I am determined to make this year an exciting, productive year where I do everything with a purpose and that is to #thrive … yes, my word of the year. Have you chosen yours? If not yet, go back here and choose your word … and then commit yourself to do everything this year to achieve it.
Over the last week, I have been sharing my Transformation Series for 2019. A series of blogs and audio files where we have discovered the following things.
I started off by sharing my ideas for choosing your word of the year – in the spirit of this, I chose three words that sum up the series .. #dream #believe #achieve and over the series I have taken you through a thought process designed to help you make the most of this formative week of 2019.
1: DAY ONE #dream Change your mind and the rest will follow… As we head into the new year, this is a great way to begin. Ever wondered what it takes to be in a continual state of motion, a state of growth and development in all areas of our lives? Well, carry on reading … it is as simple as a state of mind?
2: DAY TWO #believe The small changes that create massive results in your life… The seemingly insignificant changes in your life, that over time, change the whole direction and end destination of it. “It is never too late to become what you might have been.” – GEORGE ELIOT
3: DAY THREE #believe The Ripple Effect… Harness The Power Of Words In Your Life Thousands of words pour out of our mouths each day as our thoughts, opinions, judgements and beliefs are freely expressed. Often, however, we are oblivious to the positive or negative effect these words have on ourselves and the people around us.
4: DAY FOUR #believe You’ll See It When You Believe It! Growing Your Life From the Inside Out … If you wait until you see it, to believe it, you may have a very long wait. if you opt to believe it right now, your life will start to fall into place – and you’ll feel a lot happier too.
5: DAY FIVE #achieve Stop Hanging On, Waiting For Your Life To Happen … Stop waiting for your life to happen! The only difference between you and the people who are getting what they want is that they continue to move and you don’t.
6: DAY SIX #dream #believe #achieve Hold on to your dreams … How many times have you abandoned an idea, project, program or dream because someone made a disparaging remark or rolled their eyes when you told them about it?
7: And today, DAY SEVEN #thrive
At this stage I wanted to encourage you to set your challenge and intention for the year, to dream a clear dream of where you want to be, to put everything in place so you are in the right frame of mind to believe you can do it and then to head out and start achieving the smallest of steps, taking these steps no matter how small builds momentum and gets you moving fast.
All of this action happens when you realise that your life won’t change until and unless you assume responsibility for it and actually do something to change it. Sounds obvious, doesn’t it. We all know that the grass is only green where you water it, so with this in mind taking small steps, lead to small wins, when we celebrate small wins we build momentum, when we do things that make us feel uncomfortable we build a belief in ourselves that we can achieve these things even when its tough and so we grow and move forward, therefore living in a continual state of motion.
The amazing thing is that exercise, or any physical exertion that forces us to step up, teaches us how tenacious we are, how hard we can push and despite struggling to keep up or to finish the set, we do, we find a way and no matter how the workout goes we have actually got up and done something positive for ourselves and that feels good! So if you are struggling to take action, go do something physical, then come back and do that thing that is stopping you in your tracks harnessing your energy boost and endorphin rush, brought on by physical activity. #winwin
One of the biggest challenges that we all face is taking ultimate responsibility for where we are in life. Learning to #thrive despite feeling that our lives are just spiralling out of control. Sometimes we all feel like the events and circumstances of our lives have led us along a path that we feel we have no control over, that it’s got to be down to someone else, the circumstances we are in, the weather, late because of the trains … etc … these ‘things are responsible’ for ‘our reality’ at this moment in time. Is this true? Or is it down to us not taking charge and steering the ship one little click at a time… I think the latter.
The truth is that your life will not change until and unless you assume full responsibility for it. Responsibility, or your ability to respond, is not a way of accepting some form of blame as most people think, but rather a way of accepting your ability to respond to any situation. It is absolutely critical to realise and accept that it is never the actual events of your life but only your responses to these events that will shape and create it. You are never the creature of circumstances and you have the ultimate ability to consciously decide what things mean and how to respond to it.
