Have you tried affirmations? Do you think they’re all just New Age nonsense? Have you been doing them for years and feel that you’re getting nowhere? Are you afraid you’ll just end up muttering away to yourself in the small hours of the morning?
Let me ask you this? Do you have a little self-critic living inside your head? A little voice that, as soon as you have a great new idea, it goes “Who do you think you are, with your great big ideas?” or maybe “It’ll never work, just like that time you …” or even “There’s no point, you’re just no good at that” ? What do you suppose that is? Yep. It’s a little voice doing affirmations. BUT it’s doing negative affirmations!
We all have them, a little inner voice that criticises us when we try anything new, or want a promotion, or want to write a book, or stand up and make ourselves heard. So - if you don’t believe affirmations work - have you noticed how well the negative affirmations DO work? Do you ignore the voice? (Rarely) Laugh at it? (I wish I could) Do you not have an inner voice? (What???) If you don’t, then please write a book about it, because you are one in a million!
For me, affirmations (the positive ones we read about and try out sometimes) are just an attempt to level the playing field. If I’ve been programming myself with negative affirmations for years, it’s only right to start bombarding myself with positive ones to even up the balance. I have years of negativity to combat and conquer. This is not a moan, or an accusation or an “Ain’t it awful” . This is just a fact. I have been accumulating a huge recording of negative messages for years. I have also gathered positive ones, but the negative ones (for most of us) win out.
Now the worm has turned. The little guy (me) is fighting back. The meek are inheriting the earth. And positive affirmations are a fantastic tool in the arsenal of any self-improvement fan. I don’t always find it easy to formulate a “good” affirmation. The best format (according to various experts in the field) is that:
They must be framed in the positive e.g. don’t say you don’t want to be overweight, say that you want to be trim and a healthy weight for you. This is because your mind doesn’t recognise negatives. For example, if I say “Don’t think of a bright blue car” you’ve already gone and done just what I told you not to. Because - in order to know what it is NOT to do - your mind has to reference what a bright blue car is before it can tell itself not to think about it! You’ll think it’s crazy, but you have no idea how convoluted our minds are (and yet, completely logical when you think about it).
Affirmations need to be in the present tense e.g. “I enjoy eating healthily and maintaining my ideal weight”. Your mind can only deal with right now, this minute. Everything in the past has been filed, and what is yet to come is not able to be processed until it comes. If we affirm “I am going to eat healthily” it’s never going to be NOW, so we’ll always be “going” to do it, but never DO it.
The more clear we can make the mental picture, the better the affirmation. e.g. “I am enjoying maintaining my healthy weight of xx lbs”. It gives us a positive, measurable statement to ourselves, backed up by an image of our slender selves, or of our ideal weight appearing on the window of our bathroom scales. Whatever works for you.
I only use the weight issue as an example, it’s quite a common source of affirmations. You can use the same format for any personal development affirmations you want to devise for yourself.
I love hearing from readers when they try any of the self-improvement suggestions from this blog. Comment here or contact me at daria@lifepotential.ie .
I’m reliably informed that the term “Self Development” ranks highly in Google search word terms. Good. I think that’s great. Not from a life coaches blogging perspective, but from the point of view of an impressive number of people searching for help with their self development. I do it myself, and I’m proud to say so.
In Ireland we have a rather suspicious approach to needing help. Giving help - we’re great at that. But getting help - that’s not so easy to ask for. I think it’s something to do with the notion that, if we need to get help, first of all something must be wrong and secondly it means we have failed to cope with it ourselves. Maybe it’s an insular thing? Maybe to do with island people having to cope on their own? I don’t know.
I have been helping myself and others to improve our lives for as many years as I can remember. It manifested itself in my twenties when I trained to be a yoga teacher, and continued through training over the years in massage, aromatherapy, Reiki, coaching and NLP to where I am today.
Did self-development start when I was in my twenties? No, but perhaps that was when I noticed that I could be active, rather than passive, about my development. For most of my twenties I suffered appalling panic-attacks. I would have the tight-chested pain, dizziness, sweating, clammy skin, racing heart and be convinced that at any moment I would die. For eight or nine years I suffered this to varying degrees, always thinking that it was just me and that there was no one who could help me. I developed many coping strategies, which I suppose was “enforced” self-development (sounds a bit paradoxical).
