it) you will start to feel good instantly.  Two things happen when you do this exercise:

1. The mind can’t tell the difference between something that’s real and imagined – therefore when you repeatedly play your movies, you will automatically create the good feelings that go with the good thoughts
2. You create new neural pathways in the brain that associate feeling good and feeling happy NOW instead of sometime in the future (that never comes)

As these are your movies, no-one ever needs to know that you are playing them or what they are.  You can play them at any time and they will always increase your feelings of well being and happiness.  Also, because of the new neural pathways you will be creating, the more you play them, the more easily you will be able to play them.  Thinking of your happy movies will become instant the more you practise and therefore, the associated good feelings will become instant too.

In Summary

Our happiness isn’t in the future, it’s now.  While you’re projecting your happiness into the future you are missing out on happiness now.  So start to look at all the good things that you have in your life now and be thankful for them.  Make it a habit to look for the things that you love, you can do this any time anywhere, when you’re driving, doing the dishes, cooking, walking.  When you make this part of your daily routine, you’ll find that a new world of possibilities opens up and your world becomes a much more positive place to live in.

As always, if you have any comments on this or any other post please let me know.  Until next time, have a wonderful week.

Jo

Sleep Well - Part 2

Further to my previous post regarding solving ad hoc sleep issues, today I’d like to discuss how to manage long term sleep issues (including insomnia) and resetting your sleep cycle.

As I discussed previously, long term sleeplessness begins with waking the odd night and not dealing with it appropriately.  Left unchecked, it’s amazing how quickly your body will adjust and create a new sleep pattern/cycle, one that can actually be extremely detrimental to your health and well being.

The way to tackle long term sleep problems is to create a brand new sleep pattern (well, it was easy to create the old unhelpful one, so by the same token it’s easy to create a new helpful one).   

There are three steps to this and each step must be done religiously if you are to achieve a new sleep cycle – and that means at weekends too.  I know we are all used to sleeping in at weekends (or that’s what most of us aspire to) however, you have to do each of these 3 steps every single day for a few weeks in order to achieve the sleep pattern you desire. 

Step 1

Get up half an hour earlier than your normal waking time.

If you usually get up at 7.00 am, set your alarm and get up at 6.30 am every day (including weekends) WITHOUT FAIL.  I know this may seem hard if you haven’t been getting enough sleep, but in clinical trials it has proved to be the single most effective thing that you can do to cure insomnia.

One of the reasons for this is that if your body gets used to making up for lost sleep in the morning, then it doesn’t prepare properly for sleep in the evening.  On the whole, you can’t always choose when you go to sleep, however, you absolutely can choose when you wake up.  When you shift your waking time, the rest of your sleeping pattern has to reset too.

In order to help you with this, write down the time that you want to wake up and put it at the side of your bed (what gets written down gets done is definitely true in this instance), set your alarm clock to that time, say the time that you want to wake up to yourself before you settle down to sleep.  Doing this will help programme your subconscious and you will notice that you start to wake up just before your alarm goes off.  It’s a very reliable way to wake yourself up if you don’t have an alarm clock too – you don’t need to just use this technique for when you’re resetting your sleep cycle.

Step 2

Only go to bed when you’re tired

Most of us go to bed when we think we should, not when we’re tired then spend a couple of hours wide awake.  What you need to do is keep yourself busy until you feel tired.  Read a book, clean the house, whatever you want to do, do it until you’re actually tired.  When your body needs to sleep, it will tell you.  You simply can’t force it.

After a few days of only going to bed when you’re tired and getting up early, your body clock will very quickly reset itself and you’ll find that you need to go to bed earlier and earlier.

Step 3

Don’t nap during the day

Napping during the day only reduces your need for sleep at night, so it’s really important that you stay awake during the day.  No matter how hard you find it to keep your eyes open, resist.  Get up, go for a walk, do something in the house – just do something that keeps you busy.

Other top tips for a better sleep:

Take regular exercise

Exercise is wonderful for helping you sleep.  Once you’ve done some exercise (and I’m not talking about running a marathon here – just a walk around the block is better than nothing) your body releases endorphins which are often described as the happy hormone and give you a ‘feel good factor’.  They help calm the nerves and reduce stress and therefore, help you sleep better.

