Turning Messages into Habits
I don't know about you but where ever I go I get the same messages, for me they're coaching messages, and I love them.
Bakery
The messages I'm referring to today are about habits and looking for tiny incremental changes in our lives and working on those changes to produce long lasting results.
Let me explain.
A few days ago I participated in a self defence workshop with a world renowned expert who taught us how to escape from a position when someone has you on the ground and their full weight is on top of you. If you haven't been in this position believe me, it's not nice. You have the full weight of your opponent on your chest, it's suffocating, it's painful and it's claustrophobic. Normally people submit or panic in this situation, much the same as they do in life situations when emotional trauma hits.
Our instructor told us about the 5% benefit. If you can get a 5% benefit and turn this into an advantage this will give you the upper edge, you turn a near hopeless situation into a perfect outcome. Interestingly, yesterday's 5% advantage was a body movement so small if you blinked you would miss it.
The point I'm making is that in life it's not the big changes that make the difference, it's the ones we hardly see.
How many people 25 kgs overweight try to lose that 25 kgs in one go? How many people with maxed out credit cards try to pay off the whole balance in one go? Just about every one? How long did it take to put on that extra 25 kgs in the first place and how long did it take to max out the credit card? A week? A month? The truth is it took months or even years, it was a slow process. It was a gradual habit. To win at this, we need to reverse or create a new habit.
During my workshop the other day, I couldn't get out of the hold the guy had on me without the 5% advantage. It was small and significant. Two years ago I lost 25 kgs by losing 500 grams first, then another 500 grams and so on. I didn't actually use scales, I used my shirt, trousers and belts sizes and I went from an XXXL to L. It's been a great feeling throwing my old clothes away.
You see, to be successful we need to concentrate on the small goals with the view of the grand goals in the back of our minds. For every cappuccino we forgo, that's .00 we've saved and for every cream bun we leave in the bakery that's a millimetre we've reduced our waistline.
And these can be turned into habits. Small habits! The smaller the better, because small habits are easier to maintain.
So, you're going to ask, how do I give up the big harmful habits like smoking, over-eating, drugs, gambling, etc?
You can change those big, bad habits but it's really hard. If it wasn't hard would anyone smoke, would we have people addicted to alcohol, gambling, food? No we wouldn't. That's why we need all the help we can get.
By doing the small habits first. You need to learn to trust yourself, to believe in yourself, to have faith that you can bring about that change that you long for. You need to find something that you can do easily, that's beneficial and that you can measure.
Examples? You want examples? Start with these. Just try one or maybe two, no more.
- Put your computer mouse in the other hand;
- Swap your knife and fork over when you eat;
- Have a different breakfast, something really nutritious like fruit;
- Give up swearing;
- Have a cup of tea instead of a cappuccino;
- Get out of bed 10 minutes earlier;
- Leave the TV off for an extra half our;
- Listen to classical music on the way to work (and on the way home);
- Go for a walk every morning;
- Go for a walk every evening;
- Meditate for 10 minutes every day (maybe use that 10 minutes you got up earlier);
- Go to bed 30 minutes earlier;
- Stop watching the TV news;
- Or anything that you can think of.
Maybe these are too difficult. Maybe you need something simpler still. That's okay, try these:
- Drink 5 glasses of water each day (2 in morning, 1 at lunchtime and 2 at night);
- Use sea salt on your food (toss that other salt away);
- Drive a different way to work every 2nd day;
- Each lunch time, walk out of your work and around the block (with no sound machine in your ears);
- Make sign and place it in your bathroom so you ask yourself "What do I have gratitude for today?" and say out loud 5 things you have gratitude for.
These are pretty simple aren't they! Too simple? Maybe so, and it's where your big changes will come from. Not from trying to change the big things, they will come later.
Of course, people who consistently invest in themselves and work on themselves know that by following these steps and doing the small stuff makes the big stuff happen automatically. They find that they didn't even have to think about those harmful habits because those habits eliminated themselves from their lives, almost by magic.
We're amazing beings and we can do whatever we want. We just have to tell our DNA that we want to make some changes in our lives and we do that by examining our habits and making the decision to change one or two of those habits.
How easy is that!
Have the best outstanding day,
Andrew
Are Your Habits Changing for the Better?
Andrew is an intuitive and personal development success coach. He has clients all over the world and enjoys seeing his clients grow to having exceptional lives.
He consults privately and is a confident and well known public speaker.
His businesses include:
Intuitive Life Readings,
Intuitive Success Coaching,
Intuitive Relationship Readings.
For more information please go to http://www.andrewwarnes.com