Beliefs

The power of “I am” and putting things on repeat

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Repeat

She reaches across the table and accidentally tip over her glass, water flowing out over the table. She feels frustration and shame shoot through her body and I hear her exclaim “What an idiot I am, I’m so clumsy!”. I was sitting reading at a café, next to a mother and her two boys. The scene continued as a young man from the staff came over to help clean the table. The mother was clearly uncomfortable with the extra attention that the busboy brought and I could tell she’d rather managed it by herself.

The words you allow to follow “I am” will become part of you

Humans lead with belief, which means that what you believe will steer your actions. What you believe about yourself, about who you are and what kind of things you do will set the boundaries of what you will consider doing. If you say that you are someone who can’t draw, chances are slim that you’ll pick up a brush. In fact, your brain will even work against you should you be willing to give it one more try. Your brain want to support you in staying consistent with your identity and will “help” you focus on all the details proving how you can’t draw.

Words have tremendous power. They can be used to lift someone up, to give hope or to demonstrate love. Just writing the words “I love you”, “I’m sorry” or “I’m proud of you” fills me with strong feelings. They can also be used for pain and for shaming or isolating people. Sentences such as “You’re worthless”, “I hate you” or “Who do you think you are?” will hurt even the strongest.

The words you say to yourself are the strongest ones of all and particularly the words you let follow the phrase “I am”. These words will create ad describe your identity.

I wondered if the mother at the café had always believed she was a clumsy person and how often she experienced proof of that. If I’d asked her, at another time when she hadn’t just spilled something, would she say that she was always clumsy? That it was just part of who she was? I thought about how that belief got started in her. Was being clumsy something she’d been told as a child by someone else or had she made that up on her own?

Sometimes identity comes from outside as a taunt disguised as a joke

A friend of a friend of mine, single mother, two children, has recently introduced a new partner into their family life. It’s a man that, as far as I can tell, really has deep feelings for both the woman and her kids. I’ve seen both the children and the man spontaneously give each other warm hugs and I’ve watched the children turn to him with questions and for advice. It seems like the new family dynamic has brought more love and laughter.

I wouldn’t question his commitment to help impact these kids in a positive direction. If asked I think he would proclaim his caring for them as well as his belief in their personalities and abilities.

So I was surprised and caught off guard when I heard him jokingly say to the son “You’re such a loser dude, you’ll never amount to much in this world!”. It was said with humor and clearly as a way to tease him and by the lack of reaction from the son I take it wasn’t the first time something like that was said. The son didn’t seem to care much, just shrugged his shoulders and kept to whatever he was doing.

 Repeating something makes it true

I think that children are born optimistic and with a willingness to try new things. They aren’t easily dissuaded by setbacks or “failure”. How could they ever learn to crawl or walk if they were? The inherent belief that I can do anything if I just keep trying is what makes babies such quick learners. Sometime along the way a child will eventually be confronted by other people’s judgment. It can be by parents, grandparents or teachers. As they grow into teenagers, friends and peers will possibly have huge power to impact their identity.

The words following you are, given by people you care about, will define your identity almost as much as your own words following I am.

Every time you repeat something you strengthen that belief a little more. It’s a physical thing. The same way that your body gets better at what it repeatedly does so does your thoughts become more and more easily activated when you repeat them. It’s alike a jukebox set on repeat. The same record playing over and over. In time all you have to do is get it started and the song will play all the way through again and again.

Famous coach Jim Rohn said “Every day stand guard at the door of your mind” and I believe it’s one of the most important things you can do.

Keep guard of the things you let in from the outside and be even more vigilant about the words you hear from the inside.

Becoming aware of your identity – both empowering and limiting

Knowing how you view yourself, your identity, is powerful. Knowing is power because knowing lets you change the things you want to change and use your strengths purposely.

To identify your beliefs about yourself set aside some time and bring out your pen and paper. Some people find this exercise hard. Some are too hard on themselves and can’t find anything good to write. But some people have dug their limiting beliefs so far down inside that it’s hard to allow them to come out. If you’re coming up short with “negative” identity traits you’re in this category. If you are, then sit back, breathe and know that whatever comes up you can handle. Your mind will give you truth on a level that you are ready for.

You might start by reading these following sentences. See if you can remember a time when you’ve said something similar:

“I am such a loser, why do I have to be so shy, I’ll never be outgoing enough to make friends..”

“I am so clumsy, I always screw things up, no one will ever want to play with me..”

“Even when I know I shouldn’t I eat to much, I am weak, I’m fat and ugly..”

Then write the following sentences and ask your subconscious to give you the true answers so you can uncover strong truths as well as lingering limiting beliefs.

  • “I am…”
  • “Unfortunately I am also someone who…”
  • “My parents always said I was…”
  • “Luckily I am someone who…”
  • “I’m proud that I am…”

Finish each sentence with as many beliefs you can find. Whatever comes up is okey, just let it out on paper.

BeBrave

Your relationship to money will impact the amount you have

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Money

How do you handle your money? There are few areas that trigger as many instinctive reactions in people as money does. Everyone has a relationship to it and everyone has been raised by people that have their view on it. Do you talk about money with your children? Do you talk about it with you spouse? How does this subject make you feel?

What kind of person gets rich and how does living in abundance look like?

If you close your eyes and picture a person who is financially wealthy – what do you see? Try it. Be honest. What characteristics defines this person? What must this person have done to acquire all that wealh and what must this person have sacrificed to reach this abundance?

Is your view on this person a positive or negative one? If we use a scale where 1 is completely positive and 10 is all negative where would you score the feeling you have?

