• A Year of Change - by Peter Clemens

The e-book includes my best articles from my first year of blogging both on this blog and Pick The Brain. Apart from the work that went into the articles originally, I have spent quite a bit of time putting the e-book together - so I really hope you enjoy it!

It is a free e-book, but if you do feel it is of some value donations can be made via Paypal (in one and a half years of blogging this is the first time I have asked for donations).

Ultimately, though, my #1 goal for this e-book is to share my story with as many people as possible. There are a number of ways you can help me do this which you will be able to see in the e-book.

Finally, I would love to hear your thoughts on the e-book, either in the comments below or via email to peter [at] thechangeblog.com .

Do you ever find yourself telling someone you’ve recently met the story of your life? You probably don’t think of it as a story, because to you it’s all factual. Truth is, we place a lot of interpretation on our life story. And when you remember how it was from the present day perspective, you often distort fact from interpretation. When you do tell your story, do you look at it and wonder if it’s the story you would have written for yourself? Do you ever wonder whose story are you living?

Ask yourself this question: “Am I living a life of my own design, following my passions and interests, or am I following my family, friends, or society, living someone else’s dreams?” If you now realize that you may not be living your chosen life story, it might be time to take a look at what you’d like to change. If you’ve been doing the same career or business, living the same lifestyle, keeping too busy to take time to observe your life and your feelings, it may be time to take a time out and see what’s really important to you.

You may have followed a path determined by others who influenced you early in life—teachers, parents, siblings, or peers. You may have done what was expected of you—getting a college degree, taking a job that fit your skills, climbing the corporate ladder, building a business, or staying at home to raise children. What might you have given up? A career that fully expressed who you are, creative pursuits, a story of your own making.

Writing a New Life Story

Why do so many people wake up one day and find they are not living their own story? Or they don’t wake up at all, but are feeling stuck and unfulfilled in their lives and don’t know exactly why. If any of this relates to how you are feeling, it’s not too late to write a new life story, NOW! You CAN create a life of joy, fulfillment, and passion by taking action in the direction of your dreams. It’s not too late to build a more rewarding life.

What will it take for you to write a new life story? Imagine you are a writer and sit down with a pen and paper or in front of your computer. Start from where you are now and write about where you would like to go. Include relationships, health, finances, business, career, creative self expression, personal development, and whatever makes up the story of your ideal life. When you’ve written about the next one year or as far as you want to go, share your new story with someone you feel safe with. If you’re working with a coach, they can help you develop your new story.

The next step is to start living it. You will start finding people and opportunities being drawn to you, so you can live your ideal life story. Isn’t it rewarding to be the author of your life?

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This article was written by David B. Bohl - Husband, Father, Friend, Lifestyle Coach, Author, Entrepreneur, and creator of Slow Down FAST. For more info visit his blog at Slow Down Fast blog.

There are several ways for keeping a journal to change your life, and I’ll show you how to achieve each in just ten minutes a day. Still think it’s not worth it?

1. Your Journal Offers Self-Insight

Do you ever wonder who you really are? Do you have problems which occur again and again – patterns of behaviour that you just can’t break out of? Keeping a journal for an extended period of time lets you learn the truth about yourself: how your motivation waxes and wanes, how many projects you let fizzle out after a brief burst of excitement; what topics you return to again, and again, and again…

Ten-minute exercise:

If you’ve been keeping a journal for a while (even if it’s fallen by the wayside recently), read through some old entries. Do you spot any patterns? Look for strong emotions that occur frequently, such as anger, misery, excitement. You might also take note of recurring problems or difficulties. For example, do entries about lack of sleep coincide with stressful periods such as exams or project deadlines at work?

2. Your Journal Builds the Writing Habit

Are you an aspiring blogger, author, poet, journalist or writer of any description? If you’re making serious attempts at writing, you need to be disciplined about it – no professional writer works just when they’re “in the mood” or when “the muse descends.” Developing the habit of writing regularly (ideally every day) will be a bigger factor in your success than your raw level of writing skill. You will get better if you practice, and your journal is an ideal place to do so – no-one will laugh at clumsy phrases or failed experimental pieces, and you can write about whatever topics inspire you the most.

