Think About It Archives - Page 59 of 61

Check Your Intent

Posted on February 18, 2020

Are you trying to help someone improve, or are you looking for a pat on the back, for being empathetic or interested?

When you argue/debate/converse, are you trying to “win” and prove your perception is “right” and that it is the only possible perception, reality or opinion? Or are you seeking to understand what the other person is trying to express? I say ’trying’ as sometimes, under pressure, or if the question gets them thinking, a person may be quickly trying to express something, but not very well. Some people will pick up on the less-well-articulated thought and attack the words rather than the intent of the person uttering them. This is unfortunate.

We need to #BeKinder and allow people to find the better words to express their thoughts. This is why we should check our intent. Frequently. We can immediately change the tone of a conversation by adjusting our own intent.

The closer you listen to someone, the more you will learn about them. Some people are a bit sloppy in their word selection. Others have fewer learned words to select from. Listen carefully to people today. Measure their words against their deeds and the intent you believe you are observing. It’s fascinating. Did your waiter really mean, “Have a nice day”? (On a scale of 1-10)

Sometimes we can hurt people’s feelings with our words unintentionally. This is an accident. However, it can seem quite clear sometimes, what someone’s intent is. Sometimes it seems clear their intent is unkind.

Fellow Canadian, Jordan B Peterson, was interviewed on Channel 4 News a couple of years ago. See the video below – it has been viewed 19 million times. It has some topical subjects and is a good case study on intent. What is his and what is hers during the show?

Spoiler: I felt Jordan’s intent was to try to give a thought-through perspective to help the audience get a better understanding of the detail involved in the topics. It felt like Cathy’s intent was to try to provoke or discredit Jordan and show him in a bad light.

What do you think the intent is for both parties involved? You can leave your comment below by adding your thoughts under “Your Thinking…”. (If it is not directly below these words, click on the title of this post (at the top of the page) and it will take you to the comment area).

Action Think About It Time

A Stitch In Time

Posted on February 16, 2020

A favourite saying of mine is, “A stitch in time, saves nine”. I liked proverbs, and useful little sayings, when I was younger and I like them even more now.

Through the years I have seen how often they can be usefully applied. This one is easy to remember so it’s great for kids. My children know this proverb all too well. I only ever need to say the first half anymore and they know what I am talking about.

It is such a great saying with a visual thrown in. I can imagine someone sitting and fixing a coat or shirt with one stitch now, to save having to do nine stitches later when there is a bigger problem. You save time, it is likely to look better with one stitch rather than nine, you save resources (eight fewer stitches) and you feel better for nipping it in the bud too!

I often use this in a pre-mortem way. I like to see what stitch I can do now, which might save me time, resources, etc. later. For example, “If I can leave earlier, say by 06:00, I can drop the post in the post box, get to the gym, pick up the groceries on the way back and still be heading to the client meeting by 08:15”.

Of course, you can certainly see the benefit when you do a post-mortem on something too. Here’s an example. “Oh, if I had only left home when I said I would, then I wouldn’t be in this traffic jam, I could have made it to the gym, but now I’ll have to go at the end of the day, miss time with the kids and shower twice. At least I got the essential groceries, though I’ll have to go back out again later for the rest.”

Another common example is missing a payment for something like a class, your car, mobile bill, rent or a mortgage. It is always a much bigger deal trying to undo the damage, than if we had just sorted it correctly in the first place. With a little better forward planning we can achieve this ideal habit. The stress it saves will be significant.

You can find opportunities to use this proverb with just about anything: Health and fitness, finances (savings and taxes), relationships, career, etc.

Think about what needs a little stitch now, to help things go smoother or stop things from getting worse. Keep your eye out today for one or two ways you could use this proverb to your advantage. Then use the stitch and pocket the other eight. Good job.

Action Goals, Results & New Thinking Observe Progress Think About It

Use The Feedback

Posted on February 14, 2020

Great, positive feedback is what the majority of people would like to get. It feels good and it’s energising. One great piece of feedback, or good feedback from the right person, at the right time, can keep me motivated for days or weeks.

Improvement feedback can be harder to take. It doesn’t have to be harder to take, but in general, a lot of people will have some challenges with constructive feedback, never mind factual or negative feedback too.

Since starting this blog, I have had a good deal of feedback. Some really good and positive feedback, while others have given good insights into ways I could improve the site or content. I have found both to be very useful and I have been delighted each time that someone has taken the time out of their day to think about the item, write down that feedback and send it to me.

The real key to feedback is not how it makes you feel in the moment. Although that can be helpful, and is important, what you need to do is reflect on it and use the feedback. That is the real key.

Use the positive feedback to encourage you to keep going. Maybe even create a notebook, journal or notes page in your phone, to capture all the good feedback. Then it is there for you when you need a little motivation or want to get smiling again. I have some from many years ago. It really makes a great impact each time I see it.