Some people vision a corrupt, soulless person with greed and selfish desires as the only driving forces. Some vision a striving, hardworking person who never permit herself to rest or to have fun. Yet others see a person worthy of admiration but up on a cultural pedestal far out of reach.

So far in this post I’ve posed a lot of questions. The reason for that is that questions are the best way to access your subconscious from where all the programming for your actions stem from. You are operating based on your subconscious truths and beliefs. If you have any traces of a negative view on abundance and financial success it will trip you up.

You might, consciously, believe and say that you’re all for being rich and living in abundance. But if any of the answers to the questions above contained doubt, contempt, worry, jealousy or any resistance at all you know that you have some subconscious ideas that are not going to help you reach your goals.

Your relationship to money will impact the amount of it you have

Any negative feelings towards money and wealth will impact your relationship to it. Some try to explain this phenomenon as something esoteric or supernatural. They might complacently say something like “You have to talk to your money and tell it how much you love it so that it’ll come to you”. I think that would be a super way for me to feel stupid, I can’t seriously see myself talking to a coin..

I do, however, believe in the power of my subconscious and that the way I feel when I talk about money and finances is part of how much or little I have of it. It’s not like the money has an awareness that keeps it from me if I don’t “love it”. It’s because any negativity I harbor towards it, or people that have a lot of it, will steer my everyday actions that in turn will impact how I earn/save and spend money.

My sister sent me a link to a Youtube video of an adorable woman, Gill Fielding, talking about wealth. I particularly love her enthusiasm about money – “I really LOVE money!” she says at one point. The video is about wealth and the secrets of acquiring it and making it grow. It puts a smile on my face, I can recommend it 🙂

What can you do to change your view on money?

If you have thoughts and emotions that are negative towards money sometimes just knowing about them and consciously choosing other thoughts is all that’s needed. But most often we’ve been impacted by beliefs about money and wealth from the early stages of childhood. That means that our beliefs are thoroughly imbedded in our subconscious.

How do we best access those inmost hidden places? With questions and visualizations.

Close your eyes again and picture a person that is abundant, wealthy and living a life of financial freedom. Become determined to present this person as 100% good and to bestow admirable, virtuous and inspiring qualities to her.

Now ask yourself:

  • What thoughts and beliefs does she have to enable her to act the way she does that results in this abundance?
  • What skills have been essential for her to reach this level?
  • How can she now impact the world and do more good?
  • What will you do when you have all these resources at hand?

Were your answers totally free from negativity? If not, then commit again to a completely positive view and try the exercise again.

As with changing any belief, impacting the ones around money will take some conscious effort. However, any work in this area will not only help you in relations to finances it will also make you more aware of other limiting beliefs that are potentially holding you back.

BeBrave

You cannot hide what you think and feel – it radiates

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Radiate

You radiate what you think and feel – even if you aren’t aware of how you might think or feel in a certain moment and even if the people around you can’t set their finger on what exactly it is about you, which makes them feel a certain way, they will still be impacted.

Communicating with your body

Have you ever walked into a situation where people have been arguing but trying to hide it? You might not even have heard the fighting, and when you walked in there were no outward signs, but you could feel the tension between them? Their anger or sadness was still emanating strongly.

It’s said that about 7% of communication between humans come in the form of the actual words spoken. About 25-30% is transferred in the tone of voice and the rest, about 65% is made out of body language. Even if you don’t say anything, no words or tone of voice is heard, you are still sending very strong messages.

Your body is the vessel that holds your thoughts and your feelings. If you keep a negative thought it will impact your feelings and in turn your body. People around you will pick up on the messages you’re sending.

The message gets scrambled by in-congruence

If you don’t truly think and feel what you’re proclaiming you will create distance. It doesn’t matter how eagerly you’re trying to convince with your words. The person you’re talking to will hear your words but will get an uncomfortable feeling. They will feel confused and might even feel stupid for not being able to believe you. If you send one signal with your words and another with your body language the signal gets really scrambled.

Imagine your daughter coming home from school distraught because of a “failed exam”. You might say “don’t worry honey, that C is nothing to worry about”. If you inwardly think that your daughter really could do better, that she’s just too lazy or you worry that she’ll never make it, you’re probably not sending signals that will sooth her anxiety. There’s a risk that she’ll be leaving that conversation more confused and unsure than before she came to you. She might not understand why but she’ll feel resistance to open up to talk to you again.

When I talk to my children about issues that I’m unsure of, that I don’t know the answers to, I tend to slip into preaching mode. I hide my perceived flawed ignorance behind some cliches or generalizations and I usually immediately lose their interest. They pick up on my scrambled message and choose to tune out. But when I’m honest, admitting at first that I don’t know and that I’m unsure, they will usually hear me out when I give them my reasoning so far. Thankfully I’ve come to value our open and honest communication more than being right and a know it all.

A strong message will impact the outcome – negatively or positively

Today there’s scientific evidence, within the Quantum physics field, that proves that what we focus on and believe is actually emitted from our beings. I don’t understand the science behind it, yet :), but I’ve had plenty of real life experiences to back up my belief that I can impact the outcome of my life by thought alone.

Like the way I always seem to be able to predict how a potentially tricky situation at work will actually go wrong versus when it’ll work out just fine. It always depends on how I walk into that situation – looking for failure versus looking for success. Crouching and trying to hide my worry versus standing tall and confident in the faith that we’ll find a solid solution.