When other things in my life at the time caused me to seek help, I was amazed at how the simple act of getting help was more powerful than I could have imagined.
Self development is called such simply because no one else can “do” our self development. But there are many people who can help us to do it for ourselves.
Since that time, I have regularly sought help in areas where I felt I needed outside expertise to make progress in my life and development. Sometimes it was a psychotherapist, other times a hypnotherapist or Reiki practitioner. But always I found that getting outside help gave me some new options, which I could not see for myself.
So, I feel that, whether or not “Self Development” is seen as the new “must have” or not, it doesn’t matter. We are all constantly developing ourselves, our attitudes, our beliefs, our behaviours, our personalities and our potential. We do it whether we plan it or not, whether we are aware of it or not and whether we like it or not. So why not make it a bit easier for ourselves. When we need help, why not seek it out and make the most of it, so that we can make the most of our lives?
I’ve been proud to claim that I am a qualified Master Practitioner of NLP, and to say that I use NLP skills in my life-coaching in order to help clients make positive changes in their lives easily and effectively. Responses to this vary. People in the personal development field nod knowingly, or raise their eyebrows questioningly. Those outside the coaching or therapy professions often wonder what it is but don’t want to appear lacking by admitting they don’t know.
And then there’s the ordinary guy in the street, John Doe, Joe Public or - here in Ireland - Sean Citizen. I love you and hate you - all Johns, Joes and Seans. I love you because you come right out and ask “What the hell is that when it’s at home?”. I hate you for that very same reason. How on earth do I explain NLP?
First of all it stands for Neuro-Linguistic Programming. When I heard that first I thought “Ya wha’ Gay?” and I have to say it still causes me to stop and rack my brains. Richard Bandler, one of the co-creators (with John Grinder) of NLP, defines it in a recent book as:
“NLP is an attitude, methodology and technology that teaches people how to improve the quality of their lives. It is an educational tool that teaches people how to communicate more effectively with themselves and others. It is designed to help people have personal freedom in the way they think, feel and behave.”
For me the most informative part of that explanation of NLP is “teaches people how to communicate more effectively with themselves” because that’s how change comes about in our own lives. Someone else telling you to give up smoking, get over your fears, pull yourself together and make the changes - is NEVER going to work. But if we can get inside our own thinking and find out how to communicate with ourselves how much we WANT to give up smoking, or how there has been a perfectly good reason for having fear in the past but now we want a new way of believing and thinking - imagine how much we could improve our lives every day!
That’s what I love about NLP. It’s about story telling. It’s about the stories we tell others about ourselves, and more importantly, it’s about the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.
I think it’s telling that Bandler and Grinder called it Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) because their own background was in technology and linguistics. But as a term, it doesn’t explain itself to the ordinary punter very well.
As I said earlier, for me NLP is about stories. We hear, create and learn stories and patterns of behaviour from the moment we’re born. We hear that we are “the cutest baby”, “just like your Daddy” etc. all harmless enough. When we’re older we learn “if you don’t eat up all your dinner you won’t grow up big and strong” which in our own mind can translate into food being a contentious issue. We learn “don’t talk to strangers” which can translate into a lack of trust in people and a difficulty in making new friendships.
I’m not trying to sound like everything we hear is bad, but we hear a “story” then we tell ourselves a “story” and pretty soon we have formed a pattern around it, and forget the original story. Our personality development is filled with patterns we adopt based on the stories we’re believing.
I used to have a fear of dogs. Now that may have stemmed from an incident with a dog when I was tiny, or it might have been an imagined drama that I created in my own mind. I don’t remember. But for the rest of my life I was left with a fear of dogs, that - at its worst - meant that I wouldn’t go outside the door on my own and couldn’t even enjoy a walk.
I went to a therapist to help that. Turns out it’s not stemming from a fear of dogs, but a fear of being alone. But that’s another story!
The great thing is we can decide or choose - at any time - to believe a different story! This is the genuine magic of Neuro Linguistic Programming. When an NLP practitioner listens to us telling our stories, they can see what language we use to tell ourselves stories. They can then speak our language back to us and help us to choose a more useful story for our lives.
