Today’s post is about working towards positive change in life. One thing which can be helpful towards implementing positive change in your life is to dream freely and to imagine and visualize success often. Performing these kinds of activities creates positive thoughts and feelings, passion and excitement, and the motivation needed to progress towards the successes you are seeking. One of my favorite quotes in these regards is by Lewis Carroll who said, If you dont know where you are going any road will get you there. As such, get in the practice of visualizing where you want to go and develop a plan for getting there. You can always change your vision or your plan, but if you have no vision to work towards you will have no sense of direction, you will lack motivation, and success will be difficult to achieve. Some people dream of having their own business and ponder what their lives might be like if they had such a business. They might explore various ideas, investigate business processes and practices, and begin preparations for the day in which they start up their new business. Performing these kinds of activities will greatly ensure they achieve success towards establishing the business that they desire. Even if they ultimately decide to not proceed with their business plans, however, they will still have gained the benefit of all of the positive thoughts and feelings, the excitement of working towards their dream, and the knowledge gained throughout the planning and preparatory stages. In my own life, back when I was a teenager, I decided that I wanted to join the United States Marine Corps (USMC). After signing the enlistment papers I became highly motivated; actively performing everything I possibly could to en-sure that I was ready for boot camp. I started running, weight lifting, learning and practicing self-defense and hand-to-hand combat, and read several Marine Corps training manuals. I could hardly wait to be the mean, green, fighting machine marines were reputed to be; pretty high aspirations for a one hundred pound teenager. My decision to join the Marine Corps both motivated and excited me. Even if things did not turn out as expected, and I ended up not going into the Marine Corps, I would have still benefited from all of the preparations I made, the knowledge I gained, the excitement, the anticipation, and all of the positive feelings that resulted. So even the act of working towards positive change benefits us whether we ultimately end up making the change or not. I coached someone several years ago in some of these same regards. Bryan came to see me several years ago who was feeling uneasy about his life. He was concerned, because he felt his life had remained the same for several years and he feared that if he did not make a change it would remain stagnant in the same way in the years to come. One of the reasons he felt that his life did not change very much over the years was because he had lived in the same city for all of his life as did much of his family and nearly all of his friends. He feared that if he did not make a change in the coming years that his whole life would pass him by and he would miss out on some of the life experiences that he desired to experience. One desire that he expressed was moving to a different city, but he wasn’t sure how he might best proceed towards making that happen. Anytime we are seeking to make positive changes in our lives it can be helpful to take some time to reflect upon, and reason through, these changes in a step-wise fashion and to develop a plan for getting there. This does not mean that the initial plan we develop has to be the final plan, but the first draft of a plan to get us thinking about what it might take to get us to where we might like to be in our lives. We will probably end up revising our initial plans several times before coming up with an executable plan that we are happy with. In Bryan’s situation, where he wanted to make a move to a different city, he might proceed by drafting up an initial plan for making the move to include some of the activities he would need to engage in to make it happen such as exploring different cities to determine where he might like to live, developing transferrable job skills, and saving money to make the trips and ultimately the move. Merely the act of working towards the changes we are envisioning for ourselves can make us feel wonderful. The best way to proceed in these kinds of situations is to not rush into anything. Give yourself plenty of time to allow things to align with your goals, to allow you to take notice of and capitalize on any opportunities and synergies that might come your way, and allow you to perform adequate planning. I shared these insights with Bryan who found them to be helpful. He began exploring different cities and ultimately decided to make a move to Chicago. He’s been happy with his decision ever since and has been living in Chicago for several years now. Recently, I coached someone in some of these regards, to create a positive vision for himself to provide him, and his family, with the motivation to perform the work that was needed, and to create the space and time that was needed, to allow him to prepare for and obtain the technical certifications required to allow him to work in his field, which would pay much more than his current job in retail. We brainstormed several ideas and finally settled on a vision of him someday owning a five bedroom house with a fenced in yard – a home large enough to house his entire family; including his parents who live much further away than he’d like them to. It was a vision that both he and his wife enthusiastically shared and embraced. The vision motivated him to perform the work required to achieve his certifications and motivated his wife to provide him with the space and encouragement to do so while working towards aspirations of her own to help them to jointly achieve the vision that they shared and embraced. So try doing something similar for any goals and aspirations that you might have. I hope this post helps some of you out there who are seeking to make positive changes in life. And if you need any help with this, techniques for establishing and accelerating progress towards dreams and goals is one of the areas that I provide coaching in. Have a happy Monday everyone! :-)
Posted on: Mon, 28 Oct 2013 18:01:03 +0000
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