Someday Cured…

Having cured my Someday Syndrome, I’ve shut down the blog to focus on my fiction writing. You can find me over at AlexWorld where I discuss my writing life…

See you there!

Resolving to Be Happier: The Happiness Project

I’ve never been a huge fan of resolutions, thinking that creating them all too often just sets people up with unreasonable expectations and too much pressure, but after reading Gretchen Rubin’s book, The Happiness Project, I’ve not only changed my mind, but I created 36 resolutions of my own to follow in 2010.

As you know, Someday Syndrome has three different varieties: Someday My Ship Will Come In, I’ll Get Around To It Someday, and I Might Need It Someday. I’ve found books that I would recommend for the first and the last (The Comfort Trap and Unclutter Your Life), and now that I have Gretchen’s book in my hands it’s become the book to recommend for people who suffer from I’ll Get Around To It Someday.

The book is ideal for those who have a good idea of what they want out of life but don’t really do anything to achieve it. I’m the sort who learns from and gets inspired by people’s personal stories. Gretchen’s twelve month experiment in being happier while not making major changes in her life is exactly what I needed at this moment.

I don’t suffer from Someday Syndrome, having cured it with the help of The Comfort Trap, but I do need reminders periodically to stay on track and to stay mindful of the present. The Happiness Project has inspired me to do just that. And The Happiness Project Toolbox that’s the companion piece to the book and blog provides the additional push to follow through.

Early in the book, Gretchen says that she’s not the sort to look at whys or wherefores. She’s not interested in exploring her past to figure out why she acts a certain way. She embraces who she is and goes from there.

I’ve spent a good portion of my life figuring out why I act certain ways and even created the I’ll Get Around To It Someday ebook to help others figure that out, but at some point it’s time to stop looking in the past and to start doing now in the present.

Gretchen has a passion for research and yet doesn’t bog down her story with lists of facts. I love the book because she’s done the research that doesn’t interest me (yes, I know myself well and research is very NOT Alex). Reading her book gives me all the information I need to create my own Happiness Project without having to do any of the boring background work.

Plus her take on resolutions convinced me to try them out for 2010. Instead of goals to reach, I’ve set up my 36 resolutions in 12 areas of my life as mindfulness reminders – things to pull me out of the future or the past, turn off the autopilot and fix me squarely in the conscious present.

Basically, if you’re the sort who’s inspired by personal stories and love a good read, then go now (yes NOW) and order yourself a copy of The Happiness Project. I don’t recommend things very often, so if I’m telling you to go order it (you have clicked a link, haven’t you?) then you know it’s a good product that’ll rid yourself of your Somedays.

P.S. If you want to see what other books I recommend as Someday-Busting tools, check out my December post over on The Bridgemaker.

Dealing with Detours & Limited Visibility: Planning vs Living

While I’m not a huge planner, I do have a twenty year plan for my fiction career and three years into it, I’m exactly where I want to be. This month Melinda talks about how to deal with long term planning and short term detours. -Alex.

Plans are like a road map – they tell you where to go. Not like people tell you where to go when they’re insulting you, maps (and plans) tell you in a good way. So why don’t we all plan our lives, businesses, careers and families more?

Often it’s because we can’t comprehend that far ahead. It’s hard to get our head around planning what we’ll do in 20 years time. Heck, some days I have trouble planning the next weekend!

And there’s also the “I might not want the same things then” along with “how can I plan that far ahead when I know I’m going to change in that time?” See, the thing is, by the time you get 20 years further along in life then it’s a given that you’ll want different things and that you’ll change. If you don’t change then you’re probably dead, in which case you won’t care.

Guaranteed to change

So we don’t plan. We drift. We might plan a year or two down the track, or we plan for tangible results and things we can see. Anyone here got a 30 year mortgage or a five year car loan/lease? Yes, I thought so. What we can’t see is who we’ll be in the future and so we avoid designing ourselves in advance in case it doesn’t fit with who we become on the journey.

News Flash. It’s not going to fit. You’re going to change and your plans are going to change. Guaranteed.

Guess what? In 20 years you’ll be 20 years older

Think about this. In 20 years time you’ll be 20 years older. And some things won’t change. You’ll still have your morals and values. Some things that are uber-important to you now will still be uber-important then, like family – only you’ll probably have grandkids rather than kids then.

Who do you want to be in 20 years time? How can you design your life so your values are still there, only stronger?

Road trip 101

Think of going on a long journey and how you plan it. You look at your map or GPS, and you plan where you’re going – from A to B and the road in between. Which towns you’re going to drive through. Take the faster main highway with the tolls and traffic or the longer but quieter back roads? Where will we stop for food and fuel on the way?

Then you leave and it’s night time so you turn your headlights on. Tell me, how far can you see? A couple of hundred metres, or as far as the light reaches, yes? Does that worry you, that you can’t see your destination when you leave home? Of course it doesn’t, because experience has taught you that as you drive the road will be revealed in the lights as you move forward.

