The Butterfly Effect

You may have heard of or even read the children's story, "The Very Hungry Caterpillar", by Eric Carle. You know the one where the caterpillar starts out small and then goes on an eating spree day by day eating himself silly, eventually builds a cocoon around himself and hibernates and then emerges as a beautiful butterfly?

This story is one of  my daughter's favourite at the moment, so I could recite it to you word for word from the numerous times we have read it together. It did however, get me thinking that there was a lot more to the story than the tale of evolution from a caterpillar to a butterflly. The more thought I give it, the more it resonates with me in my adult life.

It's the story of how change is possible, change is inevitable and that change is something that can be a beautiful thing. It teaches one to be hungry for growth and change, to be adaptable in the face of adversity, that good things do in fact take time; that we should be patient, the wait is worth it and when the time is right, your wings will appear and you will be able to fly. Speaking of flying, that reminds me of a joke I once heard. "Why do angels fly?" "Because they take themselves lightly".

I guess the overall point I am trying to make is that change can be a very wonderful and beautiful thing. Something to be embraced upon, a realisation that change is a journey and not a destination. For some reason, we have become afraid of change, we fear it and run away from it, thinking it's okay I just want to stay the same. I am safe where I am. What I have is good enough.I couldn't possibly change. If I change  I will lose my friends blah blah blah. Insert whatever story you like here (  ______ ).  Or perhaps that's just me coming from my exerpience again?

The bare naked truth is that without change there is no growth, without growth there is no life and if there is no life, there is death. Death of a dream, death of a personality, death of possibility, death of potential. Nature teaches us that change is a beautiful thing. This is seen through not only our beautiful butterfly friends, but the changing of the seasons and I am certain there are many other examples we could identify if we took a moment to reflect. A mentor of mine, Joe Pane says "You're either green and growing or you're ripe and rotting".

Change can happen in an instant, if we choose to let it. There is no law written that we have to stay the same, keep the same beliefes, lead the same life. If you want a different outcome to the one that you are currently experiencing, I can guarantee that change will be the one certainty of you moving closer to your desired outcome.

My challenge to  you this week is to reflect on your current situation and identify what small changes you could make to start taking you down a different path, a path that would bring you closer to having what you want to have, to living life the way you want to be experiencing it.  Because, just like our butterfly friends, beautiful and wonderful things can emerge just when we think our lives are over .......

There's no such thing as failure - only feedback

In this week's blog, I'd like you to toy with the idea that there's no such thing as failure, only feedback. What could you do if you applied this to your life? What could you potentially achieve? How could you embrace uncertainty even more so? What would happen if you knew that you could not fail, but simply receive feedback as to how not to do something? How different would your life be if you could get back up and give something another go?

Many of the greats out there - Thomas Eddison especially, lived by this philosophy. Imagine if Eddison gave up on his idea of creating the lightbulb after his first attempt because it was not successful? No, he was a man of tenacity and realised that each time he "failed"it was simply feedback that this wasn't the way to do something. He would tweak his design and have another go. He did this approximately 999 times. Talk about receiving awesome feedback.

I'm not sure about you, but failure used to be one of my biggest fears. I didn't want to appear as though I didn't know what I was doing or that I wasn't perfect. When I was taught this principle, it put a whole new spin on things for me. Í've begun to embrace a level of uncertainty that hasn't existed in my life before and am now excited knowing that whatever I do, I can't actually fail at it, because what is failure anyway?

According to the dictionary, it's the condition of not achieving the desired end or ends. Hmm .... interesting. When we attempt to do something, how do we know how it will turn out any way? We don't. We only ever have an expectation or a pre-conceived idea of what's meant to happen. So, based on that as evidence, this whole "failure"thing doesn't really have a leg to stand on.

Most of the time we're scared to try new things without any evidence that we will fail, it's just a story we've told ourselves. We hold ourselves back saying "I could never do that", "Oh, I wouldn't be any good at that", based on little to no evidence.

This week I encourage you to attempt at least one thing that you've been afraid of failing at, and embrace it head on with your new-found belief that there's no such thing as failure..... only feedback. I'd love to hear from you how this experiment goes.

