How to create healthy habits, and achieve great things

Have you ever had times when it just felt like you are STUCK!  No matter what you do to move forward, you can’t!  No matter what we’d like to achieve, we just can’t get to a place of developing better habits. Ever wanted to eat healthier? Exercise more often? How about be more organised? Show more creativity in your job? Or even change your negative attitude into a more positive one? Maybe even change the way we work or interact with people?

It always seems to be a much larger task than we would like it to be. We would like to have better, healthier habits but can’t seem to get to that point, no matter how hard we try!  Be it eat healthier food, exercising regularly, start saving, stop worrying about everything, it doesn’t matter what it is, it just seems impossible!!

Sometimes, it seems easier to just give up, and resign ourselves with the inevitable? We all go through that at some point! It’s just easier to sit on that couch and watch TV, and not exercise. We tell ourselves: “what’s the use; it’s too difficult; it’s too much effort and without much result, or maybe you say: I just can’t get motivated enough to start!

The definition of Insanity

If you are anything like me, you think that in order to start any new habit it should be a BIG, dramatic change! But actually after having tried several takes on “I’m going to start exercising for 2-3 hours every day!” which usually results in me pulling a muscle, and to never venture near the gym for a long time, I finally realised that it’s not working! I’ve heard that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result! So let’s try something new.

Start small

You see, we’ve all been there too often, and know what that’s like. But through coaching, I’ve realised a key that so simply, that it seems almost too easy- Start with a small step.  Waiting for more? That’s it. I told you its simple!

If you want to start a new habits start with the smallest step that you can manage. For example, if you want to start an exercise regime, rather than the ‘go big or go home’ motto, which is a great start, but the finish is usually quite embarrassing. – start with exercising for one day a week, or better yet for 10 minutes a day. If it’s not too unrealistic soon you’ll find yourself meeting this target with ease, and then you’ll find yourself becoming more confident, and adding more days in the week or time to exercise!  Continue this for about 3 weeks and before you know it you will have developed a healthy habit. The great thing about this is that it can be done with virtually any situation.

Why it’s effective?

When you start with a small step and then when it goes well, you have a little motivation to continue with another small step, and soon enough you start creating enough momentum to enable you to complete a great task!  What’s the smallest step you can take to change your attitude? To achieve your dreams? To be more creative?  Monitor it over a period. Give yourself time. You didn’t do so well this week, that’s okay you can try again next week. Check yourself, and soon you’ll find yourself developing a new and wonderful habit. Try it out for a few weeks and keep at it, even if you miss a week or 2! Let me know how it works out for you.

How does coaching work:

A coach will partner with you, and act as a catalyst to achieve your goals. A coach has a unique perspective and is trained on a specific methodology that evokes curiosity, and reflection. If you want to truly succeed, and achieve something extraordinary, a coach is essential! For more information about coaching please check out my website: www.dynamiqueatwork.co.za

About Racheal: I work with leaders and professionals to ensure success. I offer telephone coaching, as well as face-to-face, and group coaching. Areas that I focus on are finding your vision and passion in life; strengthening your personal foundation; managing your stress; and executive coaching. To learn more contact me now for a free (no obligations) coaching session.

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From the time that we are born, we are taught to DO things! Every time we accomplish something we are rewarded, which gives us such accomplishment that we choose to pursue more opportunities to DO things so that we can be rewarded again! Education and work is also designed to further entrench this way of life. So we focus on DOING things to ensure success. Yet spending time DOING things on a constant basis can sometimes leave us feeling dissatisfied and empty. It starts to feel a bit like we’re running on a hamster wheel! Running as fast as we can, but going nowhere!

A definition:

One of the biggest lesson’s in life is learning to embrace the concept of being, which is extremely beneficial once mastered. It’s a strange concept, not familiar to most of us, but once you grasp it; you’ll wonder how you ever did without it! So what is the concept of ‘being’? Wikipedia defines a state of being as “aspects that involve expressions and manifestations coming from a [person's] innate being, or personal character”

It sounds to me like it refers to a natural way of responding to things, and how we show up in the world. For example to DO charitable things is one thing, but if your heart is compassionate and always being touched by the plight of others, which causes you to behave in a way that is innately kind to the less fortunate, that’s BEING! It’s knowing WHO you are and resting in that knowledge, and openly expressing that through everything you say and do.

More than a list of activities, it comes easily because it flows from WHO you are. It’s a process of working with your natural strengths, experience, personality, values, etc, and observing what needs to happen moment by moment, and not being distracted by a list of things to do. Being is a joyful and peaceful place because it comes from examining and accepting who you are, and working with that, as opposed to trying to be like someone else, which is just counterproductive. A place where opportunities happen without immense effort! What an amazing place to be!

The Concept of Flow

Many of you have probably heard of the concept of flow, described as a place where opportunities seem to happen without much effort, a place of such strength that it’s actually fun and easy. If I can use the analogy of a river, if you allow yourself to be pushed in the direction of the water, that’s flow, easier and effortless! Whereas DOING is often compared to swimming upstream, it’s hard work, you are going against who you are and where you need to go, and often leaves you exhausted and unmotivated!

So my challenge for you this month, is to focus on being unconditionally constructive, being fully present, being yourself!

Reflection questions:

What if you had everything that you needed within yourself to be a success!

What if you could have peace, and joy in who you are and what you do?

What if you loved your work, because it flows out from who you are?

