Some potentially useful ideas for a better year

 

https://drchatterjee.com/13-powerful-ideas-to-make-2024-your-best-year-yet/

Get some time alone with your thoughts. Be still and present. Allow yourself to be bored. Don’t be always connected / accessible / distracted.

Embrace discomfort. Confront your feelings and fears. Your emotions are in flux and change. Much passes.

You can’t control all that happens to you / circumstances, but you can have some control over your responses. We spend a lot of time trying to avoid a future which hasn’t happened yet. Past hurts lead to fears of the future. Tension and worry can be self-fulfilling – we bring our anxiety with us. Be aware of your patterns and be compassionate towards yourself. It is funny that we go to such effort to avoid a future we are imagining. What upsets us is us. We can take responsibility.

It Is very liberating not to mind what happens, but we might still have a preference! We need not be victims. We can have some control.

We sometimes live in others’ perception of ourselves. We base what we think of ourselves on what we think others think of us.

We want to jump to have but we have to be, do, have, share. Head, heart and hand must be aligned. Mindset (assumptions and attitudes – what I believe is possible for me), motivations and methods matter. Nouns must be turned in to verbs. Our self-talk / beliefs are very powerful. Not so much time management but mind management. The most important thing is to keep the most important things the most important things. We should seek to control the control-ables.

Common sense is not common practice. People often know what they ought to do (e.g. eat more fruit and veg, quit the fags), but they often don’t do it.  

Self-help is sometimes shelf-help.

90% of your thoughts today are the thoughts you had yesterday! What fires together wires together. We get automatic. We become what we habitually think / feel / do.  

We do well to become conscious of our unconscious thoughts. We should seek to become aware of our thoughts, emotions, behaviours. What do we want to change from and to. Practice feeling (imagine, role play – the real thing might not be so different from pretending).

Our expectations often make us happy or unhappy. Be okay with life! Austin Martins are not perfect and tend to disappoint. Calm and peaceful contentment, acceptance is necessary. We can even feel pain without it leading us to despair and endless suffering.

Stress responses last about 90 seconds. After that, we either repeat or move on. I can make myself angry and miserable again or not. I can choose to dwell on my upset.

Victimhood can have a utility, but you are not six years old any more.

Many events are neutral. It depends what story you attach to them. Or how you react to them. Stories can be changed.

Live from the inside out, not dependant on what happens.

Hatred is probably not useful. Pity might be better. Love.

You create what you think / feel / behave.

Ironically, we can criticise ourselves for being overly self-critical.

Turn towards what is, even if it is painful, without being consumed by it.

Be aware and seek perspective. Respond kindly and wisely with compassion. If you were your friend, what would you say to yourself?

Feel connection to others.

The Hi-Five Habit: Look at yourself in the mirror and hi-five yourself – it’s going to be okay! You can do this! Give yourself some positive energy. Be excited to see yourself! Unconditional support and celebration. Partner with yourself. What do you need from yourself today? Trashing yourself does not work. Don’t reject yourself. Don’t depend on validation from others. Show gratitude for yourself. This doesn’t change your circumstances but it changes you.

There is a poverty in uniformity. Resist moving to the middle ground. There can be good stuff at the untidy edges. Express what you care about. Live don’t just perform / conform.

We want results, but the way to get the results is to fix the inputs, to form the habits that get results. How you are now, depends on how you were each day six months or a year ago. We tend to over value the results. We need the systems.

True behaviour change is identity change – part of who we are, of the story we tell ourselves. Writing is natural to writers. Athletes train. Healthy people eat in a healthy way. Every action casts a vote for the kind of person you are becoming / want to become. Who do you want to become? Do one thing now.

Real change is long, slow, hard and requires dedication to a process, little things repeated imperceptibly and incrementally. Deadlines / rules can really help you. Be patient for the long journey of learning, growing.

You overestimate what you can do in the short term (a couple of weeks) and underestimate what you could do in the long term (a few years).

Make a commitment to yourself. Recruit a community to keep you accountable.

You can’t make time for everything that matters. Just make sure you make time for some things that matter.

Everything is a choice – conscious or not. Every choice is a choice not to do something else in that moment. Every YES is also a NO.

Make some time today for something you really care about. Some things are not going to get done and that’s okay.

Priority was a singular word for hundreds of years. It can be risky to have lots of priorities. It’s not all important. A few things really matter. Much is trivial noise. We are not coal miners but diamond miners. We don’t need to simply do more. Find what matters and focus on that.  

Are you led by your scared self (e.g. comparing, fear of missing out) or your sacred self?

Perfectionism is a common form of self-sabotage since it sets an exhausting impossible standard. Comparisons push us out of the moment in to dissatisfaction. Tolerate imperfection. Expose yourself to imperfection. You could have people round in an untidy sitting room and it would be okay. Get perspective. There is lots of mess out there and its okay. We don’t all have it all together. No one is perfect.

Everyone fails. Successful people have to be comfortable with failure – trying and failing often is the only way to have some success. Training is failing. The growth is where the failure is. Failure is inevitable. Failure is a comma, not a full stop.

If identity is a construction, what would be the ideal identity? That of a learner. This is a non-fragile identity since it embraces not knowing and failing. Criticism is an opportunity for growth. If people throw stones at you, think of them as gold nuggets. Or use them as bricks. Is there an element of truth in the criticism that can be put to use?

The psychological immune system is not always helpful: the more deluded someone is, the happier they might be!

What is the friction in your life. Why? Why does that bother you? Is it a revealing opportunity for growth?

Life is change. We think we can control it, but we can’t. We try to avoid difficulty. Busyness can be a kind of avoidance. We need space to process change, to adapt and thrive. Distraction can serve us. Sit with your feelings and see what comes up. Pain can be the agent of change. Squash a feeling and it will come out in some other way.

Breathe – it is free and accessible and you can control it. Be present. Pay attention.

Take a moment to reflect. Slow down for a minute. Don’t be in such a hurry to get to a future where you can relax and enjoy life! Breathe now. Can you be comfortable in your own skin whatever is going on around you? Don’t pin your hopes on a future with the perfect body, bank account etc. Be content here and now. Don’t feel the need to react, control or manipulate.