Happiness..... it's an inside job

How often have you said to yourself, "I will be happy when  I have ...(insert random shiny object and/or event here) ? How often have you acquired the random shiny object and/or event and still felt a sense of  emptiness, unaccomplishment, disconnect? The so-called happiness you were expecting, just didn't arrive? Oh and according to the Buddhists, having an expectation is the definition of sufferring.

I know it sounds cliched, but I will say it again - "Happiness is a journey, not a destination", "Happiness is a way of life". I used to think it was all a big fat cliche too. Then a few things started to change. A big shift occurred in my life and my way of thinking when I was taught and realised, that we are 100% responsible for what happens in our life, that emotions are a choice, something that we do, not something that happens to us. Wow, what a steep learning curve that was. That's a whole blog post in itself!

You mean to say that I could no longer blame anyone else except me for not being happy? That I was solely responsible for the misery I was experiencing? That I was actually choosing drama and depression over peace and love? That the lack of love I felt in my relationship had to do with me? No way, it couldn't be so. It was all him, it couldn't be me!

The change wasn't instant, it was a process that took time and is still something I am working towards each and every day. Today, I wanted to take some time to share with you some of the things that I have begun to do that have helped me to change my perspective of happiness and it's source.

One of the first things is to get grateful for the things you do have. Remember a couple of posts ago, we discussed "where focus goes, energy flows?" So if we're focussing on being grateful for things in our lives, what do you think is going to start showing up? Yes, that's right  - good things, positive things. The best way that I have found to help with this is to keep a gratitude journal to write down what you're grateful for each day.

Just to digress for a moment, my journal used to be the source of negativity in my life. Anything bad that happened, guess where it got written? Yep, in my journal. Guess how I was always feeling when I wrote in my journal? Sad, angry, depressed, unloved..... the list of negativity goes on.  So I decided to change that. I went out and bought myself a beautiful new journal, which now has its own new rules. I am only allowed to write good stuff, positive stuff, happy stuff. Guess what I do now when I am feeling low, sad or blue - I go to my gratitude journal and read of the things that I am grateful for. And knowing that I am responsible for how I am feeling and that I have chosen a particular emotion, those "negative' feelings are showing up less often and for shorter periods of time.

The other thing that's had a huge impact, is making sure that I am taking time out each day to do something for myself to add to my "feeling great" bank. This could be something as simple as enjoying a cup of tea in bed, reading, going for a walk, writing, playing with my daughter, cooking. Notice that there is more than one source of activity that I can do to contribute towards generate feeling good?

The more activites that you can do in your day, no matter how small, will create a domino effect. Over time you will become more grateful and more aware of the wonderful things that you already have, and begin to choose to be happy, to come from a place of love and gratitude rather than expectation, blame and lack. Take it from someone who's been there - this is a journey well worth investing in.

Unexpected Gifts

I was having a conversation with a friend earlier today, she was a bit distressed over something that had happened. On Wednesday her partner and her made a decision to put their house on the market as it was something that they'd been discussing for awhile and finally took the plunge and put it out there to the world. They're not in too much of a hurry to sell it, but figure it will sell when the time is right.

She came home from work yesterday to be told by her partner that an investor was coming to look at the house on Monday. She figures, cool, no worries, plenty of time tomorrow to do some cleaning and get the house looking immaculate. So this morning when her partner called her from work at 9.45am to tell her that the agent was coming over with the investor buyer at 11.30am, her initial reaction to him was "Hell no. No way. No. Not today". And hung up on him. She then took a deep breath and called him back to tell him to get someone to come and get their child so she could clean the house.

As we talked more about this, my friend revealed that her first reaction of hanging up came from a place of insecurity, of feeling judged, of things not being perfect. She said this feeling came with a lot of anxiety for her as she was so used to being prepared for things and didn't like having things sprung on her without notice. She didn't like to look as though she didn't have things under control.

Once she took a deep breath and a giant step back from the situation, she realised that the investor wasn't "judging"her, but merely coming to look at a house that they may or may not wish to purchase. The fact that this house was currently her home and a place she had a lot of pride in, was where ego came in and momentarily took over. She realised that the house didn't need to be immaculate and that she didn't need to scrub showers and toilets, clean windows, dust ceiling fans and clean scuff marks from walls. The investor was simply looking at a house.

