Self Care Advent Calendar Day 11

How are you doing? Are you where you want to be? What would be different if you had started doing things differently a year ago?

Would you be thinner? Richer? Calmer? Fitter? Healthier? In a different job? In a relationship? Out of a relationship? In your own home? Running your own business? Selling your own book?

The thing is it’s not too late to do this….where could you be this time next year?

Do you have a dream? Well stop dreaming and make a plan.

That’s your task for today. Make a plan for something you want to happen in your life.

Start with a goal, then think of the three main things that need to happen to get you to your goal.

Then break down the three things you need to get done in the same way. Repeat until you have a good idea of the steps you need to take to get you to your goal. The more you break it down, the more detailed your plan will be.

Once you’ve written down the plan, assign some dates to when you will get things done by. Mark it on a calendar for next year so you know what you want to be doing. Hold yourself accountable for hitting your deadlines. You may not always make them, and that’s OK, but know what you’re aiming for.

Think about who you can involve to help you? Can they be part of keeping you on track?

What might get in your way? If you can think of anything that could derail your plan, you can probably think of a way of getting around it too. Good planning involves thinking about obstacles and how to bypass them. It also involves contingency plans for those things that you didn’t see coming.

I know making the first steps can be the hardest part when you are working towards a long term goal, but put a little faith in yourself and be brave.

Who knows where you’ll be or what you’ll be doing this time next year.

 

Confused? You will be!

Have you ever been frustrated and unhappy because you were confused?

It can be really difficult when you don’t understand something, whether it’s Maths homework, someone’s behaviours, why your computer isn’t working or something completely different.

If you give up at this point, then all you have is your confusion.

The way to work through this is to learn. Learn about whatever it is that’s confusing you. Sometimes this will take time and thought to achieve, sometimes it will take lessons, sometimes it may just take a good nights rest – it’s amazing how often sleeping on a subject brings clarity.

Your subconscious can do a lot of processing for you whilst you sleep. Dreams are your brains way of ordering and reordering information, tidying the filing cabinet that’s in your head. If you are confused about something or someone, try not to make any decisions until you have had time to work through it a little. It can be impossible to take some things back, so make sure you give it time before you react.

Lastly it’s worth mentioning that it’s OK to be confused. My Hypnosis teacher once told me that from the greatest confusion comes the greatest understanding. I think he was right about that. If you think you understand something straight away then you tend not to examine it and  look at it in different ways. When you are confused by something you tend to analyse it and look at it from lots of different angles before you make sense of it.

That’s how you truly understand.

Embrace the confusion, learn and enjoy the understanding.

Can you see what you think?

Do you see pictures in your mind?

As a hypnotist, I often ask people to visualise things in their minds eye, but some people have real problems doing this.

Part of this comes down to how we perceive the world.

There are 3 basic categories

Visual – People who connect with the world via images

Audio – People who connect with the world via sound

Kinaesthetic – People who connect with the world via feelings

Understandably, visual types are often the best at ‘seeing’ things in their mind, but anyone can do it.

The trick is to start small.

If you can describe your front door, then the image is in there somewhere.

What colour is your door? Where is the handle and what is it made of? Is there a letter box? Where is it placed? Which way does it open? What do you see when you open your door?

Another thing you might want to ‘see’ is your morning routine – what do you do? What do you see as you do it? What does your bathroom look like?

If you can answer these questions the images are there – you just need to relax and let yourself access them.

When you have a few minutes to relax, just close your eyes and let an image or a colour appear – you can try to manipulate it or you can just let the images flow and see where they take you. The better you get at this, the more you can notice the random images and see what they tell you about what you are thinking.

It’s a bit like dream interpretation – the meanings can be a bit obscure, but they are there.

Which reminds me – if you dream, (which you do, even if you can’t remember them) then you can create images – because that’s how you dream. You see pictures almost as though you are in your own personal movie.

Have fun exploring your subconscious.