WonderFull Living Newsletter 6th January 2015
Hi EveryOne happy new beginnings 🙂
Through my never-ending quest for meaning and purpose in life one thing has become very clear to me, no matter what, NEVER quit! Sure we may need to change direction at times, wow I’ve changed direction so many times in my life that I’ve lost count, but I don’t quit. It’s gotten me where I am today! And even though I manage chronic pain these days and ‘fall down’ many times, I always get up and I keep moving forward. You know, with depression and anxiety reaching all-time highs across the globe, we need to get clear on our own purpose. We each have a very important role to play and no matter how daunting or how small the role may be, play it to the best of your ability.
The beginning of a new year is always a wonderful time to let go of the old and set some new goals for ourselves. However, this time is fraud with unrealistic expectations, leading us to broken promises while self doubt subsequently increases. We have these great intentions to start of on the ‘right foot’ but before long, we slip up and end up back where we started. Why?… We wonder ‘what happened?’…….. If we don’t take time to write up some kind of action plan we won’t have strategies to help us stay on target or help us excel in our roles. Reality is such that life has ups and downs – if I don’t learn or plan how to ride the ups and prepare for the downs, I will sabotage myself. Beware the self fulfilling prophecy – if I believe ‘I can’t’ then I can’t! Excuses become very real to me as I point the finger of blame away from myself, while unconsciously repeating what is known as ‘The Failure Cycle’.
The Failure Cycle has nothing to do with ‘failure’ as such, but it’s to do with not finishing what we started – quitting half way to our outcome – telling ourselves that we ‘can’t’ do it. Believing it’s impossible we convince ourselves that it’s all too hard and quitting becomes the easier alternative. Lets briefly look at the 4 steps of this cycle to help you understand and overcome this destructive pattern.
1. I have a new goal or aim which gets me excited. Excitement generates motivation.
2. Once the excitement wears off (and it will) I need to apply effort, at which point most of us veer of into ‘avoidance behaviour’. We start to avoid the behaviour we know we must do – the action we must take – to get to our destination. In other words, we procrastinate. We find ‘more important’ things to do and our goal starts to slip away.
3. When we procrastinate we find excuses and to a ‘procrastinator’ our excuses become very ‘real reasons’.
4. We blame! We look for an outside source to pin our lack of action on, unwilling to take responsibility. We don’t learn and we don’t change our attitude, keeping ourselves stuck in the cycle of self sabotage, yet believing ‘it’s not my fault’
To break this cycle, I must simply keep going – change direction if I have to but keep going, don’t allow quitting to become an option! The only thing to quit is to ‘give up’ my ‘reasons’ to not do something or to not take action towards my aim! Life is filled with possibiities, but only if I see life in this way. If I see obstacles I will focus on those obstacles instead and I will feed any lingering doubts, insecurities and my self prophecy will once again be fulfilled. It will render me incapable of finishing anything and I will repeat this cycle again and again. NOW is the time to change because NOW is when I have the most energy – not yesterday, not tomorrow. Integrating lessons from our past by implementing change today gives us strength, courage, power and motivation to keep going. Focus only on the possibility at hand and see a successful outcome, keep your eye firmly on your goal while taking daily steps (no matter how small) towards it. Make the decision (the commitment) to do something practical towards it each, single breathing day. Then DO something practical towards it each single, breathing day. Energy flows where attention goes and life grows – so don’t focus on the negative, nourish the positive. With a little bit of determination and self discipline you WILL succeed, because determination is the key to success and success is your birthright!
Question: Do you procrastinate?
Consideration: Why might you find so many ‘reasons’ to stop you from claiming your rightful success?
Activity: For the month of January I would like you to focus on ONE thing only. Each time you catch yourself saying ‘I can’t’ tell yourself 3 times ‘YES I CAN’ ‘YES I CAN’ YES I CAN’ then DO it!… Each time you catch yourself saying ‘it’s too hard’ tell yourself 3 times ‘It’s easy’ ‘It’s easy’ ‘It’s easy’ then DO it!
May your year be filled with focus, attention and ultimately, success!
Love Annemarie