Today is Friday 13th. The day when sailors hesitate to go to sea. The day when the Swedes clear their Christmas trees. What’s so important about this? It evokes tradition, habits, and beliefs. Habits and beliefs are the things that will help you to achieve your goals, but they can also be the things that can get in the way.
We are 13 days into the New Year so how are your Resolutions doing? A year ago, I posted about the benefits of having faith in yourself and resolving to be constant to your ambitions. One year on, I wonder how many of you reading this will have actually done the most recycling you will have done all year – recycling the weight loss / smoking / exercise / new job / see friends more standard Resolutions which many people pick year, after year, after year. Very good to choose to act. Not so good when you don’t.
Habits are crucial in changing behaviours. “Practice makes perfect” for coaches often changes into “practice makes permanent”. In other words, repeat the changed behaviour often enough, frequently enough, to make it stick and feel like it has always been what you do.
Practice when I was a child meant endless hours of piano scales. Dull, cold (unheated room), out of tune piano … pretty grim. Add to that parents who would repeatedly ask me what the tune was, and you can see that this sort of “practice” was not going to get me anywhere meaningful. In other words, there were far too many barriers. Add to that that I really didn’t care whether I could play like Oscar Petersen or not (oh HOW I wish I could now, of course) and you have the demotivational cocktail from hell. Let’s convert this to the work environment. You don’t like the job, and your boss doesn’t thank you or acknowledge when you do a good job – even if it saves the firm money or embarrassment. Now they make you learn a new software package and you have to do it in your own time, just so the firm can make more money… maybe you can see some parallels? So … how are your habits helping you? They aren’t, obviously. That is because you are repeating the negativity, every day, reminding yourself that you are unhappy and unfulfilled.
So, how would it be if you were motivated to do one thing differently? What that could be is up to you. However, the key question is: “What would make you motivated to change?”. Maybe you have found a way to get some perspective and you simply decide that enough is enough. Maybe someone close to you has helped you prioritise your life – sadly this often is triggered by a close personal loss. Maybe you want something (holiday, home etc) which will need you to have more money than you do now, and you want it so much it would make it worth the extra hard work to change, and be more positive about things – anything – everything. That positivity is essential – people are motivated to achieve positive things because, simply put, their brains will make it happen for them if they already believe it to be happening. Self-kidding, really … but it works!
So, having found the motivation, you need to find a way to keep practising your changed behaviour until it becomes part of you. And this is where the beliefs kick in. You need to look at your beliefs – what you value, what you believe to be important, what you believe to be true. What shaped your belief system? What do you hold dear – and what makes those values and beliefs so important to you? How many of them have you actually considered? How many of them are inherited, from family, friends, people you admire? It’s important to understand what is shaping how you attach value to thoughts and actions. Without that understanding, you will find it more difficult to remember to repeat the changed behaviour. Without that, you may not actually find it easy to want to change. And if you don’t want to change, you won’t.
When we look at the beliefs around today’s date – “Friday 13th” – they conjure up negative imagery. There’s even a horror movie with the theme. However, despite people attaching negative connotations to the date, they all know that, really, there isn’t any substance to that set of thoughts. They are superstitions. And superstitions are, generally, thoughts that we know, deep down, aren’t guaranteed to be true. The same goes for your own negative beliefs. Henry Ford (among others) is credited with the phrase “If you think you can, and you think you can’t, you’re right”. In other words, your thoughts have a huge influence on how you act, and how you view your actions. So, it stands to reason that thinking you can’t will result in failure. “I can’t go for promotion because ….”, “I am always going to stay fat …”. Hardly inspiring and motivational, are they? Yet if we turn them around, and start those thoughts in a positive vein, they are a bit different. “I can go for promotion, and there are some steps I need to take to get there”, “I am losing weight and if I want to lose it faster, I can …[take more exercise etc]”.
Turning negatives into positives is a great way to start to challenge your own long-held beliefs. It can feel a bit like a pointless parlour game. However, if you KEEP challenging the long held negatives with relentless positivity (the new habit), it will start to feel real, true and very, very doable. It takes time and effort, but is really worth it. The sense of satisfaction that comes from taking action based on your own positive choices takes some beating, I promise you.
Maybe you have read this and think “Hhmmm – but I can’t”. If you did that, please go to the top and read it again … because YOU CAN. You may not get the Seychelles beach or the loft apartment straight off, but you can move towards having them – by changing your habits and challenging your negative beliefs/superstitions.
Maybe you have read this and think “Hhmmm – I would like to, but I don’t know where to start”. In that case, simply get in touch to chat through your options with a professional experienced coach. You have nothing to lose but a few clicks on a website and maybe a brief Skype chat, and oh so very much to gain.
