Becoming who you want to become, and living your life the way you want to is tough at the beginning, but easier as you get used to it.
Change is tough, and changing your behaviour and actions is tough, because it requires getting out of your comfort zone. And our comfort zone is our default place, it’s the place we feel most secure in. Everyone wants to feel secure and to feel certain. Our comfort zone, whether it’s destructive or not, gives you certainty and gives us security. We know what to expect from it.
We know what it feels like to battle the same stone over and over. We know what the feeling of eating too much food feels like. We know what hangovers are like, it’s all so familiar.
So if you want to change your life, you’ve got to change your behaviour patterns, right? And that’s where people get stuck. You try to quit something, the feelings you experience are new and they feel unnatural, and all you want to to do is feel certainty, but all you feel is fear. And it may just be something like giving up late night snacking, but you try it, and it feels so strange, that sooner or later, you go back to your default comfort zone, whatever that is to you.
Fear holds us back.
Fear of what’ll happen if you get sober, if you get fit, if you get really healthy, if you become your healthy dress size. You can be scared for some many reasons. It may be you’re afraid you’ll be bored, you’ll lose loved ones, you’ll be judged, you won’t know yourself, you’ll feel big headed, people won’t like you anymore, you wont know what to do with yourself, there are very many reasons that hold us all back.
It’s really worthwhile unravelling this and seeing what you’re afraid of, and confronting it. Confronting things, although scary, is extremely rewarding and there’s no better time than now, while in a pandemic, to give yourself the time to change the things you want to change, while we’re all in such a time of change.
Once you’ve unravelled where you’re at, whats holding you back, what your comfort zone is, what you want to change and what you’re scared of, you can then start taking action, and here’s what I recommend.
There are four big things I recommend you do that have worked for me and my clients.
- Change how you use your body
- Change your focus
- Change your language
- Create an empowering alternative
Change how you use your body.
Motion creates emotion. When you work out, you change your state. You flood your system with positive feel good hormones that give you certainty and confidence. Sweating once a day, for 30 minutes is a non-negotiable game changer. Change your body and you change your life. You’re not hoping for positive thoughts, you’re making them happen. You’re creating a strong, positive, certain mind with good thoughts. You’re making yourself ready for action. You’re setting yourself up in the best possible way.
Change your focus
Focus on your wins. Focus on what you’re doing right. What happens when you focus on things that worry you? You can’t think straight, you get anxious, you can only focus on what’s in front of you. You become hard on yourself and you stop being in a relaxed state. A relaxed state is when we have the best ideas, when we see things clearly, when we get excited about what we want.
Where focus goes, energy flows. Focus on your wins and what you want, and forget the rest.
Change your language.
Have you ever noticed with some people that no matter what you’re talking about, it’s all just so negative? Defeated? Rejected? And with others, you feel hope and positivity? The mentors I have had, thy don’t put positive spins on things, they see the good in everything. They don’t see big problems, they listen to you, and help you come up with a solution. How you talk to yourself and to others is so important. The language you use can change everything. Do you inspire hope and happiness in yourself? Or are you defeated about things before you even get going? Do you tear people down to bring yourself up? Do you slag people off the whole time? Are you cynical or sneery? Spend one week not giving out, and only speaking in a positive way, and notice the incredible difference almost instantly. Mantras are also unbelievable at creating change within you too, if you do them often enough.
Create an empowering alternative
Creating an empowering alternative to the habit you want to give up is incredibly important. Willpower alone won’t do it. There needs to be something in place that’s more fun, that you get what you were searching for when you comfort eat. Maybe when you comfort eat, you really want to relax. Maybe when you do a destructive behaviour you’re looking for a bit of uncertainty to break up what you see is ‘boring’. Is there anything healthy you can do that will help you feel that uncertainty that we also all need as much as we need certainty? A sea swim? An adrenaline hit with something else?
I hope this helps, please reach out if you found this useful or you’ve anything to add. You can grab lots of free tools over on our website by clicking this link
To your success,
Jessica Cooke
