‘Waiting for perfect partner before I can be truly happy’

‘Waiting to make more money before I start my business’

‘Waiting until the day I retire before I truly enjoy life’

Every single ‘waiting for’ excuse can be overcome today.

The myth that we have to wait for something to happen before we can move a step closer to our perfect life seems to be invading everyone’s lives.  We all seem to be waiting for tomorrow, and when tomorrow comes we wait for another tomorrow.  The thing is, tomorrow has been heavily influenced by our yesterdays; our beliefs, our emotions, our attachments, and our thoughts on life.  So you can’t change your tomorrow unless you change your yesterday, and the only way to change your yesterday is to change today.

This is not a post on living in the moment and living for today.  This is a post on recognising what your thoughts were yesterday, analysing them and changing them today.

What stops us moving forward is fear and doubt.

In my life, I am not really waiting for enough money to give up my day job; I am fearful that if I give up my job I won’t make enough money in my business to support my family.  In actual fact my wife is reluctant to let me give up the day  job as it would be a bit irresponsible However, what I have done is stopped waiting for knowledge and information to move forward in my business.  I used to think I will need to master video techniques before I can post videos, I need to have enough knowledge to speak about a certain topic, I will need to become a literary genius before I can write a book.  I accept the fact that I will make lots of mistakes in my life, so why not make the mistakes today, learn from them, and produce something better tomorrow.  I can look back on my very first post on CYT and laugh at it now, but I learned, got a little better, and 450 articles later you are reading this.

Here are 4 common ‘Waiting for’ excuses and how to overcome them:

4 Common ‘waiting for’ excuses

Waiting for more knowledge

Haven’t we all used this excuse at some point in our lives.  We all seem to be waiting to become experts in something before we move on with our lives;  waiting to gain more knowledge in the writing process before writing a book, waiting to gain more knowledge about a particular topic before applying for that job, waiting to gain more knowledge about a sport before taking it up.

I was on a training course last year about a new computer software management tool I had to use at work.  The training lasted 1 day, and by the time I came to use it, 1 week later, I had totally forgot what I had learned on the 1 day training course.  However, I didn’t ask to go back on the course, I started using it, making lots of mistakes, asking lots of questions, and eventually mastered it within 1 week.  We learn by doing.

By doing something, we quickly learn to ask more questions.  Each piece of knowledge we gain from each question we ask, brings us closer to having a more thorough knowledge about something.  However, if we wait until we think we have a thorough understanding of something before we start, we will never gain any real insight and learn to ask the pertinent questions we need to ask.

Obviously, we might need a PhD in order to practice medicine, but for most things in life we don’t need to become experts before we start practicing something.

Waiting for more money

This is a classic ‘waiting for’ excuse.  ‘I’m waiting for a big lottery win before I can get all the things I want in life.’

I have asked friends who have said this what it is they really want if they win the lottery.  A lot of the answers are something like:

‘I’d travel the world’

‘I’d buy a Ferrari’

‘I would give up my job and do volunteer work’

What we are looking for a lot of the time is not to own something, such as the Ferrari, but to experience it.  You can experience driving a Ferrari for $200 a day.

You can travel the world using your holiday time from work and travelling is relatively cheap these days, you don’t actually need a huge wad of cash to do this.

You can do volunteer work any time, you don’t have to give up your job to experience the thrill of helping others less fortunate than yourself.

Most of the things we want in life can be experienced quite cheaply so why wait, why own it when what we are really after is the experience.

Waiting for more time

This is an excuse I have learned to overcome in the last few years, and I think you’ll find it relatively easy to overcome it as well.

A few weeks ago when I asked my son why he hadn’t completed his homework for his English classes, he advised he didn’t have time.  the conversation went something like this:

‘You didn’t have time!, what have you been doing’, I said, as he is sitting watching another episode of ‘Two and a Half Men’

‘Well, I had rugby on Wednesday and Sunday, I had homework for other classes, I had a party to go to.  Where do I find the time?’

‘How long would this homework take you?’

‘About an hour, ninety minutes max’

‘What are you doing just now?’

‘What?’ he says, looking perplexed.

‘You’re watching TV just now.  You could have done it instead of playing your xBox or watching TV.’

‘Oh come on, I need my relaxation time, I’ve got a busy life.’ He says with a cheeky grin.

