Change Your Life Make A Plan

When it comes to changing your life, there is an ingredient that many miss. That ingredient means the difference between living a life in reaction to what happens to us and one that we have some deciding in the direction. Changing your life is hard, but it is harder still when it is because we make certain choices, but it is the only way to get where you want to go.

The vast majority of people live their eighty or so years with no sense of proactivity in their lives. They react to one thing after another. People and events push them this way, pull them that way. Circumstances in their lives control who and what they are.

We really have no choice to change or not. Our lives change whether we like it or not. The question then is, do you want it to change in ways that you have absolutely no control over, or do you want to have some say in how it goes?

Knowing what you want and planning that life will not guarantee that things will work out the way you want, but it certainly stands more of a chance than letting others and circumstances do all the deciding.

I know so many people who want to change their lives, but there is no plan, there is no thought as to what they want or expect. If you expect to change your life, you must have a plan. What is your plan? What is it you want and how do you plan to get there?

Sit down today and write out three things you would like in your life. Just three things is all I ask. Write those three things and decide that these three things are important. If they are not, change them until you have three things that are. Start working on one of them right away. Decide how this is going to come about and start moving in that direction.

Changing your life on purpose is hard, but it is better than having your life changed without your say.

Being In The Present Moment

This has been a rough morning. I was disappointed in my own performance this morning. I goofed off more than did useful work. Then I went to the store to get something and realized that I couldn’t get what I wanted. The store is a membership store and I did not have my card with me. I was getting angrier by the minute. Then I thought about being present in the moment. Being present in the moment is a great mood fixer.

Usually, when I am upset, and this is true for most people, I am either thinking about something that has happened, like how I blew my morning, or something that was going to happen, I would have to come back to the store. It very often has very little to do with the present moment. In most cases, the present moment is perfect. You have everything you need right at that one moment in time.

When you bring yourself to the present moment and you allow yourself to think of nothing else, then problems in the past and worries about the future all seem to disappear. You can’t think about the past in the present moment, it is gone. You can’t think about the future in the present moment, it isn’t there yet. If you allow yourself only the present moment, then all else slips away.

As I started trying to keep my thoughts in the present moment, I found my anger quickly dissipating. I was no longer fuming about screwing up this morning, it was gone and there was nothing I could do about it. I was not worried about having to return to the store, that was sometime in the future.

It works the same for being depressed, how can you be sad in one moment? The past is gone and the future is not here yet. It works for being lonely, no past, no future, only the perfect now.

Next time you are out of sorts for whatever reason, try spending just ten minutes keeping your thoughts in the present moment. If your thoughts wander, gently bring them back to the now. See if being in the present moment doesn’t help.

Three Steps To Self Discipline

Reading this blog, you may come to the mistaken belief that I have everything in my life under control, that I have changed my life to just what I want. (Maniacal laughter in the background slowly dies down.) I don’t! One of the things I struggle with the most is having the self discipline to do what I want and change what I want. Self discipline can be key.

Now you may be thinking that you have self discipline down and that you are in control, and that may be true, but I doubt it. Some are better than others, but very few of us have the kind of self discipline that I am talking about.

Are you the person you want to be everyday? Do you do the things you want to do everyday? The answer of course is no. No one does. There are somethings that can help though.

1. Be aware of your life.
What I mean by this is to be as aware of your life as it plays out through each and every day as much as you possibly can. Thich Nhat Hanh, the author and Buddhist monk, would call this mindfulness. It means to simply be mindful of all you do, every act. In this instance it means being aware of you emotions and actions. Are you who you want to be and doing what you want to do?

A trick you can use is to pretend that you are viewing your life as an outsider. Some call it being the observer. Let your mind detach a little bit and watch your life as if watching a TV show.

Another trick is to pretend you are your own parent. As if you were teaching a child, direct your self in your actions and thoughts, just as you would a child.