Your life plans are the same. You can’t see 20 years ahead, but you can see next week, and next month. And as time passes you keep seeing next week and next month, but they keep moving on into the future as you do.

When problems happen – and they will

And sometimes as you drive there’ll be something unexpected. Roadworks. A detour. A flooded road. A flat tyre or mechanical failure. You have to work around it. Take a different route. Try a new road. Fix a problem.

Sometimes these hiccups and diversions lead to angst and frustration. You might get lost and confused. Run late. Costs more than you expected. And maybe you’ll discover something new along the way. Unexpected and exciting. Something you’d never have seen if not for the detour.

And always your headlights are showing just that bit of road immediately in front of you. Yet you still know where you’re headed in the end, even though you can’t see it and the signs may not even be pointing to it yet. You know, you’ve planned the road.

So what are you going to do about it?

You’re eventually going to be 20 years older than you are now. Are you going to allow yourself to drift directionless, going wherever the road takes you? Or are you going to plan who and what you want to be and deal with the changes and hiccups along the way to becoming that person?

About Melinda

Melinda Brennan is a business coach who woke up one day and realised that she was 20 years older and hadn’t notice the years passing. Now she’s becoming who she wants to be and loving a deliberately planned life. Hiccups, detours, roadblocks and all.

Check out what she’s doing at WAHM Biz Builder

Course Changes on the Someday Journey: Reorienting Goals

• Someday Lesson: You don’t set course on your dream once and then forget about it. It requires vigilance to stay on track.

I haven’t been happy recently and that’s been bothering me. After all, how can I help you find happiness if I’ve lost my own? In a post on the blog last week, I asked my Lab Rats six questions. I decided that since I haven’t been as happy as I could be, I would answer the questions myself.

1. What are you not doing even though you feel you should want it?
2. Where do you claim to want something but then let fear stop you?
3. What aren’t you tackling because it’s too much work?
4. Are you actively engaged or on autopilot?
5. How many projects do you have on the go at any one time? How good are you at prioritizing them?
6. Where are you choosing safe over happy?

If you’ve ever read the About page on Someday Syndrome or read either of my ebooks, you will have learned a bit about my life before coming to Spain. Ever since I was 12 years old I have wanted to write and yet for years I avoided this dream, taking detours in many different directions.

In 2006, I decided to stop taking detours and get on with writing. But then I got started with Someday Syndrome and it excited me. I loved the idea of it and I loved the idea of helping people and earning a living doing so.

However, as the work behind the business began to increase, it took more and more of my energy and focus away from my fiction writing.

Starting a small business is time consuming – hugely so. I’ve recently increased my fiction writing to 3 hours a day at least 4 days a week. That, plus my part time teaching, did not leave much time to focus on the small business while still having a balanced life.

When I stepped back to look at my life objectively I realized that if I was to prioritize the things I do the order came out: writing, Raúl, teaching English, Someday Syndrome. And when things aren’t going well, it’s usually the fault of whatever’s on the bottom of the list.

Someday Syndrome is insidious – it’s no good to chart your course and then let the boat pilot itself. Crossing the Someday Sea requires vigilance and regular course changes.

For me, scaling back the business is one of those course changes. I’m on the verge of letting it become yet another detour away from my writing dreams and I refuse to let that happen again.

So what does this mean for you?

Newsletter subscribers will still receive the semi-monthly Someday News, but the blog will go more or less inactive and instead of offering a full range of services, I will provide a limited number of Skype-based sessions (and email support) each month as well as the popular ebooks.

If you really want a Someday fix in between newsletters you will also be able find me on the following blogs each month:

• Sharing Travel Experiences as the Lifestyle Design expert
• Location Independent as a coach in their Ask the Expert series
• The Bridgemaker as one of the monthly contributors
• Plus a variety of other blogs, which I’ll update you on each month.

And now for you – what course changes do you need to make to get yourself back on track? What answers do you have to the six questions above?

Overwhelmed by Work:What’s Too Much?

• Someday Lesson: Unless you know exactly how long your to-do list is you can’t make objective decisions about what to work on.

Since December is Planning Month on Someday Syndrome let’s tackle a Someday Challenge that’s planning related. Specifically let’s look at Angela’s problem with being overwhelmed with everything she has to do.

Angela suffers from I’ll Get Around To It Someday. She knows what she wants but can’t seem to find the time or energy to follow through. She says “Someday I’ll find the time and energy to fulfill my dreams.” The thing is she’s not very specific about what those dreams are. When looking one year into the future however, she’s much more specific saying that she will have implemented some of her programs, have produced the show she wrote and be able to support her children financially.