I couldn’t help but laugh.  the reason he didn’t do his homework air because he didn’t give it enough importance.  (Needless to say he completed his homework immediately after our conversation).

If you are using this excuse a lot, ask yourself this question:

If someone was holding a gun to my head and saying ‘find more time to get this done, or I’ll pull the trigger’, how would I find more time?

Not having time is never a valid excuse.  Not assigning enough importance to something is closer to the truth.  Be honest with yourself and find a way to assign importance to something you’re putting off.  A great way to do this is to tell someone you’re going to do something by a certain date.  That way it creates a little more urgency and more accountability.  If you are accountable only to yourself your excuses don’t seem lame.  If you’re accountable to someone else, excuses always sound lame.

Waiting for belief in myself

Dr. Leonard Orr has noted, the human mind behaves as if it were divided into two parts, the thinker and the prover.  He states that; ‘whatever the thinker thinks, the prover will prove’.  This is true in our day to day lives.  We believe what we believe because we have found evidence to believe it, or we trust someone else has found evidence, and piggy back off their beliefs.

Think of a belief you hold about yourself that is holding you back.  It can be anything you want e.g. you might believe you are no good in social situations, but you desperately want to be social.  Over the years you have collected evidence to prove this belief, therefore reinforcing it over time.  Flip this on it’s head and start looking for evidence to prove that you are good in social situations and you will find that your old belief starts to melt ever so slowly.  Look for more and more evidence and pretty soon you will start to believe you’re bloody amazing in social situations.

Having belief in yourself is not an external issue, it’s an internal one, as is all the other ‘waiting for’ excuses.  Belief in yourself is simply a matter of gathering enough evidence to prove to the prover that what you believe is really true.

Try and think some of the beliefs you hold about yourself and by doing the flipping exercise you will be able to find evidence to dispute your old beliefs and install a new belief.  It takes work, but believe me it’s worth it.

Can you think of any other ‘Waiting for’ excuses that you are using?

Why has nothing happened for you?

Simply put, you’re too lazy to do anything about your personal development. There I’ve said it. I can hear screams of reluctance and abuse at me now, but it doesn’t matter, you’re only fooling yourself and you know who you are.

Therefore, for 2008 I would like to present the GOYA method for personal development.

No, it’s nothing to do with Francisco Goya or surfing. GOYA is an acronym for:

Get Off Your Arse!

To do something, anything, you have to take action, to take action you have to get off your arse first and make a start. That’s what this article is about.

I don’t want to hear whines, excuses, or anything else just read this through and then GOYA.

Getting to the stage of SOYA

A lot of us will have gotten to the stage of SOYA (Sitting On Your Arse) at some point in our lives. Indeed it’s good to have a bit SOYA time but too much can lead to a permanent state of SOYA and your arse gets flatter with all the sitting, the only exercise you get is flicking the remote and eating those packets of cheese and onion crisps. The younger SOYA’s among you will get a little more exercise with the Nintendo Wii and PS3 and Xbox 360s but you’re still at the SOYA stage and need to GOYA more before your life becomes a virtual world and soon the Matrix will have you.

For those of us on board the Nebucadnezzar it is still useful to read this just for a little jolt.

For those of you who don’t think you’re at the SOYA stage of life answer these questions:

1. Is your Arse permanently flat?
2. Does it take you about half an hour before you can walk properly getting off your couch?
3. Do you make old man noises when you get off the couch?
4. Do you make old man noises when you go to sit on the couch?
5. Do you have some goals that involve GOYA?

If you answered yes to any of the questions above it’s time for some GOYA.

GOYA in action

There are at least two voices inside you at any one time. One voice saying ‘take the easy option just turn the TV on and SOYA’ and the other, less dominant voice, saying ‘come on, I need some GOYA time’.

The trick to getting off your arse is making the GOYA voice more dominant than the SOYA voice.

Quick Exercise

I want you to think back to a time, recently, where you were in two minds to go and do something but instead elected to stay in bed or sit on the couch and watch TV. For example, you need to get up and tidy the house but instead you stayed in bed or watched TV or read your book. What did the little GOYA voice sound like inside your head, if you can’t remember listen for it next time. The SOYA voice sounds like MR T ‘Sit on your ass fool, ain’t nobody gonna clean the house’ and the GOYA voice sounds like Mickey Mouse on Helium ‘Oh shucks, that’s a shame coz the house needs a good clean’.

