Tools, tips and education to help you live the life you choose

Well my Mum sent me this quote this week and it inspired this post:

The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes of mind – William James.

Now it often seems that all this self help and improvement stuff has only been around the last couple of decades but that is not the case.  William James was an American psychologist, philosopher and doctor early last century.  This knowledge has been available for decades, however it is not the stuff taught in schools and often not passed on from generation to generation.

Understanding and using this quote can literally change your life.  As I said in a recent post we tend to have certain attitudes and habits born out of our experiences in life and often do not question them.

Remember it is a case of you can attract what you are looking for.  One of the simplest examples is the often quoted one of cars.  Have you ever noticed if you purchase a certain type of car or are looking to, you suddenly notice all the cars of the same model driving around.  They have always been there but they are now of interest to you so you notice them.

It is similar if someone says something about someone to you, for example ‘he works fast but is careless’.  Chances are you will notice every mistake that person makes, they may not make any more than anyone else but your subconscious is telling you they make them so you are looking for evidence to confirm your thoughts.

So hopefully this can help you see that by changing your attitudes you can change your outlook and life.  If you get up in the morning and say to yourself that this is going to be a great day and I am happy then you can start looking for things to affirm this.  It may be the little things like the sun being out, the smile on your child’s face, a song on the radio but theycan all add to and affirm your feeling. 

Changing the attitude of your mind can put a different on your perspective of events during the day.  For instance if you got up and decided you felt miserable you might see the small patch of milk your child has spilt, the huge pile of washing and the washing up you have go to do, instead of the beautiful weather and smiles.  You would allow these to add to your feeling of misery and focus on them, instead of treating them as incidental tasks in your day.

So try changing you attitudes and see what happens.  When you are feeling down or angry, take a moment to step back and think about why and whether you can change your attitude.  After all we can see kids change their outlook in a moment from misery to joy, just at the sight of chocolate or some similar treat, why shouldn’t we be able to do the same?  Let me know how you go!

Have you heard of the Pareto Principle, more commonly known as the 80/20 principle?  It seems to apply in many areas of life.  You often hear in sales departments how 80% of the sales are made by 20% of the sales force.

How does this apply to time?  Well around 80% of your results come from 20% of your time.  So the vast majority of your results come from a relatively small amount of input.

Now when I talk about results this is a bit of a general term as it depends on your situation.  You may be working where you have set tasks, it may be your business where you have set goals or it may be achieving your personal goals, even your day to day life.

In its simplest form think about say a weekend day where you might want to achieve a number of tasks.  If you analyse your day and how much time you effectively used to actually achieve those tasks you will often find that there was a lot of 'extra' time where you were doing things that were not essential to your selected tasks.  They probably needed doing but they didn't contribute to your goals for the day.

How is this principle useful to us in achieving our goals?  Once you realise that there are certain parts of your day or things that you do that are delivering the most return then you need to focus on those and not worry too much about some of the smaller things.

That doesn't mean you ignore the smaller tasks, after all these might be things like filling the photocopier, getting a tea or coffee or filing.  Obviously these need to be done but they should not be your primary focus.  Try focusing on your primary tasks for say an hour at a time then having a break and doing one of your smaller tasks.

The keys here are analysing your time and working out what are the things that contribute most to your goals, whether they be number of sales or the goals you have set for yourself for the year.  Next you need to understand the importance of focus.  Focus on those important tasks.  You won't be able to spend all your time on them but if you ensure they are always done then your results will improve.

This advice comes from our ebook Time Management Secrets,  check it out or grab a copy of the mini version.

Do you ever has those amazing coincidences happen to you?  In this case it was the day after I published my last post on habits.  An article appeared in my Inbox titled 'Where are Your Habits Leading You?'.  It is by Jack Canfield.  He is the guy who wrote the 'Chicken Soup' series of books – great books, if you haven't read one then do so.  They are easy to read and give you lots of warm, fuzzy feelings.

Anyway back to the article, it covered a lot of the same things that I mentioned in my post but also added some extra bits and pieces which I thought I'd mention here.

The first point to remember is that habits are necessary.  When you develop a habit things become automatic. Do you remember when you first learnt to drive a car, you had to think about every move.  Gradually it becomes a habit until you can find that you end up at the end of a journey not really remembering how you got there because you were in autopilot mode.  The advantage of this is that it gives you more time to think about things and survive.  While the driving might be automatic you then have time to look around for danger AND think about what you will cook for dinner when you get home.

As we discussed last week, not all your habits are good ones (we all know that), some may actually be holding you back from achieving things you want.  I talked about trying to identify those.

Jack Canfield, in his article, goes on from there and suggests trying to develop new habits.  As we all know this can be a challenge but is necessary if you decide you want to change your life.  To help you along Jack has the following tips for keeping to your new habit:

1. Write it down on a card or somewhere you will see it every day – make sure you look at it and read it several times a day.
2. Make it part of your daily visualisation (if you do these).
3. Use an accountability partner or coach to assist you to keep on track.
4. This one is very important – make a 100% commitment to the new habit. 
5. Lastly, be specific about what your new habit is and how you will achieve it.

Jack says 'just developing four new habits a year will dramatically shift your life to be more in line with your vision'.  So identify the habits you need to get rid of and start looking to what new habits you need to develop.  Follow these tips and remember it always takes at least a few weeks to embed a new habit – it will be worth it.

Leave a comment to let me know what habits you are changing or tips that you might have to help others.

Inspired by my recent experience changing to a new computer where it was amazing how much clutter I found on my old computer as I was moving things across (you often forget to sort out and delete the old stuff, no wonder it was starting to go slow) I looked around the house and thought how, in a way it is similar.  If you are not careful, you can do the same.  You buy something use it but then keep it because it may be useful again – sometimes it is and sometimes it just gets moved around over the years.  I guess that is why moving house can be good, you have to sort through everything.

When you thing about it, it is not only the physical stuff that can we collect over the years.  You can also 'collect' habits and beliefs.  Think about some of the things you do regularly, have you been doing them for years?  It could be beliefs you have.  For instance I was talking to Him the other day about doing some stuff and He said that one of His beliefs is that 'Sunday is a day of rest'.  Now there is nothing wrong with this, it is good to spend some time doing things you enjoy, have some time off and recharge.

However if you are looking to make changes in your life, achieve new goals then it is this type of belief or habit that may have to be challenged.  For instance to make the changes you want, you may need more time – say to go to the gym or do a course etc.  This may mean reorganising your life and this might challenge this belief, you may need to modify it to 'Sunday afternoons are a time of rest'.

If you feel you want to change things in your life, get out of the rut, and you find that for some reason you are not getting far along then journey then it is probably time to check your baggage.  Are you carrying things that are overloading you and preventing you getting ahead.

Don't forget we each create our own reality, our own beliefs on things, what is right and wrong, what we can and can't achieve and so on.  Reality is different for each of us and you can change it.  The first thing to do is work out exactly what you have chosen as your current reality.

So this is your exercise for the week, grab yourself a cuppa, sit down and have a think.  If you need more time look at how you are spending your time now.  If you have the time you need, but seem to lack the motivation in the short term, although your long term goal still attracts you, think about how you feel now, what negative thoughts or feelings do you have that stop you from enthusiastically tackling tasks that will move you towards your goal.

It all ties in with the blog post I did a while back on Excuses.  After you have done your thinking, check it out and see if you are just making Excuses.