With growth or improvement feedback, you should consider it, assess whether it has some element of truth (whether you want to face that truth or not), and if it does, look at how you can start using the feedback and incorporating into your life. People are trying to help you, for free, so that you can improve and do better socially, financially, health-wise or whatever the topic is. People’s intent is usually good. But even if it isn’t, you can still use their insight and comments to help you improve and grow.

I’ve been using the feedback I’ve been getting for this blog and hopefully people are seeing the result of that. And what can’t be seen yet, I’m at least working on behind the scenes.

Always thank the person giving the feedback, whether you like it, or not.

Today, try to give at least one person some useful and actionable feedback. Also, listen for, or ask for, feedback from others for you to use. Write it down. Thank them. Use it! You will grow much faster, improve yourself quicker and see the benefits of that growth realised much sooner (in health, wealth, relationships, career, etc.).

Use the feedback.

Observe Reframe your thoughts Think About It

Aware

Posted on February 9, 2020

I like to think of people as being aware or not aware of something.

When a person is born, they are not aware of much. They then start becoming aware of things such as their senses and information. Given the amount of general and detailed information available to become aware of on earth, people are often unaware of most things (relative to all things).

Becoming aware can be a factor of age, situation, geography or interest, amongst other routes. For example, most people won’t become aware of the idea of 8 x 8 until they are about 7 years old. The majority of people won’t be aware of the daily routine of a type 1 diabetic, unless they become one, or are very close to someone who has. Additionally, if you grew up in England, especially as a fan of football, you would probably be aware of the significance of 1966. If you grew up in Canada, and followed baseball, probably much less so.

Generally speaking you can become aware of anything, either intentionally or not. But with so many millions of pieces of information available to be aware of, and millions more created every day, we should go a little easy on people who are not aware of the things that we are. Just because a person doesn’t know something about a topic dear to you, doesn’t make them wholly uneducated or ignorant. They are simply unaware of that particular thing.

For today, try not to judge people based on what they are aware of, but rather, kindly and pleasantly, make them aware of the information you feel is important and assess their response to it.

Action Health & Fitness Think About It Time Weight loss

Weigh Less, With One Simple Step Repeated Each Day

Posted on February 7, 2020

Eat less.

Weight loss, through to better health and fitness, is a series of steps.

Step one is eat less. Once a person has been doing this successfully for a few weeks, they can look into several more advanced steps such as starting to exercise or doing more of it, tracking calories, buying healthier foods and preparing better meals with a better range of nutrients.

Too often people will try to change everything at once. Since these more advanced steps all take up time, require some level of learning and must be integrated into your current lifestyle, it is very difficult to start all of them at one time and do them all on a sustained basis. Usually people haven’t allowed for all the extra time it takes to add these into their life.

Save yourself all that time required to read labels and count calories, read diet, exercise and recipe books or magazines, join groups, get to the gym or exercise more, learn new recipes and shop for new ingredients and foods. Remember, eating less saves you time!

According to media reports, a lack of time is a leading cause of stress and stress eating. So try this simple step that requires no time investment and even saves you time. You even get the results you want – weight loss. You can get toned, improve health and nutrition later in subsequent steps. Remember c.90% of weight loss is reducing your current food intake.

Even if your current diet consisted of eating six chocolate bars and drinking four colas every day, you could lose weight by simply cutting your intake down to four bars and three colas. You would still drop about 1.5 pounds per week. The mathematics support this, as does the science, and eating less worked in my experience years ago when I dropped 20 pounds in 8 weeks, beginning with step one.

Just eat less.

Try it today. Eat one less helping at a meal, drink one less cola, eat half or two thirds of your regular portion at each meal. In a week you’ll be noticing, and enjoying, the difference,

Observe Progress Reframe your thoughts Think About It

Judging Me Too

Posted on February 6, 2020

A build on yesterday’s post about judging. The opening line was, “It’s something most people do to others”. I should have added, “and ourselves too.” because we know we are frequently our own harshest critic. We take the worst comments people have said about us and absorb those as reality rather than dismissing them as the outliers that they really are.

Use the bell curve, for all comments, to asses where on that spectrum you might realistically be and hold that as your minimum truth. Your mother might think you are amazing so that is an outlier at the one end of the spectrum and your worst critic might say the harshest things, creating an outlier at the other end of the spectrum. Then most of the other people are generally in the middle. Use their commentary on you: Not the worst critic.

Criticising is similar to assessing, though they tend to be the negative and positive word for the action. Then you judge and lock in a conclusion. So be super careful which area on the spectrum you lock in your own judgement. This is not a time to be self-deprecating or shy or to play down anything. This is you, talking to you, and about to pass judgement on yourself. You’ve heard from the various witnesses and you’ve weighed up their comments, within the context they were given, and now it is your turn to assess whether you lock away your potential for a lifetime sentence or if you can see the greatness in you, beyond a reasonable doubt.

If your past has not been well constructed, in the context of all people that have ever lived (not just the saints), then you can start again with a restart. If it has been fairly normal with a mix of good and less than great, you can make things better from this moment. But give yourself a break today. Judge the Whole You, over your lifetime, and not just a few silly mistakes.