Listening for the SOYA and GOYA voice

You will soon begin to hear the little voices whenever you have to do something. Recognising them is the first stage and when you hear them, it will be a revelation. Now when I say hear them you don’t literally hear them you hear them in your head. You might not think they are there but they definitely are. Any time you have to do something they are there.

The next stage is switching the voices around.

This can be tricky at first but when you do it once it becomes very easy all the other times and you will see a dramatic difference in your life. Now I know I am being a bit tongue in cheek here but I do mean this. When you switch the voices and use the SOYA voice for the GOYA voice i.e. MR T voice is now the GOYA voice and Mickey Mouse on Helium is the SOYA voice you will see an amazing difference in your productivity, you exercise routine, everything you need the GOYA voice for.

Another exercise for today

To try this method out try hearing the new GOYA voice telling you what to do whenever you are procrastinating about something. Obviously, it doesn’t have to be MR T’s voice but you want a commanding voice, have a little fun with it. Eventually the voice will be your own voice and you begin to do things you have been putting off.

List a few things you could do today and listen to the voice and GOYA and do them.

Have a fantastic New Year.

All there is for me to say is good luck and let me know the successes you have with this method. I hope you have a fantastic New Year and I look forward to speaking with you in 2008.

How do we come to love certain foods and hate other foods? It is a question I have asked over the last few months in the hope of developing a taste for the ‘good foods’.

I was brought up on a typical Scottish diet of ‘mince and potatoes’, ‘pie, chips and beans’, and a good Sunday Roast. Nothing wrong with that you might say but there weren’t many vegetables in there, or any veg that I would eat. I hated most vegetables when I was younger and thatcarried on into my adult life.

Now my palatial repertoire consists of a base of: Pasta, potatoes, chips, and the occasional salad. My drinks would be diet Irn Bru, tea with milk and two sugars and coffee with milk and two sugars. Not exactly, the best diet to function properly on.

Back in July, I decided I needed to eat a lot more healthy and decided to eat more vegetables only to find I still didn’t like most vegetables and didn’t like the taste of food that was good for me. Therefore, I carried out some research.

The science of taste and flavour

When I carried out my research, I didn’t expect it to get into it as much as I did. I became fascinated with the science of taste and flavour.

Leslie J. Stein, PhD, from the Monell Chemical Senses Centre in Philadelphia states there are many factors, which influence our taste preferences including:

Environment
Genetics
Age
Nurture

I don’t want to go on about the science aspect of taste, as there is loads of information out there.

What I would like to concentrate on is training your taste buds to like the foods you currently dislike and to dislike the foods you currently like (part 2)

Training your taste buds

As it is with most things in life taste has a psychological aspect to it. I remember loving the taste of marzipan when I was younger, so much so that I decided to eat a big block of it. Now for some reason I feel sick whenever I smell marzipan. What happened was I associated the sick feeling with the taste of marzipan. That is what we are going to use to train our taste buds.

Loving the foods you hate

Over the next few weeks, if you are willing, we are going to overcome the habit of only eating the foods you have become accustomed to. I will give you five steps for doing this and it would be great if you could report back how you get on with the experiment. It may take longer than a few weeks for some foods it may be a lot quicker for others. Either way it will be a good journey and your palette will get a good workout.

• Step 1:
  Write down a list of foods you are not keen on at the moment. Start with a list of 10 or so.
• Step 2:
  Now out of the list of ten pick the one that is the best of the bunch.
• Step 3:
  For the next few days play the food up in your mind. As an example, I will tell you what I did to like sweetcorn (I picked sweetcorn to experiment with, as I hated it when I was younger).
• For a few days I told myself the benefits of eating sweetcorn: it’s good for you, it’s filling, it tastes good, it’s healthy etc etc. This then put a wanting in my mind, it’s as if your mind says you’ve got to have it. It’s important at this stage to overcome the ‘cognitive dissonance’ part whereby you are telling yourself it’s good but deep down you think it tastes like crap. Overcome this by repeating the benefits of the food you have chosen.
• Step 4:
  This is where your imagination comes into it. A few days after I started telling myself that the sweetcorn was good for me I imagined eating it and liking the taste and saying to myself ‘this is actually quite good’ and then going on to eat some more. I imagined the types of food I could have it with; I imagined eating it off the cob with butter melting over it (unsalted of course!). This again creates a wanting in my mind.
• Step 5:
  Add your chosen food to your next meal, making sure your next meal is something your really like. For example, I was not keen on sweet corn, so I added it to a plate of Mashed Potatoes, peas, carrots and steak pie with gravy. I mixed it with some mashed potatoes and some gravy. I did this for a few weeks until I could eat the sweetcorn on its own. I don’t get excited when I eat sweet corn now but I can eat it and enjoy the taste.

