Mindfulness

 

I’ve been reading and hearing a lot lately about living in the NOW and mindfulness.  After all, now is all we have.  Yesterday is gone and tomorrow hasn’t happened and yet we spend so much of our lives thinking/dwelling on the past or living for the future.   Today, this moment, right now is the only time we actually have that’s real.

How much of your life do you spend thinking, “I’ll be happy when … the kids leave home, I get a new job, I find the right person, I get married, I have children, I win the lottery, when world hunger is ended (fill in your own desire)” We waste so much of our lives waiting for that thing that we think will make us happy. 

We literally go through the motions of every-day life whilst waiting for something we perceive to be better to come along, thinking how much better our lives will be when we get that new car, house, holiday etc only to finally get what we desired and it changes nothing, except for a few brief hours of excitement after attaining what we coveted.

What’s stopping you from being happy right now, right in this minute?  Take a second to stop and really look at this precise moment.  Are you warm?  Are you comfortable? Are you full? Do you have a roof over your head?  Is there anything really missing right at this very moment?  OK, you may think, “I need money to pay that bill” but that’s in the future not right this second.  Is there anything you need right this second to make things better?  My guess is no.  You are right were you need to be and have everything you need in this current moment and this current moment is all we have.

If we could start to live more in the current moment and be happy right now instead of basing our happiness on something that we hope will happen in the future, we wouldn’t be waste so much of our lives.

Try an exercise in mindfulness (a term commonly used for really focussing on the current moment and noticing everything that’s going on around you rather than projecting your thoughts in to a future that may never happen):

Mindfulness Exercise

Take a small task that you do every day eg washing the dishes, washing your face, cleaning your teeth, walking up the stairs etc and really focus on what you’re doing and feeling.  If you choose washing the dishes, notice everything about it, be totally present and alert.  Notice how the water feels, is it warm enough or too hot, how do each of the items you wash feel in your hands, notice how the bubbles form … notice everything about that very moment.  How warm are you?  What can you smell, what can you hear.

That is an exercise in mindfulness.  You can always bring yourself back to the current moment and ask yourself, “How am I feeling, right at this moment?”  “Do I have everything I need, right at this moment” It’s also a brilliant tool to use for stress release and worry.  If you’re a worrier, remembering that you have everything you need right now, right at this moment, takes you out and away from worrying about what may happen and brings you back to right now.

I think this is a fascinating subject and I’ll be covering it more in the coming months.

Until next time, have a wonderful week.

 

Jo

Dealing with Self Pity

I met up with someone recently who seems to revel in self-pity.  I don’t often spend time with this person as their negative energy can be very draining and I do make a concerted effort to surround myself with people who are on the same wavelength as me rather than ‘mood hoovers’ (thanks to my friend Sharon for that term) ie people whose negativity seems to suck the very life out of you.  It got me thinking about just how ugly and unhelpful that emotion really is.  To me, it’s the epitome of Victim behaviour (see my post of Victim versus Owner).

Self-Pitying Behaviour and Body Language

We all know someone who is self-pitying and at some point in our lives we’ve done it, but when you look closely at the behaviour it invokes, its easy identify the body language and attitude to that of a stroppy teenager.  The mouth seems to turn down, the shoulders slump or shrug and words like, “What’s the point? Nothing changes” “Bad stuff always happens to me” “My life is rubbish”  “Well that’s just typical for me – nothing ever goes right” Typical VICTIM language.

Learned Behaviour

Self pity is a ‘learned behaviour’ ie we see others doing it while we are growing up and copy it or we try it and it gives us the results we need at that time.  Once we learn that we get the desired result or reaction from behaving in a certain manner, we use it over and over again in similar situations when we want to feel the same way or want a similar result and more often than not, we may not even be conscious of it..

However, as we grow up, that behaviour can often become less and less appropriate, yet as it’s become an unconscious reaction, we are seemingly not even aware that we’re doing it, how we look when we do it or how frustrating it is to those around us. 