Or when I’m actually convinced that my daughter won’t be up for some suggestion I have for the weekend and no matter how I phrase it she’ll balk at the idea.

What if you could choose what you radiate?

So the theory is that what you think and feel, even on a subconscious level, radiates from you and is picked up by the people around you. What if you could become more aware of your thoughts and feelings? What if you deliberately could choose the signals you’re going to send?

So how can we understand what is going on in our subconscious when it’s actually in our subconscious? J This is where writing and drawing comes in handy!

Pick a situation where you have a challenge impacting someone towards something you believe to be a really good thing. Maybe that someone even is yourself? Maybe it’s one of your children.

Take out a piece of paper and draw a scale from 1 to 10. The 1 will represent your belief that the outcome will never happen. The 10 will be defined as your complete belief that it will absolutely come true.

Take a good look at the situation and desired outcome and then draw a line, starting at 1 and ending where you subconsciously feel like ending it. Maybe you stop at the middle, maybe closer to the 10 or maybe you just get started on the line and your pen just stops moving.

Look at the line you’ve drawn and ask yourself what the reasons are for not going all the way up to 10. Write down any concerns or considerations you have about how it might not work out. Now you have your list of reasons why you haven’t been able to influence the situation in the desired direction. You’ve been emitting these obstacles and your signal has been jammed.

Knowing is sometimes enough

Sometimes it’s curative just getting these things down on paper. Sometimes it takes a bit more conscious effort to change these beliefs and replacing them with empowering true ones. Either way, knowing about them will give you the opportunity to be honest and open when you communicate which in turn will lead to more honest and productive relationships.

BeBrave

Make room for the feelings you want to experience

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Feelings

Which feelings do you experience in an average week? Most people I ask about this need some time before they can give an answer. It’s not something they’ve paid much attention too. Emotions and feelings are something that happens to you; “I feel low today”, “I woke up feeling sad”, “What he said made me feel so angry”..

Emotions and feelings

I just finished reading High performance habits, and in it Brendon Burchard expertly gives a possible definition and difference between emotions and feelings;

”Think of an emotion as mostly a reaction, and feeling is an interpretation. The emotion of fear can come up but you don’t have to choose to feel frightened and run away. You can experience the sudden emotion of fear, but in the very next moment choose to feel centered. Whenever you “calm yourself down” you are choosing a different feeling than the emotion that may have come up for you.”

This was a new distinction to me and one that I think will help me. I already believed there is a difference between the instinctive reaction, an emotion, and the feelings I choose to live in for a longer period. Learning that I could control my feelings, some of the time, was such a revelation and feeling of freedom. But I’ve also believed that the emotions themselves can be controlled/altered by changing your mindset and every time a negative emotion comes up I feel it like a reminder that I haven’t mastered this yet… And then I’ve blamed myself and for hours lived with the feelings of shame, frustration and guilt.

Metaphor for life

I’m always on the lookout for new metaphors, visual or written, for the mysteries of a life well lived. We’re all different in how we best absorb information and so I try to cover all bases and get as many angles as possible on the important things. Metaphors, just like stories, have a tendency to enter our subconscious and we remember them better than just mere facts. Recently I came across a new way of visualizing the saying; “what you focus on is what you get” –  Imagine your internal mind as a cup. In this cup you pour your feelings.  The feelings in it, at any given time, will determine – yeah, how you feel.

I bet you’ve encountered the self-help theories like the daily affirmations and gratitude practices? These theories are everywhere and have been for some time now. The reason they won’t go out of style is because they’re working.

Someone who consciously focus on things to be thankful for fills her/his cup with a dose of gratitude. If you think about how you helped your child with their homework yesterday, although you at first felt too tired to do it, you might notice that warm feeling of pride and satisfaction dripping into the cup. When you notice the sound of pure laughter from your daughters’ room your cup gets flooded with love and joy.

All feelings can’t be in the cup at the same time

You can feel many different feelings but they don’t fit in your cup all at the same time. You can find yourself unsuccessfully grappling for that true sense of gratitude or joy. Sometimes that is because your cup is already full with other feelings.

Your cup might be full with:

  • 26% guilt because of that chocolate cake you ate last night
  • 42% worry about your kids not seeming to have any friends at school
  • 12% stress over difficult assignments at work
  • 20% fear for how the future paychecks are going to come in

When you find your cup is filled with feelings you don’t like it’s time to drain in! A coach or therapist could be a great partner when you want to empty a cup brimming with negative feelings. If you think you want to do some cleaning on your own then I’d recommend a practice of mindfulness. Letting yourself be still so you can feel your feelings and just name them will help a long way. Contrary to the fairy tale truth where if you name a fiend it will appear I’ve learnt that naming a negative feeling will make the feeling weaker.

Fill your cup purposefully

In the same way it might be hard to connect to joy, when the cup is full with disempowering feelings, it’s equally difficult to find sadness or anger when your cup is already full with gratitude, curiosity or any other more empowering feelings.

This is what all the hype is about regarding choosing feelings “deliberately”, affirmations and journaling on things you’re grateful for.

The more you practice the feelings you want to experience the more easily they will fill your cup. It’s like the bottles of joy, love, focus and the others are placed furthest out in the cupboard. The other feelings get pushed far in to the back. Practicing means thinking about how these feelings feel and on different situations when you’ve felt them in the past.

Get a journal and in it write things you’re happy, grateful and amazed for. Write down situations where you showed up in a way that made you proud of yourself. Where you showed focus and grit. Maybe a situation when you felt truly loved or appreciated.