The problem is that she’s so overwhelmed by the normal anxieties of life that she can’t see clearly. It seems to be so much stuff that she’s paralyzed by all the stuff. She moved her office in-house so that she could work on things 24/7 but that hasn’t worked which isn’t surprising. Bringing the office into the home is likely to create more anxieties not fewer. Without a clear separation of work life and home life the stress and guilt of working or not working 24/7 multiples exponentially. Every moment at work outside of regular hours takes away from family time and every moment with the family is one less moment striving for the work-related dream.

In our go-go-go world this sense of paralysis is common and it’s something many people suffer from. It happens when you allow your to-do list to get longer and longer which results in panic and paralysis.

Angela mentions anxiety at all the day to day stuff. That especially happens when you keep it all in your head – it builds and each item seems unrelated to anything else. As well, as I said working on things 24/7 is not the best way to get things done. I take plenty of time off and I’m one of the more productive people I know. I focus on relaxing when I’m not working and when I do work I don’t fritter because I know I have time to relax later.

So what does Angela need? She needs a plan. She needs to know what she’s working on when. However, she can’t create that plan until she knows exactly what she wants to work on. Yes, in her one-year-in-the-future vision she hints at what she might work on now, but the ideas are still very abstract. They’re results, not actions.

When looking into the future, it’s important to focus on actions. Outcomes are great, but they don’t motivate well because they leave a gap between the current state and the future outcome. That gap can only get filled by action.

Taking Action

And what actions does Angela need to do? What actions do you need to focus on if you want to achieve your dreams? How can you choose any one thing when there the to-do is longer than a line up to buy U2 concert tickets?

You might just pick one random item and work on that. Or you might pick the top three things that have reached crisis mode.

Or you might take a bit of time to plan out your actions, which first requires some research.

In this case, research doesn’t mean going out and looking up information or talking to others. For this type of research you are going to interview yourself. Using a blank piece of paper or a new document on the computer, write down the numbers 1 to 100 (if you’re using paper, you might need two or three sheets). Now fill in all 100 slots with everything you do during the day – both work and non-work related. Don’t forget as well those things that you want to/feel you should get done but haven’t gotten around to yet.

Why? What will Angela get out of overwhelming herself even more? How will this exercise help you?

Right now Angela feels overwhelmed by all of her to-dos. These to-dos however are only in her head. Just like in last week’s Someday Challenge, Angela needs to clear her head of the overwhelm and getting it out on paper does just that. Plus by giving yourself a goal of 100 items you’ll likely have a hard time reaching the goal and you’ll realize that you don’t actually have as many things to do as you thought, taking off some of the pressure.

By emptying your head of your to-dos you’ll also be able to look at all the items objectively. When they sit in your head they all seem equally important and necessary.

What Next?

So now you have a list of items that you do (or want to do). How do you take this list of actions and turn them into a plan that works for you, gives you time to relax, and moves you towards your dream?

You prioritize, delegate and delete items from the list. You whittle it down until it fits into a schedule that’s manageable and comfortable.

And no, it’s not easy. In fact this sort of Someday Challenge paralyzes many people.

You need help. You need the outside objectively of someone who isn’t so intimately connected to the actions, someone who can help you decide priorities and what doesn’t really need to get done after all.

You can get that help by filling out a Personalized Someday Assessment. It takes only a few minutes and just might mean the difference between being overwhelmed and being happy.

Tackling Someday Head On: Achieving Dreams with Confidence

• Someday Lesson: If you can’t fully commit to busting your Someday then how important is it to you really?

You know what? It doesn’t matter what you want. It doesn’t matter what reasons you have for not following it. If you’re not pursuing a dream you say you want, then you have to ask yourself the question How much do I really want it?

Marie understands this. Her biggest Someday is finishing her degree she admits to only maybe wanting it. She feels that she should really want it but she’s burnt out and only kind of wants it. That makes any forward progress a chore and the moment something becomes a chore resistance kicks in.

Think about your life – what are you doing because you feel you should want it? Or I should say, what are you not doing even though you feel you should want it?

Johnny, despite saying that he wants a career in clean-technology, lacks confidence and lets his poor work habits and procrastination stop him. Tie that into his fear around not having enough money and bam! he’s completely blocked. He can’t move forward because he’s scared it won’t work out (based on past experience) and yet he wants to move forward because it’s supposed his dream.

What situation in your life is like Johnny’s? Where do you claim to want something but then let fear stop you?

When Michelle contacted me to become a Lab Rat, she mentioned that she fights her weight. She focuses on everything else in her life and ignores her weight. She doesn’t apply for jobs because she’s not happy with the way she looks. She says “it’s not fair!” about her size. And yet she knows it’s a whole lot easier to stay exactly as she is. It’s more comfortable to complain than to act even though the inaction makes her feel resentful and angry with herself. She’s waiting for it to be easy.

What aren’t you tackling because it’s too much work?

