Tag Archives: changing

Quotes - 2011, Stillness

How to Affirm Our Way To Change

Practice rather than preach. Make of your life an affirmation, defined by your ideals, not the negation of others. Dare to the level of your capability then go beyond to a higher level. – Alexander Haig

affirm!

Once we’re at the ‘Alpha Level’ of brain activity, we’re ready to use affirmations effectively. Affirmations are effective at any time though, so let’s not wait to meditate! Affirmations are a way to self-program and achieve more quickly the state which we desire. We may use them as reminders to us in the form of post-it notes and the like…

affirmations

Here are some examples:

  • Health: I am super healthy now! I breathe in health!
  • Happiness: I radiate happiness, I smile on the inside! I am happy forever!
  • Relationships: I love people and they love me! I am a smile machine!
  • Wealth: I have all that I need, plus more! I float in wealth!

Affirmations are simple, the statement must reflect into the present moment, the state we would like to enjoy or the vision we have of our future self!

Daily Affirmation: Today I Affirm Life!

Recommendation: The Secret by Rhonda Byrne

The SecretKindle Wireless Reading Device, Wi-Fi, 6

Quotes - 2011, Stillness

How To Cement Change…

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The affairs of the world will go on forever. Do not delay the practice of meditation. – Milarepa

so far

So far we’ve understood how to kick-start a change effort and to figure out why change is so hard. Just like Stillness (meditation, reflection, journaling…) is useful in the ‘Be’ phase to understand what needs to change, it can be useful in ‘Zen’ phase to cement change. ‘Be’, ‘Zen’ and ‘Do’ aspects apply to each of these 3 phases as well. Let’s apply Stillness and related concepts to cement the changes we so desire.

the alpha level

When we’re even minded (at peace) our physical brain frequencies hum at a lower rate (alpha). There’s a process we can use to bring our brain to these lower frequencies. Once we’re at the lower brain frequencies we can then apply the following very effectively to cement change:

  • Affirmations
  • Visualization
  • Other programming techniques

As we involve the mind and progressively relax our bodies, our brain easily settles down into the Alpha Level. There are several products that one can use to get into this state, or we might use a manual technique like this one.

Jose Silva was a pioneer in this field, reference below.

Daily Affirmation: Today I AM relaxed!

Recommendation: The Silva Mind Control Method by Jose Silva

The Silva Mind Control MethodKindle Wireless Reading Device, Wi-Fi, 6

Quotes - 2011, Stillness

How To Lose Weight!

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Keep a pit bull in the kitchen! – Other weight-loss Funnies Here…

influences…

This series continues, the last blog on this was: What’s Our ‘Immunity To Change’?.

According to Kerry Patterson, who’s written other classics like Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, it’s six sources of influence that impact us even when don’t know it. And because we don’t know how they are impacting us on a constant basis, we’re unable to make changes that we desire. These sources of influence overrule sheer will-power all the time, which is why most of our New Year Resolutions languish soon enough!

Here they are, there are 3 ways we’re motivated and 3 areas in which we must learn the skills appropriately. I’ve listed some detail below to illustrate the example of wanting to exercise for better health and lose weight:

Influence Matrix Motivation Skill
Personal Do we have the right personal motivation to approach any change? How do we improve our motivation? If it’s exercise how do we motivate ourselves to want to exercise and actually enjoy it? Do we know what kind of exercise to undertake so as to get the biggest bang for our time? Interval Training for example is far more effective than just running or doing anything else. Unless we know what works we won’t be successful in our effort to want to keep exercising.
Social Who’s motivating or demotivating us? Is a friend or spouse holding us accountable for our exercise goals? Are they contributing or are they derailing our efforts? What specific skills can we use to take advantage of our social network?
Structural What happens if you have to pay $10 to a charity you hate for each exercise session that you miss? Or for each dessert we can’t say no to? What around us, for example the right or wrong kind of foods, is helping or hurting our motivation to exercise and therefore lose weight?