Do it often. If you can then do it every day. It doesn’t have to take long, just 5-10 minutes and you don’t have to think of something “new” every time, just write down what comes to mind.

If you do this you will have your empowering feelings close at hand and you will already have filled your cup leaving less room for negativity to enter your life.

Changing emotions

So feelings we can choose and I still believe that even emotions, the ones that come more on instinct, also can be changed. With enough time and conscious practice I think I’ll be able to change the underlying meaning I’ve anchored to a situation. In the meantime I’m going to focus on filling my cup on purpose and let myself be the work in progress I actually believe we all are 🙂

As always..

BeBrave

Self love – It’s a parents job to love and let go

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Teach self love

It’s hard to find a feeling more overwhelming than the love I feel for my children. The picture was taken when my daughter was about twelve months old and it reminds me of the role I believe I have as a mother. It’s my job to love my girls and to let go of them. To provide a safe haven that they can always count on and return to. I know that my love for them is always going to be more of my focus than their love for me will be for them. They are, and should be, busy going after life. Experiencing, epic failing, learning and adjusting. Having fun. Loving.

Loving her teaches her she’s worthy of love

I’ve listed my values and beliefs concerning my parenting on the MotherOfLions webpage; https://motheroflions.com/aboutcaution/ One of them states that “Children are born perfect and deserve love for who they are”. Children come to us perfect, innocent, present, joyful and it’s our job not to mess them up, not to dim their light.

As a parent I have an enormous opportunity to influence this new little human. By giving her my full attention, when she needs it, I teach her how worthy she is. When I express joy and pleasure for spending time with her I show how she has the influence to affect others positively. By me actively searching her out and asking for her company she feels she’s important.

The more I love her for just being her the more she opens up to me. I try to make it a habit to look into her eyes every morning and every night and tell her “I love you”. Sometimes she’s in a tired morning pre-teen kind of mood or in a busy don’t interrupt me kind of mood and just brushes it off. I believe it still seeps in. And sometimes she looks me right back in my eyes and tells me “I love you too mom”. You know.. with that presence and open honesty that completely floors me.

Your role as her parent is important

You can usually tell if a person was loved by her parents, when she was little, by how she shows up in the world. If you can provide a safe home where she feels loved and that she belongs you’ll have given her the baseline truth that she’s worthy of those feelings. She will expect it from life and what she looks for she will find. If she stays open and curious and keep expecting good things to come her way she’ll have an attitude towards people that is both disarming and magnetic.

But her understanding of the power of self love is more important

There is a video on Youtube called “Jessica’s Daily Affirmation”.  It shows a girl, approx. 5 years old, standing in front of her mirror stating everything she’s happy for and everything she likes. She likes her elephant and her dad (at least twice 🙂 ) and her sister and her hair and her pajamas 😀

I wish I could have given my daughters that idea when they were even younger and not already starting to care too much about what people think. I asked my daughter the other day if she’d ever stood in front of the mirror and told herself that she loves herself. She sort of balked at the idea. “No, that would feel a bit like bragging”. I’ve clearly got some work to do!

My plan is to keep depositing love into her emotional bank account (ref. Steven Covey) but also to try to figure out a way to explain to her, in a way that a 9-year old can relate to, how important it is to love oneself.

When she fills her own cup first she will have a continuous overflow of love to keep pouring on to others. If she loves herself she will treat others with even more compassion. If she doesn’t focus on loving herself first there won’t be enough of her for the rest of us – a very selfish way to handle her life 😉

My daughter is a complete love bug so my guess is those arguments will get her to at least consider practicing more self love.

Walk your talk – showing what self love looks like

Now read this post one more time – this time exchange all places that refer to a daughter with a reference to yourself. If you cannot show her what true self love looks like no amount of teaching or preaching will do it for her. You must do the work of looking inwards and finding what, if anything, is stopping you from loving yourself. Be courageous for yourself and your children and start a practice of looking yourself in the eyes, most easily done I a mirror ( 😉 ), morning and night and tell yourself that you love you.

If you want to take it to master class level then goolge “Mirror exercise” by Lisa Nichols. It’s a simple but very powerful exercise that feels SO WEIRD the first couple of times you do it. I highly recommend it 😀

BeBrave

Forgiving – It’s the venom, not the bite, that kills

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Venom

Life happens

I believe that we can’t completely protect ourselves from hurt. Life happens. Big things happen that are out of our control, people we love get sick, accidents occur, death and taxes – life happens. Apart from those big ones there are innumerable occasions where we’re in contact with other people and risk being hurt. Communication is tricky and misunderstandings are inevitable. So how can you approach this capricious dance called life?

One key could be to consider the old saying “It’s the venom, not the bite, that kills”. What does that really mean? To me it means that if I hurt someone, intentionally or otherwise, it’s not the actual incident that is the biggest concern for our relationship. It’s the period after the incident and how you and that person deals with the aftermath of it that’s the real challenge. If the incident isn’t managed well the person that got hurt will have a mental venom coursing through their head which will slowly erode your relationship.

The same goes for a situation where I’m the one that’s been hurt. The bite itself won’t continue to hurt me, the incident is over, it’s the thoughts and feelings relived afterwards that will continue to cause me pain if I let it.

Managing to extract the venom after there’s been a bite requires effort – it’s called forgiving.

Apologizing is a first step

Apologizing is sometimes really difficult. You didn’t mean to cause hurt and it can feel unfair to have to apologize just because someone misunderstood your intention. It’s important to learn the skill of apologizing as a first step towards forgiveness.