Avoid stimulants

Avoid drinking tea, coffee and alcohol before you go to bed.  These substances stimulate the mind and body which can lead to broken sleep patterns.  Instead, have a hot, milky drink half an hour before you want to go to bed.  This will help to relax and calm you down rather than get your heart racing as the stimulants would.

Have a bath in the evening

If you have children, you’ll know that bathing your child at night is an important part of their bedtime routine.  Again, it relaxes the body and let’s your subconscious know that it should be preparing your body for sleep.

Avoid violent films and video games

Watching violent films and playing video games before bedtime will again stimulate the brain (often leading to nightmares).  During the time you are working on your new sleep pattern, avoid these activities.  Instead read books/magazines and avoid having your TV on in the bedroom, it will distract you and upset your sleep pattern.  During the couple of weeks you are working on your sleep cycle, you should remove your TV from the bedroom (if you have one), you will be less likely to turn it on if you wake in the middle of the night which will stimulate your brain causing you to be wide awake.

Well I hope you find these tips and hints useful.  If you wish to read up further on how to sleep better then I suggest you read Paul McKenna’s ‘I can make you sleep’.  Not only is it full of useful information, but it also comes with a free self hypnosis CD which if you play each night will help you re-set your sleep cycle and aid peaceful sleep.

Until next time, have a wonderful day and as always, if you’d like to discuss any issues you may have regarding this or any other topic, please feel free to contact me for a free no obligation chat on how I can help you.

Jo

Sleep Well - Part 1

Lately, it seems that there isn’t a day that goes by without seeing a post on my personal Facebook page from one of my friends who has woken up at “daftoclock.com” and “cantsleep.com”.  Being unable to sleep seems to be quite an epidemic at the moment.   The time that most people seem to be waking with regularity is between 3 and 4 o’clock and they struggle to get back to sleep, only to drift off 10 minutes before the alarm goes off.  However, when the alarm does go off, they find it really difficult to wake up and seem to wander around the rest of the day in a trance like state.  Sound familiar?

Let’s look firstly at why it seems to be consistently between 3/4 o’clock. 

The Sleep Cycle

There are 3 phases to our sleep pattern:

1.     Light sleep – this is the sleep you fall into when you first drift off.  Our brainwaves are quick and if you were to be hooked up to an EEG and someone mentioned your name, there would be a sharp spike in your wave pattern.

2.     Slow wave – the brainwaves are much slower and even.  We usually enter this pattern about 20 minutes after falling asleep and stay in it for around 2 hours.  In these two hours our bodies rejuvenate and take the opportunity to repair itself (including our immune systems).  This part of sleep is vital for our health and wellbeing.

3.     REM or Rapid Eye Movement – this is when most of our dreaming occurs and our eyes can be seen to move beneath our eyelids (hence the title).  This sleep pattern leads to improved performance of learned tasks and the subconscious uses this time to organise and file new tasks and patterns learned the previous day.  This is the lightest sleep pattern and if you wake quickly from it, you’ll usually be able to remember your dreams quite clearly.

During the night, for the first few hours, we move between light and slow wave and then move to alternating between light, slow and REM.  When you follow the pattern, it shows that about 3 hours into sleep, we move from our essential 2 hours of slow wave to a short light sleep and then a short REM – it’s at that point that most people seem to wake up instead of going into another light sleep followed by slow wave.  So what causes it?  It can be anything, however, alcohol and stress/anxiety are the usual culprits.

Now, there are two distinct types of waking during sleep (actually there are more if you count clinical diagnosis such as sleep apnoea, but I’m just going to cover the two most common types in these posts): 

1.     Occasional waking – on the odd occasion or for a short period of time you wake up, start worrying/thinking and can’t get back to sleep.  This is usually when you have something particular on your mind that you are worried or anxious about.

2.     Habitual waking – this is when your waking turns into a habit ie you wake at the same time every night for a week or more.  This may have started with occasional waking and subsequently (because you haven’t dealt with it)  it’s turned into a habit and your body/mind thinks that’s what you’re supposed to do – in effect, you’ve trained it to be that way.

The first type has a couple of rather simple solutions, the second (which I’ll discuss tomorrow) takes a little more work to resolve, but it isn’t difficult. 

