Category: Mind Decluttering

Clutter isn’t just about stuff – mindset and emotions play a huge role.

Our thoughts and the stories we tell ourselves determine how we feel, what we do (or don’t do) and what results we create in our life.

If we, for example, tell ourselves, ‘I have never been organised, I’ll never be able to create a clutterfree life’, we will most probably experience negative feelings (such as overwhelm or resignation) which will cause us to procrastinate and postpone any decluttering activity. The result is that we continue to live in a cluttered home.

Thus, if we want to declutter our home and our life, we have to declutter our mind first, we have to get rid of the thoughts and feelings that don’t serve us.

How to declutter feelings of worry

The main problem with worry is that it’s not a very useful feeling.

Worrying – usually about things that might happen in the future and are outside of our control – is not helpful and often makes us feel helpless. And it doesn’t help us change what we worry about.

Thus, it might be a good idea to decide to stop worrying, or at least to reduce the amount of worry we are willing to feel.

If we want to ‘delete’ feelings of worry, we first have to uncover worry-producing thoughts in our mind.

We can ask ourselves:

- What am I thinking right now that makes me feel worried?

Then, we can start to search for new thoughts – different ways to think about the current or potential future circumstances and developments.

We now ask ourselves:

- What would I be thinking if I didn’t worry about this?

EXAMPLE:

This is the future event I am currently feeling worried about:

We have invited some friends for dinner on Saturday. We will be sitting outside in the backyard. It’s getting colder in the evenings.

What am I thinking right now that makes me feel worried?

I am worried because I am thinking: Our friends might get cold and feel uncomfortable the whole time. This would spoil the evening.

What would I be thinking if I didn’t worry about this?

I wouldn’t worry if I was thinking: Our friends know the weather condition and will bring a warm sweater along. And we have lots of blankets to keep them warm. We’ll have a nice evening.

Thinking better makes life better

If we want to make changes in our life, we have to make changes in our thinking – because what we think on a regular basis determines our life experience:

Our thoughts create our feelings, which fuel our actions, which create the results in our lives.

Before we can think about changing our thoughts, we need to become aware of what we are actually thinking.

The mind-decluttering model (based on ‘The Model’, The Life Coach School) is a great took that we use in coaching and self-coaching to gain greater awareness of what’s going on in our mind. CLICK HERE to learn more about the mind-decluttering process, OR HERE to read about the similarities of mental and physical clutter.)

Whenever a result in our life is not what we want it to be, whenever we don’t feel or act as we want to, we can ask ourselves powerful awareness-creating questions like these:

- What’s going on in my mind right now?
- What am I thinking?
- Does it serve me?
- How does it make me feeling?
- And acting?
- Do I like the results created by my thoughts, feelings, and actions?

TIP

It’s always good to write down the questions and our answers.

We get a clearer view into our mind and a better understanding of our thinking if we ‘take everything out’ and put it on paper.

Living WITH purpose or living ON purpose?

“Those with meaning in life are happier and healthier than those without it.”

(Dr Dilip Jeste, University of California, San Diego)

A huge number of studies in various scientific fields point out that there is a close relationship between the presence of meaning in life and a higher level of physical and mental well-being.

That’s nothing new, of course.

Most of us probably agree that searching for and finding a purpose in life can have significant positive effects on our health and well-being.

Living with purpose – What does this actually mean?

Do you know your purpose? Do you have a vision for your life?

Relax if these questions feel overwhelming, confusing, or uncomfortable – relax!

Our thoughts about life’s purpose don’t have to be complicated.

We can decide that diving deep into philosophical, spiritual, or scientific discussions is unnecessary.

The definition of ‘purpose’ could be as clear, simple, and practical as this one:

**The purpose of life is living on purpose.**

In this understanding, living our purpose means deliberately assigning meaning to our lives, who we are, and what we (want to) do while we are on this planet.

Living on purpose means living intentionally.

It’s intentionally thinking, feeling, and doing what we want to think, feel, and do.

It’s the opposite of living on default or autopilot.

It requires us to know and honour what matters to us—what we most value in life, what we feel passionate about, and what we think and appreciate about ourselves.

Living on purpose (= intentionally) provides us with clarity, guidance, and direction. It removes confusion or frustration and gives us something to work towards.

Living on purpose (= intentionally) also inspires and motivates us, giving us the energy and passion we need to move forward.

How can you find out what living with/on purpose could look like for you?

The following exercises intend to help you develop your very personal and individual idea of purpose so that you can apply it to give your life direction and meaning.

You can go through all the exercises or just choose one or two.

EXERCISE 1 – Ask your future self

Most of us have an idea of our life’s purpose inside us – whether we’re consciously aware of it or not.

Getting input from our future self can help us become more aware of what purpose means to us.

Lean back and imagine your future self celebrating her 90th birthday – completely happy and proudly looking back over her life.

Take a piece of paper and a pen, and allow yourself some quiet time to think about the story of your life from her – your future self’s – point of view.

You can start by letting your future self answer questions like these:

1. How do you describe yourself? What story do you tell about yourself?
2. What do you think and feel about yourself?
3. What do you especially like about your life? About yourself?
4. What is it about you that the people at your birthday party truly value?
5. What have you achieved in your life? Which challenges have you overcome? What are you particularly proud of?
6. What adds meaning to your life and gives you a sense of fulfilment?
7. What did you enjoy most in your life?
8. If you consider the most important areas in your life – how do you think and feel about them, now looking back at them at this point in life?

Have a closer look at:

- - your relationships (partner, family members, friends, colleagues, …),
  - your work/career,
  - your health and fitness,
  - your home,
  - your finances,
  - your leisure and community activities,
  - your …

**EXERCISE 2 – Create a vision for your future**

It is very important to ensure that our short-term and long-term goals fit into the bigger picture of our lives.

This exercise helps you understand the bigger picture of your life.

As soon as you have a clearer idea – a vision – of your life, you’ll find it much easier to articulate and prioritise your short and long-term goals and to develop action plans.

Where do you ultimately want to get to in your life?

Imagine there were no obstacles; you had a magic wand and could create whatever you wanted.

What do you want to be doing / how do you want to be living / who do you want to be

- at the end of your life
- 20 years from now
- 10 years from now
- 5 years from now
- 1 year from now

EXERCISE 3 – Create a 3-month vision board

This simple exercise helps you identify meaningful short-term changes you want to make in different areas of your life.

Allow yourself 30 to 60 minutes to consider the following questions to help you create your personal vision for the next 3 months.

Write your answers in the present tense, and be as specific as possible.

A) How do you want your life to be different in 3 months’ time?

Write below which changes (if any) you wish to make in the important areas of your life within the next 3 months:

- your relationships (partner, family members, friends, colleagues, …),
- your work/career,
- your health and fitness,
- your home,
- your finances,
- your leisure and community activities,
- your …

B) What is the most important change/goal you want to realise over the next 3 months?

C) If you have achieved this important change – what will your ‘ideal day’ look like in 3 months? What will be different compared to today? What are you thinking and feeling, what are you doing (or not doing), etc.

EXERCISE 4 – 3 little powerful questions

If you prefer to focus on just a few questions that can help you get a clearer idea of the priorities in your life you could consider these:

- What are you currently excited about in your life?
- What does it mean to you to have a full and rich life?
- How could you have more fun and joy in your life?

You will probably not arrive at a final definition of your personal idea of living on purpose just by doing some little exercises.

But anything that helps us identify our priorities in life will make it easier to move forward in a meaningful and intentional way.

Give it a try – Invest some time to think about what it means to you to live on/with purpose.

HOW CAN I HELP YOU?

Are you tired?

Tired of trying to (re)organise the various areas of your life entirely on your own?

Tired of investing vast amounts of time and energy in finding a way to create a better organised = better life?

Tired of feeling overwhelmed, confused, frustrated, stressed, disappointed, exhausted, …?

Fortunately, you don’t have to figure it out all by yourself.

We can do it together.

You can decide to get my support, advice, and guidance – and achieve the desired changes in your life so much faster and easier.

Check out how I can help you.

Why we need failure on our way to success

Our failures can help us become more successful

If we set ourselves goals, there is always the risk that we don’t reach them, that we fail.

And what we often do, because of that ‘risk’ of failure – we pull back:

We let go of that goal completely or we make it smaller, easier to achieve.

There is nothing wrong with this as long as we feel happy and content about the achievement of those smaller easier goals.

If, however, we feel dissatisfied, disappointed, frustrated, if we cannot truly enjoy the results we currently have, we might want to have a closer look at our fear of failure that holds us back from working on big(ger) goals.

Some time ago, we talked about ‘How to fail successfully’.

We discussed that the only reason why we try our very best to avoid failure is because we try to avoid the bad feelings we expect to show up if we miss our expectations and desired results.

And that the only reason why we connect bad feelings with failure is because we have negative thoughts about failing.

We are the ones who decide what failure means to us.

Unfortunately, we very often decide to think about failed expectations in a negative way, in a way that creates negative feelings like disappointment, shame, pain.

The recommendation in the article mentioned above was to deliberately start getting good at failing by doing it often and by appreciating failures as learning opportunities.

Today we want to discuss the second suggestion a bit deeper:

How to deliberately use the learning and growth potential of failures.

Imagine you would always win.

You would achieve all the goals you set yourself and create any results you wanted to have. No matter what you did it was a success.

No challenges and obstacles to overcome, no difficulties to move out of the way, no two steps forward and one backward, always all expectation met.

Wouldn’t that be boring?

Not only boring but probably even awful. Because winning effortlessly all the time would also mean:

no opportunities for self-development and growth, no need for experimenting, no innovation and new – and potentially better – ways to approach things and move forward.

Failure has much to offer

Most of us don’t want to spend time with our failures. Instead, we want to move on and forget about ‘what went wrong’.

But we can learn so much from our failures – if we take the time and effort to understand what they want to tell us.

We can decide on purpose to use any failure as a neutral (not negative!) source of information, offering valuable insights and ideas for innovation.

Three powerful questions to create success from failure

(Source: Stacey Boehman, 2k program)

1. What worked?
2. What didn’t work?
3. What am I going to do differently?

Let’s have a look how this works.

EXERCISE

Decide to invest some time to really evaluate a failure experience. Sit down and take out a piece of paper and a pen.

Step 1 – Choose a recent failure that you want to evaluate

Think about your recent failures. And pick one. It could be something small or big.

‘Failure’ examples:

- You didn’t get the job you applied for.
- A prospect didn’t become a client.
- You lost a tennis match.
- The sweater you knitted doesn’t fit.
- You didn’t achieve your weight loss goals.
- The weekend trip with your mother-in-law was a disaster.

Step 2 – Start working on the first question: What worked?

You mind might want to immediately offer answers to the question what didn’t work – ignore it for now.

It is important to start with thinking about what worked because that brings you to a more positive place and makes you open to the insights that can be gained.

List everything that went well. Every little thing. Don’t let yourself off the hook, keep writing.

Ask, for example,

- What did I do well?
- Which of the actions I took were effective?
- What helpful thoughts did I have?
- What useful beliefs did I create?
- What ideas?
- Etc.

List anything that brought you in the intended direction.

Step 3 – Now answer the second question: What didn’t work?

Try to be open and curious, and non-judgemental.

Keep the list as neutral as possible, avoid negative adjectives. This is just about creating an inventory of the things (actions and thoughts) that didn’t work out, it’s not about collecting accusations.

Ask, for example,

- Which thoughts or beliefs got into my way and kept me from doing what had to be done?
- In which ways didn’t I show up like I wanted?
- Did I lack certain skills or necessary knowledge?
- Etc.

Step 4 – Finally think about this: What are you going to do differently?

Based on your answers to the other two questions you can now make a plan and list what you want to do differently in future.

This step is vital for our development and our future successes, but most of us don’t do it – because we are so eager to get away from the failure experience.

What you are going to do differently is your new roadmap.

Even if your next goal is different from this missed one, you will still benefit from what you learned here if you make a plan how to apply it in your next project.

“We think we fail and go backward. We only go back when we give up. When you fail, you’re moving forward.” (Brooke Castillo)

A powerful question to open up your mind – What do you want to feel?

Don’t let your mind run on default – Use powerful questions to direct your thinking.

In the first article of the new ‘Powerful Questions Series’ we talked about the tendency of our mind to always focus on the bad, difficult, negative parts of our daily life experience – if we allow it to run on default.

We also discussed how we can use powerful positive questions to counter the negative and limiting tendencies of our mind and open it up to the opportunities and possibilities that our life has to offer.

Questioning our current thinking can help us become more aware of the effects our current thoughts have on our feelings, actions and results. It becomes easier to consider new and potentially better ways of thinking.

The powerful question in Part 1 of the series was, ‘ How do I want to feel just now?’

It’s a very helpful question and we should definitely keep it in our toolbox of mind-empowering questions. We can take it out whenever we are in a situation where we wish to actively take control of what we are feeling in that specific moment.

A similar question that can serve us very well is

**‘What do I want my top feeling to be today?’**

The purpose of this question is to give our thoughts and feelings a clear direction for the whole day, not just for the current moment/situation.

Asking ourselves what we want to feel reminds us that we don’t have to feel whatever comes up.

Our thoughts create our feelings. And we can always decide what we want to think about the circumstances in our life.

If we don’t like how we feel, we can explore what we would have to think to feel the way we want to.

DAILY EXERCISE

- Take a few minutes in the morning and think about the day that has just started.
- Consider the activities and tasks you are going to do, the people you are going to meet or get in contact with, the things that might come up during the day, etc.
- Then choose the top feeling for the day. How do you want to feel throughout the day, not matter what exactly is going to happen or not to happen?
- Choose just one feeling as your favourite feeling and decide to give that one feeling your full attention and support during the day.
- Find ways to remind yourself of the chosen feeling at different times of the day, and in different situations. (Write it on post-its, put it in your calendar, send yourself an email and put it in the subject line, set the timer on your mobile phone to remind you regularly, …)
- And the following morning, when you choose the top feeling for the new day, take a few minutes to evaluate your experiences with the top feeling of the day before.

The answer to the question (What do I want my top feeling to be today?) is probably a different one for each of us. It might also be a different one for you each day, depending on your specific situation and plans at that time.

On some days, your favourite feeling might be ‘confidence’. Or ‘peacefulness’? On other days it might be ‘courage’. Or ‘strong’? Or ‘excited’? ‘Curious’? ‘Loving’? ‘Compassion’?

You choose. You just pick the feeling that seems to be best for that time being. And then you stick to it, for the whole day.

Other feelings might come up, don’t judge them but don’t let them take over. Just redirect your attention to your top feeling, and explore what you want to think to create that feeling.

Enjoy your day and your top feeling!

HOW CAN I HELP YOU?

Are you tired?

Tired of trying to (re)organise the various areas of your life entirely on your own?

Tired of investing vast amounts of time and energy in finding a way to create a better organised = better life?

Tired of feeling overwhelmed, confused, frustrated, stressed, disappointed, exhausted, …?

Fortunately, you don’t have to figure it out all by yourself.

We can do it together.

You can decide to get my support, advice, and guidance – and achieve the desired changes in your life so much faster and easier.

Check out how I can help you.

How we can balance the negative in our life with the positive – and feel better

When life feels hard, we can ask a little question to open up our mind.

Life is 50:50

The thought that our life experience is and will always be 50:50 – 50% positive and 50% negative – can be very helpful, especially at times when we feel a bit overwhelmed by the demands and challenges that our daily life throws at us.

It can be a relief to deliberately remind ourselves that ‘there are two sides to every coin’ and that ‘every cloud has a silver lining’.

But how can we flip the coin so that we can see the positive side

- when everything just seems to be so dark, and dull, and hard?
- When our intellectual knowledge about the power of positive thoughts doesn’t help us at all because we just can’t find anything positive to think about?

A little two-step exercise to shift the focus of our mind from negative to positive

Step 1: We accept our ‘dark’ thoughts and feelings, we no longer fight or resist them.

We decide to stop feeling bad about feeling bad. We allow ourselves to experience the negative thoughts that our human mind tends to bring up in challenging times.

Being human is not easy all the time, as we all know.

Being human includes that we sometimes think and feel that life is too hard, that we experience some days or periods in our life as dark and painful. And that’s okay. We don’t always have to try to change it, we can decide to just accept it as it currently is.

Step 2: We open up our mind by asking ourselves: What else is true? (Source: April Price)

As we no longer have to argue with our mind about the hard parts of our life and we no longer have to resist the negative thoughts and feelings it brings up, we gain mental space and new energy to now say,

‘Yes, okay, this is hard. But what else is true?’ What does the other side of the coin look like? Where is the silver lining?

This little exercise can very quickly help us

- redirect our attention to the positive things in our life (which are always there, and always make up 50%),
- without denying or suppressing the negative parts of our current experience (which are always there, yes, but make up only 50%).

Example

This is one example of how I used the 2 steps during the pandemic 2020:

My four sisters live in Germany, far away from me. During Covid, I worried a lot about them. I knew that they felt frustrated and sometimes isolated and lonely because of all the restrictions and regulations. I thought of them often, I felt sorry for them, and sad.

I did the little exercise in writing. This is an excerpt from my notes:

“Step 1: I accept my thoughts and feelings.

Okay, that’s how it is at the moment. I believe that life is difficult and hard for my sisters right now. The consequence is that I have thoughts that make me feel sad about/for them. And that’s okay. No need to force myself to think/feel better about it.

Step 2: I ask myself, ‘What else is true’

I list all the answers that come to my mind:

My sisters are more connected to each other now because they are all in the same situation. They have more empathy and understanding for each other. They help and support each other. They are all strong and capable to cope with this situation and they will get even stronger because of it. They are all doing comparatively well – they are healthy, have their families around, have their jobs/enough money.”

At the end of this little exercise I still felt sad – and that was okay – but I also felt calmer and less worried.

Give it a try – Create a balance of positive and negative

What’s a situation that you are experiencing as negative or hard, that you have ‘dark’ thoughts and feelings of worry or sadness about?

Could it be helpful to you

- to first deliberately accept these thoughts and feelings, and then
- to ask, ‘What else is true about this situation?’

Why it is so important to ask our mind the right questions

Our mind is the most powerful tool we have – if we learn how to use it in a powerful way.

If we don’t pay close attention to our mind, it will do what it is used to do and good at – and that’s constantly looking out for danger and risks that could jeopardise our well-being.

If we let it do what it wants to do, our brain will bring up a lot of negative thoughts and limiting self-talk throughout the day – just to keep us where we are and away from doing new or difficult things.

We can decide to no longer let our mind run on default.

We can take our power back by telling our mind that it’s no longer in charge, that it can relax and calm down – because now we will take the lead and we decide what we want to think, feel, and do.

Thinking better makes us feel better. And when we feel better, we are better able to take the necessary actions that allow us to create the results we want to have in our life.

When we ask ourselves powerful questions, our mind opens up and answers with powerful thoughts.

One of the various ways to take control and to use our mind as a powerful positive life-management tool is to ask the right questions.

An example of a powerful question: ‘How do I want to feel just now?’

The purpose of this question is to create greater awareness of what we are thinking and feeling during the day.

It also helps us to define the feelings we want to feel, and to find the thoughts we need to think to create those feelings.

INSTRUCTIONS

- Sit down in the morning, think about the question (‘How do I want to feel today?’) for a few minutes, then write down your answer.
- Try to remind yourself to think about the question again and again throughout the day. Ask yourself at different times of the day and in different situations how you want to feel right in that moment.
- If you don’t feel and act as you want, you can ask yourself: ‘What do I need to think right now to make me feel and act the way I want?’

EXAMPLE

Let’s say your answer to your question in the morning was, ‘I want to feel calm today’.

But then, on your way back from work, you notice that your are feeling stressed and frustrated.

Now you ask, ‘What do I need to think to feel calm instead of stressed and frustrated right now?’

The answer might be: ‘These are the thoughts I want to focus on now: Work is over for today. That’s good. I managed to get a lot done today. That’s also good. I’m looking forward to taking care of myself and relaxing at home. That’s very good. :)’

GIVE IT A TRY

Tomorrow morning, take a few minutes to find your answer to the example question, ‘How do I want to feel today?’

And then, throughout the day, practice becoming aware of your feelings and deliberately changing your thoughts whenever necessary.

For more information about the power of positive questions (and the negative effects of negative questions) CLICK HERE.

The secret of self-confidence is our willingness to experience any emotion

**Self-confidence is a skillset we need to build up and practice**

We often think that self-confidence is something that we either have or don’t have.

But confidence is not something that we are born with, it’s not a special talent or gift.

In fact, confidence is an emotion and – as all our emotions – self-confidence is created by our thinking:

The quality and level of our self-confidence depends on our mind – on our thoughts about our capabilities and on our trust in ourselves, and in our willingness to do what we want to do – whatever the consequences of our actions might be.

Where do trustful thoughts about ourselves come from?

It’s easy to think confident thoughts when we have already accomplished something.

And we usually think that we feel confident because we have done it so often, because we have the experience of doing it.

But confidence doesn’t come from doing something many times. It’s just easier to think the thought, ‘I can do that’, when we have done it many times.

Whenever we want to do something we have never done before, we need to feel confident about our ability to do it before we start doing it.

And that’s not so easy most of the time.

We all know from our own experience in different areas of our lives that a lack of self-confidence can keep us from taking action, from doing what we want to do and from trying and achieving new things.

So how can we deliberately create the thought, ‘I can do that’, and then feel confident before we do it?

The main secret to self-confidence is our willingness to experience any emotion.

As human beings we are afraid of the emotion that we expect to feel if we fail.

We are afraid that if we take action and fail at what we are trying to do, we will feel inadequate, humiliated, embarrassed, defeated, … .

If we deliberately decide to be willing to experience any emotion, if we are getting good at feeling any feeling, then we will have self-confidence in everything we do.

The worst that can happen is a negative feeling – and as soon as we know that we can handle any negative feelings, we no longer lack self-confidence.

Two ways to increase our self-confidence

Strategy 1 – Practicing self-confidence producing thoughts

This strategy is quite simple and it can easily be integrated in our daily life.

We first create a list of helpful thoughts – thoughts that support confidence-feelings.

And then we just practice thinking them daily – and particularly when we feel hesitant to take action and do something new.

Some examples:

- What others think about me is 100% about them, it has nothing to do with me.
- Fear is no big deal.
- The worst that can happen is a feeling. I am good at feeling any feeling.
- Failure earns success. The more I fail, the faster I’ll succeed.
- The better I fail, the more confident I become.
- What I make it mean is the worst that can happen.
- I am willing to do the stuff I am scared of. Again and again.
- Self-confidence is a skill. I am determined to become an expert at feeling self-confident.
- I am willing to experience discomfort consistently in order to be more self-confident.
- (Add thoughts that will help you to feel more confident.)

Strategy 2 – Experiencing failure, on purpose

The ‘Dare of the Day’ Exercise (Source: The Life Coach School)

This exercise helps us to get good at doing things that we are scared of. because we fear the negative feelings that might come up while we are doing those things or if we fail at finishing them successfully.

The ‘Dare of the Day’ is a challenging exercise but it can also be a lot of fun. And it’s a confidence booster.

Step 1 – Commit yourself to do a ‘Dare of the day’, each day, for 30 days, starting today.

Step 2 – Create a list of ‘Dares of the day’.

Do some brainstorming and write down all the things – big and small – that you don’t feel comfortable doing:

- Things that you are scared to do for some reason.
- Things that you always wanted to do but never did (because of fear of failure?).
- Things that you never considered to do but that might be interesting and offering new experiences and results in your life.
- Things that allow you to experiment with uncomfortable feelings.
- Things that are just fun – but a bit scary.

Examples:

- Go up to a stranger and ask for something.
- Give someone a compliment who doesn’t expect it.
- Ask for the day off.
- Say no when the other person expects a yes.
- Say yes when the other person expects a no.
- Ask for a pay raise, or a promotion.
- Speak in public.
- Smile at a grumpy stranger.
- Wear a sexy outfit.
- Cry in public if you feel like crying.
- Laugh hysterically in public if you feel like laughing.
- Ask for a discount.
- Go on a blind date.
- Ask someone a huge favour.
- Offer your help to a stranger.
- Give your unfriendly neighbour some flowers.
- Book your first golf lesson.
- Get up an hour earlier.
- Come late to an important meeting.
- Don’t apologize when you are late.
- Call a family member you haven’t talked to for a long time.
- Write a letter to apologize for something you feel bad about.
- Get a new haircut.
- Ask your dinner guests to go when you are tired.
- … (Add all the things that scare you – they will help you to grow.)

Play around with as many ideas as possible. You can add to your list whenever new ideas come up.

“The more outrageous your dare, the more self-confident you will be. The point is to get really good at doing scary things.” (Brooke Castillo)

Step 3 – Each morning, you pick your ‘Dare of the Day’ for that day. And then you do it.

And learn from it.

The best way to do so is to write about it before and after:

- Why is this thing a dare for you?
- What are you thinking and feeling before your do it?
- What are your thoughts and feelings after you did it?

Step 4 – Don’t miss a day for 30 days in a row.

And don’t forget to have fun. Enjoy the process of getting more and more confident. Each ‘Dare of the Day’ will make you stronger.

Tip – You could share this exercise with a family member or friend. Having an accountability partner can help you ‘dare the dares’. And it’s also fun to share your experiences and learn from them together.

Now it’s your turn:

What’s your ‘Dare of the Day’ – today?

Your mood booster – The 3 G’s

How to feel better, on purpose, here and now

Our brain’s main job is to keep us safe and alive.

That’s why our mind thinks it’s very important that we focus our attention and our thinking all the time on problems and obstacles, difficulties and risks, and potential danger.

But we don’t have to let our mind run on default.

We can intentionally decide what type of thoughts we want to be thinking – which means we can also intentionally direct our feelings.

So if we are in ‘a bad mood’ and we want to change that, we can always go and look at the thoughts that are creating our mood and change them.

Changing our thoughts, however, is not always easy and it can take some time and energy.

But there are short cuts that can help us feel better faster.

The application of ‘the 3 Gs’ is one of them. (Source: April Price)

The 3 Gs – Your immediate mood booster

This little self-coaching tool is easy to apply and you can use it anytime, anywhere to make you feel better almost immediately.

It causes your mind to refocus its attention on the positive – on what’s working, on the abundance of your life, and on the good stuff you want to create in your life.

This is how it works:

Whenever you feel like your mood needs a boost, you ask yourself

- G 1 – What’s good in my life today/just now?
- G 2 – What am I particularly grateful for today/just now?
- G 3 – What goal will make me feel excited today/just now?

EXAMPLE

I use the 3 Gs technique regularly in the early morning.

On many days, I don’t feel very energised and powerful when I wake up. Often, I feel weak and miserable – even if there is no obvious reason.

My strategy now is to give myself a few minutes to create a mood shift before I get out of the bed.

I give my mind an early morning job to do. I ask it to focus its attention and to find answers to the question ‘What are my 3 Gs today?’

Today, for example, my mind and I came up with these answers:

- G 1 – It’s Good that the client meeting in the afternoon has been cancelled – I can use the time to call my sister and share the latest news.
- G 2 – I am Grateful that the arrival of our new puppy has now be confirmed for next Monday.
- G 3 – This is the most exciting Goal on my to-do list today: Ordering toys online for the puppy.

Give it a try.

Take the idea of the 3 Gs along through your day, and then, when the need for a mood booster comes up, you asks your mind to find and focus on 3 attractive Gs.

How to find the good stuff in our lives

Why we should organise a special ‘Easter Egg Hunt around Christmas’ this year

When I wrote my blog post for Easter beginning of April this year (2020), I definitely didn’t expect it to be still valid at the time of the year end holiday season – more than 8 months later.

At that time, I had thought that life would be back to ‘normal’ at the end of the year, I hadn’t had any doubt that Corona would be ‘an old hat’ at Christmas.

I was totally wrong – as nearly everyone.

The Corona Virus is still around, and in many parts of the world the situation has become much worse than anyone had expected. And the tough thing is that it’s still very difficult to ‘see light at the end of the tunnel’.

Life remains challenging!

The header of my article in April was ‘Easter 2020 will not be what Easter used to be’. If I wrote it now, I’d just call it ‘Christmas 2020 will not be what Christmas used to be’ and I could reuse pretty much all of the content again.

Instead of doing so, I’d like to refer you to the Easter post and the idea of a special fun activity I had proposed at that time: ‘The Feeling-better Easter Egg Hunt’ – Searching, finding and appreciating the good stuff.

Have a look at the ‘old’ article – your might want to use the little Egg Hunt exercise as an intentional mood-improvement activity – on your own or with family/friends – during the holidays.

The ‘Treasure Chest’ Exercise offers another great way to strengthen our ‘feeling positive muscle’. Click here and start to collect positive thoughts and feelings.

Look out for ‘the good eggs in your basket’

– for the good things you are personally experiencing right now. And also search for the good stuff that’s happening around you, in your family, in your community, and in the world.

Deliberately appreciating what we have is a great way to make us feel better, on purpose and immediately. We all know that – so let’s do it, now.

How to improve relationships – with family members and others

The holidays with family – good times or bad times?

Traditional family gatherings can create a mixture of emotions and experiences – and not all of them are positive and feel good.

Spending more time than usually with family can be fun, it can build and strengthen feelings of love and connection.

But times of family reunions like the Christmas season, of course, can also include boring or uncomfortable rituals and customs – like long hours of eating, drinking and talking – and strict expectations about how we should behave and contribute to the celebrations.

Old family stories, the good ones and the bad ones, can still effect the delicate network of feelings that link us with our close and also with the more distant family members.

Also, relationships between family members or between groups of relatives can change over time, they can improve but they can also deteriorate for various reasons.

We don’t feel close to and we don’t like everyone just because they are somehow related to us.

This might not be an issue during the year when we manage to avoid seeing them but it can become a problem if we are expected to spend a lot of time with them over the festive season.

What can we do to improve our relationships with ‘difficult’ family members?

Our thoughts determine the quality of our relationships with other people. What we think about a family member influences how we feel and act when we are with them.

If we think that a person ‘is difficult’ we will feel a certain type of emotion – like stress, defensiveness, frustration, judgment – which will lead to a certain type of behaviour – like trying to avoid that person, treating them with unfriendliness, reacting in a resentful way – which will most probably make our relationship and our encounters with that person difficult.

Gaining awareness is always the starting point for positive change

Before we can make any change to the better, we have to become aware of the thoughts we have about the person with whom we want to get on better.

And very often, gaining awareness of our thinking is actually all we need to open us up and create an understanding that allows us to change our thoughts, feelings and actions – and automatically the relationship will change.

A great technique to increase our self-awareness and our openness to see the other one in a more objective and neutral way is to deliberately focus our attention on the fact that there is a lot we have in common with the other person.

This technique (source: Jody Moore) is easy to apply and really helpful when we struggle or feel stuck in our relationship with another person.

A mind-opening question: In which ways is he/she just like you?

Instead of just thinking, ‘She is difficult’, we can ask ourselves: ‘In what ways is she like me?’

And when we answer this question honestly, we can easily see: ‘Yes, she is difficult in certain areas, like I am difficult in certain areas. She is just like me!’

EXAMPLE

Imagine this little scenario:

You are preparing the Christmas dinner.

Your sister joins you in the kitchen and very soon you are in a disagreement with her about how to cook a certain dish. If you are arguing and feeling defensive it’s probably because you are having thoughts like, ‘She is wrong, I am right. As always, she is not listening, she is not respecting my way of doing things.’

Now is the right time for you to stop and interrupt what’s going on in your mind by asking yourself, ‘ In what ways is she like me?’

It might be that there is a lot you share with your sister:

- She has clear ideas about the preparation of the food – just like you.
- She has opinions about the steps to be taken, and she gets confused if other people don’t see it her way – just like you.
- She wants validation and wants to be right – just like you.
- She might be feeling disrespected – just like you.

Seeing all the ways your sister is just like you will help you feel compassion and connected to her.

Give it a try

– when you are feeling attacked or annoyed by people, of if you are feeling judgemental of others –

take a step back and deliberately appreciate all the areas where you are the same.

It will get you to a more compassionate place. And to better relationships.

HOW CAN I HELP YOU?

Are you tired?

Tired of trying to (re)organise the various areas of your life entirely on your own?