Forgiving has a complex role in a life well lived. Really letting go of hurt is important. Sometimes you are the one that can deliver that gift to someone else and sometimes you have to give that gift to yourself.

Forgiving someone that hurt you

When something has happened that have left you feeling hurt you have that venom coursing through you. Even if you fully accept that what you need to do, to feel better, is to forgive it’s sometimes not all that easy to do. Even when the one that hurt you is sincerely apologizing it might still feel painful and sad inside. This is a tricky situation that requires some internal digging and honesty on your part.

First be honest with yourself about what you need to be able to forgive completely. And really be honest with yourself. No one stands to gain from you pretending to forgive or saying that you do when you still harbor sadness or resentment. You need to understand yourself before you can articulate to someone else what you need.

When you know what you need and feel secure in the reasonability of these desires the next step is to figure out how to communicate them to the people involved. How can you convey your needs in a way that leaves the person apologizing willing to comply? Apologizing is vulnerable in the first place, being rejected and asked to “do more” can drive people away. You want to be a person that it’s easy to apologize to but not someone that is left with the pain of faking forgiveness. It’s a balancing act that requires honesty and true communication.

Forgiving without an apology

Sometimes things happen and there is no one around to give an apology in the first place. There are people that aren’t capable of accepting responsibility for causing hurt enough to apologize. Sometimes the person that hurt you isn’t even alive any more. If you have pain in your life because of something someone did to you then you are still a victim to what happened.

The venom is still in you. Even though the bite maybe happened a long time ago. Can you extract that venom by yourself? Clean your blood and release your body and soul of pain?

I believe that forgiving is a choice and a skill we can learn and that it’s one of the most important gifts we can give to ourselves.

Letting go of guilt when forgiveness is withheld from you

One of the most difficult situations, when it comes to forgiveness, is when someone you’ve hurt can’t get over the pain you caused. When the gift of forgiveness isn’t given to you even when you vulnerably ask for it.

Some people can’t accept an apology without enough time for their feelings to cool off. It’s hard to live with having hurt someone that you love that needs time for the anger/resentment to dissipate. To leave them alone when all you want to do is heal that broken connection.

Worst of all are those situations where someone can’t accept your apology no matter how long time it takes or how you try to fix things. In these circumstances you eventually will need to do something that sounds easy but can be extremely difficult; You have to let it go, you must find a way to forgive yourself and move on.

Do you have venom searing through your body and soul?

If you have unresolved situations in your life, things have happened that you cannot forgive, you are most certainly in a negative energy spiral. Would it be valuable to you to free up some of that energy?

Take out that pen and paper and write down the answers to the following questions:Notebook

  1. Think of a situation you keep coming back to in your mind where someone did something to you that you can’t get over. Describe the situation.
  2. Now think about this situation as if you were in the other person’s body and mind. How was she/he feeling, what was the intention? If you had to list three mitigating circumstances for the behavior what would they be?
  3. How would your life be different if you could truly let go of the hurt of that situation?
  4. What are two things you could do that would help you move on?

Sometimes there is resistance when trying to do this exercise, if you run into a mental block then take a deep breath and try to change focus. Try answering as if the answers are really easy or really basic – write whatever comes to mind – writing something, anything, will move you forward.

BeBrave

The art of dreaming BIG, promising LITTLE and taking small steps

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start small

Taking small steps has not been part of my go to solutions for progress. Taking massive action á la no pain no gain has been more my tune. But like the snowball that starts small and grows into an unstoppable force I’ve started to suspect that there is truth, for me, in starting slowly and building my confidence.

“You should dream BIG!”

Yes. You really should dream big. Dreaming and visualizing a future that inspires you and those around you is essential for knowing where  to go. And you should talk about it. Talking and writing your dreams creates a special kind of magnetism that will pull you in.

When you talk to others about your dreams you also tap into a human drive; Social pressure. The human brain wants you to stay consistent with what you say so telling people about your plans will create healthy pressure.

There are two possible traps to be aware of when dreaming BIG.

The first is the risk of fooling your brain out of taking actual action. Since the brain doesn’t know the difference between that you think and what you’re actually experiencing it might get the idea that you’re already making progress. It will reward you with the chemicals of progress and you might very well settle in that happy feeling and “forget” to do what is needed.

The other possible risk of dreaming BIG, and telling people about it, is the risk of failing on your big promises. Look into the post about truth and keeping promises to get more background;

”The essential thing to understand is that when you talk to others, or think something to yourself, your subconscious is listening. If you say something and then don’t act accordingly your subconscious will get confused; “We said something but we didn’t take action on it. We better protect ourselves from feeling stupid/confused or like we failed. Let’s make that thing we talked about into something “not important”. We would never NOT do something that’s important so let’s make sure we don’t waste time on that unimportant thing! Ever!””

Dream BIG and promise LITTLE

Continue to dream BIG and talk about the dreams but maybe without a deadline? Promise LITTLE to yourself and even less to others. In fact – if you’re just starting to build credibility with yourself then start extremely small.

If you want to cut back on sugar for health reasons then don’t start with promising yourself to never eat it again. Start with maybe drinking one less soda per day?

If you want to start spending more quality time with your children don’t set the bar at spending two hours of deep and meaningful conversation seven nights a week. One; your kids will hate it 😉 Two; Maybe promise yourself that one night a week I’m going to set a reminder on my phone and when it rings I will go into my daughters room, sit down and say “I just wanted to be near you for a little while – is it ok if I sit here a couple of minutes?”.

