Dr. Phil-isms

I love Dr. Phil. I rarely watch his program, but every time I do, I am impressed with his wisdom and forthrightness. I love it when he says, "To continue to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results is the height of insanity." Amen. Here are a few of my other favorites:

"Awareness without action is worthless."
"Failure is no accident."
"If you want more, you have to require more from yourself."
And finally this one: "Your feelings? To he** with your feelings!" Oh...ooops, maybe not that one :)

I guess what I really like about Dr. Phil is that he squarely places responsibility for our lives in our own laps, right where it belongs! WE are the only people who can change our lives for the better. We can continue to blame everything in the universe for our "bad luck," circumstances, or the short straw we've drawn, but truthfully, that sort of blame does nothing for us. We CAN change our lives for the better, but it takes courage to admit we need to fix some stuff, and action to make productive, positive steps in the right direction. All we need is motivation, and that isn't always readily available to us. We need to figure out how to harness what motivates us. I have found that if I somehow realize that Rome wasn't built in a day, and small, positive changes, over time, accrue into HUGE changes, I become excited and motivated.

For most of my adult life, I struggled with the realization that I waste time and procrastinate, with the ready excuse of over-busyness. Well, who made me too busy? I did. Now that I've become much smarter (at 50, you will become much smarter too), I don't overschedule. I realize that I hate being too busy, and when I am too busy, I fall into self pity, and then reward myself with silly, time-wasting entertainment, to compensate for the overwork I feel bombarded with. Most of the time, I over-volunteered. Volunteering is good, even necessary, to a point, but when it begins to suck you dry, it's time to pull the plug on it.

So let's get to motivation. I personally have discovered that IF I write down what I want to change in my life, and then ask myself, "what is ONE thing I can do TODAY, that will move me in the right direction?" For example, I scheduled a coaching session with my brother (coaches NEED coaching as much, maybe even MORE than the average person) and I expressed the desire make it a regular habit to keep up with my scrap booking. First of all, he asked me the question, "what's stopping you from scrap booking?" After I thought about it for awhile, I realized I was focusing at the end result of having ALL my scrapbooks completed, and what effort and tasks that would entail, so I found the whole process completely overwhelming. He then asked me, "what steps would it take to get started?", and we began to brainstorm, together, how I could implement small, doable tasks that would get me going. 

What a relief! I stopped thinking of the whole job and instead concentrated on ONE thing at a time I could do to move me in the right direction. That coaching session was 6 months ago, and I have since completed 2 scrapbooks, working at them little by little until they were done. I have many more to do, BUT it doesn't matter. I don't care WHEN I finish them, just that I am working at my goal little by little and am not overwhelmed. Better yet, I'm totally enjoying the PROCESS, not just having completed albums. I do the same thing with any future event that stresses me out. I now implement a list of all the activities that must be done for the event to take place, and start mapping out a calendar of each day leading up to the event, and what I will do that day. For example, when my daughter scheduled her wedding day, the prospect of putting on a wedding terrified me. Rather than panic, my daughter and I got together, wrote down EVERYTHING that we needed to do (thank God I have a hard-working, diligent, and highly practical child), and broke it down into a schedule. We accomplished it all, and in spite of the usual mishaps, the wedding pretty much met our expectations.

So what stresses you out about your life today? If you could change ONE thing about your life, what would it be? Write it down. What is ONE thing you could do this week, today even, that would move you one step closer to realizing change in that area. Then do it. Take your second step tomorrow, repeat, and you will begin padding purposefully down the river of life, rather than hanging up on the sandbar of disorganization and procrastination. Again, Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither are accomplishments. They are made up of small, deliberate, daily steps taken regularly, and that is ENTIRELY do-able!