Helen has a similar challenge. Yes her life is great, but she lets her health get out of control. She knows that certain foods are bad for her and that she doesn’t get enough exercise, but she doesn’t make herself a priority. Work fills her life and she lets that dictate all the other things she does. Rather than making a conscious choice at every meal to eat well, she goes on autopilot and lets whatever at hand go into her mouth. She chooses the comfortable (although more unhealthy) option of sitting in front of the computer rather than going out and getting exercise. Even though she loves her home and her village, she’s not connected to it the way she is to a city like London which energizes her to be active. At home she curls up in her nest and hibernates.

Are you connected or disconnected from your environment? Are you actively engaged or on autopilot?

Now let’s turn to Joyce who desperately wants to get back to writing. She has had two books published but has writer’s block for her current projects. She says she wants to focus on her writing and yet in her list of Somedays Joyce wants to do a bit of everything, from advocacy work to moving to another part of the country. And with each new idea she takes herself farther away from her writing Someday. With so many projects that seem to have an equal importance to her, all of which are time consuming and emotionally draining, Joyce can’t choose any single one to work on.

How many projects do you have on the go at any one time? How good are you at prioritizing them?

And then finally we have Kristin another Someday-writer. She’s never made the effort to pursue her dream of supporting herself with her writing because she had a secure job that was safe. In her one of her hugely successful writing courses, 25 year writing veteran Holly Lisle says “SAFE never starts.”

SAFE can keep you locked up in your house, never daring to step foot outside the door. It can keep you locked in a job you hate that has no future, just because you’re afraid if you walk away you will never work again. SAFE can kill your hopes and dreams by telling you they were never worth pursuing, that you were never good enough to make them real, that you were only kidding yourself.

Where are you choosing safe over happy?

Basically it all comes down to excuses and because you’re getting something out of your inaction. For every single one of the Lab Rats that “something” is hope. As long as they don’t move forward, as long as they don’t follow through on their dreams they still have hope that the dreams will come true. Thing is, no matter how much hope they have, if they don’t act they’ve already failed.

It’s like being afraid to ask for help. Most people don’t ask for help because they’re afraid the other person will say no, and yet by not asking for help the answer is already no. In Spanish they have an expression “El no ya lo tienes” which literally translates to “The no you already have it.” If you ask or if you try then you have the possibility of the yes. But you have to do something.

Taking Action

So, what could each of the Lab Rats do? What could you do?

What are you not doing even though you feel you should want it?
Do you really want it? And if you don’t which is the “lesser evil”? Stopping or seeing it through? Sometimes you’ve reached a point where dropping the project makes no sense. On the other hand you might think it’s worth finishing when really you’re just flogging a dead horse and it’s time to accept your losses and walk away.

Where do you claim to want something but then let fear stop you?
Stand up and shout “I want this!” Or drop it and go find something else that you’re really passionate about. Can Johnny actually say that about his career in clean-technology? Think about people like Madonna or Gandhi (yes, I’m actually putting Madonna and Gandhi in the same sentence). Neither one accepted no. They wanted to fulfill their dreams so much they went out and did what they had to do (guided by their moral compasses) to achieve it. Of course, not everyone wants the same sort of world-influencing dream, but if you can’t say with 100% confidence “I want this” then why are you wasting energy, time and money pursuing it?

What aren’t you tackling because it’s too much work?
Human beings are inherently lazy. It’s a blessing in many cases. If it weren’t for our laziness we’d still be living in caves working hard all day long just to get enough to eat. However, there’s a dark side to laziness – inertia. It’s always harder to get started than to keep going. So, despite our desire to change we stay on the same path, repeat actions that do nothing to advance our dreams (or even hinder them) and then complain that we’re not seeing progress. If you truly want to change, you have to get active. Put your laziness to good use and find a way to create a new habit that will carry you to your dream in the same way your current habits carry you away from it.

Are you actively engaged or on autopilot?
One of my favorite phrases here on the blog is “life is choice” – from the decision to get up each morning through to going to bed at night (well for me the last one isn’t that much of a choice – my body just shuts down at some point and I get no say in the matter). Helen lets circumstances dictate her choices. It’s easier to go with the flow than to make active choices that might inconvenience other parts of her life. Getting out and getting exercise means not working quite so much. Taking time from work means the renovations on the house take longer and vacations can’t be as exotic as she would like. And so on and so on. If you grew up in the 1980s you might remember a series of books called Choose Your Own Adventure. Life’s like that – full of choices with consequences. Are you going to decide what action you take or will you let some invisible author make those choices for you?