In my experience,  self pitying behaviour is usually used by children and adults for two main reasons:

1. To get attention - behaving in a self pitying way generally produces a flurry of drama and attention accompanied by cries of “Oh how awful!”  “Poor you!”  “What are you going to do?” Some people learn from an early age that gaining negative attention is better than gaining no attention and carry that through to their adult lives.
2. To play the victim – when we play the victim, we seemingly don’t have to take responsibility for what’s going on in our lives and we can openly moan about how hard done to we are.  It’s easy to blame our undesirable situation on someone or something else and therefore, feel that we don’t need to do anything about it because it’s not our fault.

How to deal with Self-Pity

Next time you come across someone harbouring this emotion, instead of going along with it and sympathising or empathising with the person, why not ask them some questions:

1. What’s making you think that?
2. Is that really true?
3. Who would you be without that thought?
4. What can you do to change things?

Asking those types of questions usually brings the person out of victim mode and helps them move to owner – owning their situation rather than becoming a victim of it.  I’ll warn you though; they will be surprised if you’ve never taken that tac with them before, because they’ll probably be expecting you to join in with their misery and sympathise with them, espcially if that's what you usually do.

If those questions don’t help and the person is intent on continuing with their misery and bringing you down in to it too, my advice is to either try to change the subject or make your excuses and leave.  That may sound harsh, however, if a person doesn’t want to be helped and just wants the attention, I guarantee that you’ll come away from the conversation feeling worse than they ever did!

If you use that behaviour

Do you recognise yourself as using that behaviour?  If so, instead of sinking down into those negative thoughts and feelings, take ownership by asking yourself the 4 questions above.  As self-pity is a learned behaviour, it can be unlearned by taking back control and owning your life rather than being a victim of it.  Remember, we can all choose what we think … it just takes a little effort.

If you feel that you may be using self-pity as a way of gaining attention from people, try doing things differently.  Do something nice and unexpected and thoroughly selfless for someone instead, see how that feels.  You may find that it brings much more positive attention which will not only make the other person feel great, it will also help bolster your self esteem.

If you would like more information about anything I've written in any of my blogs or would like to speak to me in confidence about how I may be able to help you, please do not hesitate to contact me at info@whatnextconsultancy.co.uk.

Jo

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How to Achieve your Goals

Well, it’s the beginning of March already and I was just wondering where are you up to with your New Year’s Resolutions (if you made any)? Have you stuck with them or have they fallen by the wayside?

For many of you, especially if your goal was to get fit and lose weight, I’m guessing that you gave up some time towards the end of January. If you didn’t and are still going, well done! You’ve achieved what probably 95% of the population haven’t.

So what makes the difference between achieving and not achieving a goal? Well I’ve discussed in other posts why goals fail generally (see ), however, what I have noticed is that people who achieve their goals somehow place that goal in a different part of their brain. Now I know that sounds a bit odd, but bear with me.

I had a client that no matter what she did, she couldn’t lose weight; I told her that it was because it wasn’t important enough to her; it wasn’t a ‘true desire’. Our true desire’s we achieve, because we reallywant them and they are of the utmost importance to us. . Here’s the analogy I used with her ….

“If you were going on holiday and had to be at the airport and on a plane at a certain time, would you be on that plane?”

“Well of course I would!”

“How do you know?”

“Because I just would! There’s no way I’d miss that plane.”

“If I said that I would give you £1m if you lose 10lbs, would you be able to do it?”

“Damn right I would!”

So what’s different between knowing that you would lose weight if you were to get £1m and achieving a ‘regular’ current goal? They are true desires – something that you reallywant and will make happen regardless of anything else – you simply won’t let anything stand in your way.

If you aren’t achieving your goals, my guess is that it’s because they are ‘nice to have’ rather than a true desire. So how can you turn a nice to have into something more important? Either, change your goal to something you REALLY want or put the current goal it in the place in your brain where you put important things. Now, that may seem a little odd or even simplistic, but it does work.

