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Tuesday, October 13th, 2009
 Portmarnock Beach
What a fantastic day it is here in Dublin today! The sun is shining. It’s a beautiful autumn day. Makes me feel great.
When the sun is shining, like it is now, it’s so much easier to feel cheerful and positive. Has anything changed? Has the recession gone away? Have the people in charge suddenly started taking responsibility for themselves and the importance of the jobs they hold? No. It’s just that the good weather puts me in better humour.
How often do you say that the weather makes you feel good, or bad (if it rains)? How many times do you say someone, or something, made you feel a certain way? In relation to the weather, I do it all the time. At this time of year, when the days get shorter, I feel more melancholy and have to remind myself to change my mood, since I can’t change the time of year or the weather.
We even extend our power give-away to people:- “He made me really angry”. “She made me do it”. We give other people the chance to affect our mood. What a waste! What a loss for us.
One of the greatest powers we have is our ability to change our mood or our state. We can decide to remain upbeat when we meet a group of friends who do the whole moan-a-minute routine. We can choose to be positive about our health rather than assume, at the first sniffle, that we’ve got swine flu’. We can even choose not to respond angrily to someone who does something we don’t like.
We might like to give them the benefit of the doubt and believe that they are acting like that because of some sadness or upset in their lives. We could see it as feedback rather than criticism. We could even use it as a tool to encourage ourselves not to be like that.
But it is always a choice. We often rush into a comment, or a response that afterwards we might realise was less-than-useful. A pause for a quick assessment of the situation can often help us to put that little bit of distance between ourselves and the situation, give ourselves a moment’s breathing space. Time to choose a better option. Or - as I read in one of the personal development books I have - “think a better-feeling thought“.
So get out there and practise thinking a better-feeling thought. Your choice. Your response. You choose the outcome.
Tags: Change, NLP, Personal Development, personal responsibility
Posted in Human Behaviour, NLP, Self Development | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, September 1st, 2009
 . Self Development & Personal Growth
A time of great change. But it could also be an opportunity for self development.
Schools are back. Children are preparing for the academic year ahead. Colleges are cranking up in preparation for the new college semester. Everything is in a state of change.
It’s a time of schedules, timetables, books, uniforms and new shoes. It is often a time of anxiety. It can be difficult to adjust to the changes in our families that come about when a young child starts school, or an older child starts college. It is not only a time of great change for them, but it has an impact on every member of the household.
However, despite the anxiety and upheaval that major change may bring, we can choose to see it as a chance to develop and educate ourselves in new areas too.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve always found myself quite divided about the arrival of term-time. On the one hand I’m delighted to have a bit of structure and routine returned to my life. On the other hand, I love the lie-ons during the summer. I love the openness and possibilities of the days. But by the time September comes, I’m ready to shelve all that for another year!
I start looking through the lists of courses available in my locality. What will I do this year? How will I further develop myself? It’s a time for me, a time for me to focus on my own personal development.
Of course, when I say personal development, I don’t mean that the course I choose has to be based on, or called, self development. No matter what the subject matter of the course it will give me a chance to develop in some area of my life. Over the years I have done classes in pottery, drama, yoga, creative writing, french, flower arranging, singing, art and probably others I’ve forgotten already!
They have stretched me in directions I would not have expected. They have challenged me to develop my potential in creative areas I wouldn’t have approached before. Taking up new activities has, over the years, given me a chance to meet up with other like minded people and develop new friendships and acquaintances. And - like children starting in school - I too have felt anxious at the beginning. I have tried to talk myself out of joining. I’ve tried to find supportive friends to come along with me.
And in the end I am always glad that I joined up. It’s like guerilla self-development! You start out learning flower arranging and wake up to discover that you’ve learned how to organise your time (to attend the class); control a budget (have you seen the price of fresh flowers!); meet & engage with new people; develop your creativity; enhance your home decor and probably even more besides.
So - although it doesn’t say all that on the brochure for classes in your neighbourhood - why not give it a try this September. You never know where it will take you!
Tags: Creativity, Personal Development, Self Development
Posted in Creativity, Motivation, Self Development | 6 Comments »
Wednesday, August 5th, 2009
 Books I picked up a book the other day. It was one from my stack of self-help or personal development books that I work my way through when I have the time. I don’t know why - but I stopped and asked myself -
“Now why do I do that? Why do I keep reading self-help books? Am I not “helped” enough by now? Have I not learned enough? I thought I believed that I have all the answers for my own self and my own life! If that’s true - why am I still looking for help?”
I realised that the reason that I read that kind of book is not to learn something new (though I regularly do learn new things). Because when I read them, I often find myself thinking “Yes, I agree with that” or “I knew that” and I regularly feel that it confirms what I already knew in some part of my being. Reading the inspiring, empowering books gives me permission to say to myself - “Yep, I knew that already.” It makes me feel good that I have worked out some stuff in my life and it resonates with other people (who have written about it already).
I like that. It feels good. So I will continue to read self-help, self-development books. I will continue to develop myself and acknowledge the great knowledge and insights I already have inside. And I will continue to find new and interesting information and insights in books written by others in the personal development arena.
Tags: Personal Development, Self-help
Posted in Confidence, Self Development | 2 Comments »
Monday, May 25th, 2009
 Positive Affirmations 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 .
Tags: Affirmations, Personal Development, Self Improvement, Self-help
Posted in Beliefs & Values, Confidence, Human Behaviour, Self Development | 2 Comments »
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