the steps

Once we understand and know how to leverage these ‘influences’ we can follow these steps to ‘Change Anything’:

  1. Identify Crucial Moments: Under what conditions and circumstances are we tempted most not to exercise and to eat foods that we shouldn’t? Understanding these is crucial to our success.
  2. Create Vital Behaviors: These are proven behaviors that work under trying circumstances. We must decide on these behaviors before temptation hits.
  3. Engage all 6 sources of Influence: As above, have a plan and follow it.
  4. Turn Bad Days Into Good Data: Each human is unique and any approach that we build is subject to improvement. When we fail in our efforts, let’s use that information to improve our plan and re-apply!

Daily Affirmation: Today I AM a change master!

Recommendation: Change Anything by Kerry Patterson

Change Anything: The New Science of Personal SuccessKindle Wireless Reading Device, Wi-Fi, 6

Quotes - 2011, Stillness

What’s Our ‘Immunity To Change’?

I learned that although God loves us, he doesn’t grant us immunity from the consequences of our choices. – Donna Rice

immunity to change

Once we’ve streamlined our day and have discovered more time to devote to our transformation let’s figure out next steps…

In our journey even when we know what to change and attempt to change it, we fail, often miserably.

Why?

One reason, and there are others which we’ll discuss, is our ‘Immunity To Change’. This concept is made famous by Robert Kegan who wrote the book on it.

He explains that we have undiscovered and unconscious motivations and belief structures that work against us whenever we attempt to change at a conscious level.

It’s what we’re conscious about versus what we’re not conscious about. The two clash and derail our change efforts!

discovery and action

First we must discover our ‘Immunity Map’, which is a step-by-step process:

  1. An improvement goal: It has to be the one thing we want to change badly or what others close to us think we need to most change.
  2. What works against: Then we list out the various things we do or fail to do that work against our improvement goal.
  3. Competing Commitments: Next we list out all our competing commitments and what worry’s us most…
  4. Big Assumptions: This exercise then reveals a final column of our big assumptions in life.

Once we’ve discovered the ‘Big Assumptions’ that run our life, we can try specific experiments to test out these assumptions. These experiments grow bigger in scope until we’re rid of these assumptions that run so contrary to our well-being.

Daily Affirmation: Today I AM uncovering my immunity to change!

Recommendation: Immunity to Change by Robert Kegan

Immunity to Change: How to Overcome It and Unlock the Potential in Yourself and Your Organization (Leadership for the Common Good)Kindle Wireless Reading Device, Wi-Fi, 6

Quotes - 2011, Stillness

Making Time For The Important Stuff!

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If you love life, don’t waste time, for time is what life is made up of. – Bruce Lee

what next?

So far on this journey we’ve covered the following topics:

  1. How Do I Fix It?
  2. Be Zen Do!
  3. What Needs To Change?
  4. How To Become More Aware

Change is easy when we know how to attempt it. Will-power alone doesn’t cut it. We need a guiding philosophy such as be~zen~do and then we need to know what must change. Increasing self awareness is the essential tool to that end.

Next we face two issues:

  • How to make time to effect change in our lives? And…
  • How to actually effect change, i.e. have the motivation and the skills to do it?

making time

Change is difficult, we often have wonderful excuses, conscious and unconscious ones that thwart our attempts to change. Once we know how to make time we’ll figure out why it’s so hard to change in the first place!

