Apparently creating a blog title with Top Ten or some other numbered list is the best way to get your blog posts noticed and read.  Many of these lists provide us with useful facts and information or they may simply be entertaining.  For example I was delighted recently to find one telling me about where to eat gluten-free in Edinburgh and my sister frequently informs people about top places to take their children in Sydney.

But I’m not so delighted with all the top ten ways to feel better, burn fat, live mindfully, eat right and so on.  There are blog posts and books galore offering these nuggets of wisdom,  which once read, understood and digested will completely change our lives for the better, apparently!

I was recently seduced by a book offering hundreds of ways in which happy people do things differently.  As I read I noticed what was happening to me:

• Initially I felt better

• My ego felt good, bolstered by the “know that already, actually” factor.

• As I continued I felt my mood drop slightly, I may know these things but am I actually doing them?

• And finally I felt angry, “here you are telling me all this stuff, which I, in fact, mostly already know, but how in the hell do I do it. That is my real issue?”

And this is the

ONE BIG REASON

the 1,000’s of reasons don’t work because, we don’t know how to get there.  We don’t know how to deal with what stops us.

On the whole I think we do understand what would help us,  that’s why we initially feel good reading these lists,  they stroke egos,  they are the confirmation and approval of that knowing.  But we start to feel a little deflated,  we do know what to do,  hell we could probably have written the blog or book ourselves;

but we don’t do it, do we?

We flip onto the next something,  anything to move on from that gnawing doubt.  We distract ourselves again and again from the pain of knowing but not doing.

Which leads to me to why these books and blogs make me feel angry.  What we need is help to change,  to deal with what stops us improving our lives the way want to or perhaps even need to.  We are stuck repeating things over and over and over,  not knowing why,  berating ourselves for being so useless,  or numbing ourselves out and promising that tomorrow,  next week or next month we’ll get our act together and things WILL be different.
Much of our behaviour is habit driven,  we are stuck in a groove fuelled by our limiting beliefs about ourselves and the world.  When we practice something long enough neural connections are created which we zoom along.  Like driving somewhere and not remembering most of the journey,  we end up in the old behaviour;  another bar of chocolate half eaten,  raging at our partner,  screaming at the kids,  watching another pile of drivel on the TV and we don’t know how we got there.

We need to raise our awareness and start investigating

what is really going on.

Over the coming weeks I will be writing more about how to do this.  Change Is Always Possible, and yours can start here:

• Awareness is the beginning of the journey.

• Identify something about yourself or your life you would like to change.

• Set an intention to find out what lies beneath your behaviour or situation.

• Ask to be shown and then listen and notice.

• Write down anything you discover no matter how odd or unconnected it may seem.

• Be gentle with yourselves, change is a process.

“What we can or cannot do, what we consider possible or impossible, is rarely a function of our true capability. It is more likely a function of our beliefs about who we are.”  Anthony Robbins