Are you being your best?

Is there anything you want to do or change? Changing habits are not easy and we need to work hard to achieve what is important to us.

When we do something repeatedly it becomes a habit that we don’t even have to think about. It becomes the easy and often ‘go to’ action. We might not even notice the route that we have driven home from work or that we are chewing a Tim Tam with our coffee because its what we always do. (OK, so now you know I love chocolate!)

Borrowing an analogy from a fabulous book by Norman Doidge MD (The Brain That Changes Itself) http://www.normandoidge.com/normandoidge.com/MAIN.html ima gine how much easier it is to ski down a mountain when you are following well worn tracks than when you find fresh snow and begin to make a new path. However after repeatedly skiing along these newly created paths they too become easy to follow.

Changing habits are the same. We need to be aware of what we want to change and stop and think about why it is important to us that change occurs.

The next step is to start with one small achievable goal that leads towards the identified change. Then comes the hardest part, sticking to our goals.

Just like the tracks in the snow take many repetitions to be formed, so do the pathways in our brains that allow us to change our habits and achieve our goals.

With persistence we are all capable of making small changes in our lives. This often gives us energy to then be able to set another small goal and then another and another, giving us greater control of who we are and what we want to achieve.

So, how can we make it easier to stick to our new goals? We need to have a clear VISION of what we are trying to achieve and be more mindful and AWARE of what we are doing. When we are leaning into the old tracks we need to remind ourselves WHY we want to change. Setting alarms (I love using emojis on my phone) also helps PROMPT us into action.

If you are looking to change and need some help staying on track or working out what those first few changes look like, please feel free to contact me. onthemove.consulting@gmail.com