You are the only one that can and the only one that will take you where you want to go in your life.
Responsibility is not some skill you need to go and find outside of yourself but it is something you already possess. All you need to do is to assume this power that calls on you to stop blaming anything and everything other than yourself.
Most of us have been conditioned to blame someone else for the parts of our lives that don’t work. When you take full responsibility for your life you put yourself back in charge; you get back in behind the wheel of your life and now you have the ability to control and direct your life the way you choose to. Ultimately it is not the conditions of your life but rather the decisions about what things mean and what you are going to do about it that will create the reality of your life.
When you are fully responsible you recognise that you are the creator of your life.
At some level you were responsible. If not by your conscious actions, then by the meanings and emotions you attached to the events and experiences. Only when you accept responsibility for creating everything in your life can you start to un-create and re-create it the way you truly want.
If you keep blaming someone or something else you will remain stuck because you will always rely on something or someone else to be responsible for the way you feel and ultimately someone else will be responsible for the state of your life.
You have to consciously unfold your arms, get out of the back seat and get back behind the wheel and start directing your life towards where you want it to go, instead of just going with the flow.
See, there are only two real choices in life, the one conscious and the other unconscious: you can either choose to be directed by the events and circumstances of life and let the river of life take you wherever it’s going or you can have both your hands on the steering wheel and decide that you are in full control. You get to decide where you go. Although you can’t control all the events of your life, you can always decide what the events mean to you and how you are going to respond. Whenever anything happens to you, you have an opportunity to respond to it in order to create the outcome. Most people have fallen into the cultural hypnosis that just passes the responsibility on to someone else. This is why their lives feel out of control, well that’s because it is. They have not yet taken responsibility.
You create your world.
When you assume your responsibility you are in charge and this is an internal shift in your thinking and behaviour. Your psychology is not just a big part of your life but it is “everything.” Winning and losing in life is an internal game. By learning to control and direct your mind you get to choose what things mean and therefore you get to choose your response, also known as your responsibility. No one can ever give you responsibility. It is an internal process and a switch that only you can turn on or off.
Being fully responsible doesn’t mean you live in blame and self-pity. It means that you live life from a place of power where you know that on some level you are fully responsible for what happened and you will be responsible for everything that is to come.
Be careful how you use your past experiences. With responsibility comes a new emotional territory that has the power to reinvent your past. Using your past as a place to learn from and a place to pull pleasure from, right, wrong or indifferent, there is a gift in there somewhere. You just need to find it. It’s never too late to have a happy childhood, you have the ability (and response-ability) to find an empowering meaning in whatever life gives you.
Responsibility means that you are in charge. You call the shots. Nobody and nothing is in control and to blame other than you. This is how you turn problems into opportunities and how an ordinary life becomes extraordinary.
Helen Keller, who was both blind and deaf, said that : “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”
What is it going to be for you?
You can either let the environment steer your life or you can get behind the wheel and take responsibility for every aspect of it.
Life is one amazing adventure, but only if you perceive it as that. By being responsible you can take yourself anywhere you want to go because you are the only one who gets to steer your ship and direct the course. You can’t control the wind but you can most certainly direct your sails.
In saying all of this, are you set up for the next leg of your journey? Do you know your destination and the route you are going to take? Are you ready to RUN …
The best advice I can give anyone wanting to change things is just to start.
Do something small today, even if it makes you feel uncomfortable – by doing so – you win! This builds incredible momentum and you will start moving towards your goals super fast.
Download my WOMAN IN MOTION cheat sheet and see how you can get moving fast.
Everyone who is successful in life asks for help … none of us ‘knows it all’ … your challenges are not unique, there is always someone who has walked your path if not one very similar, there is no shame in acknowledging where the leaks in the ship are and plugging the gaps …
If you have downloaded my cheat sheet and worked through the exercises and feel like you are ready to ask for help, then take some time now and fill in my form and tell me more about you. Let’s see if I can help you take the next steps in your fitness journey.