Occasional Waking

As I described earlier, we usually wake when we are in REM sleep.  What causes us to wake is usually that while our subconscious mind is trying to figure out what happened to us during the previous day and is filing the information in different boxes in our mind (that’s the easiest non technical way of describing it so that everyone understands the way the mind processes information), it will come across something that it can’t categorise (it’s usually something that you’ve been worrying about and haven’t dealt with the previous day) and therefore, it doesn’t know where to file it.  That ‘shock’ (for want of a better word) wakes you up so that your conscious mind can deal with it, so that when you go back to sleep again, your subconscious mind can file it.

It’s quite a different concept if you haven’t thought of it before, but it’s absolutely true.  The solution to it is twofold:

1.     Always keep a notepad and a pen by the side of the bed.  When you wake up with a start in the middle of the night worrying about something, write that thing down immediately.  Then settle back down and you will drift off to sleep again.  By writing the issue(s) down, you are informing your subconscious mind that you have dealt with the problem therefore, it will allow you to fall asleep again.

2.     If you action point 1 but are still awake, then as I’ve said in numerous posts – STOP THINKING ABOUT THE THING YOUR WORRYING ABOUT!  You can choose your thoughts, you don’t have to think anything negative unless you want to.  Choose to think about something that’s positive/that you love eg your children, your house, your possessions, your parents, your next holiday/your last holiday, lying on a sun-drenched beach – whatever works for you.  List as many good things/things that you love in your life/things that make you happy as you possibly can (a bit like counting sheep, but a lot more positive).  By doing that, you shift your thinking away from the negative thoughts you were having, to positive ones.  I know that it sometimes seems harder in the middle of the night (everything feels worse at that dead hour), but you can still do it.  You have control over your thoughts – they don’t have to be negative.

These are two very simple things that you can do to help with your occasional waking.  Tomorrow I’ll give you 3 key steps to solving longer term/habitual waking (including insomnia).  Until then, have a great day and sleep well.

Jo

Managing Fear

We all get fearful from time to time, but what is fear?  In this day and age is there anything we really need to fear?  After all, we’re hardly likely to get eaten by a sabre toothed tiger or trampled by a herd of woolly mammoths.  The fear that our ancestors faced due to being in constant life threating situations was very different to the fear we feel now.  However, those same feelings haven't yet evolved out of us, we still have them whether we are actually in danger or whether we are just imagining the worst that could happen in a given situation.

Now, when I talk about fear in the context of this post, I’m not talking about the fear you may feel when you’re walking home late at night when you’re on your own – that’s REAL fear and you have every right to feel that way... that fear is what keeps us safe (like our prehistoric ancestors).  What I’m talking about is imagined fear, the scenarios we run through in our minds that drive us to distraction, pain and worry.  Those feelings of fear, we DO have control over as they are just thoughts.  After all, they haven’t happened yet, they are just things that we vividly imagine might happen, which then elicits the associated feeling so that the scenario ‘feels’ very real (remember our minds can’t tell the difference between something that’s real and something that’s vividly imagined).

Here’s an example to illustrate what I mean.  A couple of months ago, I recognised that I had started to become fearful that something I had been working really hard on may not come off which would affect me financially.  I noticed that I was becoming more and more fearful as I ran scenarios of what would happen if it didn’t work out.  The more I let my brain run with the ideas, I had myself bankrupt and out on the streets with no where to go within a matter of months. I started to have sleepless nights (something I haven’t suffered from for a very long time) I had let my fear take away my reasoning, my control and my confidence.

Then one day, completely out of the blue I got up and thought, “I’m tired of feeling like this.  I’m not doing it anymore” and I stopped.  Just like that.  I stopped and although from time to time I do get a little negative niggle (after you’ve thought a particular negative thought – or any thought for that matter - for a while, you created quite a strong neural pathway in the brain which means it can manifest itself again quickly and easily when you least expect it) but I just ignore it and get up and do or think of something more positive immediately before it gets the chance to grab a hold. 


The issue I was fearful about is still not yet resolved, but I’m not fearful about the outcome and because of that, I can think and plan with more clarity and more effectiveness now that I’m no longer running those unhelpful images which trigger negative emotions.

You may think that it’s not possible to do that ie to just stop worrying.  You may even think, “Well, it’s alright for you Ms Positivity but I can’t do that” Well, you can, everyone can.  Like I’ve said in other posts, all thoughts are just that, thoughts, which in turn affect your emotions and feelings and the really good thing about all this is that you can choose your thoughts if you want to.  You just have to recognise that you’re having those fearful, negative thoughts and change them to something more positive.