You can even write about your writing; building the ability to think about how you write will give you insight into your strengths and weaknesses. Being able to explain how and why a piece of your writing worked will let you replicate that achievement in the future.

Ten-minute exercise:

Set aside a period of ten minutes to write a journal entry every day. Even when you don’t think you have anything interesting to say, honour that commitment and write something. Some people are inspired by writing prompts, famous quotations, or simply picking a topic (work, family, health, goals). Even the busiest of us can find ten minutes in the day – set your alarm earlier, if you have to. It’s worth the effort: a hundred and fifty words a day – easily possible in ten minutes – adds up to over fifty thousand words in a year. Once you’ve built up your journaling like this, you’ll find it much easier to work on your other pieces

of writing.

3. Your Journal is a Gift to Your Future Self

Did you keep a journal at any point as a child or teenager? If so, and if you still have it, go back and re-read

some entries: I guarantee that you’ll have a few great laughs and smiles in doing so. There might be references to incidents you’d previously forgotten, or particularly telling phrases or observations. Keeping a journal today means you can look back in five years, ten years or in old age at what you were thinking about, dreaming of, hoping for … it’s the closest you can get to time-travelling back to meet a past version of yourself.

Ten-minute exercise:

EITHER: Pick up one of your old journals and flick through it. What stands out? Are there incidents described that you’d forgotten? Have your views on a particular issue or topic changed radically?

OR: If you’ve never kept a journal in the past, use a page of your current one to write a letter to yourself in the future. Jot down some thoughts about the main strands of your life – are you happy with your job, your relationships, your health and fitness? Write down where you see yourself in a year, and in five years.

4. Your Journal Holds You Accountable

Many people like to record facts and figures in their journal, especially ones which relate to an important life change. Calories consumed, exercise done, cigarettes not smoked, alcohol units drunk … whatever the nature of your change, your journal can help you to achieve it. Seeing your progress in black and white helps you to carry on when your motivation is at rock-bottom, and for some people, the knowledge that they’ll have to record their failures is enough to keep them on the straight-and-narrow.

Ten-minute exercise:

Pick an area of your life where you want to improve: perhaps you want to get up early every day. For the next week, write down how you did each day – it’ll only take a minute or two, and you’ll be able to see if you progress as the week goes on – or if your enthusiasm quickly peters out.

5. Your Journal Encourages Positive Thinking

When you write in your journal, don’t dwell on things that went wrong. Focus on the positive aspects of your day or week – even when you have to dig hard to find something. It might take a while for you to notice the effect, but you’ll soon be seeing faster change in your life: we tend to move towards what we’re focusing on. Time coach Mark Forster advocates writing a daily “What’s better” list, recording the things which were not just good but better – this is a powerful way to focus on growth.

Ten-minute exercise:

If you’re reading this in the evening, how do you feel your day went? (Morning readers – use yesterday.) Chances are, you can think of lots of frustrations, things that went wrong, things that didn’t get done. Get your journal and write “Things which were good today”. List at least five. They don’t have to be big things – something as simple as “I saw a beautiful sunset” or “I left work on time” are fine. Now how do you feel about your day?

Written by Ali, a writer and website creator (www.aliventures.com).

Images by Barnaby and Windy Angels.

“Pulling weeds, picking stones. We are made of dreams and bones”

Currently I’m reading Beautiful Boy, a raw and compelling book in which a father describes his journey through his son’s addiction to methamphetamine. I must admit this book has hit a nerve, and I have found myself experiencing various emotions for both the father and son.

Of all these emotions, I think it is sadness I feel most. Sadness to see a bright and athletic boy, who once appeared destined for greatness, become seduced by the world of drugs. Sadness to see the dreams of both the father and son turn to dust. And sadness to see so much squandered potential, as encapsulated in the following quote from the book:

“My son, the svelte and muscular swimmer, water-polo player, and surfer with an ebullient smile, is bruised, sallow, skin and bone, and his eyes are vacant black holes. When I reach him he goes limp in my arms.”