2. Be willing to change direction.
There are times when all I want to do is lay on the couch and watch a movie. Today is no exception. I could say I have an excuse, I disturbed a hornet’s nest and got stung several times, some on my face. It hurts! I thought I would just sit and watch a movie as the Benadryl took hold, but it was taking too much time. I decided I needed to exercise a little self discipline and stop the movie, get off the couch and write this. I was willing to change direction. Can you do this? Have you had this type of experience and failed to change?

3. Don’t beat yourself up over failures.
When I fail, I tend to want to degrade myself, it is how I was taught, and think that I am such a loser. I beat myself up for even small things.

This doesn’t help. The best way to handle failure is to see what you might learn from the situation and then decide to do better next time or to use what you have learned from the failure.

Next time you fail at something or don’t behave the way you normally would, simply see it for what it is, a setback, and ask yourself what you can learn. Once again, like teaching a child, you might even ask yourself questions to see what you have learned.

Self discipline is a huge issue for many people. If you are one of the lucky ones to not have to deal with this, then I congratulate you. If, on the other hand, you are like me, then try these three steps to help you.

Change My Life But Nothing Changes

I read a great article the other day and it really stuck with me. I’ll give you the link in a minute. The article was about how we say we want to change. We go through the motions, but then nothing really changes. We say, “I want to change my life,” but nothing changes.

How many times have you said that you see where some problem is, but then the problem keeps occurring? If you are anything like me, it happens way more than you really want to admit. Why is that?

The problem is that seeing the problem can be easy, knowing what the problem is can be easy, but doing something about it is very hard. We are so programmed to be and do who we have always been and what we have always done that is it a part of us. To change who we really are is hard. Our ego doesn’t like the idea of venturing into unknown territory.

What is it you would like to change? Do you really know what it is? If so, what causes that behavior? Once we get to the place where we understand what needs to change and what causes the behavior, then we can begin to work on making the real change. The net time that situation comes up, instead of acting the way we normally do, we need to change our actions.

Don’t let these recurring behaviors have control. Set your mind to take control from them and live life the way you want. I won’t be easy. As I said before, we are programmed, but unlike some sort of robot, we can change our own programming. It can be done and you can do it!

P.S. The article I read was on the blog Self Help Daily.

Change Happens!

Most of my posts are about how a person can effect the change they want in their life. It is about being who you want to be. Today, I would like to talk a little about the changes that come into our lives. Whether we like it or not, change happens!

The older you get, the more you begin to understand that change is inevitable. I used to say that there is no way to get away from change other than to die. I have since understood that even then we change.

Change happens! There is no getting around it. If we try to fight change we only become frustrated and angry. We cannot control it.

Some people will tell you that you can control your life. Some will say that it is by faith, some, the Law of Attraction. Whatever the medium, they will tell you that you can control your life and bend it to your will.

I disagree. You can control how you think about life, how you react to it, but you cannot control life itself. There are just too many variables! People will desert you, hurt you, leave you. The weather may not be what you want on your wedding day or your graduation. The economy is beyond your control. You may be rich today and poor tomorrow.

What you can control is your thinking, your reaction. Change happens! When it does, instead of simply reacting as you always do, stop and think a moment about what you want. How do you want your life to be in relation to this change, this situation?

You do have a choice, some control, over how you react.

Let’s say that someone close to you dies. You can choose to fold in on yourself, become a recluse and spend the rest of your life angry at the person for dying and leaving you or, hurt that life, or God, took them from you.

Your other choice is to understand that you are grieving. That life for you has not ended, but simply gone through a huge change. Certainly you will go through a time of mourning, but at some point you either decide to go on with your life, learn new skills and go on new adventures, or sit in the dark.

The changes that come don’t have to be quite so drastic, but to some people the loss of a job, or their home feels the same. Their only hope is to learn to control their thinking.

Change happens!

There is no getting away from it. How will you react the next time change comes into your life?

Don’t Give Up!

You can modify, modify frequently, but

Don’t Give Up!

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