Maybe you want to start exercising. Promise yourself to go on one 20 minute-walk this coming week instead of jumping into a stressful new routine that you’re not ready for neither mentally nor physically.

Building trust is the most important step

Making such small commitments might seem totally useless and idiotic. “How will taking one 20 minute walk bring me closer to my goals??” Believe me I know that doubt very well. I know the frustration that can kick you into action as well as the eagerness when you think you might be onto some new solution. I can get myself all A-type worked up and keep going HARD towards my BIG goals for a reasonably long time. But the BIG promises and vision always fails me when they are my main focus. I lose my initial momentum at some point and immediately my self-doubt kicks in and tells me “I’m no good” and that “see you’re not going to make it – again!”.

The trick is to build your trust in yourself in a pace that’s sustainable so that you don’t give that inner critic/fear ammunition when you’re weak. If you start small and keep hitting your goals then you will start to feel proud and slowly you’ll start trusting that when you say you’re going to do something then you do it.

Power of rewarding chemicals

Apart from building trust with yourself there is another theory that makes small steps so powerful. It has to do with chemicals. The brain loves “doing the right thing” – every time you do something you truly believe is good you give your brain the go-signal to release the hormone cascade that feels so good. You flood the system with dopamine and you think “wow, this feels good!”. You have that feeling of pride and happiness – you’re rewarded. This all happens subconsciously but that doesn’t stop it from impacting you both in the moment and in the future.

You will be automatically drawn towards the things that brought you pleasure. And it doesn’t matter how BIG or small the actions is. The only thing that matters is that you believe/decide that it is important. So though it might sound silly at first it’s all really just a smart management of your body’s normal functionality. How do you make a small step feel important if it doesn’t? Well, this is where complete trust in the aforementioned theory comes in handy. Do your own research if you’re not willing to take my word for it, which might be a healthy mindset since I’m no doctor with a degree 😉

When you look for the truth behind your reward system you’ll find all the evidence you need to start believing that steps, no matter how small, are the starting point for action and you’ll be on your way 😀

Triggers and momentum

Yet another way for optimizing how the human brain works is to use the power of triggers and routines. There is power in connecting one action to another. E.g. take your medicine when you’ve brushed your teeth or repack your gym bag immediately after hanging the wet ones up to dry when you come home. If you connect actions to each other and then focus on getting the small first action done then chances are that you’ll continue with the next actions as well.

Making small steps part of your life

Would you like to try using the power of small steps? What if it actually works? What if, at the end of this experiment, you have a bit more trust in yourself and you’ve started a few new habits?

For this exercise I will assume that you know an area or two that you want to change. Even if you’re maybe not completely crystal clear on what you want as the end goal I’m sure that there are some general directions you’d like to go in.

  1. For one or two areas, that you want to change/improve, pick one small action that you can take on a weekly basis. The actions should take no more than 15 minutes to do, ideally 5-10 minutes, and it should be something that leads in the direction you want to go.
  2. Make this a serious effort and research if you must to ensure that you truly believe that small steps give these valuable results.
  3. Make a plan! Take out your calendar and phone and schedule/set alarms for performing these small steps for the coming 6 weeks. You will have 6-12 (depending on if you picked one or two areas) dates and times for actions that should take no more than 5-15 minutes each.
  4. Notice if it’s working. Set another alarm for each of the days you’ve scheduled. Set it to the evening and when it goes off just take a quick note of how you’re doing and what the effects of doing your actions, small as they are, are on your mood.

Note; In my experience setting a small-step-goal to something that I can do in the morning has had the best effect. When I win the morning I tend to want to keep taking home other small victories throughout the day.

BeBrave

Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?

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Right or happy

During a management training I participated in, some years ago, we were asked a question that stopped me cold. You know, one of those questions that challenge everything you’ve up until this point believed to be true. We were talking about how to handle misunderstandings and conflicts. Explicitly how we as leaders show up and what our motives were moving into a conflict. If the meaning of communication is the response you get, then what response were we looking for? And then came another question delivered as almost an afterthought; “Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?”

My instinctual response, sad to say, was: “Both off course!! If I’m right then I’m usually happy!”

It provoked me to no end thinking that I’d have to choose between the two. It was, to my binary mind, such a horrid choice. Either be happy but wrong all the time or be miserable while being right all the time. Since being wrong was so enormously hard on my self-esteem I interpreted the choice as no choice at all. I was basically doomed to be miserable.

As it turns out I’m much happier when I stop thinking that life is that binary. When I let there be more alternatives in life. What would being wrong and happy look like? When have I already experienced being right but still felt miserable?

What is Right is far more subjective than I ever thought

Growing up is a humbling experience. I’ve had to backtrack a whole lot of beliefs and truths the past 20 years or so. Turning from a know it all to realizing I know so little. There is no use in fighting for the right answer when it turns out there is no objective right answer to so many situations. The right answer is different for different people and in different circumstances.

Here are some truths I’ve carried:

  • One really shouldn’t play with food. It’s irresponsible towards raising well behaved children as well as considering that there are people that starve on this planet.
  • I have to eat dinner sometime between five and six o’clock or I’ll be “hangry” and miserable.
  • One should put the used kitchen ware in the dishwasher after finishing a meal. Not doing so is acting misbehaved and disrespectful.
  • I shouldn’t spend a night just sitting still in the sofa reading a book.

I’ve examined my own truths with questions like; What could I believe that would make that rule not be true anymore? Usually there are situations or beliefs where my truths turns out to be wrong for me. Situations where believing the exact opposite of what I thought was right turned out to be some of the best moments in my life.

