Where Did These Attitudes Come From?

Following on from my last post about what makes your bad habits tick, today I will look at the mentality behind each of the attitudes listed, and a simple suggestion on where to start looking and reflecting about yourself, so that you can deal with the cause, and start opening yourself up to the possibility of healthy changes.

'I'm the way I am, and that's that.'

On the surface, this might seem like a very convenient attitude. You will not have to change, and others can either like it or leave it. It could end up making you a lonely person though, if others decide they would rather leave it than put up with it.

Start thinking about where you have learnt to believe that change is impossible, and then open your mind about it.

'I'm probably too stupid to change my habit.'

'Nothing I do can ever be good enough.'

'My self-criticisms are mostly justified.'

Each of these attitudes are learnt responses. No child thinks that they are too stupid, without first having been told or shown that they are not good enough.

Start thinking about the origins of your self-criticism. At what point did you learn to believe that you are not good enough?

'It's self indulgent to want to be happier.'

There is no point in constantly bemoaning your fate. That does not mean it is self-indulgent to look at and change what is making you unhappy in life. Your own happiness should be all-important if you want to make others happy, so working on your own contentment is actually very altruistic.

Start thinking about where you learnt to believe that your feelings do not count.

'Life is hard.'

'I am an unlucky person. Always have been. Always will be.'

'There's no point in me trying to change anything. It won't make a difference.'

These are all sweeping statements that often lack observation. Chances are when you look at your life, you will be able to find memories of times when life was easier and when things went well for you.

Start thinking where it was that you learnt to believe that you have no control over your life.

'I need to be hard on myself or I won't do anything right.'

'If I can only change by getting someone to help me, it doesn't count.'

Where does this regime of self-punishement come from? It is likely a learnt behaviour of over-strict parents, teachers or other adults. Alternatively, it may also be the consequence of a past failure or shortcoming.

Start thinking where you learnt to believe that you need to make up for a past failure or shortcoming.

'I'm too frightened to consider changing myself and my habits.'

Fears can be based on facts or they can exist only in your mind. If you were shouted down the last time you uttered a dissenting view to your partner, that is a fact. If you are afraid you left the iron on and check it numerous times before you leave the house every day, then your fear is irrational.

Start thinking whether or not there is a factual basis to your fear.

'When others give me a hard time, it's because I deserve it.'

'Other people can change, but I can't.'

Where does this glorification of others come from? Why are others better than you? Why are they always right? This is a child's belief in which adults are high up on a pedestal. Remember thought, that the great are only great because we are on our knees.

Start thinking about what fears stop you from taking charge of your life.

'I don't deserve to be happier.'

If all the other statements are unhelpful, this one is the biggest and most destructive one. It comes from a sense of deep self-loathing and possibly depression.

Start thinking where you learnt to believe so strongly that you are worthless.

You may notice that the 'start thinking' advice askes you to reflect on where you learnt to believe a particular thing. This is because many of the beliefs we hold today about ourselves or the world around us were initiated by past experiences, sometimes going back as far as childhood.

No matter where the origins of your problematic habit lie, you will benefit from first identifiying the cause and then from developing new personal resources. These can help you change the detrimental petterns that were established through an emotional link with past events or present unhappy relationships or circumstances.





What Makes Your Bad Habits Tick?

Sticking to the theme of goals and kicking bad habits this week, let us consider the mental processes behind bad habits and change. Stop and consider one bad habit that you currently have.

Chances are you are pretty anoyed about yourself and your inability to stop doing or start doing a particular thing. You probably feel like a sad failure and are likely to give yourself a hard time about it. But blaming yoruself or others is neither constructive nor will it get results. Quite the opposite, the more you put yourself under pressure, the less likely it is that you will gain control over your habit.

If you feel trapped by your habit, you need to take a good look at yourself to see what you are doing or not doing to contribute to it. Sometimes the simple fear of finding out something truly awful about ourselves stops us from looking closely at who we are. When we finally overcome our reluctance and examine our underlying motives for doing or not doing something, it can be surprising to discover the human and quite understandable reasons behind the issue.

The way people approach their problems can vary greatly from person to person. Whether you are successful in building up a good new habit or not will largely depend on your personal outlook. The right attitude can really move mountains! What you believe to be true will determine how you deal with life and how you deal with the challenges you face. However you also have to realise, that just because you believe something to be true, it does not mean thant it really is true.

Have a look at the following questions to find out what your attitude is. Give yourself one point for every time you agree with a statement.