Adding more foods to your list of likes

I have used the above 5 steps for adding: carrots, turnip, cabbage, tomatoes, celery, green tea, spinach, diet irn bru, tea without sugar, and am working on a few others.

In 1 years time I should have amassed a list of foods I can eat which is healthy for me and which means I have a wider choice of meals to cook.

I am currently writing a follow up to this article entitled:
‘ 5 steps to hating the foods you love’ which was a lot more interesting and more challenging.

Let me know if you use this and how you get on.

Walking into the wind

In everybody’s lives, we all build up strength by resisting something. Think about it for a moment. If you want to build up your body strength, you fight against weights to make your muscles bigger and stronger. If you want to be aerobically fit, you fight against machines to make your lungs stronger. If you want to become smarter you fight yourself to study and study some more.

Anything we want more of we have to build up resistance to it.

It’s just like out body fighting a cold it has to build up its immune system response to fight the cold.

Making use of this

When I suggested to my colleague that she should involve herself more in confrontational situations, I meant just that. If she did not walk away from these situations she would pretty soon become comfortable in them and then learn to stand up for herself more. You can also do this with various aspects of your life.

To be more courageous put yourself in more courageous situations.

To be able to stand up for yourself more put yourself in situations where you will have to stand up for yourself more. This way you build up a resistance to the stress you may feel in these situations.

To be a better speaker, put yourself in situations where you will have to speak more.

Your life

This is your life, if you don’t like something about it change it, don’t talk about it, don’t bitch about it, don’t think about it just change it.

Gettings things done: the dirty dishes method

I have recently been reading more and more about productivity and getting
things done (GTD). I belive this is out of necessity as I have a lot
on my plate just now and balancing them all can be tricky. There are
a lot of things that I have come across that work for me and other things which
do not. I will be writing more about this in the future.

I have come across a trick which consistently works for me and that is breaking
the job down.

The dirty dishes method

Take any task and simplify it into different components. I will take
an everyday task as an example here; washing the dishes. It seems easy
enough but a lot of people are averse to washing the dishes and leave them
until they pile up and then you might need some mounaineering equipment to
get to the top of the pile. Obviously most people have a dishwasher but
the same rules apply.

Our brain looks at the pile of dishes and might think ‘that’s
far too much to do, I’ll do it later’. It thinks this way
as the dishes are usually disorganised and placed in piles that make it look
as if there are lots of dishes. Our brain immediately says ‘hey
this is going to take ages to get through this lot’ and it immediaitely
switches off to the task. Picture in your minds eye that pile of disorganised
dishes. Now picture those same dishes organised into piles of dinner
plates, tea plates, bowls, pans, cutlery. It looks so much more neater
and it looks less challenging.

So the next thing we do is organise them into piles. This way the job
doesn’t look so big.

Now to get started. To do this just tell yourself you will do the dinner
plates first and then you can do the tea plates later.

Once you’ve started the dinner plates you will automatically keep going
to the tea plates and you will have gathered momentum and continue until you
finish.

Breaking the job down

Do this with every single task in your life and you can get a hell of a lot
more done.

Some of the task I have done recently are:

Sorting out the mountain of paperwork I have at work. Using the breaking
up method, I look at what is most important, I then sort out the paperwork
into piles of priority, so I might have 10 -20 piles. I then work through each
pile in turn and devote 30 minutes of uninterrupted time per day to do it.

Other tasks include: visting clients, doing notes, decorating a house, daily
chores, going to the gym. We can literally do it in every area of our
lives.

To summarise the dirty dishes method:

Let me know if this method works for you or if you try another
method.