When she took an even bigger step away from the situation, she began to be grateful that the investor was in fact coming today, as they'd actually saved her a whole day of "Cinderella-ing". She could now just do a couple of things that needed doing so the house was presentable. But she'd actually been given a gift of having time to spend with her daughter without constraints, deadlines and expectation.

How often do we go through our day to day lives reacting instanteously to situations before thinking them through, not taking the time to let things sink in before we react or to even see the gift that may be hidden? We operate from a place of knee-jerk reactions, with our actions, thoughts and words. Often times these can be to our our detriment. What if for a week, you were to take a deep breath, let things sink in and then respond?

Procrastination is the thief of time

I remember being taught this saying when I was 11 or 12 years old. Procrastination was such a big word, I could barely say it, let alone apply it in context. As I have grown older and gone on my merry way in the big world, I have found myself to now be a master of  "procrastination". Apparently, I am not alone.

These days we're so "busy" and are easily distracted by Facebook, Twitter, email,  mobile phones or apps, that it can be easy to end up putting off the big things we want to do.  When I say big things, I am referring to the things that we know we need to do or the things that we "should be doing" in order for us to be heading in the direction of our goals and our life's purpose. Well, at least this is what I have found for me. And I guess, when we break down these "big" things into step by step goals or daily actions, they're really not so big after all. It was only ever a perception that we had.

So the big question is, how does one go about applying themselves to achieving their goals and not end up distracted? I am still in the process of figuring that one out in its entirity. But I have found a few steps that have been most helpful in allowing me to be more productive, more focussed and getting more out of my days. I thought it may be helfpul for you if I shared some of them with you, to help you being to break the cycle.

The first thing, is to decide what it is that you really want out of life. What is your big picture, your end game, the place you want to end up? This becomes your "why". The reason that you would commit yourself to doing things that you wouldn't usually do, forming new habits. When you know what you are working towards, it becomes easier to focus on the end result. You will do whatever it takes to get you there. This big picture will keep you going on the days when you think you can't go any further.

The next thing would be to list the steps that you need to take to get you there. So for example, if your big picture is to change your career from retail assistant to running your own business,  you would probably need to set yourself a timeline of when this would be achieved, what education would you need to undertake, who would you need to talk to about setting up your business, you may decide to join a networking group, develop a business plan, source a premise to run your business from - the list goes on. Then list out the steps that will take you to where you want to be. It's also really helpful to put dates of when you want to have achieved these by. If you're a visual person, make a timeline and stick it up in your office. It will be a constant reminder of the end picture you have in mind for yourself.

From here, it's a matter of looking at your daily actions. How do you structure your days? Are they structured at all? Could you benefit from some structure? Pencil in your diary time for you to carry out something for yourself for that day. And more importantly, make sure you actually do it. During this time, your phone should be off, computer off, no other distractions, just take this time purely and simply for you. For me personally, I find first thing in the morning is great. Mainly because no one else in the house is up and I can give to myself first and then am ready to give to rest of the world for the remainder of the day.

If working from home during the day, I find it useful to plan out my time. Schedule and allocate time in your diary for tasks ie. answering emails, developing business plans, making phone calls etc etc. I also allocate tea breaks, a lunch break and "my time". Then, as I complete each task I tick it off.

If there's a task in my diary that I really don't feel like doing, then I put a timer on for 30 minutes and spend a solid amount of time on that task. I may not complete it, but at least I have put in some action towards completing it. Most of the time though, once the 30 minutes are up I keep going any way beacause I am already in the groove and the sense of accomplishment that comes from completing something dreaded is awesome.

When you sit down at your computer, put a timer on for 30 minutes while you are checking your email/facebook/twitter. This will allow you to become more effective at spending your time wisely, rather than frivilously. I'm not sure if I am the only one that it happens to, but time seems to disappear when I am getting caught up in everyone else's world and their drama. Once the timer goes off, log out of your account and get back to what you need to be doing.

I trust that you've found these tips useful. Have a go at implementing a couple of them into your daily routine, you never know you just may be able to become the "Master of your time", making the most of every day. I will leave you with this thought...

Where Focus Goes.... energy flows

Don't think of a purple elephant!

Hang on a second, you just thought of exactly that although I told you not to. Do you know why? Because one of the universal laws is where focus goes energy flows.