QUESTIONNAIRE

• Life is hard.
• I need ot be hard on myself or I won't do anything right.
• I'm the way I am, and that's that.
• I'm probably too stupid to change my problem habit.
• It is self-indulgent to want to be happier.
• My self-criticisms are mostly justified.
• Nothing I do can ever be good enough.
• When others give me a hard time, it's because I deserve it.
• I am an unlucky person. Always have been. Always will be.
• Other people can change, but I can't.
• There's no point in trying to change anything. It won't make a difference.
• If I only change by getting someone to help me, it doesn't count.
• I'm too frightened to consider changing myself and my habits.
• I don't deserve to be happier.

How many points did you score? Anything between 1 and 14 points will hold you back from acheiving a successful change! Every one of the above statements is a block on the way towards a good result. If you have more than six blocks, they buld into a nice solid wall right in front of you, so it is worth a look at how you can change your attitude. Life can be a lot easier once you take a different view of things.

Now that we have a benchmark on any mental blocks you might have to changing habits, read through where these attitudes come from as I explore some of these mental blocks, and ways to change your thinking to start overcoming them!

Change A Habit, Change Your Life

Here I am are, a week after I decided to step up and take responsibility for all the aspects of my life. I had picked out all the things I wanted to change in my everyday life, and determined new time-saving habits to put in place. There were ten tasks I put in place to acheive each day. I am a self-professed statistics nerd, so I made a chart to tally up my level of success.

I'll be honest, week one wasn't great. I only achieved 55 points out of a possible 100 points. For a first attempt, that was not too bad. I did manage to go cold turkey of playing computer card games (my addiction to FreeCell and Vegas Solitaire was eating up a chunk of time every week) and get the ball rolling on some new habits.

A wise woman once told me that you will change when your desire to change is greater than your desire to remain the same. It comes down to despising the pain more than effort to make the change. If you are not already at that point, then take a little time to revel in the muck that is your current bad habit, so that you can truly appreciate the value of breaking out of it.

It is unrealistic to expect to be able to change a bunch of habits at once. Professional organiser Marcia Ramsland suggests that you cannot do it all at once. She recommends breaking one habit at a time.

Anything that is measurable is changeable. Studies show that realistically it takes twenty-one times to change a habit. Pick one daily habit you would like to change. Start by creating a chart with a spot for each one of the twenty-one days.

When looking at the anatomy of the rule of twenty-one, four levels start to appear during the process of creating a new habit:

1-4 times of doing a task

"I could do it if I just tried harder."

Then old habits kick in with time pressures and stress. The trick is to keep going anyway.

5-10 times of doing a task 

"I recognise the obstacles to doing it successfully."

Then the old habits kick in again and you start to feel like a failure. Just keep going.

11-15 times of doing a task

"I need to revisit my desired goal and focus on success."

Old habits will still try to thwart you, but now you are determined to persist. Keep going.

16-21 times of doing a task

"The goal is in sight. I know why I want it. It is worth pushing through to success."

You did it! Celebrate and enjoy your new habit.

By charting your progress, you can see the measured improvements you make which will help you move towards your goals. For example, you might set yourself the challenge of exercising for 10 hours a week. Every day, focus on doing something towards that goal. Anything will do. But you must doing something towards it.

If you look at the levels of habit changing above - the key along each step of the way is always keeping going. If you keep pushing through it, you should see improvements each week. If you take a backwards step, forgive yourself, remind yourself why you want the change, and then keep marching towards your goal.

If you get there in your 21 days - congratulations! If not, keep pushing! Once you've reached your target, do it another twenty-one times to ensure permanent success. The best way to maintain a new habit is to strive for a "no-exceptions policy." Keep at it every day!

Motivation is what gets you started.

Habit is what keeps you going.

~ Jim Rohn

Take Control Of Your Life

As I discussed on Monday, if we want to be truly successful, we have to take 100% responsibility for our lives. For the past three days, I have been trying to do just that and I would say I have only been moderately successful. I have acheived about 75% of the daily goals I had set out for myself. I honestly thought I would be able to do 90% - 100% of them though.

Upon reflection, the tasks I missed were ones where I let old habits get in the way, or I simply forgot to look at my list and make sure I did everything on there. The key word is 'I'.

I forgot. I let. I. I. I.

That in itself is a breakthrough. The things that did not happen the way I intended I immediately acknowledge as my fault. A week ago, I would have blamed my family for changing the schedule, the rain and who knows what else. But I automatically recognised that the things I missed were completely within my control.

We all have restrictions in our lives.

But, equally, we all have vast areas on untested capacity:

to make decisions, to plan our future,

to follow our paths.

It's easy to blame others for our inaction.

It's easy to blame our constraints.