A new personality, a new you

I had noticed recently that I was getting more and more frustrated
at work when things are not going the way they were planned.  I was starting to
panic about not making a meeting on time; I was getting angry when people were
wasting my precious time.  Things came to a head a few months ago when
I was driving home really angry about the day’s time wasting events and
thinking about all the things I still had to do.  I actually screamed
for about 10 seconds as loud as I could.  The feeling was great, to get
rid of all that frustration in one go.  It highlighted one thing to me:
I was stressed and felt under pressure at work.  About two minutes after
the screaming session I told myself ‘I am a calm person and always remain
calm in all circumstances’, I immediately felt better.  I kept
on saying this to myself every time I felt a little frustrated or under pressure
and it seemed to work, the frustration would go. 

This is not a great revelation.  The world is starting to wake up to
the fact that what we tell ourselves and what we think of ourselves will eventually
come true.  However when it actually works it seems a fog has been lifted.  I
kept on thinking about this and how to apply it in my life.  I wrote down
a list of traits I would like to have e.g. be funnier (I think it’s a
great talent to be able to tell a story and elicit a genuine laughter), I would
like to be able to tell stories that make people laugh.  I then wrote
down an ‘installation saying’ basically an affirmation.  I
repeat the installation saying until it starts to take hold.  I noticed
I began to see the process of what makes people funny, whereas before I could
not see a process at all.  I also noticed I was gaining confidence in
starting to tell funny stories and was starting to tell more.  Now, I
am not saying I became Billy Connelly overnight but my stories got better and
the reactions to those stories got better and a new trait was being born.

So, if you want to have a particular trait why not try installing a new one
and uninstalling the old one.

The process of installing a new trait

1. Write down the traits to uninstall

Write down all the traits you don’t like about yourself.  Putting
it simply a trait is anything that you do all the time and has become part
of your personality e.g. being serious, being angry, being miserable etc etc.

Once you have your list you will have your list of traits that you would like
to install.  So if you wrote on your list of traits you didn’t like:
being angry all the time, you will presumably want to be a calm person.  So
the first list of traits you would like to install will be the opposite of
the traits you didn’t like about yourself.

2. Write down an ‘Installation saying’

For each of the traits that you would like to install write down a saying
for them.  For example:

If you want to be a calmer person, your saying might be ‘I am a calm
person in all situations’
If you want to be confident, your saying might be ‘I am a confident person
in every area of my life’.

3. Looking for the process

Saying it alone does not work.  I could say ‘I am the funniest
man alive’ all day but it won’t make me funny.  You will begin
to see the processes of each trait you want to install.  For example,
the process of being funny:

Being relatively confident when speaking
Being able to tell stories in front of groups
Embellishing the story
Testing it out on colleagues and friends
Looking for the funny side of life

If you have chosen a trait to be more outgoing the process might be

Go out more
Talk to a few more people than you normally would
Be as confident as your mind will allow you (this will grow in time)
Talk a little more than you normally would

4. Practice in every situation

Whenever you get the chance, practice your new trait.  As an example
I told a story to my wife the other day which she thought was funny, I then
embellished it a little and told my work colleagues who then told a few other
people and when I was asked again about it, it was polished, embellished and
quite funny.  I am now a little more confident with telling stories, not
just funny ones but stories in general.

It Takes time

Don’t be frustrated or disheartened if this does not work overnight.  It
has taken you about 15 – 100 years to install the traits you have just
now.  However I will say that if you work at it you can install a new
trait in a matter of months, and that is definitively worth the work. 

If I said to you ‘pay me £1000 and I’ll get you to be the
person you want to be’ would you do it? If you said yes, then e-mail
me (only joking), you can do this all for free by reading blogs like this and
by thinking about what you really want.  The main problem people have
with changing is knowing what they want to change to.

You can change anything you want about yourself no matter
what your circumstances are.  You need belief in yourself and the determination
to go for it.  I
believe in you and everyone reading this blog believes in you now go grab your
determination and get started.

Interview with Steli Efti

Steli Efti has a dream a making education for everyone free with his plan
for the “people to educate the people” and his SuperCool School
project.

I first met Steli Efti after setting up a MyBlogLog
account. He was setting up an interesting project called ‘Supercool
School’ which has still to open to the public, but I liked the idea
and conversed a few times with Steli.

You can see Steli’s blog at supercoolschool.typepad.com/blog/ on
which he writes articles about education and EduBlogging and various other
topics.