One way to help deal with real issues that could potential end negatively is to think about them logically as soon as you acknowledge that there may be a problem.  Work it through, looking at all the possibilities and come up with a solution even for the worst case scenario.  Having a plan and facing the issue head on will give you control back and help you manage the issue effectively (if there really is one and it’s not just something you’ve created in your throws of negativity!).

Another helpful tool in managing fear is taking whatever you are worrying about and visualising a perfect outcome, the outcome you really want. Again, the mind can’t figure out the difference between something vividly imagined and something that is real, so by focussing on a positive outcome, that’s much more likely to be the outcome you receive. It will also help you to feel more positive and resourceful.



There are some statistics that I once saw that showed that 90% of what we fear never happens.  OK, the negative people reading this will say, “Well 10% could go wrong”, yes, 10% could go wrong, but if you’re worrying and fearful about the 90% that won’t go wrong, you’re not focussing on the important stuff!

It would be remise of me not to point out here that sometime a little ‘controlled’ fear can be good for us.  Footballers, actors, public speakers all say that they have a little bit of fear before they make a performance, but it’s a good fear.  It’s usually caused a shot of adrenalin, that helps them focus and give an excellent performance.  That adrenaline shot comes from our ancestors ‘fight or flight’ syndrome, a shot of adrenalin that give them the strength to either run or fight whatever what coming at them (it’s something that again hasn’t yet disappeared through evolution).  I’ll cover public speaking in another post so I won’t say too much about it here, but the main way to stop those feeling becoming overwhelming is to visualise a positive out come and keep practising.  The more you run the pictures of your performance going smoothly and ending well, I'll pretty much guarantee that they will.

In summary, being fearful is rarely useful unless you do find yourself in physical danger.  It comes from thoughts of what could happen which is usually not based in reality - I like this little statement (although I can't remember who said it):

"Change your thoughts, change the world". 

I also saw this a couple of days ago and think it really sums this post up quite nicely:

Until next time, have a wonderful day and remember, do contact me if you have any feedback, if you wish to discuss any issues with me personally or can think of a topic that you’d like me to cover.  Your feedback is really important to me and I’d like to take the opportunity of thanking those of you who have given me feedback recently.  When I set up the blog, I said that if the information I provide helps at least one person, then it would be worth it.  Well it seems that I’m doing that and some.  So thanks again for your support.

Jo

Overcoming Procrastination - Part 2

Following on from parts 1-3 of the reasons why we procrastinate, here are the remaining 2 reasons:

4.   Forcing the flow

By forcing the flow, I mean trying to make things move at your pace rather than letting things unfold in their own time.  For example, have you ever put off ringing someone and then when you finally force yourself to do it hours or days later you find that they wouldn't have been in if you'd called them at the original time you thought of it?

Sometimes there are bigger things working than what we can see and we need to trust that we are doing the right thing by not doing what we think we should be doing at that moment in time.  So if you’ve decided to go shopping rather than doing that report, don’t beat yourself up ... just go with it.  It's exactly what you should be doing at that point in time.

In fact, experiment with it.  Take something you’ve been meaning to do (something that isn’t of huge importance) and when you feel like doing some work on it, do it and when you don’t, do something else instead but don't beat yourself up.  Just see how it works out.

5.   Chasing the wrong goal

There could be one very simple explanation as to why you can’t get your backside in gear to do that one thing you’ve been meaning to do for ages ... it might be the wrong goal.  As I mention in my post ‘Why Goals Fail’ it could be one of a few things:

a.    It’s not your goal, it’s something someone else thinks you should want.

b.    It’s what you think you should want but deep down you don’t

c.    It’s just not the right time to be thinking or working towards that particular goal

d.   You’re trying to do it out of desperation

Achievement of goals comes from those that you are inspired to achieve.  If you aren’t inspired the likelihood of you achieving that goals is severely compromised.

So ask yourself the question, “Is this something that I really want or am I acting out of desperation or I think I should do it/want it?”  If you answer the latter two, then ditch it.  Find something else that you feel inspired to achieve.

In summary, we can spend more time worrying about not doing something than we would if we actually just get off our backsides and did it.  So next time you feel like you’re procrastinating, ask yourself which one of the 5 reasons are stopping you.  Once you’ve established what it is, then you have your solution.  However, what I will say is that the thought of doing something is usually far worse than actually doing it and using the law of motion, just taking one step towards the goal usually leads to more small steps and soon you find you’ve achieved what you set out to do. 