How does coaching work:

A coach will partner with you, and act as a ca talyst to achieve your goals. A coach has a unique perspective and is trained on a specific methodology that evokes curiosity, and reflection. If you want to truly succeed, and achieve something extraordinary, a coach is essential! For more information about coaching please check out my website: www.dynamiqueatwork.co.za

About Racheal: I work with leaders and professionals to ensure business and personal success. I offer telephone coaching, as well as face-to-face, and group coaching. Areas that I focus on are finding your vision and passion in life; strengthening your personal foundation; managing your stress; and executive coaching. To learn more contact me now for a free (no obligations) coaching session.

Subscribe to newsletter: You can subscribe on www.dynamiqueatwork.co.za to receive a free monthly newsletter.

The only thing that is constant is change - We’ve all heard that saying at one time or another, and are very aware at how resistant we are to change. But an even more interesting question is: How much time do we spend on our reasons for the change, and getting resources to adapt and “power up” for the change.

I love reflecting on life, and the lessons that life is teaching me.  When I moved house I decided to pull up and replant a beautiful plant from my garden.  But the plant did not seem to be too happy with the change, and the plant appeared to be dying a day later!  I was very disappointed, and I wondered at the fragility of the plant! Surely it couldn’t die, because I had made sure that it was in fertile soil. It was just in a completely different environment, and situation!  Over a few months, it looked like absolutely no growth was happening! I was ready to give up, and toss it out! But after a few months I saw some new leaves shooting up, and I could see the plant recovering, and is still doing quite well actually.

So, I asked myself as I often do, what is the lesson that I need to learn here?  Instead of an answer I got another question: How many times during periods of extreme stress or big changes do we actually stop and nurture ourselves and take the time to reflect on what is happening, and ask ourselves if we are we happy with this change?

You see what actually was happening with my plant, was that it was trying to adjust, it had to focus on the roots getting enough nourishment to survive, energy spent on growing leaves and branches are wasted energy. So when changes happen to you, how are you adapting to it?  Do you stop and take time to reflect on the direction, and is it a purposed direction? Or do you just continue unaware and let life happen to you? Sometimes we need to stop and reflect, and ask some important questions, and focus on where we need it most. The higher we want to grow, the deeper we need to go! It’s a principle that I call “Go slow in order to go fast”. (Included in this principle are the concepts of thinking outside the box, re-evaluating, and re-integrating; reflecting; gaining feedback; checking the map; taking time out; being busy vs. being effective etc.) Coaching is very effective in evaluating your life and living it on purpose!

So today, if you can take a half an hour out of your day to  re-energise yourself and think about some of the changes you’ve been through. Ask yourself:” How is this contributing to making life more meaningful to me?”  If the answer is no, then you have some work to do! If you would like more information about this topic, or coaching please contact me.

How does coaching work:

A coach will partner with you, and act as a catalyst to achieve your goals. A coach has a unique perspective and is trained on a specific methodology that evokes curiosity, and reflection. If you want to truly succeed, and achieve something extraordinary, a coach is essential! For more information about coaching please check out my website: www.dynamiqueatwork.co.za

About Racheal: I work with leaders and professionals to ensure business and personal success. I offer telephone coaching, as well as face-to-face, and group coaching. Areas that I focus on are finding your vision and passion in life; strengthening your personal foundation; managing your stress; and executive coaching. To learn more contact me now for 1 free (no obligations) coaching session.

Subscribe to newsletter: You can subscribe on www.dynamiqueatwork.co.za to receive a free monthly newsletter.

Have you ever gotten into your car or an airplane, without knowing where you are going? Yet, we often do that with our lives; we start a career, relationship, business, etc and then forget to check where we are going, and what we want out of life! No wonder many have a mid life crisis! If we don’t know where we want to be, how we are ever going to get there!

As Socrates said “an unconsidered life is not worth living”, how sad that many waste their talents and skills, all because they never take the time to figure out what they want and which direction they want to go. We seem to be so busy, as if being busy makes us more productive, and get’s us to our destination faster! Many end up being stressed, because they don’t take the time to think about how to improve their working habits, like manage their time better, or how to delegate or plan the day. These people live their lives subject to the actions, choices and what’s important to others.

Take time out in the day to reflect on how you feel about where you are right now, and what you would like to achieve in life, a journal is also useful in discovering your inner desires, what’s important to you as well as discovering where you want to go. One of the benefits of coaching is that a coach will work with you to identify those areas that can be changed or improved so that you have a life that’s lived with focus and  purpose.

What is coaching and how does it work:

I often have people asking me to explain what coaching is. The best way to explain coaching (whether it is personal; business or executive coaching) is by comparing it to a sport’s coach.  A sport’s coach is one who is trained in specific skills and has knowledge about how to improve and increase the sport’s player’s ability (let’s call him Jim) to succeed. He or she would work with Jim to identify areas of potential growth. A coach would have a unique perspective which allows them to see a side of Jim that cannot be seen by Jim himself. A coach is trained on a specific methodology and would utilise this expertise to enhance the performance of Jim. Without the coach, Jim can be an adequate player, he will still play the game, and may even win a couple games, but if Jim wants to truly succeed, and achieve something extraordinary a coach is essential.  A personal coach works in the same way with a client. Make sure you choose a coach that is trained and has the expertise to provide insight and value to you. There are numerous areas that you can work on with a personal coach, from vision formation, to managing stress to business success, to time management.

For more information about coaching please check out my website: www.dynamiqueatwork.co.za.

About Racheal: I work with leaders and professionals to ensure business and personal success.I offer telephone coaching, as well as face-to-face, and group coaching. Areas that I focus on are finding your vision and passion in life; strengthening your personal foundation; managing your stress; and executive coaching. Contact me now for 1 free (no obligations) coaching session.

Subscribe to newsletter: You can subscribe on www.dynamiqueatwork.co.za to receive a free monthly newsletter.