A 6 Month Review – How Are You Really Doing?
This is a guest post by Kasia Rachfall of Fresh Perspective Coach
We are now officially half way through the year…let’s do a little review.
- How many of you have made New Years Resolutions in January?
- How many of them have you kept?
- How many of you don’t even bother making any resolutions because you know you won’t keep them?
My hand is right up there with yours. That’s the way things used to be for me. I used to never keep my resolutions because I didn’t know how to keep myself motivated long enough to do it. Well, I’m a lot more aware now of what steps I need to take in order to make sure any goal I set I achieve.
In his book The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success Deepak Chopra writes:
“In every moment, we have access to an infinity of choices. Some are made consciously while others are made unconsciously. Unfortunately, a lot of our choices are made unconsciously, and therefore we don’t think they are choices and yet, they are. As a result of conditioning, our choices are often triggered by people and circumstances into predictable outcomes. Step back and witness the choices you are making in every moment.”
Awareness is the first step to making any change because if you’re not consciously aware of a need for changing something then what’s the point in changing it? The above quote uses different words to say what Einstein also said in his famous quote “You can’t solve a problem by using the same thinking that created it.” The thoughts that run through your mind, your self- talk, lead you to making choices.
The reason that you may be experiencing certain results over and over in your life is because you keep making choices to support those results. Whether these choices are going back to work in the same place, eating the same foods, talking down to yourself or to others, they are the choices that keep you stuck in the same job, in an unhealthy body, or in an unhappy state of mind.
You have thousands of thoughts running through your mind every day. They run fast so you are not even aware of many of them. In order to begin to identify those thoughts that are causing you to make certain choices you have to slow them down. This is where journaling comes in handy.
The trick is to focus on one area of your thinking at a time. If you were to write down every single thought you had you wouldn’t get anything else done! And that’s not the point of this anyway. Let’s say you decide to work on your health and wellbeing and you are pretty sure that your eating habits are what’s causing you to stay overweight. Write in your journal when you eat, what you eat, and what emotions are present when you are eating. Write down every thought around food, no matter how weird, unrelated, or random it is. You can do this same exercise around smoking and other things too!
Writing down these thoughts will make a record for you. It will allow you to review them and look for any patterns that you run. Once you are aware of your patterns and strategies you are in a better position to do something about it and make the changes you want to make. Once you have that awareness of your negative internal dialogue and beliefs you can seek help from your doctor, a personal trainer, coach, or other source so that you reach your health and fitness goals.
Ask yourself these questions:
- Where was I last year at this time?
- Where am I now?
- Where do I want to be next year at this time?
Creating awareness for yourself is crucial to keeping those New Year’s Resolutions in 2010. I encourage you to give journaling a try and experience for yourself how it makes change easy!
I’d like to thank Kasia for this fantastic post. To find out more about Kasia and her coaching please visit http://freshperspectivecoach.com
I’d like hear your thoughts on journaling in the comments below.