How many projects do you have on the go at any one time? How good are you at prioritizing them?
Multitasking has gotten a bad rap in the past century. Ever since the industrial revolution specialization and finding your niche have become the ideal to pursue. However, not everyone is so single minded. Some people have so many interests and so many brand new ideas every day that they can’t function trying to be specialized. And because no one has ever taught them to deal with all these ideas flooding in, they become paralyzed and so do nothing. Fortunately the author Barbara Sher has brought back the renaissance approach to life in her book Refuse to Choose. If you’re someone who likes to do it all, this book provides a way to handle all the ideas that throw themselves at you like a group of puppies in full play-mode. Joyce sounds like she needs this book. How about you?

Where are you choosing safe over happy?
Sometimes safe is important – for example in the basic needs of life, but beyond that safe does nothing but block our desires. Don’t risk, don’t stand out, don’t be different from anyone else. As long as you choose safe over happy then you’ll always feel unfulfilled and happiness will always remain out of reach. Happiness requires risk. What are you willing to risk to gain happiness?

Your Personalized Someday Assessment

How did you do answering the six questions above? Are you as blocked about your life as the Lab Rats are?

If so then it’s time to do something about it. It’s time to reach out and ask for help. You want to live more and to achieve your dreams. You don’t want to live on autopilot. You don’t want to go through life on autopilot and unconscious.

It’s time to wake up, take control of your life and make the changes you want to make.

By doing nothing you already have your no, so why not try for yes instead?

All you need to do is fill out the Personalized Someday Assessment and I’ll help you bust your Somedays and create the life you want.

Turning Your Goals Into Plans The Quick Method

Did you know that December is National Write a Business Plan Month? Now, I’m not a big fan of business plans (actually I find most of them useless documents that sit on the shelf and never get looked at). And many of you have no need for a business plan as your Somedays are not business related. However, I’m a big fan of small plans, of deciding on actions and then following through on implementation and in the end getting something done. To kick off this month-long look at planning, Jonathan Beebe of Develop Minds takes a look at the quick way to come up with a plan.

When you set a “goal”, your subconscious mind tends to place it into the “someday” category, even if it’s a short-term goal you have every intention of completing. And while you may complete it as a short-term goal, the chances of failure actually go up when you label it as a “goal”… despite the fact that it’s good to have goals.

Stop for a moment and think back to the last time you went on vacation and enjoyed yourself. Beforehand, what did you do? First, you thought of what to do, and then you planned the big day. When it came up, you went out, had fun, and it felt good right?

You had an idea based on your desire, and you successfully executed it at some point in the future. Same as a goal right? The difference is, your mind is used to following through with plans, but may need much more training to follow through with “goals”, despite the fact that they are basically the same thing.

Don’t Plans Often Change?

Plans may change, but so do goals. In fact, I’d say goals change quite a bit more than plans because of the fact that they are more long-term in nature. Change isn’t always a bad thing, however. If you’re continuously growing, many things are bound to change about yourself, such as your interests, and maybe even your passions. Likewise, your goals and plans need to change in order to accommodate your changes, and that of course isn’t a bad thing.

It’s all about getting what you honestly want out of life, and as humans, what we want can change from time to time.

How to Create Your “Plan”

Let’s do a quick exercise. All you’ll need is a pen, a piece of paper, and your mind.

Take one of your big long-term goals that you hope to accomplish “someday” and that’ll be the only thing we label a “goal” for this exercise, and write it down on the top of your paper. Now, the sub-goals, or what would be called the short-term goals leading up to your big goal are going to be labeled “plans”.

Write down your new short term “plans” and decide when they should be executed, and give an estimated time-frame. Put tentative dates, and make sure to plan on executing some of them very soon, in fact, as soon as you can. If it’s honestly a goal you really want, you won’t want to wait anyway.

Below is a simplistic example plan to illustrate the exercise I just described. It’s for someone who’s always wanted to start their own online business but has previously put it into the “someday” category in their mind.

Goal: Start an Online Business

Action Plans:

• Find a good resource and gather up the necessary knowledge.
  Date: 11/30/2009 (Today) – Complete by: 12/7/2009
• Topic/Market Research
  Date: 12/7/2009 – Complete by: 12/14/2009
• Create the website
  Date: 12/15/2009 – Complete by: 12/21/2009
• Create the initial content
  Date: 12/22/2009 – Complete by: 2/22/2010
• Create a marketing plan
  Date: 2/23/2009 – Complete by: 3/1/2010
• And so on…

If you take the above example literally it will obviously have some flaws, but it wasn’t meant to help you start an online business, it’s purpose is to show you how to simply change the “goals” you need to accomplish as soon as possible into plans, so your mind actually queues the actions you need to take, rather than just letting them remain stagnant in the “someday” bin.

Do What Works For You

You can always modify the template to be more effective, especially if you already have a working system set up for getting things done. And if you currently had some pending goals, the “goals to plans” method I described should give you enough of a push to get started on them right away.

Once you start accomplishing the little things that work towards your big goals, you’ll be taking steps toward the life you honestly want to be living, and remember, you can be given all the right information you need to accomplish anything you want to, and be taught everything you’ll ever need to know, but it’s all useless if you don’t put it into practice.

