When problems arise and difficulties set us back, it is essential to keep sight of the long term goal, and not to become disillusioned.
Part of a good self development plan is building in a commitment to pick ourselves up and start again, should set back or disaster strike. In fact, it is really a question of learning from any mistakes we make, analyzing how and why things didn’t work out as planned, and making sure lessons are learned for the future.
Learning can, and should be continuous. None of us ever know everything, and all of us can learn from other people, from their experience, and from their achievements or setbacks, as well as our own.
So learning not to fall into a stale routine when things don’t go right is really important. Your self esteem is not directly linked to any one project, any one target, or any one goal. Your self respect and self esteem is linked to your ability to deal with things as they occur in life. Finding solutions to problems is important, but the process is also important.
Someone once explained to me the difference between being problem centered and solution oriented. If all you can do is think about the problem, you are not really working your way to a solution. If you are determined to find the right outcome, you will be able to see the problem clearly and what is possible to rectify the situation.
Most management training courses will recommend not being problem centered, or ‘stuck in the cornflakes’, as one manager described it. For many people, the path to self improvement can only really begin when we learn to stop feeling guilty, or worried about past events and actions. In other words, allowing our life chances to be held back by
being stuck on old problems. Going forward and developing your future in a positive and healthy way almost certainly means that you need to shed some of the angst of the past.
If you are still worrying about something you did or didn’t do in the past, or a have a feeling of failure or inadequacy that just hangs around you, you really need to let it go. You can’t go back and undo anything that you did. Nor can you go back and do something that you didn’t. If you live in the past, this is only in your mind.
You can’t go back to the time of the event that keeps nagging you. You can only decide either to allow it to continue to torment you and hold you back, or decide that its time to let go, put whatever it is in the past, and move forward.
What is also important is that you also deal with any unhealthy attitudes; attitudes that you know are damaging and that only you can deal with. For example, how can you move forward, with a positive attitude that enables you to see clearly and rationally how to act and behave to achieve your best, if you know you have, for example, an emotional leg iron that leads to drinking too much alcohol or dependency on nicotine, or poor eating habits?
More often than not, there are emotional reasons why people become addicted. So we need to consider what emotional debris we are carrying around with us, and then shed it and move on.
Eating disorders can be just as damaging as any other. Again, there are generally emotional reasons why we may need to concentrate on controlling what we eat and eating too little, or binge eating.
It is imperative that we become emotionally adult, i.e. we take responsibility for our health and behavior that affects our health. This applies to all sorts of things too. Understanding that our emotional reaction to things can lead to child like responses is a key to taking rational control of our lives. It is more and more commonplace to read that we are what we eat (or take in to our bodies), and that having a good healthy and balanced
diet will make a big difference not only to our physical and mental health, but also to our ability to function effectively.
Use brain training to stop eating unhealthy sugary foods that give you an energy rush one minute, and leaves you feeling depleted half an hour later, try to learn how to change your diet. Plan it, and give yourself a reasonable timescale.
They call it called cognitive dissonance or neuro linguistic programming, or self hypnosis, but it doesn’t really matter what its technical term is. It is about re-educating your brain.You can find all sorts of techniques to do this. You can make tapes and play them at night as you are going off to sleep, or you can self hypnotize yourself to be receptive to self instruction.
You believe what your brain has been trained to believe. Lots of this training comes from you. Some of it from other people and what you hear. However, it is how you program the information that goes into the brain that matters.
If you have always believed that you are worthless and incapable of doing anything worth while, you have to train your brain to accept new information. Tell your brain that you are clever, and perfectly capable, and can achieve great things. Believe me, your brain will believe it if you keep telling it that this is the case. If you keep telling yourself that you don’t like cakes, each time you have the urge to get to the fridge for a nice piece of chocolate cake, tell yourself ‘no! I don’t like cake’. Keep on doing this every time, every day, and after a week you will be surprised. Your brain will have ‘remembered’ that you don’t like cake, and your urges will go away.
Similarly, we need to ensure that we drink lots of water, and get regular exercise. This way we are showing our commitment to our health, our potential and our well being.
One other thing, and sometimes difficult to address, is the need to ensure we are not being held back or damaged by relationships or friendships that are just not right for us. This doesn’t mean that you need to just ditch your partner, and ‘lose’ your family. It does, however, mean that damaging relationships need to be addressed, carefully, and if necessary, changes need to happen. You need to have support, just as your family and friends will need your support. Balance is important here, as in all things.
Hand in hand with this commitment is consistency. Like all things, it is quite possible to train yourself to be consistent in your attitudes and behavior. It’s important to not only believe, but to put in the effort in a consistent manner. Doing your best for one day a week isn’t really going to do it for you.
It’s very important to develop the right attitude, which means really that you have to ‘live’ your plan. Living your plan means taking everything you do seriously, and ensuring that you are doing your best.
This doesn’t mean you don’t get to have time off - far from it. Some of the most successful people are successful in different areas of their lives. The trick is not to waste time or opportunity. When it’s time for recreation, make the most of that time by ensuring you really do enjoy this time and the activities you choose.
When it’s time to spend together with family or friends, make the most of that time, and ensure your concentration is on the interaction with them, and not on something else. So living an authentic life, i.e., making decisions about how you live, how you spend your time, and how you behave with others are major steps towards ensuring you reach your potential. It is a foundation stone for your self development journey.
Neuro Linguistic Programming
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