Steli has written an eBook which is an interesting read, and you can download
it here for free the
post which accompanies the eBook is 7 Lessons that could ruin your life

The eBook has 7 Lessons that could ruin your life and suggests ways to fix
them:

Lesson 1: Be afraid of failure
Lesson 2: Focus on doing it right
Lesson 3: Learn not to learn
Lesson 4: Intuition isn’t important
Lesson 5: Your beliefs are irrelevant
Lesson 6: Don’t decide
Lesson 7: You aim too high

The book has some great content and very interesting conclusion.

Interview

I interviewed Steli about his eBook and about his hopes for SuperCool School.

Tell me a bit about yourself so our readers know you a bit better.
I am a 24 years-old “learning lunatic” who wants to help giving the
power of education to the people. I am a teacher, an entrepreneur
and an advocate of free education and of the supercool
dream .

You have written an eBook which gives 7 lessons that may ruin your
life, why did you write this?
I had a discussion with my younger cousin about his attitude towards life and
his dreams & goals.
He said that the reason why he’s not willing to take risks, to make mistakes
and to believe in his dreams is because school taught him different. He tried
to legitimate his behaviour and to persuade me that he doesn’t want to learn
better and faster and that school would be too easy and fast if he would. That
was too much for me. I sat down and thought about some “life lessons” I
had to “unlearn” in order to move forward with my life and how I
made it.

After that I felt like sharing it with the world to hopefully help some people
realize that no matter what they’ve learned in life -if it’s not
good for them they can unlearn it and move forward.

What is Supercool School?
A bold attempt to redefine the concept of virtual education. Supercool School
will unite people from all around the world who want to share their knowledge
and give them a live, interactive and free environment to do so. This is a “people
educate people” concept. Anyone can be a supercool teacher, the only requirements
are: love what you are
teaching, know your stuff, be dedicated and have the will to share your knowledge
for free.

When will it go live?
In May 2007.

What are your hopes for the future?
I hope that enough people will join us to make the supercool dream come true
and to make online education accessible for free… worldwide.

What do you think of blogging as medium for spreading your message?
I love it
I started with a very business oriented approach to blogging. I had this idea
of Supercool School and as a novice Internet user it was the easiest and fastest
way to do some important homework and get some real-life feedback. I used my
blog as a very raw (and free) market research and alpha testing tool. After
that I started the project and kept my blog simply as a place for random thoughts
and ideas. I didn’t know anything about the true beauty and power of
blogging back then. I used to stand
upon the round table to blog and talked TO an audience instead of JOINING
the conversations in the bloggosphere. Now…it’s so much more fun to
blog and it has become even more than a learning tool or a way to spread a
message – it’s a great way to find new friends and supporters who share
our dream!

To find out more about Steli’s Project visit his webiste www.supercoolschool.com and register for updates.

Steli, I truly wish you all the success in the world with
this, a great idea, an ambitious ideaand a worthy idea. Good Luck!

Tips for a better life #3

It has been shown that an average sleep cycle lasts for around 90 minutes. The
90 minutes consist of 2 distinct states rapid Eye Movement, REM, sleep
and nonREM (nREM) sleep. There are various cycles within this 90 minutes
cycle but the main ones are REM and nREM.

I have read a lot about this but only tried messing about with it last year. I
now usually have around 3 sleep cycles which sees me getting up at around 5am. I
go to sleep around 12. If I go to bed earlier I get up earlier. So
I am basically functioning on 3 sleep cycles.

My tip is to experiment with this 90 minute sleep cycle and see how it works
for you. You can squeeze an extra 8.5 hours per week by getting up 1
sleep cycle earlier and not requiring to take a nap during the day.

Personal development means absolutely nothing unless we are ready to change. We
can read a hundred books, attend a hundred seminars, read a million blogs but
it still won’t change us unless we are ready to change. A lot
of us are looking for answers but we still haven’t formulated a question. Questions
are key to solving anything whether it be a mathemtical problem or your own
life.

James Dyson asked the question; How could I get rid of the bag in the hoover
without losing suction?

Richard Branson asked the question: How can I compete with the big airlines?

Robert scoble asked the question: How can I change Microsoft’s public
image?