Make it your plan to get started immediately.

About Jonathan Beebe

Jonathan Beebe is the author of Develop Minds, a personal development blog focused on providing information on how to increase your consciousness, your intelligence, and how to significantly improve your life by making the most out of it.

Someday I’ll Be Happy: How Live Beyond Just Getting By

Robin contacted Someday Syndrome because she suffers from Someday My Ship Will Come In. She does not know what she wants. She just know that she does not want the life she has now.

When asked to finish the sentence “Someday I’ll…” she answered:

be happy.

She feels that she doesn’t accomplish much. She feels overloaded all the time and since she doesn’t know where to begin she does nothing.

She has tried reading motivational articles and journaling but neither has helped.

Finally, when asked how she pictures her life a year from now she said:

I really can’t answer that. Finances are short and I’m raising two small children alone. It’s hard to dream when you are barely getting by.

The Someday Challenge

First off, I congratulate Robin for getting by, even if it’s barely. Raising kids on her own is not a simple task and that victory needs to be celebrated.

There are probably many other things in Robin’s life currently what we could celebrate, but since Robin’s Someday is a general desire to be happy she likely doesn’t see much of those celebratory moments.

Speaking of her Someday, this is exactly what most people who suffer from Someday My Ship Will Come In feel. There is no future, no idea of what’s possible. There’s just blankness in the future and often bleakness in the now.

If Robin is going to bust her Somedays first we need to clear out this bleakness, then start building excitement.

The First Step

So, let’s take a look at this future blankness and present bleakness.

Many people will say things like “Come on! Put on a happy face! Fake it until you feel it!” and sometimes that works, but all too often it’s like painting over a damp patch in the wall that’s hiding major structural damage.

We need to pull the drywall down, clear out all the rotten supports and then rebuild the structure before we can decorate and make it look pretty.

In Robin’s case the unhappiness she feels is that rotten material behind the drywall. We need to clear it out before it causes the whole house to fall apart.

And the best way to clear out negative thoughts and emotions?

Put them down on paper. When emotions swirl around in our heads they build and build and build until they break out and cause more damage than a hurricane.

If however we let out the stream of emotions and thoughts in a controlled manner they don’t overwhelm or do damage. But putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard Robin can get rid of that overloaded feeling she mentioned.

Yes, it might seem like a strange thing to focus on the negative when we want to get Robin to a positive place, but unless she unloads all the negativity first the positive thoughts and actions will have no place to go. There’s currently no room for them.

Once Robin has this list of everything that’s wrong with her life right now, it’s time for one small success, some positive result based on a single action. Looking at the whole list of complaints, whines, moans and all the unhappy parts of her life, Robin will pick one small item and commit to changing it.

It might be as simple as a conscious decision to see mornings with the kids not as a battle to get them out of the house to playtime where she gets to spend time with them. Or a feeling that she’s not active enough and committing to a twenty minute walk three times a week.

Robin’s Homework:

1. Write out everything that’s wrong with your life. Let it all hang out. Start with all the big stuff and take it right down to the minor irritations. Reward yourself with every page you fill. Nothing is too petty or going to be judged by anyone. This is just for you.
2. Read through the list and pick one thing that you feel you could change. It needs to be something small, something that would take only one or at the most two steps to turn from negative to positive.
3. Put the change into action and then pay attention to how the change makes you feel. Plus note if there are any side effects to this change (positive or negative).
4. Pick a second small irritation and change that, then a third and a fourth, each time paying attention to the consequences of each change.

The Long Term

Once Robin starts to see the positive effects of the small changes she is making, she’ll then want to start building up the structure of the wall we’ve torn out.

To do that she’ll need to figure out what she wants out of life. Sounds easy but it’s not. It will require a lot of inward reflection and self-awareness.

The effort will be worth it, especially for her children. Robin can use them as a motivator – if she can find her dream and pursue it, think of the great lesson she’ll teach her children in the process.

What do you think? If you were Robin’s Someday Mentor what would you suggest? Join the discussion over on the Facebook Someday Syndrome fan page.

Stretching Your Mind: Your Mind as a Rubber Band

Your mind is a reservoir of creative potential, just waiting for you to develop and nurture it. Too many people say they aren’t creative. I say – they either haven’t developed their creativity or are looking at creativity through a narrow focus.

Your Mind as a Rubber Band

I want you to picture a rubber band, one of the really thick, strong one’s used for bundling large packages. You’ve just taken it out of it’s box and what’s the first thing you do with it? You stretch it. Stretch it out to soften it. Coming straight out of the box it’s stiff and inflexible. After stretching it a few times it becomes softer, more pliable and stretchier.

