be the change

I have been involved in behavioural change all my working career pretty much and I have learnt a few things about how it works.  Behavioural change is hard because our brains are pattern makers, and changing takes effort and quite a lot of it.  To begin with it is hard to do, it takes effort, but then we start to feel and see the effects that the change we have chosen has on our life, and then we want to do more of it.  So, the best thing to begin with is decide what we want to change e.g. I want to feel better in my body.  Then the second thing is to substitute, yes it is that easy! substitute something that makes us not feel like that, with something that will make us feel like that a little more,  and remember to start small, as change takes time and we need to be motivated to be the change.  It is much easier and we are more successful to change 1% per day and then in a 100 days we are 100% improved, rather than trying to do it all to quickly. 

Then we need to start cutting things out potentially, so we can make way for adding new things that serve us better. We have to make the space and the time, as we can not just keep adding, and adding, as this increases our stress load and leads us to becoming unbalanced and overwhelmed.  It is the reason why most of our new years resolutions get broken and dropped quickly, because we want to go from zero to hero, and we just can’t sustain that, it gets much too much... really quickly.  We run in cycles and patterns, and whilst we may be motivated today, tomorrow we may not, and then may not have any space to be the change we wish to be already 100%.  So this week's invitation is to spend some time reflecting on what you wish to change and why, and write it down (make yourself accountable to yourself, if you feel like you need a helping hand at all, speak it outloud to someone else (a friend or a family member perhaps) and ask them to remind you and support you when you really need it.  Not to shame you if you fail, but eagerly support you to continue again, and in 100 days or so, reflect back and see how you have changed - you will be amazed just how far you have come.