In one line - what’s the best thing about NLP? NLP is about finding and choosing the most useful beliefs, stories and patterns to live the life we want for ourselves. Apologies to Richard Bandler, John Grinder and my tutors Owen Fitzpatrick and Brian Colbert if I’ve just negated all your years of training me!
“Experience is not what happens to you; it’s what you do with what happens to you” Aldous Huxley
My suggestion this month (and don’t worry about the calendar, I know the month is at its end) is to pause. People are quite rightly concerned about their futures now that it appears uncertain, but just pause - take a breath. You still have control over how you react to every new thing, or piece of news, or dramatic event, that comes your way. Sometimes it may be the only control you have, but it’s the most important.
Remember when you were a kid and you were taught to chant, if anyone called you names, “Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me”. There was a very good reason for that. The names you are called, or the things that happen to you, are not as important as your reaction to them.
So this month, remember to - pause - breathe - take control - and now you get to choose how to respond.
There is a lot of fear going round at present about possible unemployment and job cutbacks. It’s alarming because it has brought to the fore an issue that has often been associated with men who lose their jobs late in their careers and realise that they don’t know who they are, apart from their job. This is a very important fact to keep at the front of your mind - you are not your job, you have a job, or do a job. But you are not the job.
We all do it all the time though. We ask “Who is that guy?” and the answer will inevitably be “He’s a plumber/programmer/lawyer/insert-your-job-here”. But that’s not who he is. It’s what he does. Before you had a job - did you exist? Yes. Before you had your current job, did you have another job? Probably. Do you imagine that when you retire you will cease to exist? No. Most likely you are imagining, for your retirement, all the things you’ve wanted to do for years, the places you’ve wanted to go and didn’t have the time off. And now you do.
Think about it. Before you had a job, were you real? Did you have love and happiness, hopes and dreams, fears and upsets? Yes. Did you have people who loved you and cared about you? Yes. Did you have friends who you knew were there for the good times and the bad and that, during the bad times you would need them even more, and they would be there? Yes.
If you are unlucky to have lost your job, or be on reduced hours or income - keep reminding yourself that you are still the same person. You are a person who is loved and cared about. You are a person of worth. You have friends and family that love you, not based on your job, but simply because you are lovable and loved by them. And at difficult times, they will want you to know that even more. Because our common humanity is something that is not dependent on what job you hold, or how much you bring home.
We are all in this together (not in the smarmy, hypocritical way the politicians keep telling us) and there will be times when we need help and times when we will want to help others.
Talk to each other. Even more than usual, when times are hard, communication is essential. Resist the temptation to avoid people because you feel raw and abused by your circumstances. Trust in the understanding of the people you have gathered round you over the years. Friends are not just for the good times. They are for all time.
Change really gets a bad press. Change is set up as being difficult, painful, unpleasant, something none of us wants to do unless we have to. Well anything that’s portrayed that way is going to have a tough job getting any takers!
What if you could see change as a gateway to something better? What if you could see it as the passage to a better, more fulfilling life? Maybe you could see it as your contribution to the miracle that is your dream life?
Sounds too good to be true? Let’s look at some real life situations. Say you’re in a job that you’re a bit fed up with. You’d like a better one, but you don’t take any action to get one. You stay where you are, taking advantage of the drinks on a Friday evening to complain about your job, your boss, your lack of prospects etc. There is no chance of things getting better unless something changes. Realistically, the only thing YOU have control over is yourself.
What can you do? Well, what does lie within your control? You can decide whether to stay or go. You can choose to look for a change of tasks within the job. You could ask for more responsibility, to do more varied and interesting tasks. You might decide that the job pays the bills and you can use it to fund your more interesting hobbies. You could look at what attracted you to that job in the first place and examine what has changed since then (maybe the job has, maybe you have). I’m sure you can think of other possible options in this scenario.
What if you leave things exactly as they are? Do nothing? Wait for “fate” to step in and take the decision away from you? Absolve yourself of all responsibility for your own happiness & fulfillment?
As one of my favourite quotes goes “If you keep on doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep on getting what you’ve always got” (W.L. Bateman). So if you keep on doing the nothing that you’ve always done, you’ll keep on getting the unsatisfactory job that you’ve always got.
