Small Steps Big Results

Posted on December 9, 2010
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If you ask someone why they don’t take action on their ideas, most people will say “I don’t have the time”.  And of course, this is the fall back excuse, what we’ve already learned from looking at the habits of thought is that there may be any number of other thought patterns running that are behind the lack of initiative.

So you need to start small, start with simple actions that you can take even if you don’t yet “feel like it”.  Maybe you don’t have an hour to exercise, but do you have 10 minutes? Everyone has 10 minutes.

Once you establish the goal of “I am a healthy, energetic and fit person that loves to exercise” and the emotion habit of feeling excited and enthusiastic, then you can say “OK, what is one 10 minute action I can take here?”  Maybe you’ll put on music and dance, or run up and down the stairs, or sit and do deep breathing.

You’ll start to ask “What is it that I want to do”?  You begin to listen to many other levels of your consciousness to decide what actions to take.  And eventually, your actions become so lined up with the vision of where you want to be, what you want to accomplish, that it becomes second nature.

If you hang out with kids, you have heard the whining when it comes to chores or homework or trying something new:  “I’m afraid” or “I don’t feel like it” or just “No”.  We can say to our kids “I know you are feeling this way, but you have to do it anyway.”  We need to kindly tell ourselves the same thing.  “I know you feel cranky, tired or afraid right now, but you can come up with one 10 minute action that you can feel excited about and do that.”

Eventually you will want to uproot and replant the thought/emotion patterns that are behind the whining, but finding one 10 minute action keeps you in motion in the meantime.

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Overcoming obstacles to achieving your Big Idea

Posted on December 8, 2010
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What are the biggest obstacles to succeeding in a Big Idea?

  • Being overwhelmed
  • Feeling there is too much to do and not enough time to do it in
  • Putting attention on things you ‘should’ do instead of things you want to do
  • Having a poor relationship to failure
  • Expecting an instant change instead of making a lifetime commitment to learning, to slowly building the tools and skills that will enable you or strengthen you in an area where you may be weak.

All of these take energy instead of providing energy, and leave you feeling drained.

These are the top things that keep people from achieving what they want.

Some people don’t even want to get started because they just feel so overwhelmed.

Some people get started and consistently fail, because whether its conscious or unconscious, they are doing things the way they’ve always done them.  And internally what’s going on is they are beating themselves up “I’m a failure” “I’m no good” whatever those messages were probably from childhood.

And so what’s getting wired together is the thought “I’ll try this again” along with the emotion of overwhelm or fear of failure with the underlying thought “It will never work”.  This is the habit of thinking that’s wired in the brain, and of course it will be very difficult to succeed in this environment.

This is all happening subconsciously.  These patterns get established very early in our lives, and we just carry them forward subconsciously into every new situation until we learn ways to institute a new habit of thinking.

When I work with a client that is instituting a new habit of exercise, I might have them work for a whole month just on establishing the habit of thinking “I am fit and healthy”, whatever phrase that we can come up with together that when they imagine themselves living this goal they feel excited and enthusiastic. And so they get the emotion going, excitement and energy, and the thought “I am a vital and healthy runner” for example, firing together naturally before they ever set foot on the exercise machine.  Taking the time to establish this new habit of thinking will exponentially increase the rate and speed of success.

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How to Make Your Resolution Stick

Posted on December 7, 2010
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When we talk about the psychology of success and psycho-neurology, there is a phrase that says “What wires together fires together”.   Here’s how it works:

Let’s say we were to take an MRI of your brain, and we told you to pick up your pen.  You usually pick up the pen in the exact same way every time.  Perhaps at first it was difficult.  Remember squeezing the pencil, forcing your middle finger down to hold it steady?  But eventually it became second nature.  So when you look at an MRI as you are picking up the pencil, the neuron center for the thumb, right finger and middle finger all fire together, and they start firing even before you reach for the pencil, just when you start to think about it.  It’s starts with the thought “I’m going to pick up the pen” and continues to the action of picking up the pen and making the letters.  So the thought and the action neurons all fire together in a pattern that is visible on MRI.

The same thing applies to everything we do, brushing our teeth, getting out of bed, putting on our clothes, all of these become established neuron patterns that all fire the same way virtually all of the time.  That’s the definition of a habit.

Emotions and thoughts have patterns too.  Say you hate your job, you are miserable.  The thoughts “I hate this job” and the emotions of anxiety and stress start to fire together way before you ever walk through the door to your office in the morning.

So what we know about making ideas stick is that you want to have the thought, emotion and action related to your idea all firing together, wiring together in a neuron pattern in the brain.  If you are instituting a new pattern or a new habit, for example you decide to start holding the pen in the other hand, it takes a while to establish these new neuron patterns, the new habit.

So in the Take 10 success system, we build in a 30 day process of consistent small actions that is designed to help ‘rewire’ the brain to align with the resolution, or Big Idea that you set.  You practice the same thing every day for 30 days until the habit is set.

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Eat for Brain Health

Posted on December 6, 2010
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Sorry to tell you folks, but the average American will consume 3500 calories at their holiday meal, much of that in the form of fat and simple carbs. This seems like a good time to talk about the impact of what we eat on our brains, doesn’t it?

Maybe you’re thinking “OK, let’s not invite Debbie Downer to our Thanksgiving feast”. No, really, I enjoy my fats and carbs as much as the next person. But we, and I definitely include myself in this ‘we’, can easily become recreational eaters. As you sit down to enjoy the communal and celebratory aspects of eating this season, consider also the miracle of our bodies and our brains, and how the food we take in nurtures and fuels us.

When we eat too little or too much, or too little or too much of certain things, it directly impacts our energy and our brain function. Too much fat and simple carbs will make us feel sluggish and sleepy. Too little food will make us feel drained or jittery. The amount and sequence of what we eat contributes to our sense of well being. For example, it’s been shown that small meals throughout the day help you sustain higher levels of energy than 2 or 3 larger meals. There is also research to show that a largely plant based diet, one where your body can pull the proteins it needs from a wide variety of foods, is much easier on the body than eating “complete proteins” like meat or dairy. Since it’s easier on the body, we feel more alert and vital.

There’s great news about chocolate. Chocolate contains flavonoids which help oxidize cholesterol, which in turn lowers plaque build up in the brain. Flavanoids also act like mild aspirin, improving circulation to the brain and elsewhere, lowering the risk of stroke. Red wine has the same goodies in it.

Fat is necessary for brain health. It’s critical. There’s some research that shows that low-fat diets, while they may improve heart disease outcomes, may increase mental health problems leading to increases in suicides, accidents and even homicides (lending credence to my feeling after trying one of those eating plans that I’d “kill for a piece of chocolate”). So you need dietary fat (not transfat, like french fry fat, but you know that already) for the acetylcholine it produces to feed to your neural transmitter cells.

So enjoy your eating this season, but remember that what you eat will affect your brain and impact your sense of health, vitality and wellbeing long after the last turkey sandwhich on rye with russian dressing and cranberry sauce with a pickled tomato on the side is consumed. Be conscious of when ‘enough is enough’. Eat strategically, eat consciously, and season every bite with a generous dose of gratitude.

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