If you read my post It’s a Boy!, you will know that I am the father to a one-week-old baby boy (as well as a 17 month old boy). Given this, I’m sure you can easily understand why reading Beautiful Boy has put me in a reflective mood. As any parent will tell, holding your newborn child is a experience unlike anything else. Here is this tiny little person who is completely dependent on you for their survival. And yet when holding my newborn son, I see in him endless potential and the ability to be or do whatever he wants. A professional athlete? Sure. A world-class musician? No problem! An acclaimed movie director? If that’s what he wants….

But I am also left to wonder, why don’t I see myself in the same manner? Even after all this time - the countless hours I have spent devoted to personal growth - I still cannot say that I truly believe in myself. I want to believe in my own power. And to a certain extent I do….. But there is still something holding me back. Is it fear? Am I scared of who I could be and the things I could do? Of course this sounds crazy, but I think it is true.

As you probably know, human beings have a remarkable talent for finding fault in others while being oblivious, or perhaps it is purposely ignorant, of our own faults. I would also argue that for many of us, it is much easier to see potential in others - especially young children - than it is ourselves.

Perhaps this is why it is common for parents to try to live out their own personal dreams via their children, without regard to what their children actually want. This is clearly a mistake. Children should be encouraged to dream their own dreams, and then given encouragement and support to make them a reality. And this should still be the case when these dreams don’t match those of their parents. I remember an episode of So You Think You Can Dance where a sports obsessed father was still struggling with the idea that his son preferred dancing over football (the son was quite talented and had obviously been dancing for some years by the time of this episode). To the son’s credit, he had the courage to pursue his passion anyway. But I wonder: how many children’s dreams have been shattered by unsupportive parents?

Here then is my personal challenge: to view my own life the same way I view the lives of my two sons. That is, to recognize the endless opportunities that lay before me and are within my grasp if I am willing to work hard, take a few risks and believe in myself.

Beautiful Boy also leaves me with the question to ponder: how can I ensure my sons don’t follow the path of Nic Sheff, the drug-addicted son who is the subject of the book? This is a tough question because I have no doubt that, at some point, they will experiment with drugs. It would be delusional to think otherwise.

One event that obviously had a major impact on Nic Sheff was the divorce of his parents at a young age, and the somewhat strange custody agreement that had him living with his father during the school year and his mother during the summer holidays. As the father, David Sheff, writes in the book: “Nic was always missing someone”. My parents also divorced when I was young. Indeed, one of my earliest memories is standing on the front porch watching my father walk out the front gate of our yard on the way to his new place. This event instilled in me the motivation to work particularly hard to maintain a loving and strong relationship with my wife Kathryn, and this book has only reinforced the importance of doing so.

What else can be done? There are many things. Providing a good example through my own actions. Doing everything possible to give my boys a happy life they don’t feel the need to escape from. A solid education that gives them the opportunity to pursue their passions and interests. Ultimately, however, they will live their own lives and make their own decisions. And even the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.

It is amazing feeling to become a parent, but I have never before felt so vulnerable….

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One of the most significant breakthroughs in my personal growth happened when I admitted to myself that I felt like an impostor.

I’d been practicing law for around two years. My colleagues and clients consistently told me how much they appreciated my work. However, I was constantly plagued by a nagging suspicion that all the praise wouldn’t last. Eventually, I’d make a major mistake, or people would learn something embarrassing about me, and the image they’d formed of me as smart and competent would fall apart. It was as if I was an impostor—a fraud posing as a good lawyer—and sooner or later I’d be found out.

When this anxiety arose, my usual approach would be to deny it and insist to myself that I was the real deal. “No, that’s not true,” I’d tell myself. “I’m brilliant, hardworking, and all-around awesome.” Sometimes, this would temporarily pick up my mood. But invariably, the sinking sense that I wasn’t actually good at what I did, and that eventually my “deception” would be discovered, would return.