What’s the way out of this puzzle? Accept change. Embrace it. Go out and find it before it finds you. Give yourself to it wholeheartedly. And eventually maybe you’ll even learn to enjoy it?
Hale Dwoskin who teaches The Sedona Method, details the three important questions we have to ask ourselves in relation to feeling bad about anything:
Could I change how I feel about this thing?
Would I change how I feel about it?
When?
The events presented to us in any situation may not be under our control, but our feeling about the events is OURS. Now what are we going to do with it?
Have you heard about Earth Hour? Are you going to participate? Watch this and find out what’s happening in your neighbourhood for Earth Hour. It’s a chance to show our solidarity and commitment to making the planet a better place to live.
If you live here in Ireland check out www.change.ie . Or to find out details of worldwide action, take a look at www.earthhour.org . See what we can do to help our family, our community and our planet.
How many times a day do you hear or read those words? People even say it to each other when they meet. It’s becoming a catchphrase. Now, if you’re reading this, you’re probably a positive thinking person. Maybe you do affirmations, positive visualizations, sending good wishes and thoughts out into the world or universe when you meditate or pray. That’s great. But what are you doing the rest of the time?
You all know the belief that we get what we focus on, right? Well if you are positive thinking at specific times each day, but then meeting your friends or neighbours and doing the “Ain’t if awful” conversation, which are you doing more of? Will your one hour’s meditation swing it against the three hours you moaned with your friends about the economy, the banks, the unemployment etc.? I’m not saying stick your head in the sand and ignore it. It’s real. It’s happening.
But looking only at the bad means that we focus on the bad. And if you believe that you get more of what you focus on … what do you think you’ll get? A pay rise? An offer of a great new job? A big lotto win? I don’t think so.
So, even when things globally look bad, or perhaps even moreso when they look bad, we need to focus on positive things. They are always there. Maybe we have to look harder. For starters, lots of things have actually come down in price. Lots of foodstuffs are cheaper than before the recession. Buying locally can help support your own community. Petrol (depending on where in the world you live) is cheaper than it was (though it’s creeping up again I notice). For some people their mortgages are coming down.
So can we look at the real things please? Have you lost your job? No? Then look out for ways you can support jobs in your neighbourhood. That can be anything from paying a neighbour’s kid to mow your lawn or wash your car to employing local workers to build your house extension. If you still have enough money coming in, try to spend it in your community and support your local economy.
And my favourite - barter! I’m a big fan of exchange. You can exchange goods e.g. why not have a “garage swap” instead of a “garage sale”? If you have a service that you provide, why not exchange it for services others provide? I don’t think there’s any law against it (if you know otherwise, please let me know because I’ll be in big trouble!). It’s a fair exchange of services. No money involved. Just people helping each other out.
And finally, or perhaps it should be first, gratitude. I know you’ll say it’s all Pollyanna-ish, and new-age, but there are always things you can be grateful for. Start with the obvious - if you have good health, be grateful for that. If you’re well enough to have a job in the first place you’re better off than people who were already unemployed and now have little or no hope of work. If you can no longer afford to eat out, be grateful that you have friends that you can arrange dinner parties with. Take turns to have dinner in different houses maybe once a month or so. You may find that your friendships broadens through meeting new people at house parties.
I could devote an entire newsletter to “Things to be grateful for”, but you know the best ones in your own life. If you’d like to share your favourite ones with me, I’ll be delighted.
What resolutions did you make for this year? How many of them are still on the go? How many have been shelved by about, oh I’m guessing, the end of January? Don’t hang your heads! It’s the most normal thing in the world. I’m going to share something with you. Some of my regular readers will know this already. It’s no secret. I don’t make New Year Resolutions. That’s right. Never. As far as I’m concerned every day of the year is the start of a new 12 month period. I don’t particularly hold January 1st in any special esteem. What I do love about Jan. 1st is watching the New Year’s Day concert from Vienna, Austria. I watch it on television every year. Have done since I was a kid. I love it. For me, New Years Day is about getting up on time to make a pot of tea and settle down to watch and listen to the concert. It transports me to that beautiful city, and begins my year with music, beauty and joy. And it costs me nothing but the licence fee.