When it comes to situations that involve other people you just up the complexity level of what’s right or wrong. The people around you will have their own truths and beliefs. What is right for someone depend on individual beliefs as well as the current state they’re in and the timing of the situation.

How do you want to be right?

Maybe something to consider when looking for the right answer is defining what being right means. There is a difference between being right over someone, i.e. if you’re right then someone else have to be wrong, and finding the right answer to a situation. What if the right answer is defined as “the solution that leaves both parties happy and connected”?

If you can find the solutions that meet that definition you will in fact be both happy and right 😀 Tada!

You radiate your thoughts and feelings – You cannot not communicate

Picture this. You’re walking into the living room and your child is sitting on the floor. Just sitting there still, looking into the distance, shoulders down, a frown on his face. Not saying anything when you walk in. You already think you know a ton about what that child is feeling.

Ever been in a situation where someone you know is being unusually quiet and asked “What’s wrong?” ´, gotten the answer “nothing!” and still known that something definitely isn’t right?

The thing is that you cannot not communicate. If you Google it the general belief is that 55% of communication is body language, 38% is the tone of voice, and only about 7% is the actual words spoken.

Stay flexible enough to find the true right answer

Maybe a final idea to remember. I got to a point where I truly believed that finding a solution from the other person’s point of view was the right answer. But the pendulum swung a bit too far in the opposite direction. I forgot to include the fact that I needed to feel good about the proposed solution as well. I sometimes swallowed my irritation and tried to fake a smile and my commitment. But since I kept radiating my feelings people rarely got really happy with my proposals.

When I look for “the right answer” I try to do the hard work of challenging my beliefs until I find a truth that really works for the both of us. Can I reconsider what my daughter’s behavior means when she walks out on our argument and slams the door? Maybe instead of being disrespectful I could interpret it as a young girl finding herself at the end of her abilities. A girl that has run out of more constructive ideas to be understood? Maybe she’s been taught that nothing else works for getting out of a scary argument. Maybe the adult have been fighting to be right and not to find the right answer…

BeBrave

People aren’t bad they make bad decisions

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Isolation

“He is a bad person, I hate him!” My girls have both been through situations and met people that have made them angry and upset. So have I. Off course! There have been people in my life that I would prefer not spending time with. But unless you plan to hide yourself, on the metaphorical one-man-island of “internal travels” and isolate yourself from the rest of the world, you will have to relate to other human beings.

And humans are messy and we’re all a work in progress. We’re stumbling along trying to survive, feel good and make some sense of our time here on earth. Sometimes we crash into people. Sometimes with enough force as to send that person right into a fall that lands on a third innocent bystander. A woman at work snapped at me, because she’s not slept for days worrying about her terminally ill mother. I fell into an obsessive negative thought pattern wondering if I’d done something wrong. Coming home I brought that energy into our family evening. I was being distracted and absentminded and I argued with my girls for leaving the back packs on the floor.

One of the most important decisions a person can make in life is what to believe about the universe. Is it benign or evil at its core? I choose to believe that people act as good as they can under the current circumstances. When we know better we do better. I choose to believe this because it makes me stronger. It also makes it easier to manage whatever happens in my life.

I don’t feel that you’re on my side!

My drive for understanding why people do what they do has sometimes led to misunderstandings with my daughter. When she’s told me about this or that situation in school and about how someone was being bad I’ve tried to understand that other person’s situation.

When I questioned the situation; “How do you think was he feeling when he said that bad thing to you?” or “how are things for him at home?” my daughter felt I pushed back against her description or objected to her right to feel victimized.

She’s said; “You always try to understand how someone must have felt instead of listening to me! You’re taking their side.”
Sometimes, when it’s not about her, she lovingly hugs me for “Trying to see the good in everyone no matter what”.

I try to explain to her why I want to understand why people do what they do. It’s not to be “a good person” or “turning the other cheek”. I do believe that being positive and looking for the positive is a winning strategy for interacting with people but the main reason is more selfish. I want to understand others so that I can stop being impacted by their negative behavior and to be able to influence them towards a more positive behavior. If I understand them then I can more easily adjust my approach so that we get a win-win situation; I get what I want and hopefully that other person get what she/he wants.

While trying to understand motives for seemingly weird actions by others I also learn about myself. I still do things that surprises me, things that I don’t understand why I do. If I can understand what drives someone else then I can evaluate if I also have that same need/driver.

Understanding someone’s motives does not mean you should accept their behavior

Trying to understand why someone does this or that, which impacts you negatively, does NOT mean that you make excuses for that person to continue to treat you badly. You teach people how to treat you by how you let them and you need to be very clear about your limits and your definitions of terms like respect, love and cooperation.

Understanding their motives just frees you up to working out a solution to the negative impact in your life. Take that woman at work that keeps yelling at you, because she’s under extreme pressure at home. If you are told about the dying mother then you will be in a much better place in meeting this woman with compassion. From understanding comes the ability to not take things personally and you are in a much better position mentally to stay supportive and empathic when you don’t feel personally threatened.

A talk from this perspective will have a much higher chance of success. You’ll be more elegant in finding the phrasing to offer warm support while making it clear that you won’t tolerate being yelled at in the future.

If you believe you are a bad person you will not have hope enough to act

It’s important to switch into the idea that people do what they can under the circumstances not only because it helps you to become more mentally immune to the actions of others. Being able to distance yourself from drama and keep your equilibrium becomes easier if you believe that some people simply make bad decisions instead of thinking you’re surrounded by bad people.

