29 Aug SMALL STEPS TO MOVING FORWARD
SMALL STEPS TO MOVING FORWARD
SELF-AWARENESS: small steps to moving forward
Self-awareness is one of the most important achievements. Acceptance and knowing that ‘it is what it is’. And you are where you are at any given moment. Just like you are who you are at any given time. Just remember you have choice and the ability to make certain decisions to take whatever action that you need, for what ever reason.
WE EVOLVE
We are always growing and evolving. You are not the same as you were 5 years ago. And you will not be the same in 5 years either. Not exactly, anyway. Every new experience could trigger one of your previous strategies, or even create a new one. Small steps to moving forward.
PERSISTENCE: small steps to moving forward
And this will test us. Fulfilled living is a continuous improvement process. The key here is that practical strategies make up positive instances. What ever they are for you, they must be rehearsed and practiced. They must be repeated. They must be revisited. This way they become learned. They must be persisted. Again and again and again and again.
Keep going, keep learning, and keep growing. Accomplishments mostly involve a level of persistence. Remember this. This is about constant and continuous involvement and improvement as time goes on and you grow.
A NEW AWARENESS
Consider it a new level of awareness or acceptance, a new level of gratitude and giving, a new level of peace and contentment.
LEARNING
Let’s say you make a decision to learn a musical instrument the piano. You decide to get more in touch with a different side of you. A creative side.
You decide to buy a piano and attend some lessons. You attend the first bunch of lessons. But to build skills you must practice. There is no other way around that. Between lessons you practice what you learned and that’s what you need to do.
PROGRESSIVE LEARNING: small steps to moving forward
After that, you might be able to play a couple of songs and some tunes. Then what? If you want to keep learning then you apply yourself more. You take more lessons. You practice more and more. Then you start to learn more complex tunes.
Then you might join a band or similar. See, small steps.
KEEP GOING
If it is something that’s important to you, something you really want, you keep moving forward. The key to remember here is that the final and ongoing step to active learning is to keep going to keep moving keep growing keep learning keep applying.
BECOMING AN EXPERT
This is something I do in my personal life too. I wanted to build some educational skills of positive mental wellness. I first did one course, then another, then branched off to more, and so on. What happened in the end? I became rather sophisticated with expert knowledge. Can I learn more? Yep, heaps more. I just need a few more life times. And I mean this humorously. There is just not enough time to learn what I wish to learn, and live too. But I use small steps to moving forward.
CHALLENGES
Even when you take a backward step or even if it doesn’t feel comfortable when it comes to human patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving, they can be strongly wired inside us and it can feel as though there can be challenging to break or to change. Let me put it to you this way.
AUTOMATIC PATHS
Think of a thick forest with one distinct path that has been well used over and over again many times by you, because of the endless times you have walked through it. You have walked exactly the same way and the path is easy to see. You walk it automatically, without thinking or noticing the directions that you are taking. It is clear and automatic. No attention or concentration needed.
A NEW PATH
But what if one day you decided to walk a different path? You would have to pay attention to a new route, and consciously decide the way. Then the next time you walk into that forest you would have to make a conscious decision to walk down the new path and your experience would be very different to the usual. What am I getting at?
OUR AMAZING BRAIN
You see our neural pathways in our brain become accustomed to the way we teach them. We’ve been thinking and behaving in certain ways, sometimes for a very long time, always along the same path. The same pattern.
And then we see a new way of thinking or behaving or communicating or presenting ourselves. And the first time we try it. It’s like creating a new path in the forest. The first time we make that path it’s quite challenging.
PRACTICE: small steps to moving forward
Then the next time, we can just make out the path but we have to think about it consciously, as in which direction to walk which way to turn. Once we learn the new path, small steps to moving forward, and have practiced it enough times, we know automatically, and the old path fades from conscious thinking eventually, as it does not get used.
TAKE THE ADVANTAGE
You see, we have the capacity to do that with our thinking and these changes in thinking can have amazing results in our own lives. Can you see what I am getting at? How can you use this to your advantage? So just because you learn a new practical strategy for how to handle stress or for how to feel more confident in social situations, how can this be used to your advantage.
SMALL STEPS: to moving forward
If you go back to an old behavior or thought pattern, it’s okay. It doesn’t mean that you’ve gone backwards or you’re a failure. In fact you may learn from such occasions.
It’s all about learning procedures. We don’t just change all our way and strategies in all areas of our lives instantly or overnight. It takes small steps. Small steps often lead to big progress. So keep the momentum going. Be persistent, small steps to moving forward. This is key to ensuring a growth mindset.
So be persistent. If you are not where you want to be or behaving how you would like to behave, or getting the response from someone else that you would like to receive, then look at the choices you are making.
PERMISSION
Give yourself permission to move forward to where you need to go. Permission to make necessary changes to your life. Give yourself permission to feel emotions. It’s okay to feel frustrated with someone or annoyed, or unappreciated.
But don’t hide or avoid your feelings. Feel it for a while, then work on understanding or identifying what it is you feel. Then make a decision to move on, small steps to moving forward, so that you don’t get stuck.
GOOD INTENTION
Feel compassion to take ownership for yourself, to forgive, to let go of what ever you need. Do what you need to do to move forward and find who you truly are. You are here to live your life in the way that you want to live it as long as your choices are not based on a decision to intentionally hurt another person.
STRENGTHS: small steps to moving forward
Expect the best of you that you can give. Feel empowered to look for and find your strengths. Remember that strengths help us find our problem solving skills. You will want good things for yourself and to reach for the goals that you set for yourself. Small steps to moving forward.
Allow yourself to be able to depend on yourself. Be kind to yourself while you are holding yourself to a high personal standard it is most important to be kind and compassionate to yourself.
LET GO OF PERFECTIONISM
Be lenient as you realise, you will fail, you will make mistakes, you will not always be able to give your best. Remember you are human. And no human is perfect. Small steps to moving forward, I’ve never met a perfect person, and I doubt whether you have. Get rid of perfectionism, and associated expectations,
KINDNESS AND FORGIVENESS
Be kind to yourself and you will feel more compassion to others. Let go of past regrets and past mistakes. Hurts and disappointments need to be let go of too. Let go of blame and judgment, and forgive yourself and others for things that are wrong, or even perceived as wrong.
CHANGE: small steps to moving forward
And the punch-line, …small steps to moving forward….the freedom you could gain in your life from letting go is enormous. You may even realise one day that all you had to do is ‘let go’. For all this time, you were holding on to emotions that were just not helpful. Letting go is like a magical concept. Not so easy to do, but there may come a turning point for you that something on the inside of you just “changes” and that’s all it took.
HYPNOSIS
I see this change happen often during hypnosis. Most amazing to witness, when the conditions for change are created and the client has a realisation. Priceless.
Amanda Dounis
Positive Thinking Clinic
1/7 Magdalene Terrace
Wolli Creek, 2205
0458 850 850
amanda@positivethinkingclinic.com.au