Take the initiative.

Take control.

Decide your own journey.

So whilst I may not be running at 100% success rate yet, I am laying the responsibility in the right place... with myself! I consider this a major step in the right direction. Onwards and upwards!

Take 100% Responsibility For Your Life

Some time ago, my mother handed me a book that very well might be the key to personal success. In typical Krissie-fashion, life got in the way and leisure reading fell way off my radar. Today I finally decided to get stuck into it. The book is written by Jack Canfield, one of the creators of the Chicken Soup for the Soul. The book is aptly titled "The Success Priniciples"

According to Mr Canfield, the biggest myth in today's society is that we are not entitled to a great life and that somehow, somewhere, someone is responsible for filling our lives with continual happiness, nurturing family time, exciting career options, blissful personal relationships - all simply because we exist.

He argues that the real truth, is that there is only one person responsible for the quality of life you live, and that person is you.

This means that if you want to be successful, you have to take 100% responsibility for everything that you experience in your life. This includes the results you produce, the level of your acheivements, the state of your health and physical fitness, the quality of your relationships, your income, your debts, your feelings - absolutely everything!

This is not an easy idea to wrap one's head around, let alone to actually do. In our society, most of us have been conditioned to blame something outside of ourselves for the parts of our life we don't like. We blame our parents, our partners, our friends, our bosses, our colleagues, our clients, the media, the weather, the economy, our lack of money, our astrological chart - anyone or anything we can pin the blame on.

We never want to look at where the real problem is - ourselves.

In a year that has been primarily a journey of self-discovery as I pushed my boundaries, lived overseas, met new kinds of people from all walks of life, and spent some serious time reflecting on my life and who I truly am, I really wish I had read this book before I began. Just the opening chapter has me considering my situation in a totally different, brutally honest and open way.

As of this morning, I have written a list of the things about my life I don't like. I have selected five of them to start actively changing from RIGHT NOW and have developed a plan of attack to make it happen. Every week I am setting myself a set of goals and challenges to acheive in that seven day stretch to start proactively working towards the life I really want. At the end of each week, I will review and reset the goals for the following week.

I am excited. I am done making excuses and letting stuff slide. I don't like everything about the status quo that is my current life, so I am mixing it up and making things happen. External forces are no longer a factor.

 My success comes down to one thing... ME!

Addiction... Not Always A Dirty Word!

ad·dic·tion [uh-dik-shuhn]

noun

the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming, to such an extent that its cessation causes severe trauma.

I'm just going to throw it out there, that contrary to popular belief, many addictions can actually be very healthy. Surprised? Shocked?

They can definitely be healthy when you take a broader view of addictions like I do. I sometimes start a speech by warning everyone in the room that I am about to make a public confession - I'm a woman with an addiction. I can't stop, and I don't want to stop, because I'm a smile-aholic/hug-aholic/enthusiasm-aholic/<insert other appropriately positive addiction here-aholic>.

Everyone I know has both good and bad addictions, and at this very moment, I would like to challenge everyone to kick at least one bad addiction out of their lives and to put in place at least one new good one.

I'll give you examples from my own experiences. Remember not to judge. What is good or bad is in the eye of the beholder, and though I am often referred to as superwoman, I am also a living, breathing human with many foibles, and I am about to give you a window into several of them!

ADDICTIONS I AM WORKING ON KICKING

• Procrastination (Am culling back my use of Facebook)
• Being the Queen of Mess (I have already successfully deep-cleaned my room last month, but I don't consider the addiction completely broken yet. I still have more habits to break before I can declare myself cured.)
• Use of 'The Snooze Button' (Hitting the snooze button every three minutes for 30+ minutes is simply ridiculous)
• Some slightly OCD habits (I can only microwave things in time increments that are multiples of 21, I always use my towel with my name embroidered on it with my name facing away from me and to the right, when going to sleep I start on my back, then roll to my right side, then left side, then onto my stomach, then curl up with my left arm dangling off the bed before I can doze off, and many more absurdities)

ADDICTIONS I HAVE ALREADY BEATEN

• Computer card game FreeCell (1500 wins in a row means it was time to stop playing)
• Slurpees (other people have coffee or caffeine addictions, I had Slurpee issues!)
• Facebook game Bejewelled Blitz (widely known as the cause of a year of insomnia)
• Insomnia (alot of my issues with getting to sleep were self-inflicted - I perpetuated the problem constantly for years and years)

GREAT ADDICTIONS I CULTIVATE

(and would be thoroughly traumatising without them in my life)

• Smiling (my goal in life is to make the whole world smile)
• Hugging (my brother would describe this as a bad addiction though)
• Helping people grow (nothing feels better than assisting someone to step up to a new challenge)
• Laughing (if you cannot find humour in your everyday life, just give up now)
• Rotaract (love having an outlet for making a difference in the world)
• LIFE - the best addiction of all! I have a never ending passion for wanting more out of my life.

