‘I always have a choice’

After much practice, this is a phrase I like to say to myself a lot – as creatures of habit we often forget we have choice in our thinking, our actions and decisions. The unconscious pull of our usual patterns of thinking or behaving cause us to do what we always do and hence we end up with the same old results.

To get different results – do things differently – flexibility is key.

Success with New Years Resolutions

Most people will be starting the New Year with some resolutions in mind. Having goals is fundamentally important to wellbeing. Goals are attractors, like magnets they pull us forwards into our future, making it compelling and stop us from getting stuck. They give our lives a sense of direction and movement. Achieving them has a positive impact on our self esteem.

Here are some simple tips to help you on your way:

State your goal in positive terms. What you want to achieve as opposed to what you want to stop doing, for example ‘I want to eat less chocolate’ can be better rephrased as ‘I want to eat more fruit’. This is because in order to process the negative your mind first has to make a picture of what is to be negated – so it sees a nice big bar of chocolate and then tells itself not to eat it, which actually reinforces the very thing you want to keep away from! Having a goal of eating more fruit gives your brain a very clear and direct message of what you want to happen.

Commit your goals to writing. Anything which has significance in life is stated in writing. Birth, marriage, death, laws, religious scriptures all have written form. Remember to include the date you set your goal, it will be meaningful when you look back after achieving it. A journal, diary, laptop or postcards are all great for doing this. If you’re a more visually oriented person you might like to create a collage of different pictures or photos which represent your goal.

Specify for Success. Anything can be accomplished if it’s broken down into small enough steps. We human beings have sent men to the moon! Goals are essentially journeys, they take us from where we are to where we want to be and like any journey they are made up of individual steps. Identifying the daily, weekly and monthly steps which need to be taken, will help you to keep on track.

These can be of an external nature such as doing regular exercise, sticking to a healthy eating plan, learning a new skill or getting the support of a friend. Equally important are the internal personal qualities you can draw on like determination, being organised, relaxed, creative or patient. Beliefs also exert a huge amount of influence on goals, an empowering belief to hold could be: ‘I deserve to have my goal and am capable of achieving it.’

Have milestones and celebrate them. Milestones are critical for keeping up the necessary motivation to reach a goal. Celebrating them serves to acknowledge all the effort you’ve put in and how far you’ve come, as well as adding in some all important feel good factor.

Keep your eye on the goal when doing the boring stuff. Having the bigger picture in mind while doing the smaller everyday kinds of tasks towards your goal will help you to stay focused and motivated.

Don’t be scared of the blips. Thankfully we’re not robots, but wonderful human beings, so there will be days when you are amazingly enthusiastic and feel nothing in the world could stop you and others when you feel weary and tired towards your goal. When you have a blip be gentle and loving to yourself and remember if you’ve taken three steps forward and moved back two, you’ve still gained one step and are still closer to your goal than before. That’s something to be proud of.

Treasure Maps

Creating a treasure map is one of my favourite things to do around this time of year. It’s an enjoyable, fun way of coming up with a wish list for the year ahead. The beauty of it is, because it employs right brain, unconscious processes through imagery, the usual kinds of limited thinking associated with setting goals is easily by-passed.

At the beginning of December I’ll start collecting old magazines, brochures and leaflets that come through the door. So that by the time the holidays start there is a good pile. I tend to do it in two stages. The first afternoon I just go through and cut out any images which appeal to me, it’s not necessary to know why I’m drawn to them, just that I am. It helps to set the scene too, by creating a relaxing environment, through lighting some candles, making sure the room is really cosy and having some nice snacks to nibble on. The next day I’ll take the pile of cut out images and sift them, some may be discarded and with those that remain I’ll start to arrange them onto a piece of coloured card. Once all the positions feel right I’ll stick them down with glue. I might look at it for a day or two and then it will go in the wardrobe out of sight before the new year begins, until I happen to be doing some spring cleaning or sorting, when it might be looked over again.

The unconscious mind processes information in the form of images, symbols, metaphors and analogies. Sometimes it’s only when the year comes to a close that I have been able to work out what a particular image represented to me, as a goal - hence the name treasure, since treasure is always hidden, however the map does always lead to it. For the several years I’ve been creating a treasure map for yearly goals, somehow I’ve always achieved everything on it – this year in particular I feel I’ve just whizzed through in terms of my being, doing and having goals. So I’m looking forward to what the next year will bring.

The Power of Visualization

I’ve been in my current home for over a year now. Here’s a little story about how I found it.

I needed to move quite quickly. From experience I know that the power of visualization is all in the detail. So I sat down and created a floor plan of the property, where exactly I wanted each room, right down to the positioning of the doors and windows. I designed the kitchen with beech effect units and cut out all the types of appliances I wanted from a catalogue and stuck them into their respective places. I really liked the Zanussi oven in the old place so I cut out the latest model of it and glued it on too.

I drew a white bathroom suite and a nice semi-circle basin, with the particular type of mixer tap I had seen somewhere and liked - not forgetting a lovely towel rail I had seen in someone’s house. There were to be fitted wardrobes with panelled doors and wooden flooring. Everything had to be newly installed too as I just wanted to move in and hang my clothes up.

There were lots of other things I wanted along with my new home – safe parking outside, shrubs and greenery, friendly, helpful neighbours and a park nearby where I could take my evening walk. The location had to be close to town, but very quiet and peaceful, somewhere I could hear the birds sing.

Having designed my perfect home, every evening while washing the dishes I would visualize the property and walk through it in my mind. I’d spend on average 4 hours a day house hunting. The more I did my visualization though the worse the condition of the properties, to the point I’d joke with the agents that they were showing me ‘haunted houses’. The situation was getting stressful, I was spending lots of time, money and energy on trying to find this property, I knew exactly what I wanted and then one evening – while washing dishes of course (I find it very therapeutic!) I stamped my foot on the floor and said to myself ‘I DESERVE TO HAVE IT’. In the space of 48 hours I had found the property, viewed it twice and finalized the agreement.

So whatever you want to achieve – make it as specific as possible. Visualize it in every detail so that it feels familiar. If you hit obstacles along the way – check out what you believe about your goal – do you believe you deserve it? Do you believe it’s possible?

Needless to say everything I visualized about my home was there with amazing accuracy. I’ve kept my original floor plan and drawing, here are a few shots: