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Decluttering our home is not always easy.

Sometimes, we struggle to let go of a possession although we don’t use it or don’t like it.

• • It could be a pair of shoes that we bought 6 months ago and have never worn. We don’t want to give it away because, yes, it’s a bit small, but maybe we could wear it without socks in summer?
  • Or a picture we inherited from our grandmother. Whenever we look at it we think that it actually doesn’t fit in our home and that we don’t like it. But how could we dare to get rid of it – it’s from our grandmother!

In situations like these, if often helps to put that item in question away for a while.

We put the shoes in a box in the garage and decide to get them out again in 3 months. We take grandma’s picture from the wall and hide it behind the wardrobe for 30 days.

And then we wait and see what happens.

Do we miss the thing that’s no longer visible and accessible? Most often, we don’t. We completely forget about its existence.

Then, after 3 months or 30 days have passed, it’s easy to now take the final step and get the item out of the house.

It is similar with the useless things we keep in our mind.

Decluttering our mind is also not always easy.

Sometimes, we struggle to let go of a thought although we know that it doesn’t serve us, that it holds us back, has become a burden.

It could be a thought we ‘inherited’ from someone else.

Maybe our teacher in primary school has ‘given’ us the thought that we are hopeless when it comes to finishing a task on time. We keep the thought, ‘I don’t manage to finish things on time’ although we know it’s definitely not serving us. We might even doubt that it is true but still can’t let it go.

It could be a thought that we ourselves ‘invented’ and keep thinking.

We, for example, have decided that if we don’t say what we think we can avoid the risk of hurting someone else’s feelings. We don’t like this thought because it makes our relationships complicated but we struggle to get it out of our mind.

In these mind-clutter situations we can apply the same strategy that’s so helpful with physical clutter issues:

We get the ugly or useless or harmful thought out of the way for some time. And we decide to replace it with another thought for that period of time.

EXERCISE

Step 1 – Choose a thought that you don’t like and that’s not serving you.

Something like ‘I don’t manage to finish things on time’ from the example above. This thought makes us feel incompetent and slow which causes us to act in an incompetent way which creates results that reinforce the ‘fact’ that we don’t finish things on time.

Step 2 – Decide what you want to think instead.

Now you play around with different thoughts that you could use as a replacement for the old one.

If we take the example above, we could ask ourselves, ‘What do I have to think so that I feel competent and agile and act in a way that lets me finish things on time?’  A suitable thought could be, ‘I know what to do and I do it efficiently, on time’. If that thought doesn’t fit yet, we could choose something like ‘I am good at learning to do things efficiently and on time’.

Step 3 – You practice the new thought and lock the old one away

You store the old thought away at the back of your mind and practice the new thought continuously. And whenever the old thought pops up, you remind yourself, ‘Oh no, I’m not thinking that thought for a month. For now, I only allow myself to think the new thought’.

The nice thing with thoughts that we have proven to be useless and powerless is that they disappear on their own – as soon as we have successfully established the new thought in our mind, they old one is gone – it vanishes into thin air.

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Confused? What if you knew what to do?

So often when we are faced with a challenge, or a new task, or a tough goal, our mind guides us into confusion.

It brings up thoughts like ‘I don’t know what to do’, ‘I don’t know where and how to start’, ‘I don’t know how to do this’.

The result of feeling confused is, of course, feeling stuck and overwhelmed.

And not doing anything.

We can get ourselves out of confusion and indecision by asking ourselves

• • ‘If I did know what to do, what would I do?
  • And then, what would I do next?’

Now our mind has a clear task it can focus on, it has a problem to solve. All we have to do is to give our mind time and space to think.

It might need some practice but soon your mind will get used to focus on finding answers and solutions instead of spinning around in confusion.

Answer your questions in writing

It’s a good idea to put your thoughts down in writing. Writing slows us down and allows us to process our thoughts better.

Get out a pen and some paper and start writing.

Write out your problem and then write out the two question – and your answers. In writing!

• • ‘If I did know what to do, what would I do?
  • And then, what would I do next?’

Trust yourself, your mind will find the answers.

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The purpose of fear

Fear is one of those emotions that have played an important role in the human evolution – fear has kept us away from dangerous situations and helped us survive.

That’s why our mind is programmed for fear for survival, and fear still serves us in many ways.

It keeps us away from doing things that could hurt us, such as running into traffic. It helps us make better decisions when it comes to our safety, like complying with social distancing rules during pandemics.

However, fear is no longer as necessary as it used to be, most of our day-to-day fear is not necessary and not useful.

Often, useless fear keeps us from doing what we want to do, it causes us to avoid certain situations or activities, it can limit our personal growth potential.  

Having fear is part of the human experience.

If we want to overcome fear we first need to understand that having fear doesn’t mean that something has gone wrong with us. It doesn’t mean that we are weak or cowardly.

As human beings we are wired for survival and having fear is a normal part of the human experience.

Thus, accepting that fear is going to be part of our life can make it much easier to live with it.

Our thoughts create our fear.

Most of the self-limiting fear we have comes from a thought in our mind, a thought that might be irrational but nevertheless is creating fear which then keeps us from taking action.

As soon as we find that irrational thought and its cause, we can start to work on getting the fear out of our way.

One way to do so is to deliberately change our thoughts.

Let’s have a look at an example – The fear of public speaking

Many people are terrified of public speaking.

The fear of putting ourselves out there is often caused by another fear – the fear of potential humiliation. We are afraid of making a mistake and being laughed at because we believe that that would make us feel terrible.

Thus not the act of talking in front of an audience causes our fear of public speaking but the idea that our feelings could get hurt.

As soon as we understand the fear-causing thoughts, we can decide that we no longer want to believe them. We can search for more useful thoughts and replace the old ones.

We can, for example, decide to start thinking:

• • Being laughed at during a public speech is not the end of the world.
  • The worst thing that could happen is feeling humiliated.
  • And that’s just a temporary feeling, it will go away.
  • And experiencing it will make us stronger.

Taking action while feeling fear is a skill that we can develop.

If the fear-causing thoughts and the fear itself (in this case the fear of humiliation) are deep-seated and hard to change, we can decide to take action anyway.

We don’t have to be fearless to take action.

Taking action while we are still feeling fear is always possible:

• • We might need to remind ourselves that there is no real danger, that it’s not about life or death.
  • We consider the worst that can happen and tell ourselves that we will survive it.
  • We decide that we don’t give in to our fear of fear.
  • And then we do the thing we are afraid of.

“It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default.” (J.K. Rowling)

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Do you ‘like’ your failures? ?

• • What have been the 3 biggest failures in your life so far?
  • What were your 5 most important failures last month?
  • How often did you fail last week?
  • What’s your most recent failure?

Do these questions make you feel uncomfortable?

Most of us don’t like to talk about our failures. And we don’t like to think about them.

Instead, we try to forget them as quickly as possible.

And if we don’t manage to get them out of our mind, we at least try to hide them from other people’s eyes.

We tend to fear failure and try our very best to avoid failure because we feel bad when we fail.

But the only reason why we feel bad about our failures is because we have negative thoughts about failing.

What is failure?

Failure happens when we set out to do something, and we have an expectation of the result of our action(s), and then we miss that expectation, we don’t achieve the result we wanted to have.   

At this point, failure is still something neutral, it’s neither negative nor positive. It’s just something that didn’t turn out the way we had expected.

We have complete control over how we think and feel about the missed expectation and result.

A little side note: There was a time in our life when we all enjoyed failing

We all know from our own experience that falling down and failing while learning to walk is a precondition of becoming successful at walking.

You might not remember it but as a baby you most probably enjoyed the process of continuously failing: falling down, getting up,  falling down, … . Giving up was no option, each failure/falling helped building up strength and capability, and success was just a matter of time – finally you walked!

How failure can become something negative

We get to decide what we are going to make it mean if we miss our expectations.

How we think about the ‘failure’ determines how we feel about it – which finally changes the neutral fact of a missed expectation into a negative or positive experience.

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

That’s why we try to avoid failure – we want to avoid the negative feelings we associate with it.

How failure can become something positive

However, we are free to choose having positive – or at least neutral – thoughts about failure.

We can decide to think, ‘O.k., I missed my expectation, I didn’t achieve the desired result this time. That’s not the end of the world. It’s actually a learning opportunity. I can have a closer look at it and learn and then try it again in a different way.’

The better we get at having positive feelings about failing, the more willing we are to try and do what we need to do on the way to our success. The more often we are willing to risk missing our expectations, the more we are going to learn, and the better we are getting at meeting our expectations – and becoming successful.

How to become better at failing

We can increase our chances of success by getting good at failing.

We learn to get good at failing by doing it often. And by appreciating and using each failure as a learning opportunity.

EXERCICE 1

Think about an activity, a project or a task that you actually want to do but that you have postponed again and again. 

Are you trying to avoid failure?

Decide now that you will no longer allow fear of failure hold you back.

Describe what you are expecting to get out of it, what results you wish to achieve.

And then do it.

• • The worst thing that can happen is that you fail and that you allow yourself to think and feel bad about it.
  • A great thing that can happen is that you fail and feel good about it, and use it as a learning opportunity.
  • Another great thing that can happen is that you succeed – not only because you get the result you want but also because you experience what can happen if you don’t avoid failure.

EXERCISE 2

Appreciate each failure experience as a learning opportunity.

Read the questions about past and current failures on the top of this article again.

And take the time to answer them.

Then lean back and consider

• • How did these experiences help you learn and evolve?
  • How did they help you getting better at doing difficult things?
  • How can they be seen as proofs of your courage, decisiveness and determination?
  • How did they benefit you although or even because they didn’t result in what you expected?

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“Failure is something you have to consider as something you want to include in your life. It’s not something to avoid. It’s actually something to pursue and to get very good at.” (Brooke Castillo, The Life Coach School)

Why setting goals and pursuing them is so important

The main reason why we usually decide to set goals for ourselves is, of course, because we want to achieve or get something that we currently don’t have in our life. Or maybe we want to change what currently is to something else – usually something better.

However, goal setting not only gets us on track to move towards our goals.

The special benefits of setting and pursuing goals

• • The act of setting goals and then moving towards them has a deeper benefit:

It allows us to evolve and to develop our personal potential.

Moving towards something that’s beyond our current abilities and overcoming the obstacles on our way helps us to stretch ourselves and to become better in what we do and who we are.

• • Another positive effect of setting and pursuing goals is that it gives our mind focus and direction.

If we don’t direct our mind, it runs on default. It might focus on thoughts that don’t benefit us – because they produce feelings and actions that create unwanted results in our life.

Our deliberate intentions and goals keep our mind from running ‘wild’, they provide supervision and structure and help us live our life on purpose.

The process of goal-setting – Some tips

1. 1. Choose a goal – even if you don’t have one.

Even if you don’t have a specific goal at the moment, if you don’t have anything currently on your calendar that you’re working towards, setting a goal can be a really powerful and useful exercise.

Decide now to commit to a goal so that you can enjoy the general benefits of the goal-setting-and-pursuing process (see above).

1. 2. Get specific but don’t think about the how yet.

Be very specific about your goal. Talk about your goal in the first person and in the present tense. Decide on time-frames and deadlines, and other details.

At this point, don’t think about how you are going to achieve the goal, you only think about the what and when.

1. 3. Write the goal down.

Take your goal out of your imagination, make it real and tangible.

The best way to do this is to write it down.

Writing down your goal on a piece of paper gets it out of your brain. You now can look at it, your can adjust it, you can carry it around, and you can (and should) read it again and again.

1. 4. Stretch yourself with the goal, and ‘welcome’ any negative feelings.

Offer yourself a real self-development opportunity, make sure that you push yourself beyond your current comfort zone with your goal. (If it seems easy to achieve, it’s not a real goal!)

You will know that you have stretched yourself sufficiently if negative emotions such as fear, doubt, shame come up.

Don’t push these feelings away, accept them as normal parts of the process.

Managing these feelings will not only ensure that you achieve your goal but also allow you to become a stronger and better version of yourself.

1. 5. Uncover any negative thoughts, and question/replace them.

Search for the negative thoughts that cause the uncomfortable feelings.

It might be something like ‘This is too hard to do’, or ‘I don’t know how to do this’, or ‘I don’t know if this is what I want’. Uncover all the thoughts behind your feelings of disbelief or doubtfulness or fear – and write them down.

Then remind yourself that these thoughts are just choices. Your mind is bringing them up in an effort to protect you – but that doesn’t mean you have to believe them. Tell your mind, ‘No worries – I’ll figure this out.’

1. 6. Have a brainstorming session with your future self.

When you start to work on your action plan, you can ask your future self for some help.

Imagine yourself at the place in the future when your goal has been completed.

From that place, look back to where you are now and you tell your present self the how – all the steps you took to accomplish the goal and all the things you did to overcome the obstacles on your way.

For any step you can’t describe in detail yet, you create a ‘to-figure-out’ action step, like ‘This is what I don’t know yet and this is how I’ll figure it out’.

The process of goal-setting – An example

Last year, decided to improve my fitness levels. This is how my goal-setting looked like:

1 to 3 – Choose a goal, be specific, write it down

I want to increase my fitness levels by becoming a better runner. On my birthday – in 6 weeks time – I run from home to Bondi (across the suburbs) and then back home (along the coastal walk). That’s about 15 km and will take me about 2 hours.

4 – Stretch yourself and appreciate negative feelings

It’s a bold goal! Currently, I run about 25 minutes, two or three times a week. The idea to run around 2 hours without a break feels very intimidating and uncomfortable.

5 – Uncover negative thoughts and question/replace them

My original thoughts:

That’s a stupid idea. I am fit enough – why do I put this pressure on myself? I will hate myself if I don’t make it. And all the preparations and the training! I need to make a plan! And then stick to it! Oh no, this is really stupid – why do I always make my life difficult?!

My counter-thoughts:

O.k., o.k., calm down. It always feels great to achieve ambitious goals and this one will be no different. I’ll feel fantastic on my birthday, being so fit and strong. Yes, of course, it needs some time and effort to get prepared. Yes, I need to make a plan. But I am good at planning. I’ll make it work out!

6 – A brainstorming session with your future self

My future self (I imagine her on the day of my birthday):

I remember how uncomfortable I felt, 6 weeks ago, when I made this decision and wrote it down. It felt so intimidating to see my goal on paper.

But then I made a plan. I decided to change my running schedule to 4 times a week and to extend the running time to 40 minutes.

I also decided to do longer runs every Sunday: 45 minutes on the first Sunday (at the end of the first week), 50 minutes on the next Sunday, 60 minutes on the third and fourth Sunday, 90 minutes on the fifth Sunday (one week before the Bondi run). 

I created a simple action plan, listing the running dates and running times. I put the plan on the wall, opposite my desk, so that I had to look at it every day. And on all running days, I wrote ‘done!’ at the end of the line of that day as soon as I came home from running. That felt good!

I also remember, however, that it was not always fun, especially the longer runs on the Sundays. But I never thought about giving up, that was just no option. I reminded myself that I did this for myself and that it was worth the effort.  

Success! Goal achieved! Eight weeks after I had set my goal, I did the Bondi run – it took me 1 hour and 50 minutes and was quite exhausting. But – I did it! The goal-setting process was very helpful, especially the ‘talks’ with my future self.

What do you really want in your life?

When someone asks us what we really want in our life, most of us say that we want to feel good or better, or that we just want to be happy.

So it seems to be very important to find out what it is that makes us feel good, better or happy.

Where do our feelings come from?

Often, we believe that our feelings are determined by the external circumstances in our life.

We say that we feel a certain way because of something that’s happening outside of us: other people and what they do or don’t do, the past/our past experiences, events that are happening or not happening.

We are persuaded that the reason for what we are feeling is out there, outside of our control. But that’s not true.

Every feeling is created in our mind, by the thoughts we are thinking.

Feeling better or happy is completely within our control!

That’s very good news, of course, but it’s not so easy to accept/believe for many of us.

We got so used to the idea that we have to depend on something external, outside of us, in order to feel a certain way.

We believe that we can only feel happy if, for example, the scale proves to us that we have the ‘ideal’ weight.

We are persuaded that we will be happy as soon as we have found the ‘perfect’ partner.

We think that we can only feel good if we get promoted or a ‘better’ job.

But it’s not the external things that we believe we need to have that will make us feel better.

It’s always the thoughts that we have about our external circumstances that make us feel a certain way.

EXAMPLE 1

A very simple example is the weather.

How we feel about the weather has nothing to do with the weather but is completely determined by what we think about the weather.

If it’s heavily raining on a Sunday morning, we might think: ‘Oh no, we can’t go to the beach. This will be a boring day!’ – It’s heavily raining and we feel miserable and bored.

However, if we think: ‘Oh yeah, that’s great, now I can stay in bed and keep reading all day long!’ –  It’s heavily raining and we will feel great and enjoy the day.

EXAMPLE 2

Let’s imagine we believe that as soon as we achieve our ‘ideal’ body weight we are going to be happy.

Again, it’s not the circumstance – the ‘ideal’ numbers on the scale – that has the power to make us happy. The numbers are completely neutral, they actually mean nothing unless we assign a meaning to them.

It’s the thoughts that we have about these numbers that have the power to create the feelings we desire to have.

We might believe:

‘As soon as I’ll see these ideal numbers on the scale I will know that I am a great person. I will be fit and thin and people will admire me. I will feel attractive and confident and lovable and admirable. I will feel fantastic about myself. I will be happy.’

If we look at this scenario from an objective point of view, we know that the conclusions above are not realistic:

• • We all know a lot of people who have achieved their weight loss goals, who have these ‘ideal’ numbers on the scale, who are fit and thin and attractive – but nevertheless feel completely miserable and unhappy. – The numbers on the scale don’t have the power to create good feelings for them.
  • We also know other people with a body weight much higher than the healthy ‘ideal’ numbers who feel strong and confident and fantastic about themselves. – The numbers on the scale don’t have the power to create bad feelings for them.

Thus, the secret to feeling happy is not waiting for something external to change. It is to change the thoughts we are thinking right now.

We can still choose to aim for our goals, of course. We can, for example, keep our plans to lose weight, if we want to.

But it’s time now for us to give up the idea that achieving that goal is necessary for us being able to feel the way we want to feel.

Knowing that our circumstances – our body weight, for example – have nothing to do with how we are feeling about ourselves, we can start to search for believable thoughts that will help us to feel our desired feelings now.  

EXERCISE

Start with one feeling you wish to feel more often and decide to focus on that favourite feeling for several days.

Referring back to the second example above, it could be ‘feeling confident’ (Feeling confident now, no matter what the numbers on the scale are!)

• • Going through your day, ask yourself again and again, ‘What do I have to think to feel ___ in this moment?’ – For example, ‘What do I have to think to feel confident right now?’. 
  • It might be that you struggle in the beginning to find believable thoughts. Just start ‘smaller’: ‘What do I have to think to feel a little bit more confident in this moment?’ 
  • You can also look back to your past to find helpful thoughts. ‘What was a situation in the past when I felt confident? What thoughts did I have about myself at that time? Could I think similar confidence-creating thoughts today?’
  • Look around for role models, people who seem to have a lot of the feeling you desire to have. ‘What might that person be thinking that makes her feel confident right now?’

Become an expert in creating and feeling your favourite feeling. Right now.

 

How to take action and make changes in our life

Many of us share this experience:

We have an idea or a goal we want to realise, we plan to change a certain behaviour, we want to create a new habit – and we really want to get active and do this thing.

But then we don’t do it. 

We don’t get started at all, or we get started but then stop again as soon as the first obstacle shows up.

So, why aren’t we taking action, why do we procrastinate and postpone, why do we quit, again and again?

It’s because of the clutter in our mind.

It’s because of all the thoughts and feelings that we got used to thinking and feeling, that we keep thinking and feeling although they don’t serve us.

Everything we do or don’t do, every action or inaction in our life, is driven by a feeling. A feeling which is caused by a thought.

If we don’t get active, it’s because we don’t ‘feel like doing it’.

As our feelings drive our actions, we only get active if we have the appropriate action-fueling feelings.

And we can only feel the ‘right’ way if we have the ‘right’ thoughts – thoughts that are creating the feelings we need to feel to take action and to create the results we want to have in our life.    

Now it’s clear why we so often struggle to take action and make changes in our life:

If we try to take action without changing our thoughts and feelings, we run into problems:

We are trying to work against our mind – against the thoughts and feelings we got so used to – and that is really hard.

Let’s have a look at an example, let’s pretend I want to lose weight.

EXAMPLE – Weight Loss Goal – PART 1

My current thought is: ‘It’s really hard. I’ve tried so many times to lose weight and it didn’t work out. This time I have to make it work somehow.’

Based on that thought my feeling might be: Doubtful. Or skeptical. Maybe shameful. Or even desperate.

This type of feelings will most probably create action(s) like these: Postponing and waiting for the ‘right’ time to start the new diet. Or starting a new diet plan but giving in at the end of the next stressful day – getting to the fridge to find relief.

The result I’m creating: Another attempt to lose weight that doesn’t work out.

We can easily see here why it’s so hard to get new results if we stick to our old thoughts and feelings. 

Before we can change our thoughts we need to understand what’s going on in our mind: We need to learn how to watch ourselves think.

As soon as we manage to look ‘from the outside’ into our mind and to observe our current thoughts and feelings – like we did in the example above -, we begin to understand why we struggle to make changes.

We can then decide to take control of our mind and to change our thoughts.

EXAMPLE – Weight Loss Goal – PART 2

My new – deliberately chosen and practiced – thought is: ‘It doesn’t matter what happened in the past. This time I take a different approach. I’ll make this work out for me. And I will be so proud of myself in the end!’

My feeling now is something like: Determined. Or confident. Or committed.

My action(s) will look like these: Creating a detailed plan for the dieting process, including strategies how to overcome temptations and obstacles. Deliberately and regularly imagining the feelings of pride and accomplishment. Keeping to the diet plan.

My new result is different, of course! The different approach (different thoughts and feelings) helps me to do what I want to do. I am making myself proud of myself.

As soon as we consciously change our thoughts we also change our feelings which enables us to change our actions/behaviours and therefore the results in our life.

EXERCISE

Think about the things you would like to do, the goals you wish to achieve.

Step 1 – Pick one goal. Describe the result you want to create:

……………………………………………………………………………..

(Example: ‘My paperwork is clutterfree and well organised.’)

Step 2 – What would you have to do, which actions would you have to take to create the desired result? Write it down:

……………………………………………………………………………..

(Example: ‘I go through the 3 boxes of papers (stored in the garage), the 10 binders in my filing cabinet, and the paper pile on my desk. I take up/out each piece of paper and decide: to shred or to keep/file? I reorganise the binders and file what I decided to keep. I shred what I no longer need.’)

Step 3 – Now think about what feeling you need to feel to take the necessary action and get that thing done. Do you need to feel confident? Determined? Committed? Or something else? Write it down:

……………………………………………………………………………..

(Example: ‘I feel determined.’)

Step 4 – What thought would you need to be thinking to create the feeling you listed above?

……………………………………………………………………………..

(‘Yes, I’ve become a bit lazy with my paperwork and now it’s quite messy. I don’t like that and I’m the right person to change it. I’m going to get it sorted out next Saturday.’)

Step 5 – Now practice thinking that thought. Day by day.

(Example: ‘I don’t like that and I’m the right person to change it. – I don’t like that and I’m the right person to change it. – I don’t like that and I’m the right person to change it. …’)

Expect your feelings and actions to change soon. Slowly but surely. 

Get excited about the new results you will experience soon. Enjoy the change.