Darren Rowse asked the question: How can I make money blogging

Once you’ve formulated your question how do you know it’s the
right question? The answer to that is: when it moves you toward a positive
outcome for the good of yourself and harms no other.

I have a friend who has been been trying to get out of his current job for
2 years. The benefits and salary are the key things that hold him there. I
have asked him several times ‘If you left your job just now, what would
you want to do?’, to this day he still doesn’t know what he wants
to do. He knows if he seriously asks himself this question it will be
a step closer to making a decision and leaving the company. So if he
doesn’t ask the question he can go on with his life and complain about
his job.

It takes balls to ask the right question

There are many people in the situation I described above and many people who
have still not asked the right questions and deep down don’t want to. Questions
drive us forward, right questions change our lives.

Think about this scenario and the questions we could ask:

You’re fat and you want to lose weight. You’ve lost a few
pounds and are quite pleased with yourself and your progress. You are
looking in the cupboards one day and see that packet of biscuits that the kids
have not seen (rarely ever happens, but it could). What questions do
you ask?

Will one biscuit really do any harm?
It’s only got 100 calories, surely that’s not going to harm me?
I’ve done so well I should have some reward?

Are these the right questions to ask. Any overweught person knows, deep
down, they are not. The right questions to ask in this situation could
be:

If I have this biscuit will it disrupt my program?
Will this one biscuit throw out all the good work I’ve done?
Will this one biscuit lead to another one?
I’ve done so well, it’s crazy to stop now isn’t it?

Asking the right questions takes guts.

Changing your questions

If you are stuck in a situation and you have been asking yourself questions
which are not driving you forward in some way try asking a different set of
questions.

As an example I have written about ‘paying
off my mortgage to become a professional blogger’. I have an agreement with my wife that
if I can pay off our mortage I can give up my full time job as a homeless support
worker and become a professional blogger. I like working as a support
worker however I want to work for myself but not have to worry about money
whilst I am doing it. So I came up with paying off the mortage.

Now my first questions were:
How can I make money to pay off the mortgage?
How can I get £75,000?
What can I do to make that much money?

When these questions are asked I felt doomed to fail, I felt this is an unreachable
target. Then I realised I was asking the wrong questions. I started
asking

What can I do to earn £1000 (If I can do £1000, I can replicate
it 75 times)
What service could I offer to help people who would pay me?
What skills do I have that I could convert into money?
What would be a win win situation whereby people are getting something for
paying me to do something?

So I came up with the eBook ,
not the best way to make £75,000 but it offers readers an easy way to
read the articles on my blog whilst helping me toward my goal.

I have also been pushing my services as a blog
consultant over at my other blog.

I also have a few ideas to help people lose weight and charge £499 for
a 3 month program and limit it to 50 people, I am still working on this.

There are also a few other things I have in mind.

All this from changing my questions. I feel energised to really go for
this goal and get to the target.

How to change your questions to change your life

If you have big goals, break them down. For example if your goal is
to lose 30 pounds, start asking how you could lose 2 pounds. Do this
15 times and you have reached your goal. Sound too simple, that’s
because it is, its our thinking that makes it hard.

We often ask ourselves the same question over and over again. Ask 5
different questions to a problem you might be stuck with and start answering
them all. This was you might have 5 different solutions.

Ask yourself questions in every area of your life. How can I make my
kids happier? How can I free up more time for myself? How can a work smarter?
How could this process be improved? How can I become more organised? why have
I not bought this guys eBook yet?

When you ask questions in all areas of your life, you will gradually learn
to ask good questions and filter out the bad questions. Practice is the key
to changing your life and asking questions is a great skill to have.

Ask yourself this question often as we often get stuck in our life and stop
thinking about what would make it better.

I hope this article has helped you in asking some questions about yourself. What
questions would you ask yourself to change. Let me know by leaving a
comment.

Win a copy of my new eBook ‘Change your thoughts to change your life: the best
of the blog’.

All you have to do is submit your best personal development
tip and write a little about it. It can be anything from improving your
fitness to debugging your brain as long as it benefits body, mind or soul.

The ten best tips will win a copy of my new eBook and get a link to their
blog when I publish the ten best tips as a post.

I have been working
on the book for the last few days and it is all the best articles from the
blog put together into an eBook format. The book will go on sale next
week for $9.99.

If you want to pre-order the book drop me an e-mail.