I’ll give you a good example of what I mean - for the last few weeks I’ve been saying that I’ll remove the weeds from the path in my back garden and give it a good scrub with bleach, but I seem to never have the time, energy or inclination to do it.  At the weekend, I was putting some rubbish out and happened to pull up a couple of the errant weeds.  The next time I looked at the time, it was two hours later, I’d removed the weeds, been to the supermarket and bought the bleach and scrubbed the path ... I only went out to bin some rubbish. 

The moral?  Don’t think too much, “JFDI” as one my IT Directors used to say. Motion creates motion.

Until next time, have a wonderful day.

Jo

Overcoming Procrastination - Part 1

Have you labelled yourself as a procrastinator?  Do you put things off that you know you should be doing? Do you find it extremely hard to start something?  Do you find yourself doing anything (I call it ‘cleaning out your kitchen cupboards’) rather than doing the thing that you think you should be doing?  Well you’re not alone.  Pretty much everyone I meet does some or all of the things above, plus more.

I’ve been studying this with some of my clients and friends and find that when I question them about the things they are telling themselves and the reasons why they don’t do what they think they should be doing, I find that actually you can’t just put it down to one issue ie ‘procrastination’ it’s usually one of 5 things that we put under the heading of procrastination:

1.   Inertia

2.   Learned helplessness

3.   Resistance

4.   Forcing the flow

5.   Chasing the wrong goal

So let’s look at each of those 5 things.

1.   Inertia

What do I mean by Inertia?  Well you can’t move.  You remain the same.  You just can’t seem to get started.  The ‘thing’ you want to do seems too big or too hard or you don’t know where to start ... so you don’t!

The key to combating inertia is to start.  Start anywhere, even if it’s one tiny thing that moves you in the right direction.  Just do one small thing that moves you forward.  For example, if you want to start to exercise, just walk around the block.  If you want to start saving, just start with saving £5.  Starting small will get you ‘in motion’ and by the law of motion, motion creates more motion and you’ll find that you don’t stop there.  You’ll get carried along and the more you do to take you towards your goal, the more you’ll want to do.

The other way to do it is to start BIG!  Go all out.  If you want to pay your debts off, push yourself and pay more than you intended to.  If you want to start to exercise, sign yourself up for a 5K with some friends (you’re less likely to back out then!).   

If you’re worried that once you start then you won’t be able to stop and it will use up more of your time than you want it to, set yourself 15 minute time blocks in which to do it.  15 minutes is nothing in a 24 hour day and you’d be amazed how focussed you can be if you’ve set yourself a short time scale.  You can also get an awful lot done in a concentrated 15 minutes.  Commit to the time box and not to the result, if you do that, the results are sure to follow.

2.   Learned Helplessness

When you find enough reasons to do something, nothing will stop you.  Tony Robins (world renowned self help guru) says, ‘If you can find enough reasons to do something, you can get yourself to do anything’.

Here are some quick tips to help you overcome learned helplessness:

a.    Write down as many reasons (no matter how big or small) as you can for doing the thing you want to do.  Do this with someone else if that helps.  Just make sure you do it.

b.    Make plans regarding how you would go about achieving it (see my posts on goal setting to help you with this)

c.    Gather evidence that will help support your goal.  That might means statistics, research who has done what you’ve done before, what help is out there for you etc

3.   Resistance

Michael Neill (another self help guru) sums up resistance nicely:

You are almost never resisting performing a task;

Rather you are resisting being ‘forced’ to perform the task.

In his book ‘You Can Have What you Want’ he gives an example of not making sales calls and he says that he can either beat himself up for being a horrible person or ‘sneak up’ on his resistance using time management techniques or just give up!  But he says what if he’s resisting making the calls because he just doesn’t want to be told what to do ... even if it’s him that’s doing the telling.

So what’s the solution?  Stop giving yourself such a hard time.  When we’re pushed, we push back.  Trust that you know what’s best for you (most of us don’t trust that we know that) and just do the thing because you want to, not because you or anyone else is forcing you to!

Tomorrow, I’ll give you the last two reasons why we aren’t doing what we think we should be doing.  Until then, have a wonderful day.

Jo