If there’s some goal that you want to achieve, but haven’t quite been able to manage it, try this little exercise. Read it through it a couple of times before you try it:

1. Imagine being given £1m for losing 10lbs or imagine arriving at the airport in time to get on the plane for your dream holiday or simply imagine something you know to be absolutely true eg the sun coming up in the morning.
2. Where do you see the picture in your mind? What colour is that picture? Is it a movie or is it a still picture? Is it colour or is it black and white? Is there sound or not? Is the picture large or small?
3. Now think of something that you’ve been trying to achieve but haven’t quite been able to achieve it.
4. Where do you see the picture in your mind? What colour is that picture? Is it a movie or is it a still picture? Is it colour or is it black and white? Is there sound or not? Is the picture large or small?  I’m guessing that the picture of what you want to achieve is in a different place to the picture you saw in the first part of the exercise (No1)?
5. Now, mentally move the picture of the goal that you want to achieve (3) to the exact same place as where you see the picture of what you know you can achieve (1).
6. Make that picture bigger. If it’s black and white, make it colour. If it’s a still, make it into a film. If it’s silent give it sound and make it as big, bright and vibrant as possible.
7. Run and re-run that mini film over and over again and really feel that you have achieved that goal.
8. Whenever you get a free moment, run that movie (if should actually be quite fun!). The more you run that movie, the more you brain will get used to the idea and move you in the right direction to achieving it.

If you’ve never tried this kind of exercise before, you may find it a bit odd, but trust me it works. Give it a go. It doesn’t cost anything and you'll be surprised at how much it will help!

Jo

Stop Worrying

Worry is such a crippling emotion.  It virtually strips us of our ability to deal with situations effectively by creating imaginary scenarios which no matter how hard you try, you’d struggle to find a way out of.  Why? Because they haven’t happened!

Worry is created when we take an actual situation, issue or problem and then imagine all the possible things that could go wrong.  Usually when we begin worrying, nothing wrong has actually happened, we just create negative scenarios in our minds, usually as vivid, large, bright, noisy videos in our heads that we run over and over again with more and more imagined horrific endings, all of which haven’t actually happened and indeed probably will never happen!  The more negative thoughts we have, the more negative thoughts come to us.

When I talk this through with clients, they usually say something like, “Well if I don’t plan for the worst case then it could take me by surprise and I’d be left high and dry and devastated.  My reply, “There’s a huge difference between worrying about imagined scary scenarios and actually making plans.”

Can you hear the difference in the language?  Worry is ‘Victim’ behaviour, whereas planning is ‘Owner’ behaviour.  When we worry, we lose the ability to plan and see things clearly.  I absolutely advocate having an action plan, it’s a wonderful way to combat those worrying thoughts.  But that plan should be based on what you know about your situation NOW and what you can do about it NOW and not based on all the dreadful things that you think may happen in the future.

After all, think back to some of the most trying times you’ve been through in your life(we’ve all had them), has there ever been a time when you haven’t come through the other side?  Was there ever a time when you really couldn’t cope?  It may have been difficult at the time and extremely uncomfortable, but whatever obstacles you’ve been up against in your life, you came through them.  How do I know that with such certainty?  Well you wouldn’t be sitting here reading this!

It doesn’t matter what happens to you, it doesn’t matter how stressed, depressed, anxious or scared you are, you will always find a way to deal with a problem and because I think this point is so important, I’m going to say it again:

YOU WILL ALWAYS FIND A WAY THROUGH!

You always have and you always will and no amount of worrying about it will make one bit of difference to the outcome.

So the next time you find yourself worrying about something that may happen in the future, either park it or plan for it in a calm, focussed way and tell yourself that whatever happens you will deal with it!

As always, if you have anything that you’d like to discuss in confidence, please do not hesitate to contact me at info@whatnextconsultancy.co.uk

Have a wonderful weekend.

Jo