You deserve the best mind coach in the world. Start with the one inside you already.

Think About It

Judging

Posted on February 5, 2020

It’s something most people do to others. Though, my hunch is that few of us may like being judged ourselves. This may have more to do with the negative association of judging, that of criminality and being guilty, than actually having someone, “form an opinion or conclusion about” us. (It can be positive, such as in the case of selecting a life partner or date, or noting someone’s positive attributes such as “the most amazing brown eyes”.)

A preferred term for the activity of judging may be assessing. Mainly because it may feel less, well, judgy. However, it does lack the decision or conclusion element which may remove the power behind judging. Assessing seems to indicate you are still working out what to think. Whereas judging seems to have drawn a final conclusion.

So when you hear someone say, “don’t judge me”, or “you have no right to judge me”, it probably tells us more about them (possibly feeling guilty), than anything else. The person may also be demonstrating that they do not fully understand the deep survival mechanism inherent in judging.

As humans, as with probably any living species, we are constantly assessing and evaluating our surroundings for dangers, opportunities, threats and means of survival. This assessing, and then judging, is an in-built, hard wired, millions of years DNA thing. Not something that is easily changed.

Maybe everyone should just learn to get more comfortable with being judged. I’ll start.

If you like what you’ve read, click the ? below.

Go ahead and do the same on my other posts you’ve enjoyed.

Observe Reframe your thoughts Think About It

Stories We Tell Ourselves

Posted on February 4, 2020

Stories are often easier to remember than just the facts on their own. Additionally, stories tend to have more depth and nuance than facts, so they tend to invoke specific feelings. Stories can also be embellished, intentionally or unknowingly. With stories, we can highlight different elements depending on our mood, our audience or our intent.

A simple example of this is how you describe the big party you attended Saturday night. It is usually a little differently highlighted when retelling it to your friends rather then your boss or mother-in-law.

Stories are also personal. Those that strike a chord with us are more easily remembered. Given that decisions are based on emotions first, and personal stories are in our lives because they invoke an emotion, we probably allow stories too much influence over many of our own decisions in life.

“I would do that, but I am not smart enough.” “I have always struggled with my weight.” “My mother always said I was like that.” “I won’t go for that promotion because my teacher said I wasn’t very good at public speaking.” “I’m too old.”

These are all examples of the type of stories that hold people back from achieving their personal potential.

However, as with a tv (or website), we can change the channel and thereby the story that it is playing. Although we can choose to stay on this channel, while we believe and live out the current stories we tell ourselves, we can also choose to change the channel and change the stories we tell ourselves. You always have a choice.

Listen closely to those unhelpful stories that swirl in your head and are too readily voiced.

Then, create new, more empowering, and exciting stories for your life. And repeat.

Go on. Change the channel.

Progress Think About It

The Finish Line

Posted on February 2, 2020

Where is the finish line? For many things, it’s hard to tell where the finish line is. If you were running in an athletics event on a track, you would know where the finish line was. This is important. Knowing where you must push hard to, before you can rest, is usually critical in getting the best result.

In athletics, I was taught to run through the finish line. It was suggested that I run an extra meter or two so I didn’t let up at the line and allow someone to pass me by a nose.

Life’s like this too. You should make sure you know where the finish line is: precisely. Then you need to go really hard at it and run through it.

Without a finish line, you could find yourself going around and around (like on a track) and not ever feeling finished. This can become disheartening.

With a finish line, you know exactly what you need to cover (100m, 200m, 3,000m, etc.). Like in athletics, you should be clear with your activity and what you must complete to cross the finish line.

When you cross the finish line, celebrate!

Life is a series of 100 meter sprints which, when combined, are the distance of a marathon (or ultra marathon). Remember to celebrate completing each one, not just the very last one.

Action Progress Think About It

Start Me Up

Posted on February 1, 2020

The first step often can feel like a giant leap for mankind: Too big. Getting started can be such a challenge. And yet, it is instrumental in getting to the second step and then ultimately success.

There are different ways to get started. You can countdown if you are NASA or Mel Robbins – 5, 4, 3, 2, 1… You can put it in your calendar and block a specific time on an exact date. This is described as the Seven Day Success Cycle in my video “ETRR 13” on the Videos page of this blog site. There are other ways too.

Whichever method you use to get started, remember that your environment should help support you. If you go for a run in the morning, make sure your clothes are out and ready and your shoes are at the door before you go to bed. Any other items you need for the run should also be set out neatly the night before. Set up your environment for absolute success while the intentions are high. Do not wait to see how you feel in the morning, you’ll rarely feel like it.

Once you’ve taken that first step, be sure to celebrate. This is the hardest step so it deserves the most celebrating. Every time you start something new or start on the next step, give yourself a well-deserved pat on the back. Well done.

Now Get Started! With a little momentum you’ll start to feel unstoppable: Like a rolling stone.