Tired of investing vast amounts of time and energy in finding a way to create a better organised = better life?

Tired of feeling overwhelmed, confused, frustrated, stressed, disappointed, exhausted, …?

Fortunately, you don’t have to figure it out all by yourself.

We can do it together.

You can decide to get my support, advice, and guidance – and achieve the desired changes in your life so much faster and easier.

Check out how I can help you.

What to do if mirroring others’ behaviours and attitudes doesn’t serve us

What is mirroring and how can we manage it intentionally?

Human beings are social beings and that’s why relationships with others impact our lives significantly.

We all crave connection and approval, we want and need to feel loved and valued by others, especially our family members and close friends.

As relationships are so important to us, we want them to be good, and healthy, positive and enjoyable.

But – as we all know – relationships can be challenging and complicated in dynamics.

This is especially the case at times like the upcoming festive season when we come together with family members we haven’t seen for a while, and when we generally spend much more time together with our relatives than usual throughout the year.

We want to have a good time together and enjoy each other’s company.

A typical human way of building strong connections and greater understanding with someone else is to mirror the other person.

Mirroring happens subconsciously most of the time. We are usually not aware that we are replicating another person’s nonverbal signals, that we imitate their gestures, speech patterns, attitudes or moods.

The positive effects of mirroring each other

In many circumstances and situations, mirroring serves us well and there is no need to become more aware of our imitating actions and reactions. We don’t need to change what makes us feel good.

Imagine a situation like this one:

Your aunt is coming over for Christmas dinner. And she is apparently very happy to see you, she is lovely and kind, and smiling, and curious and asks you a lot of questions.

You’ll probably mirror her without even thinking about it: You direct your attention to your aunt, and start smiling, too, and you react and respond in a kind and friendly way, and show interest in her. The two of you have a lively conversation and feel connected and close to each other.

The negative effects of mirroring each other

Unconscious mirroring, though, can also create problems occasionally. And it seems that this happens especially in emotionally charged situations such as family gatherings.

We not only mirror positive good-feeling signals from others, we also mirror negative attitudes and behaviours.

If someone is critical or judgemental of us, our default reaction is to move into that same negative space. We tend to become critical and judgemental, too.

Imagine a scenario like this one:

Your mother-in-law joins you in the kitchen while you are preparing the Christmas dinner. And she immediately starts criticising what you are doing, suggesting other – ‘better’ – ways of meal preparations, giving comments like ‘you never knew how to do this correctly, I’ll better do this’.

Your normal human behaviour will be to mirror her – you will begin to think and feel and act critically and judgemental of her. Additionally, you might judge yourself for criticising your mother-in-law for her judgments of you. Probably, the atmosphere at dinner will not be very easy-going and joyful.

How can we break the circle of mirroring?

As human beings, we have the ability to override our default mirroring settings, we can decide to stop mirroring the people around us.

Breaking the pattern requires awareness.

In many cases, just the awareness of it will help us to immediately let go of the mirroring.

In other cases, it requires special attention and effort to make changes, especially if the cycle of mirroring was established a while ago and has become a habit for one (or both) people in the relationship.

We know what to expect especially in our most challenging relationships. We know what’s probably going to happen – and we can decide to no longer allow the automatic mirroring to happen!

It helps to be well prepared and intentional before we enter a situation that usually initiates the negative mirroring on one (or both) sides.

We take our time to find one helpful thought that we want to choose on purpose when the challenging encounter takes place next time.

And we memorise that thought. We practice it, again and again, until we are 100% sure that we will easily remember it when we’ll need it.

A powerful thought for the mother-in-law scenario described above could be:

- My mother-in-law is critical and judgemental and that’s o.k. It’s all about her and has nothing to do with me. She can be critical – and I can be calm.
- Or: Okay, she needs to be right all the time. I can understand that. I don’t mind. I don’t need to be right all the time.
- Or: Mirroring my mother-in-law is a choice. This year I choose not to mirror her. That’s actually a relief. I can show up as I want to.

What about you and your mirroring tendencies?

What are the situations and relationships that trigger your negative mirroring pattern?

What if you decided to get well prepared – choose a powerful thought and practice it! – and to let go of the mirroring?

How could that positively change the ‘typical’ scenario?

We are all in control of our life experience – if we decide to actively take control of our mind.

Our thoughts not only determine the quality of our relationships with our family members and friends, but they also determine our relationship with our home, our money, our health, our work – and our relationship with ourselves.

We can change and improve any relationship and experience in our life if we change and improve what we are thinking.

Letting go of the clutter in our mind enables us to move on and create the relationships and experiences we want to have.

The ‘How to enjoy the Holidays with Family’ Series.

Read more:

- What do you want to think about your family? (Part 1)
- How to improve relationships – with family members and others (Part 3)