Once we know what we’re going to change, we’ll need to make time in our daily busy life. How do we do that? The way to do that is by streamlining all our daily tasks. If we can be organized about the rest of our life, we’ll make enough time during the day to spend on more worthwhile activities such as step 4 above…

Here’s a basic system that can be applied to our ‘worldly’ tasks! Divide all your work into 3 major projects:

  • Have 3 projects. Must finish each project in less than 3-6 months. In this system you shouldn’t start a 4th project even if 1 or 2 are done; all 3 must be done before you pick the next 3.
  • Make steady progress on each project by breaking down the projects into a series of steps and working on them weekly and possibly daily.
  • Simplify each step into one or more tasks.
  • Select at least 3 HITs (High Impact Tasks) each morning. At least one or 2 of these HITs should be related to your 3 current projects.
  • Complete these 3 HITs early morning. Do not check email!
  • Now work on your routine tasks. Try to batch them into time slots by context.
  • Have a process to capture all incoming information and resulting tasks.
  • Must mono-task, no multi-tasking
  • Have a fixed time during the day for
    • Email
    • Internet
  • Do a weekly review, get back on track and plan your next week.

Daily Affirmation: Today I AM on track!

Recommendation: Getting Things Done by David Allen

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free ProductivityKindle Wireless Reading Device, Wi-Fi, 6

Quotes - 2011, Stillness

How To Become More Aware

I think self-awareness is probably the most important thing towards being a champion. – Billie Jean King

awareness

Continuing from yesterday’s post, What Needs To Change…

Increasing awareness of self and of what we truly seek are the next steps in our ‘change’ journey. These are skills which will be handy at any stage of our lives. Some of tools which can be employed at this stage are:

  • Self-Inventory: Becoming aware of what motivates us, what irritates us, why we get angry or passionate. Here’s more about it… Want To Stop The Suffering?
  • Active Journaling: A form of journaling that allows for closer contact with our spirit inside, more here: Emotional Freedom!
  • Shadow-Self: Combine the above two… For a given day, carry a journal and every hour on the hour jot down: What was my dominant thought the last hour? What am I dwelling on right now?
  • Stillness: Use a method for stilling our minds and for having directed-thought, some tips here: http://namastenow.com/index.php/stillness/
  • Assessments: Consider personality assessment tests as well as something like Strengths Exploration.
  • Personal Vision Statement: A vision statement may be crafted based on using the above tools. A vision statement is one that states in a few words the end state an entity wants to achieve. An example might be: I am a loved and admired husband and father.

These tools can be used to help us figure out what needs to change. Once we have that we can use the Vision Statement as our end goal and as a motivational tool.

dimensions of awareness

Work on transforming self can be done along the following dimensions:

  • Body: Focus is on wellness goals…
  • Mind: Focus is on intellectual and psychological well-being
  • Soul: Spiritual aims are the focus here…
  • Life-Purpose: In some ways this bucket combines the first 3 dimensions and puts the focus on how our existence impacts and improves people and things around us, our world…What is our contribution to Life?

There can be other dimensions… More on this overall process next time!

Daily Affirmation: Today I AM changing for the better!

Recommendation: What Got You Here Won’t Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith

What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More SuccessfulKindle Wireless Reading Device, Wi-Fi, 6

Quotes - 2011, Stillness

What Needs To Change?

I am here for a purpose and that purpose is to grow into a mountain, not to shrink to a grain of sand. – Og Mandino

what?

Be~Zen~Do is the overall change methodology that I’m proposing. To start on this journey we must know what it is that we want to change. It’s like knowing our destination before we can start using a GPS device fruitfully. As stated previously we do often know what we want to change. How confident are we that we’ve nailed exactly what needs to change? As an example we might think we want a promotion at work. And consequently we might consider changing our work pattern to gain that promotion. But what if that’s not what we truly seek? What if we really need deeper fulfillment in the form of another vocation all-together? If we get a promotion instead we might be moving farther away from what we truly desire and need to change!

next…

Our main effort should be to go after what truly needs to change.

  1. Do we need to change a job, a vocation, or should we be working on changing our perspective?
  2. How should we think about approaching change?
  3. What do we need to transform?

More on this next time!

Daily Affirmation: Today I think about important things!

Recommendation: The Greatest Miracle in the World by Og Mandino

The Greatest Miracle in the WorldKindle Wireless Reading Device, Wi-Fi, 6