But what of resolutions? I said that I don’t make New Year Resolutions, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t set goals for myself at any time of year. I’m trying Jack Canfield’s quarterly goal setting, this year. With it, I choose one important goal that will improve my life. I commit to forming the new habit over three months. By then it should be part of my normal way of doing things, I will have formed a new, positve habit. Then I choose a new one for the next quarter.
For this quarter I decided to improve my time-keeping. I have been a poor time keeper most of my life. Ask my sister. Ask anyone who has ever arranged to meet me at a precise time. I can even manage to be late when I give myself time to spare. Because if I have time to spare, I’ll try to cram in something else and still end up late for my appointment! So - for me - improving my time-keeping would be a major step forward
How have I been doing? Well, I’ve discovered that to be on time for things, I really need to think much farther ahead than I usually do. For instance, if I am due to meet you for lunch tomorrow, I have to start thinking about it today. Now, for those of you who are good time-keepers, this is no surprise. But for me, my logic was that - if it’s tomorrow that I’m meeting you, then tomorrow is when I’ll think about it. You’ve spotted where this is going. When tomorrow comes, I have too little time to decide where to meet, what to wear, whether to drive or take the train, how to also fit in my usual mom-tasks etc. So I used to end up rushing, last minute, no make-up, feeling flustered and hopeless and angry with myself for being late yet again.
Now I can’t say I’m excellent yet, but I’ve found out something important, which is relevant to New Year resolutions too. Forgiveness. This quarter is my time-keeping quarter. I’m making great improvements in my time management. But if I still end up late for an appointment, for some reason - I FORGIVE MYSELF. That’s the important part. I don’t beat myself up. I don’t negative-talk myself. I don’t say “Oh no. I’ve failed again. I knew I was no good at this. I can never be on time.”
What I DO say is - “I can see how it happened that I was late this time. I can use that knowledge so that next time I won’t be late. I’m doing the best I can and I’m proud of that.”
Tell me - what do you say to yourself when you slip up? If you’ve already dropped some of your resolutions, was it because after one slip you told yourself you had failed and there was no point in keeping it up? How much easier is it going to be to keep a resolution if you’re constantly encouraging and forgiving yourself?
Try it for yourself. Take one of your resolutions that has lapsed. Or one you’re struggling with. Start today. Make sure that it’s an achievable and desirable goal, put all your previous attempts behind you and begin afresh. Forgive yourself. Congratulate yourself for all the effort you’ve already put into it. Resolve to forgive yourself if you make any slip ups. Take it one day at a time. Let me know how you get on.
Let’s stop pretending. Of all the things going on in the economy, the world banks, the welfare systems of many countries, unemployment, lay-offs etc. let’s just stop pretending. People are going round speaking in whispers about “the R word”, as if we daren’t say the word RECESSION. Stop it people! This is like not saying the name of a disease in case you might catch it just by speaking about it. It’s not going to happen. You are not going to lose your job because you talk about the jobs situation where you are. You are not going to keep your job just because you never said the R word. It’s real, it’s here and it’s here for a while. So let’s stop pretending it isn’t, or that whispering about it will make it go away.
Another I’d really like is that - if you have notbeen affected by unemployment, or your pension going up the swanee, or the bank going boom with all your savings - I’d really like it if you would stop pretending that the recession is hurting you. Stop being embarrassed by having a good job, that pays you well, and gives you enough money to continue to enjoy the good things. You’ve worked for it. Enjoy it! Don’t buy into the drama of everyone having to suffer together. I don’t mean you should gloat about your good fortune. But you should be grateful for it and acknowledge it.
What you can do is to continue to spend as you would have before. Support your locality by shopping in your local stores, use local tradespeople when you need jobs done, go to your local theatre, cinema, clubs etc. Keep the economy moving as much as you can. Keep employment going by paying fair wages to staff. Keep morale high by not buying into the “ain’t it awful” brigade. Don’t join them. It will not help anyone.
Let’s look at what we can do, that might be useful. How about volunteerism? Why not look at volunteering in your neighbourhood. You’ll find some activity that will suit your time and your nature, while serving the needs of your community. It might be helping out with a local sports team, coaching, doing meals-on-wheels, being a driver for a day-care centre, collecting, fund-raising. There is a huge range of things going on right now, in your own neighbourhood, that you can help with. It’ll be good for your self-esteem, good for your self-development and great for your community. How satisfying is that going to be?