My Eventual Surrender

I grew more and more frustrated with my seeming inability to combat my negative thoughts. Finally, in desperation, I decided I’d simply let down my guard and accept that I felt like a fake. I stopped telling myself I shouldn’t feel that way, yelling at the negative voice in my head to shut up, and using all the other strategies I’d devised for protecting myself from the anxiety. “Okay,” I said to myself. “I feel like a fake, and that I’m deceiving people, and I’m afraid people will find out. That’s where I’m at right now.”

For a few minutes, I collapsed into fear and despair. An icy feeling gripped my chest, as if I were breathing below-freezing air. But then, suddenly and inexplicably, I started laughing. I laughed so hard I cried. Eventually, I could no longer keep my balance, and I lay on the floor for about an hour until the laughter died down.

The long-term effects of admitting where I was at were even more remarkable. Though it was hard to understand, I stopped taking seriously the idea that I was a fake and people were going to find me out. The thought still came up occasionally, but all I felt in response was the urge to laugh, as if it were the most hilarious joke I’d ever heard. The need to convince myself I wasn’t an impostor, and the tension and heat that normally arose in my body, were gone.

Why Acceptance Creates Change

This experience happened before I developed an interest in spiritual teachings. When I started exploring books and workshops on spirituality, the reason why accepting how I was feeling created such a transformation began to become clear. Many spiritual teachers speak of the peace we can find by accepting what’s true in the present moment, without resenting it or trying to pretend things are different. Just aligning ourselves with what’s happening right now, it’s often said, can be a source of great healing and empowerment.

In The Power Of Now, Eckhart Tolle explains the importance and power of admitting and accepting what’s really going on inside us:

When there is no way out, there is still always a way through. So don’t turn away from the pain. Face it. Feel it fully. . . . Keep putting your attention on the pain, keep feeling the grief, the fear, the dread, the loneliness, whatever it is. Stay alert, stay present—present with your whole Being, with every cell of your body. As you do so, you are bringing a light into this darkness. This is the flame of your consciousness.

In The Heart Of The Soul: Emotional Awareness, spiritual teacher Gary Zukav also gives a concise description of how accepting our emotional state, as painful as it may seem, is the key to transforming it:

The first step in changing the dynamic that creates an emotion is to experience the emotion. Resisting an emotion prevents you from exploring it. When you accept your emotions, they flow through you like air through a flute. You feel them, which allows you to learn from them. They show you where energy leaves your energy system and how. Your emotions are friends who bring news that you need to know.

Many people are familiar with the idea of accepting reality as it is right now—particularly through Tolle’s work—and buy into it in theory. But in practice, if they’re in pain right now, it’s hard for them to live with how they’re feeling. The gap between where they are right now and the state of peace and composure they want seems so frighteningly vast that they don’t want to acknowledge it’s there.

What’s more, people tend to worry on some level that, if they stopped resisting what’s true right now, they’d somehow cause their feelings to become permanent. If they accepted that they’re feeling afraid, for instance, they might make themselves stay scared forever. And by acknowledging their negative thoughts, rather than fighting against them, they worry that they may “manifest” difficult events in their lives. Thus, they’re locked in a constant battle against the thoughts and feelings they don’t want to experience.

What we don’t often realize is that our resistance to our emotions, not the emotions themselves, is the cause of much of our misery. In my own case, it was my efforts to deny and push away my feeling of being a “fraud” that created my discomfort and anxiety. It may sound paradoxical, but it was only when I fully allowed the feeling to be there that it started to dissolve and leave me with a deep sense of calm. As it turned out, the gap between where I was and where I wanted to be was far narrower than I’d thought.

The next time you’re troubled by a negative, repetitive thought, I invite you to try this experiment. Rather than trying to counter it with positive affirmations, telling it to shut up or distracting yourself from it with some activity, try simply acknowledging that it’s there. Try on the perspective that how you’re feeling is neither good nor bad—it simply is. Notice how just recognizing and allowing the truth can help you come to terms with, and move beyond, your negative patterns of thinking.

Copyright © 2008 Christopher R. Edgar.

Christopher R. Edgar is an author and success coach certified in hypnotherapy and NLP. He helps professionals transition to careers aligned with their true callings. He may be reached at http://www.purposepowercoaching.com.