Skip to main content

How to change Anything in your Life



To paraphrase the philosopher Nietzche, he who has a strong enough why can bear almost any how. I've found that 20 percent of any change is knowing how; but 80 percent is knowing why. If we gather a set of strong enough reasons to change, we can change in a minute something we've failed to change for years.

The greatest leverage you can create for yourself is the pain that comes from inside, not outside. Knowing that you have failed to live up to your own standards for your life is the ultimate pain. If we fail to act in accordance with our own view of ourselves, if our behaviours are inconsistent with our standards - with the identity we hold for ourselves - then the chasm between our actions and who we are drives us to make a change.

The reason so many of seem to be walking contradictions is simply that we never recognize inconsistencies for what they are. If you want to help somebody, you won't access this kind of leverage by making them wrong or pointing out that they're inconsistent, but rather by asking them questions that cause them to realize for themselves their inconsistencies.

Internal pressure is a valuable tool to use on yourself. Complacency breeds stagnation; unless you're extremely dissatisfied with your current pattern of behaviour, you won't be motivated to make the changes that are necessary. 

So why would someone not change when they feel and know that they should?They associate more pain to making the change than to not changing.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

"This, too, shall pass,"

Dr. Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania did an intensive research on what creates learned helplessness. In his book Learned Optimism he reports on three specific patterns of beliefs that cause us to feel helpless and can destroy virtually every aspect of our lives. He calls these three categories permanence, pervasiveness, and personal. Many of our country's greatest achievers have succeeded in spite of running into huge problems and barriers. The difference between them and those who give up revolves around their beliefs about the permanence, or lack thereof, of their problems.  Achievers rarely, if ever, see a  problem as permanent, while those who fail, see even the smallest problems as permanent. Once you adopt the belief that there's nothing you can do to change something, simply because nothing you've  done up until now has changed it, you start to take a pernicious poison into your system. No matter what happens in your life, you've got ...

Problem Solving Questions ...............Continued

Every morning when we wake up, we ask ourselves questions. When the alarm goes off, what question do you ask yourself? Is it, How come I have to get up right now?," "Why aren't there more hours in the day?, "What if I hit the snooze alarm just one more time?" And as you get in the shower, what are you asking yourself? "Why do I have to go to work?," "How bad is the traffic going to be  today?," "What kind of stuff is going to be dumped on my desk today?" What if every day you consciously started asking a pattern of questions that would put you in the right frame of mind and that caused you to remember how grateful, happy, and excited you are? What kind of day do you think you'd have, with those positive emotional states as your filter?  Obviously it would affect how you feel about virtually everything. Realizing this, I decided I needed a "success ritual" and I created a series of questions that I ask myself ever...

The Magnificent Obsession - Creating A Compelling Future....

GIANT GOALS PRODUCE GIANT MOTIVATION So often, people ask me, "Where do I get my energy? With all that intensity, no wonder you're so successful. I just don't have your drive; I guess  I'm not motivated. I guess I'm lazy." My usual response is, "You're not lazy! You just have impotent goals!" Frequently I get a confused look to this response, at which point I explain that my level of excitement and drive comes from my goals. Every morning when I wake up, even if I feel physically exhausted from a lack of sleep, I'll still find the drive I need because my goals are so exciting to me. They get me up early, keep me up late, and inspire me to marshal my resources and use everything I can possibly find within the sphere of my influence to bring them to fruition. The same energy and sense of mission is available to you now, but it will never be awakened  by puny goals. The first step is to develop bigger, more inspiring, more challenging ...