What exactly does this mean I hear you ask? Well, let's just say you're fixated with all the negatives in your life, how you're so busy, you're tired all the time, the world is filled with idiots, everything is so hard, people set out to make your life difficult.... do I need to go on? What do you think you are going to filter into your daily experiences and encounters with the world? You will be out there searching for examples of the negative. And that's cool. We're all doing the best we can with the knowledge, information and resources we have at any given moment.

However, what kind of a world would be out there for you if you began to look at things from a different perspective? What if you began to schedule your day better or even get out of bed 15 minutes earlier and go to bed 15 minutes later? All of a sudden you've just created an extra half an hour in your day. What could you do with that time to add even more value to yourself and your day?

What if you started to exercise, nothing too over the top to begin with, just a gentle 30 minute walk around the block to clear your head. I can guarantee you that you will feel more energised after it. What if you chose to look at problems as possibilities instead? Then sit back and notice how things seem to unfold in a whole different light. Has the world suddenly changed? No, you are choosing to focus on a different outcome.

Come with me for a second. Grab your torch and let's go into this gigantic warehouse that stands before us. Take your torch and shine it anywhere you choose. What do you see? Are you seeing the possibilities that lay before you or are you seeing a big empty warehouse? What if you move your torch over to the left a little? What are you seeing now? What could you see if you chose to? Now, what would happen if someone turned on a huge flood light, and this once doomy and gloomy warehouse was now lit up like a Christmas tree?

The warehouse is a representation of our mind. Sometimes we can focus too much on the negatives and get caught up in a trap of allowing things to "happen" to us. It can be easy to forget that we are 100% responsible for ourselves and the results we're getting in our lives. It can be easy to blame others and make excuses for what's going on.

My challenge to you is for you to take the torch of your mind and to shine it in a new place, a place that may be unchartered territory or a place that you haven't visited for a while.  What can you now see that perhaps you couldn't before? What possibilities are opening themselves up to you? What direction could you now choose to go in that perhaps you haven't thought to go before or have been afraid to go in? What action step could you take that would be a step towards achieving a goal? I'd love to hear what you find when you shine your torch in a different part of your "warehouse".

Say "Yes" and then work out how...

In this day and age, we've become so accustomed to saying no, that maybe some of us have forgotten how to say yes. We constantly say "no"to ourselves and our desires because we get too caught up in the "what ifs". Well, chances are the "what if" will never happen.

I am going to challenge your thinking for a moment, what if you were to start saying "ÿes"and then working out how after? What possibilities would open up for you?

Did you set a New Year's Resolution or two at the start of 2012?  Are still focussing on achieving your resolution? Have you  decided that it's too hard, you're too busy, you don't have enough time, it costs too much and have already said no? Have you  had problems and drama creep into their lives? But what if they weren't problems? What if they were possibilities that were presenting themselves to you?

I am sure you are familiar with Walt Disney? This man was infamous for his creative flair and out-of-the-box thinking. He didn't let anyone stand in his way. He had his studios set out in a such a way so as each room had a specific purpose. First of all, there was the "Dream" room. This was a room filled with magnificent colour, an air of playfulness, infinite possibilities, a room where the dreaming took place, where ideas were thrown about and there was no such thing as a bad idea. In this room anything could happen

A bit further down was what was known as the "reality" room. This room was filled with storyboards and post-it notes where the ideas started to take shape. This was a room where you started backwards and then began to work forwards. You began with the end in mind. This room was all about "how will this come to life". There was no place for lack nor negativity, the main focus was that  - anything is possible.

Further away again, was a plainly coloured room containing only a desk and a chair. This was aptly named the sweat room.  This room was where the real work was done. It was designed so that one would get in there and get their work done as efficiently as possible, as this wasn't a comfortable space to be hanging out in.

So, I'd encourage you to take a few moments and let yourself into your "dream" room. Open yourself up and start to dream again. What could you if you knew no fear, lack or limitations? What would you choose if you began to see a plethora of opportunities laid out before you? Where is your dream room? It need not be a space in your house. You may find your dream room whilst you're out walking or on the beach or on a mountain top. Wherever it is, I strongly encourage you to take the time out to "Say Yes and then work out how".