Tag: Life Goals

My New Life Manifesto

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Health, Success

For a while now I’ve been dancing around ideas on self improvement and how to live well and not being fully committed or being the best version of myself. I think this is partly because fully owning my life feels like a big responsibility and can seem scary at times. It’s easier to stick with habits and go on autopilot through life. The trouble with that is that you can end up unhealthy, unhappy and underwhelmed by life. At 41 I felt it was time I really tried to cut the bullshit and take ownership of my life and my health.

I have Fibromyalgia, which can be a debilitating condition leaving me exhausted and in pain in my muscles and joints most of the time. Having the will and the energy to do anything can be a challenge. But knowing how to improve my fibro symptoms and not doing it is something I’m not prepared to do anymore. So, I have written a kind of life manifesto. I’ve tried writing this kind of thing before, but they have either been unhelpful or I just haven’t committed to them. As they say, I hope this time it will be different.

So, here it is. I am a very visual person so I have gone all graphic designy to make it appealing and accessible for me. I’ve used the word ‘better’ to express doing each thing in a wiser, more effective way than I have in the past. I’ve started at the top with my Why, my Purpose; to THRIVE SO THAT OTHERS MAY THRIVE.

MIND

I know that one’s attitude in any given situation is a choice, as expressed by Viktor E. Frankl in his great book Man’s Search For Meaning, and one’s attitude shapes everything we experience. Mindset has a similar impact and a growth mindset is better than a fixed mindset, the choice of mindset is for each of us to make. However, we also need actions, not just intentions. It is important to have good habits, things we do daily to improve our lives and the lives of others.

BODY

One of the things I have learned about physical illness is that diet plays a big role in causing and worsening any illness. This is a change that I have struggled to make, as I keep bouncing back to what I habitually eat. If I am going to be able to live my life and serve people, I need to make this change. Physical strength is something that many of us wish for, to be strong and look good. Having Fibromyalgia my muscles often feel weak and I am sometimes not able to do tasks which others may find easy. This is something I aim to change. Some of you may have a good understanding of what Chi is, others may have only heard it in reference to Tai Chi. Chi is the life energy that flows through all living things, in accordance with Traditional Chinese Medicine, and for us to be healthy we need our Chi to flow well, we need to have an abundance of it and for it to be balanced around the body. Better Chi means better flow, quantity and balance. Without this we get sick.

SPIRIT

I am a student of theology, not in the sense of getting a qualification, but in the sense of spending my time reading about and understanding the theology of different religions around the world. Three key themes that stand out to me that will help me fulfil my Purpose and live a good life are Connection, Wisdom and Altruism. The first includes connection to others and to the universe as a whole, and everything in between. If we are wise we will live well, this is a given, and to be altruistic means to lift others up, to help them to thrive.

I hope that this Life Manifesto helps me to thrive in order to help others to thrive too. I also hope that you find this inspirational and you write your own Life Manifesto, or feel free to steal mine. I wish for you a blessed and happy life my friend.

Setting Goals For 2023

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Health, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

It is that time of year again when we make New Year Resolutions with an underlying suspicion that we may not keep them going beyond January, but we convince ourselves that this year it will be different. This may be a conical view, but it is often our experience.

Part of the problem is that we set general goals like losing weight, which we are not necessarily invested in and there is no specific purpose behind them. Another part of the problem is that we want a quick fix to fix our lives, something easy and quick to do that will solve all of our problems. This will never work, because there are no quick fixes. The issue is that we do not want to commit our time to improve our lives. We want something we can do for 5 minutes a day or something quick at the weekend.

In order to improve your life you must fix your life. This must be a long term commitment. For example, I have lower back pain for which I have been to see a physio. Their advice was to complete daily exercises to strengthen my core muscles, which would alleviate my back pain. I did it for a week every morning and my back pain began to improve. I then missed a couple of days and my back got bad again. So, if I want a pain free back I need to complete these core strengthening exercises every day for the long term, with no missed days. It is the same for all areas of our lives that we want to improve.

This is how life works. We need to stop making New Year Resolutions and start making life commitments. These commitments should be decided and reviewed after a long period, say every 3 to 6 months. Then adjust or pivot where needed. This is so we consciously understand that this is a life change and that we are committed to it.

In order to have a life we are happy in we need to invest in a life that creates wellbeing and joy. This takes daily commitment. We also need a purpose for the life changes we make otherwise the changes will be as effective as trying to lose weight for no serious reason. With purpose and commitment your life will change for the better.

When They Go Low You Go High

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

This title comes from a saying that Past President Barack Obama and his Wife Michelle often said. It came across as a family motto, which is a very positive way to think about things. It essentially says that when others resort to lies, insults and immoral tactics to bring you down and make themselves look good you take the moral high ground.

However, going high, which is essentially acting like a good human being, is something that I would say should not be limited to scenarios where others have gone low. Being a good human being is always a good way to live. We can never be a good human being all day every day, as we have challenging times that cause us to waiver, but the intention is what matters. Think good and be good is my advice.

The Skill of Optimism

The Pathway To Fulfilment

“While you can’t control your experiences, you can control your explanations.”
― Martin E.P. Seligman

Much is often said of the optimism of youth and that such a person is optimistic and another person is pessimistic, as if they are both something we have as innate abilities, like being funny or courageous or creative. Much of what we see as personality traits are in fact based on learnable, practicable skills. It all depends on knowing the underlying behaviours and thinking patterns that bring about said optimism or pessimism.

In his book Learned Optimism, How to Change Your Mind and Your Life, Martin E. P. Seligman, Ph.D lays out his evidence for the theory that optimism can be learned and that pessimism left unchecked can make us feel helpless, which is the essence of depression; depression is essentially prolonged helplessness. The root cause of both pessimism and optimism is how we explain bad experiences and good experiences to ourselves, how we explain failure and success.

I will let Martin E. P. Seligman explain this is their own words. “The optimists and the pessimists: I have been studying them for the past twenty-five years. The defining characteristic of pessimists is that they tend to believe bad events will last a long time, will undermine everything they do, and are their own fault. The optimists, who are confronted with the same hard knocks of this world, think about misfortune in the opposite way. They tend to believe defeat is just a temporary setback, that its causes are confined to this one case. The optimists believe defeat is not their fault: Circumstances, bad luck, or other people brought it about. Such people are unfazed by defeat. Confronted by a bad situation, they perceive it as a challenge and try harder.”

So, how do you explain misfortune to yourself, do you say things like “why does this always happen to me?” The emphasis on the always will make it seem like the misfortune will happen again and again and that it all your fault. The language we use to explain misfortune to ourselves matters, because seeing misfortune as permanent, pervasive and our fault makes us feel helpless, with no way to make things better. If we begin to train our thinking to explain misfortune as temporary, specific and caused by factors outside of ourselves then we build our skill of optimism.

Optimists, according to Martin E. P. Seligman’s research, also see success as permanent, pervasive and created by themselves, and pessimists see success in the opposite way. A simple flip of how we explain misfortune and success changes everything, and we go from pessimistic to optimistic. However, the way we explain the events in our lives has been developed and somewhat hard wired into our brains from childhood. It is not a quick process to changes our thinking, but it is possible through repetition.

It helps to monitor how we explain the events in our lives and keeping a journal to document our explanatory style (pessimistic or optimistic) and to create language that develops optimistic thinking can change it over time. This is positive, it means that your success and failure are in your hands. It means that you can develop bulletproof optimism that will lead to a happier and more joyful life full of successes and, ultimately, a more fulfilling life. So, take back control over your life through your explanations of what happens in it and make it a life well lived.