Happy New Year! 2010. A new decade. I hope that your celebrations were wonderful…
New beginnings are exciting, aren’t they? They give us hope that we can start over and change for the better. That we can leave the old stuff about ourselves behind, and step into the new. That’s why we set intentions and themes and get all pumped up for change at the new year, right?
But you know, we can do that any old day. Even in the middle of a hot day in June, we can change. As human beings, this is our superpower. It’s pretty amazing, this ability to let go of ideas and behaviors and attitudes that are covering our inherent brilliance, and change for the better.
So yes, it’s the new year. But writing a new story for ourselves and stepping into our ability to lead the life of our choosing is something we can do every day. And, if you have big plans for change in 2010, you can revisit and revise your new story, often, to stay focused on the letting go of the old stuff that isn’t working for you.
A secret of change is that our energy goes where our thoughts lead us. If we are constantly saying to ourselves, “I’m so disorganized, I’m so disorganized…” that is where our energy stays: with disorganization. On the other hand, if we can shift that to, “I’m really excited to get organized and learn to stay organized.” Then our energy moves toward creative solutions and positive action.
How it works
1. What’s your current story?
Before you can tell a new story, you have to know your current story. Sometimes, we are so attached to our story we don’t see it as a story, but as FACT. Clara has been off of school for going on three weeks. One of those weeks we were on vacation, but last week, I was home with Clara all week. My story was, “I can’t get any of my work done with Clara home.”
That was not the story I wanted to be living – it was making me tense. I had a lot of stuff I wanted to complete last week and I wanted to be able to do it and have a good time with Clara, too. So I sat down and asked myself, “What story do I want to tell about this week?”
2. Choose a new story
My new story, “I am having a good time with Clara and I’m getting enough of my work done.” Once I started thinking about the situation in terms of my new story, my creative brain went to work for me. I talked to Clara about what I wanted to do, she told me what she wanted to do, and we went from there.
This is deceptively simple, but our brains cannot think creatively if they perceive any sort of threat. How did I know it was a perceived threat? I was tense about it.
3. Take action on your new story
I knew how I wanted to feel and act, so that is what I did. Clara and I sort of organically fell into a schedule where we would play together for a while and then I would work for a while. It was very sweet and we both enjoyed it. A few times I found myself falling back into, “I’m not getting any work done…” but I was able to refute that story, because I had already gotten more done than I thought I would.
This works, all the time. It doesn’t have to be the new year. You can write a new story for anything you would like to change about yourself and simply start acting on it. Practice makes perfect. You will undoubtedly have failures and setbacks, but that is part of how we re-wire our brains and learn new skills: by evaluating what we’ve done right, what went wrong, and practicing some more. As Aristotle said so eloquently,
“Excellence is a habit.”
You get to choose, every day, what story you will tell, what habits you will strengthen. What story will you tell next year? My fervent hope is that it’s the story of you being your brilliant self, at work, at play, in all of life.
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Photo courtesy of Gutter via Flickr under a creative commons license.
