Take Responsibility

Take responsibility for everything that happens to you.
Everything. Everything you see, or even everything you hear on the news.
Seems a little unfair?
Maybe. But Once you've taken responsibility for everything, you've also admitted you have the power to change everything.
So unfair at first, but ultimately empowering.

And if you're ranting about how you're life is different, and its unreasonable that I don't understand your special reason why you can't take responsibility for something someone is doing to you?

Well, that's your problem. And your responsibility to do something about.

I've got my own reality to look after.

Remember how it was before

In the past, I've found magic wands and made changes. After a while I tend to accept the new improved situation as the standard. I forget about how things were. And I question if the magic wand really did anything at all.

Now, sometimes, by the time I reach this stage, the magic wand has done its job, and I don't need it any more. It is now just a dead stick. Brown and sticky...

Now I've mentioned being gluten intolerant, and the changes that made to how I feel. It was a shock how quickly I got used to being the new me. The vibrant me (in so far as I'm ever vibrant, a gluten free me... vibrated... more). A happier, more awake me. Within two months I had taken it for granted.

Then I had to start eating gluten again. So that I could be blood tested to see if it had a result.

It was hell. My stomach rumbled and my head fuzzed up. Suddenly all I wanted to do was lie in bed in the dark.

I had forgotten that not eating gluten was a magic wand for me. I thought it was just some sort of punishment I had accepted.

I have another month of gluten to go. I get to have a final requiem for many of my favourite foods. And to suffer through every tediously long painful day at work, feeling like I should be anywhere else but there.

But I know where my magic wand is, and come May, I'll be digging it out again, and once more turning myself from a frog into a prince.

Initial Hurdles: Use softer wood

Sometimes you're going to hit into a hurdle, whatever you do. It can't be avoided. So you might as well cover the hurdle with some padding.

In the metaphor, hitting the hurdle is failing - specifically its failing to even get started. So how can you lessen the pain of this happening?

First: You can realise that failing on day 1 doesn't mean you have failed forever, or have even had a set back - just come at the hurdle again tomorrow

Second: You can choose to take on a smaller job - you may not have hurdled a high hurdle, but you have still made some forward progress

Finally: You can try to turn your failure into a success. What was it about the failure you learned about yourself - think hard: can knowing that help you come up with a way that will get you over the hurdles more often in the future? If so, on days setback is actually going to push you further forward in the future - a net win.

Initial Hurdles: Start on the other side of the hurdle

A technique I have kept hearing from writers is 'never finish your last paragraph, leave it half written'.

The reason this works, is that when you start writing, a blank page can be an insurmountable hurdle to jump. But if you have half a sentence, half a paragraph already written, then you know where to start. You already have a plan for where to go... and by the time you get to the end of the paragraph, and into the blank void that lies beyond, you're writing, you're going, you've tapped into that bit of you which knows how to carry on.

The only hurdle you have to jump is overcoming your urge for completion.

You can do the same with many other problems : when cleaning a room, leave one shelf untidied so that you know where to start tidying... or when you finish one room move all your cleaning equipment to the next, so that its already there when you want to get started.