Now imagine your mind as that rubber band. As we put creative ideas, dreams and inspiration into it, your mind stretches and flexes around the new thoughts. As the mind is stretched it becomes more capable to stretch and flex, able to accommodate and generate more and greater ideas and creativity.

Oliver Wendell Holmes said “The mind, once expanded to the dimensions of larger ideas, never returns to its original size.” Once you’ve added a new idea into your head it creates a new neural pathway within your mind. The dendrites and synaptic buttons in your brain form new connections within the biochemical/electromagnetic network of cells and nerves. (for more information on how this works, see The Mind Map Book by Tony Buzan)

Just like the rubber band becomes able to stretch more, your mind is expanded and able to accommodate more growth. Over time those pathways become a permanent part of your mind and enable more and more creativity to happen. They become reinforced, stronger and reinforced through repetition, enabling them to develop side pathways of their own.

Use It or Lose It

Now think of a rubber band that has been left in the drawer, unused and neglected for a long time. What does it look like? Dull, white-coated, shrunken. What happens when you try to use it? It snaps, yes? It’s flexibility and potential has been lost because it was not used.

Growing Pains

Ever felt the pain of trying to learn something new? Been to a seminar or workshop and heard so much you want to ask the speaker to stop so you can process the information? That vertical learning curve of working to master a new skill? I have a friend who called that discomfort a ‘mind expansion headache’. It’s when information is packed into your head faster than your brain can comfortably adapt and stretch to accommodate it.

That rubber band around your mind becomes stretched to the max, working hard to assimilate and understand the new ideas being poured in. Now think about how you feel a little later on, when you’ve had time to understand, work through and use some of the new information. Feels better, yes? That’s because your mind has adjusted and expanded to fit those ideas in.

Your mind is more than a muscle. In fact, it’s actually a bundle of nerves and pathways more than a muscle, but that’s beside the point. Creativity, stretching and using your mind, increases the capability of your mind. It’s a catch-22 in reverse – the more you use and develop your mind creatively then the more able and capable you are of developing it more. Like an ever expanding spiral your creativity develops as you stretch that rubber band more and more.

How Far Can You Stretch?

Visualise stretching that rubber band again. Really see it in your mind, your hands stretching that band out for maximum flexibility. Watch the movement of your hands and the rubber band. See how you’re doing it? If you’re like me, then you’re stretching it out and then allowing it to relax back before stretching it out again. Just as the band needs to relax, so too does your mind. The relaxing allows the creativity to flow and settle, before stretching out again further than before. The rest, the relaxing, is just as important as the stretching and development.

How far can a rubber band stretch? How much can your mind hold and process? Eventually the rubber band will snap when it reaches its limits. Your mind however, has no such physical limits. Provided you take breaks, relaxing the stretch, your mind can develop and expand infinitely. The only limits we have on our minds are those we put there ourselves. Allow your brain time to relax and process the information you’ve put into it and you’ll quickly be able to develop more creative ideas and expand it further.

About Melinda

Melinda Brennan is a Business Coach who helps her clients use the power of their own minds to develop their businesses and get past limiting beliefs.

Visit her online at WAHM Biz Builder

The Drag of Inertia:The Lab Rats Explore What Blocks Them

Back in the first Lab Rat series, I talked about inertia as one of the reasons why people choose to be unhappy even when they know what they want out of life. That discussion prompted a section in I’ll Get Around To It Someday about how we block ourselves from following our dreams due to a habit of inaction or a habit of action in things that don’t help our dreams.

For example, I’m suffering from a sinus infection as I write this. I know where the sinus infection comes from – eating too much wheat irritates them (allergies) and they become vulnerable to whatever infections are floating about in the air. I could stop the cycle easily by not eating wheat, but I have a habit of including it in my diet and the habit’s a hard one to stop mainly because I enjoy bread and pasta and sweets.

The current crop of Lab Rats all have their own blocks related to inertia, although in Kristin’s case it’s the sudden removal of inertia (the imminent arrival of the baby) that has created her blocks.

Generally the blocks we have in our life can be divided into four areas: family, work, relationships and health. Let’s see how the Lab Rats block their dreams in each of these areas.

Family

For most of the Lab Rats a lack of progress on dreams related to the family comes from a desire to avoid conflict. For example Joyce allows the emotional problems of her son to interfere with enforcing chores and Helen lets her younger brother get away with saying offensive things because she doesn’t want to fight with him, although in Helen’s case she’s developed a much better relationship with her father by learning not to avoid conflict, so she has one success under her belt to help her with her brother.

Marie has a variety of toxic relationships to manage and has to do so actively which makes moving forward difficult as her energy goes into managing the toxicity instead.

Johnny’s family related blocks come from wanting to be a great parent but not devoting enough time to do things he wants to share with his kids. I’m certain that this is a common challenge for parents – where do you draw the line? What does “quality time” mean? Being a parent is a full-time job on top of all other commitments and there’s always something more a parent could be doing, so sometimes it’s just easier to do nothing.

