This Year I Will... Getting into Action III

I don't have the time... It'll take too much time... There's never enough time... Uh-huh... Sound familiar. There's a saying by Lao Tzu that says "To say "I don't have time" is to say, "I don't want to"... So take a look and see where you say "not enough time"... and then see if the real thing is "I don't want to"... It's a great excuse for not getting around to the things that you say are important to you...

Sometimes though, we do get stuck and don't know what to do next... M.J. Ryan then recommends looking at the situation through someone else's eyes... So if you're having trouble getting organized, think of the most organized person you know and then ask yourself "what would they do right now"... And then go and do it... It may or not be what your organized person would do... but at least you're doing it... The trick is to get out of our own way and see it through a different lens... and then another option opens up for you... You have the solution within you... you just need to step out of your old habits and see something else...

The distance between an impulse (gotta have icecream!!) and action (getting icecream!) is half a second... That's not a lot of time to alter something! So, how can we increase the gap between impulse and action, so that we do have a choice and impulses don't rule our days? The trick is awareness... increasing our awareness of what we are doing... and what we would really like to do... You can even create that awareness in that half a second... It's like hitting the pause button on the TV... You can put reminders around the house, sticky notes that remind you that icecream is not the answer... You can get rid of the chocolate in the house... Get others to help you by being your awareness partners... All of it will help you develop a new habit...

So things maybe aren't going so well, and change isn't happening for you... Who do you blame? Yourself or others? Either way, you're making a lot of excuses for why it's not happening... Life is not perfect and you do get surprises and curve balls along the way. What's your back-up plan for those times? So the gym is closed today and you can't exercise... go to Plan B, riding your bike... but it's got a flat tire... so go to Plan C, going for a walk! There are always options...

Your brain can't tell the difference between you actually doing something and you imagining yourself doing the same thing... If you imagine scary things happening, for your brain, it's real and it's happening... If you imagine something great happening, same thing... it's real for your brain and it's happening for your brain... When you're doing this, you need to imagine seeing, hearing and feeling yourself in the situation... And it needs to be vivid imagination... in Technicolour... in all sensory modes...