So take a moment to reflect on your addictions - good, bad and ugly - and see what changes you might like to make. Feel free to share your addictions by posting a comment below. Admitting these things to yourself outloud (or in a written online forum) is the first step to instigating the changes you want.

In the very least, my suggestion - get addicted to life - it is marvellous!

Don't Love It? Then Don't Live It!

I was re-reading a favourite little trinket of a book 'Words Are Not Things' this morning. This whole little book is full of random food for thought concepts. Like the text on the back cover which is upside down says "The back cover can pretend to be the front cover if you print it upside down". Truly random thoughts fill every page of the book, but one particular page jumped out at me today.

If there is a part of your life you don't want, don't live it

I think the reason this line grabbed me was because I am currently busy shaking up my life. All who know me, know I am a happy person by nature. However, in recent months I had come to realise that my general happiness with the status quo that is my everyday life, was allowing me to become complacent. I was content with life in general, and I allowed this feeling to dominate my thoughts.

Now I'm not saying there is anything wrong with being happy and content. Quite the opposite actually. I firmly believe that people should be generally happy with their lot in life. We should make the best of what is thrown our way. It seems to me though, that I am not the only one who allows 'feeling good about life' to prevent them from making changes to improve the parts of their life they don't like.

I figured it was time to step up and admit to myself what things in my life I wasn't happy with. Once done, I made an action plan to affect change in these areas. Last month I worked on decluttering my life and finally got on top of my messy habits. Now my key focus is on improving my fitness levels as I work towards swimming 22 kilometres (approximately 14 miles) at the Splash for Cash swimathon next year to raise thousands of dollars for the Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children.

I have a list of other things my life that are okay, but not great, and an action plan on how I am going to change them for the better. I am stoutly refusing to live the parts of my life that I am not content with and that are anything less than the greatness I am capable of.

I believe every person is capable of greatness. The definition of what constitutes greatness will vary from person to person, but just the same, I would love to live in a world where every person strives to discover their own personal greatness; a world where we stop accepting the status quo in our lives and start chasing after the lives we truly want.

Stop waiting for it to happen... go MAKE it happen!

There is change on the menu... ...and I'm hungrier than ever.

Imagine my surprise when the inspiration for the next stage of my young life, came from a horoscope that showed up in my inbox. A horoscope subscription I never even signed up for. Yet there is was. Telling me that the stars forsee change in my life; changes that I would instigate myself.

"There's some change on the menu, but you'll be responsible for it, so you won't have a hard time adapting. You'll need to do some fancy footwork when it's time to let others know what's going on."

Ordinarily I am the kind of girl who looks at horoscopes from time to time for a bit of a giggle, or I have a crush on a guy and I'm wondering if the astrologer thinks I should go for it. They are not something I put alot of stock in. Yet somehow, when this crossed my computer screen, it empowered me to take charge of my life. Not what I expected at all when I opened that email!

One of the many issues faced by my generation and perhaps the general population at large, is that we are so busy either playing the blame game or accepting the status quo, that we never stop to realise that the great majority of things that affect our happiness are genuinely within our own control. We fail to acknowledge that we are truly capable of pursuing the lives we want to lead.

I have always considered myself a happy person. A fortunate person. Like every normal person, I have my ups and downs, but in the overall scheme of things - I am happy. However it wasn't until recently that I realised that I can be truly happy AND still have a thirst for more out of life. Whilst I can accept my life for what it is, I can want more, expect more and chase more.

So when I read this horoscope, it made me realise how hungry I am. Yes indeed, if change was on the menu I was going to have as much of it as possible. What changes did I want to order? And does it reflect poorly on the life I have right now, if I am so keen to aspire to more? I sat down and wrote a list of all the major facets to my life and I dared to dream the possibilities that I could have. If I didn't just accept the status quo that is my life today - what would I change? What would you change?

As I progressed through the list it soon became apparant how much more I could be doing with my life and I am already taking action to chase opportunity down. So, as I wade through my 'Menu of Change', I'll be sure to share the triumphs, obstacles and failures here. For now though, I am excited to be rallying towards a truly exciting future. My truly exciting future. And I am thrilled to be taking the next steps in my life's journey.

There is change on the menu... and I'm hungrier than ever. How about you? What are you hungry for?