Finally Kristin’s family blocks come from distance. She lives five hours away by plane which makes staying in touch difficult. Her pregnancy has also distanced her even more from the family, blocking her from taking a whole-family trip that’s been in the works for five years.

Work

Let’s go back to everyone’s Someday Challenges for this one. Helen said her life was almost perfect and at work she loves 90% of what she does, but because she enjoys it so much she has a habit of using work to put off the other things she’s blocking in her life (like her health).

Marie struggles to finish her dissertation but her hostile work/school environment makes it difficult to actually want to do anything. She needs to actively remind herself every day that she loves the topic of her dissertation, which again drains energy from moving forward.

Although she says she wants to work on her writing, Joyce finds other things to do, doesn’t insist on the quiet she needs to write (see avoiding conflict above) and feels uncomfortable promoting herself and her writing. Many writers are like this. We can’t not write and yet we spend much of our time avoiding writing altogether. It’s like we find the idea of writing so overwhelming we run from it instead of embracing it.

Kristin is another writer-in-the-works but her worry isn’t avoiding writing. She worries that by living in the unstructured world of new motherhood where everything revolves around the baby she won’t create the time to work on her dreams. She’s going to try to set up some routines before the baby comes, but of course all bets are off once the baby actually does arrive.

As for Johnny, he knows that his paid work is a habit and that he will use it and anything else to avoid the career development for what he really wants. He also knows that if he sticks to his plans he could find work in his dream profession within three months and yet he’s spent many more months avoiding doing just that. He’s always struggled with inertia in all his jobs and being motivated doesn’t matter – he still delays. For Johnny, as we move forward we’ll look at developing habits of small actions to turn inertia into motion.

Relationships

Marie and Johnny have no major blocks with their relationships and Helen’s only block is a lack of time (see work above) to commit to her husband.

Kristin on the other hand uses the conflict-avoidance method on her husband because she knows that for the next while she will depend on him for “everything from finances, to emotional support, to adult company, to plain old heavy lifting.” So of course she doesn’t want to rock the boat, but avoiding conflict often creates more through resentment and misunderstandings.

And Joyce struggles with interactions with others because she has a social anxiety that keeps her home and that tires her out too much to enjoy it. Plus she has this to add:

From what I can tell, having had to rely only on myself since I was a very young age, I have developed a block that keeps me from opening up and asking for what I want.  I allow fear—of appearing weak, stupid, inefficient, being rejected—to take over and stop me from doing what needs done.

This fear of hurt is harder to overcome than inertia because beyond getting moving, there’s also the protective shell that needs to be removed first (because it blocks her vision and limits how far she can travel). The fear does, however, explain some of Joyce’s reluctance to write. When a writer puts words down on paper she opens herself up to rejection and although Joyce has previously published books, each time it’s a brand new experience.

Health

Not surprisingly everyone says that they could be doing better health-wise with Marie being the only person to say she exercises every day.

Joyce, instead of not doing enough, does too much at times thus creating more pain but, as I learned through living in constant pain for ten years, on those days where we feel all right we take too much advantage of the feeling and make the next day worse. Balance evades us because when we feel good we want to squeeze everything in before the next bout of pain.

Kristin, of course, with the pregnancy experiences new sensations every day and wishes she would pay more attention to what she eats but she knows that it’s just a matter of making the time to do so and to not create her schedule around her work, her friends or her husband (again see conflict-avoidance above).

Johnny gets chronic headaches from so much time in front of the computer and knows that if he treats his body well, they go away, but sometimes it’s tough to remember even with the pain as a reminder.

Helen identified her health as her number one Someday and has this to say about the her health blocks:

Boy would I be fibbing if I said I have no blocks here!! I cannot seem to get a hold on what I want to achieve or even work out how to start. I know I want to be fit and healthy. I know I want to loose some weight but there is a bit of me that says I can’t be bothered – but I know that is an excuse – I think the reality is that there are so many things in my life I enjoy doing more.  Also my diet is very location dependent. In London I have a really healthy diet and I walk miles each day regularly doing 20,000 steps a day but at home it is rare for me to leave the house although my diet is still ok. I know there are blocks here but I just have difficulty seeing them and finding the energy to break through.

Procrastination is a tricky beast. Most of us know what we need to do to reach our goals but we can’t find the energy to do so. It’s like the carrot isn’t enough and sometimes the stick (of pain) doesn’t work either.

It’s a matter of finding the right carrot and the right stick to get us moving. What might be the right combination for someone won’t work for another. As we continue through the ebook, each of the Lab Rats will discover what dreams inspire them and what fears motivate them until they’re moving forward with ease.

And if you want to know what might help you with your Someday Journey, check out the Personalized Someday Assessment. You know you want to live more, so go for it!