Another reason is that when you get used to trying to understand the underlying reasons for someone else’s negative actions you become more likely to try to understand your own motives. Why do YOU sometimes do things that are not helping you progress in life? Is it because you are a bad person? To believe that you are a bad person is to believe something really disempowering. How can you muster the confidence or courage to change if you believe that you are bad no matter what?

On the other hand, if you are used to meeting negative behavior with an inquisitive mind, you will be more likely to look for and find reasons and motives that you can actually impact and change.

When you are faced with negativity

Unless you plan on escaping to a remote isolated island to fend for yourself you will come across people that impact you. If that impact feels negative then maybe these steps can help:

  1. Decide that the behavior impacting you is coming from someone who for some reason can’t do better at the moment
  2. Try to figure out what that person have been or are going through that can explain why they act the way they do
  3. Remind yourself of a time when you weren’t communicating in the best way. This will increase your level of empathy further
  4. Become really clear, to yourself, of what changes you need in behavior from this person. What you can live with/tolerate and what you really need to find a different solution to
  5. Communicate with empathy and compassion for the both of you.

BeBrave

Don’t know what you’re passionate about? – choose something!

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Don’t know what you’re passionate about? – choose something!

Ever heard that you should build your career around something you’re passionate about? I know a lot of people that just don’t know what they’re passionate about or that don’t have the luxury of even thinking about it – they struggle with paying the bills and getting the kids to and from school.

What if I told you that the biggest thing stopping you from living closer to your passions is that you haven’t taken the decision to do so seriously? What if the only thing missing is that you choose something to be passionate about and then walk through that door?

FALL for the pressure of society..

How secure are you in the choices you make in life? Do you look for approval from others?
Most people are very susceptible to the critique of the outside world. How then do we listen to our own inner voice and truth? And how do I know that what I like IS truly what I like and not just something that would please someone around me?

People around you probably want the very best for you. The problem is that sometimes those people have very different life experiences than you and their advice is just not relevant to your life.

One way to evaluate others opinions/advice is to look closely at where they are in terms of success within the area they’re commenting on. Have they earned the right to be a contributing tribe member? Are they living the advice they give? Sometimes people give advice even though they haven’t had the time to live that advice yet. Just like I’m doing right now 😉 When you follow their reasoning does it make sense to you? If so then you can incorporate the idea in your plans. If not, then thank them for the advice and make a mental note to ignore it 🙂

..or STAND for your curiosity

Another way to isolate yourself from negative opinions is to become aware of where it comes from. I bet you already know who you can expect negative comments from. So why do you fight against reality and expect things to be different? You can’t change someone else’s worldview. It’s actually quite irresponsible to walk into a situation pretending that you don’t know what’s going to happen when you do. If you know, based on prior experience, that this person is going to send negativity your way then DON’T get upset when that happens. See if you can just see that negativity as a sign of progress. No matter what you do that negativity will come, so switch focus and realize that negativity from this person means you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing in your life!

What if I don’t know what I’m passionate about?

Some people have no problem coming up with an entire list of things they are passionate about. Their problem seems to be that they get paralyzed by all the choices or ineffective because they try chasing all of them at once.

Passionate is a strong word though. Maybe you’re picturing obsessed workaholics or fiery flamenco dancers and don’t feel you can relate? I’ve realized it’s a problem for all us fixed mindset-people. We were fooled into believing that there is a “right” way to do things and that if we weren’t really good at doing things with little or no effort then that only proved how stupid and limited we were.

That is a sure recipe for not trying new things. And if you never try things then how are you supposed to find out what you like or not?

I’m learning about my own scripting and it’s a continuous trial and error finding out what I like doing. It’s sort of weird not being able to answer that question. Like I SHOULD know. I’ve realized that it’s much easier to follow a different feeling than that musty paralyzing passion.

Start with a smaller but still just as impactful feeling

Be still and listen to what YOU want to know more about. What YOU would want to research even if you were alone and no one knew. If you’re under stress from living a busy life it might not be easy to hear. It might be stressful even to sit still for a while and just listen. Be patient with yourself and give yourself 10 minutes. Take 10 minutes and sit completely still. Close your eyes and take a deep breath, hold it for a few seconds and then let it out with a deep sigh. Feel your shoulders lower and feel the calmness come into your body.

Ask yourself:

  • Without any thought of financial return or of what the people around me would think – what am I curious to learn more about?
  • If I had a time machine and could reset any decision I made by just going back in time and start over, what would I want to try doing?
  • What person, living or dead, are you secretly impressed by and would like to know more about?
  • In my past. What situations have I been involved in that I’ve enjoyed more than usual?

Be relentless and brave – push forward knowing that progress beats perfection

If you’re like me and have just found a flickering little flame of curiosity then fight for it! Protect it fiercely from negativity and fan that flame as much as you can. Make it a deliberate act to nurture that idea and engage with it as much as you can to grow it into a blazing fire.

It’s truly more important to pick something and start learning about it than to wait for the right idea or the right time or the right amount of knowledge. Pick one and walk through that door! On the way you will learn about how you act under pressure and change, how the world works and how the people around you are and react to you when you’re changing.

And try not to take things to seriously. I think it was Jim Carrey that said in an interview that ”Until you’ve completely messed up in at least five situations where other people have told you that ”it’s now or never!” you haven’t even started!”. Pick something and try it out! If it’s not what you wanted you WILL find something else to try – but if you don’t start you’ll never know what it feels like to live truly inspired.

I believe that life is there for all of us. Let’s keep fighting and supporting each other to build it.

BeBrave

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