3 Ways to Improve your Life

 

Through conducting countless coaching sessions, personal development and life experiences, I’ve learned that there are some things that you can do immediately to significantly improve the quality of your life.  Of course there are many others, but I think that these are perhaps three of the quickest and simplest:

   

1.   Choose how you want to perceive a situation

In any given moment, we can CHOOSE how we view a situation and whether we see it as positive or a negative.  A situation is not good or bad, positive or negative, every situation is neutral; it’s the meaning that we give to it that makes it positive or negative and how we view a situation can be attributed to whether we live our lives as Victims or Owners. 

 

Owners don’t have any less difficulty in their lives; they just choose to manage difficult situations differently.  They look for the opportunity; they look at what it could mean and how they can use it positively and most importantly, what they can do differently should that situation rise again in the future.  Because of their outlook, they are generally in a much more resourceful state to handle the situation positively.

 

A Victim could see exactly the same situation in a negative light, which will leave them feeling powerless, unable to deal with it and potentially feeling helpless and out of control.  Thereby leaving them in a resourceful state and feeling unable to cope.

 

2.   Ask better questions

 

The questions that we ask ourselves about a situation have a major impact on whether we are in a resourceful state able to deal with the issue effectively (Owner) or whether we feel disempowered and unable to see a way through (Victim).

  

Owner questions:

   

‘What can I do about this?’

‘How can I learn from this?’

‘What message can this be telling me?’

‘How can I use this?’

 

Victim questions:

 

“Why does this always happen to me?”

“Why can’t I do anything right?”

“Why do things never turn out right for me?”

“Why doesn’t this stuff happen to other people?”

“What’s wrong with me?”

 

Whatever question you ask yourself, you WILL get an answer – therefore, ask better questions and you’ll get better answers!

3.   Have fewer rules

 

The more rules we have for ourselves and others, the more chance there is for them to be broken and therefore causing us disappointment and pain.  Our lives tend to be driven by the rules that we’ve set for ourselves and for how we think others should think, feel and behave. 

 

Our rules are built up over the years from a mixture of how we see the world based on our perceptions, learned behaviours and modelling (picking up rules from others eg parents, grandparents, teachers) those around us.  Having fewer rules or at least lightening up on your rules, will ultimately give you less pain – after all, they are something that’s been created by you, so you can change them.

   

I’ll break each of these down into more detail in individual posts at some point, however, if you just make these three changes to your life (which are relatively simple and require little effort) and practise them consistently  you will start to see a marked difference in your resourcefulness and your ability to cope better in trying situations.

   

If it seems too much to do all three at once, just take the ‘questions’ and try asking yourself better questions for the next 3 days.  You’ll be amazed at the quality of the answers you will receive … as I said earlier:

 
 

‘Ask a better question and you’ll get a better answer’.

  

Whatever you do, have fun with it and remember, practise makes perfect!

Jo