October 2013

How To Beat The Winter Blues – Week 2 – Essential Strategies For Revitalising A Sluggish Winter Body – and keeping your energy levels where they need to be.

Welcome to week 2 of How To Beat The Winter Blues!

How did you get on with last week’s techniques, of figuring out how you ‘do’ the winter blues – and what you want instead? I’d love to hear how you’re getting on, over at the forum.

This week we’re moving on to a really important topic for the winter blues – how to revitalise yourself, so you don’t end up feeling sluggish and exhausted all winter – that would be a sure-fire recipe for the blues!

And I’m bringing you a 5-step strategy, to help you keep your energy levels high, throughout the winter.

Interested?

But before I dive in and talk about how to keep your energy levels where they need to be, I want to let you in on a perhaps obvious secret, but one which most of us forget in our modern, hectic lifestyle:

Want to discover How To Beat The Winter Blues? Join this online course today and you can start changing your life in the next five minutes.

Want to join in with this course? Upgrade to discover How To Beat The Winter Blues today.

How To Magically Make More Time – In Under A Minute

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How often do we spend our time fretting about not having enough time? It seems to fly by. And the more stressed we are, the faster it goes.

In our fast-paced society, there’s a common thread in most of our lives – we don’t have enough time.

Most of us would love to find more time – for the things we have to do – and for the things we’d rather do.

I’d like to share with you a near-magic-wand for creating more time in your day.

Interested?

No, it’s not a time machine. You don’t have to give up eating or sleeping. And it’s completely legal! 😉

It’s a single gratitude phrase – a mantra – that you can choose to say, with mindfulness. And its effects can feel miraculous.

But before I dive in and share the technique with you, first I’d like to share a secret about how time runs away so easily – and why time feels so different, when we’re having fun or doing something we hate:

The way we feel about time is determined by the stories we tell ourselves about it.

And the stories we tell ourselves about time dictate how much of it we have.

When we’re hiding away in the realms of the Monkey Mind and its stories of stress, time is a scarce resource over which we have no control. We run the mantra, “I don’t have enough time.” And we prove ourselves right. In fact:

Whether you think you have enough time or you think you don’t, you’re right.

Time is largely a matter of perception. When we convince ourselves that we don’t have enough time, we trigger the body’s sympathetic nervous system’s ‘fight or flight’ stress responses, setting off chemical reactions that pump you full of adrenalin and other stress hormones. These shift your thinking to the primal part of the brain, responsible for life-or-death short-term decision making, meaning it’s harder for you to concentrate and you will get less done.

It’s as though getting stressed about time steals time form you. Yes, sometimes we don’t have enough time. But mindfulness can help you to make the most of the time you have.

We all have the same number of minutes in a day. And, within reason, we have a huge amount of choice over how we spend them. The whole concept of ‘have to’ and ‘not enough time’ is a story concocted by the good old Monkey Mind, based on the diet we have fed it over the decades.

So how can you magically create the feeling of having more time?

By being grateful for the time you have.

Giving gratitude for the time you have lets go of the Monkey Mind’s stress-stories and helps time to expand. So if you feel rushed and need more time, here’s what you can do:

Could This Be The Solution To Not Having Enough Time?

Take three mindful breaths, breathing in through your nose and breathing out with an ‘ahhh’ sound, as you relax, release tension and come back to this present moment.

Allow yourself to settle in your body, rebalancing the body’s stress and relaxation systems for a few moments.

Now allow yourself to experience the effects of the mantra:
I am grateful for the time I have.

Consciously choose to focus, mindfully, on feeling grateful for the time you have. Notice the shift – you’ll feel it in your body and mind.

After all, this moment is all the time we’re ever going to get, so why on earth waste even a moment of it by feeling grumpy about it?

I invite you play with this technique for a few days and notice what happens!

I’m curious: What are your ‘time stories’?

Did this gratitude technique bring anything up for you?
Any resistance?
Any insights from using it? Any questions?

Feel free to share, via the comments box, below. Thanks!

Namaste,

P.S. This technique is based on one from my book Gratitude: A Daily Journal. If you’d like to discover how a few minutes a day of gratitude can transform your life in just a couple of weeks, then it’s worth checking it out!

And if you’d like to experience how mindfulness can help you to cut your stress levels, in under sixty seconds, then you might enjoy 52 Mindful Moments.

What To Do When You Say The Wrong Thing – How To ‘SAM’ Your Way Back To Peace Of Mind

How To Change Your Life

Ever done a ‘Boris’? Put your foot in it? Said the wrong thing? Here’s how to ‘SAM’ your way back to peace of mind.

“I may have small feet, but they’re a great fit in my mouth.“

How many times have we done it?

We all know that sinking feeling, as we realise we’ve said the wrong thing – really “put our foot in it”. And as for how we feel afterwards…

You know the kind of conversation.

For example:

Talking to a work colleague in a hotel at a conference, you comment that it would be a great place to bring a family for a holiday. “As I told you yesterday, my wife and kids left me last month.”

In a bar, chatting with friends, you complain – again – about having to get up at 6 to go to work. “Actually, five of my team are being made redundant this week and I have to tell them the news tomorrow.”

Bumping into a friend you haven’t seen for a while, you ask her when the baby is due. “What do you mean? I’m not pregnant!“

Whether we say the wrong thing on a major scale or it’s just a minor slip-up, it’s easy to do. Sometimes it’s because something has happened to the other person that we couldn’t possibly know about. Sometimes it’s because we’re not concentrating on what they’re saying. Sometimes it’s just ‘bad luck’.

Whatever the reason, we want to cringe and disappear, full of embarrassment and even guilt. It can lead to us avoiding the other person – who hasn’t even done anything wrong. This can leave them feeling potentially confused and hurt.

How You Could Handle It Differently

At the time:

S – A – M

Stop
Stop talking. Even if you’re mid-sentence.

Admit
Admit your mistake. “I put my foot in it. I didn’t mean to offend…” You’ll know the words that work for you.

Move On
Move on. You’ve apologised. It was an accident. It’s up to them how they choose to respond and you dwelling on it will only make things worse.

After the event:

If it’s appropriate, go back and do S-A-M.
If not, then do it in your head! Run a conversation with the other person where you say sorry and ask them to forgive you. Then move on. It doesn’t matter that the conversation didn’t really take place, it will still help.
Learn from it, so you don’t repeat history. Then let it go. There’s no point in holding onto guilt and embarrassment. It doesn’t help anybody.
Most importantly: don’t go around telling everyone about it… Yes, it makes a great story, but that just leaves you stuck where you are. And if the other person hears the story through the grapevine, you’ll be causing them that pain, all over again, not to mention damaging your relationship with them.

Bottom Line: If you want to feel happier in life, it’s important to learn from mistakes and then let go of them. Saying sorry goes a long way towards making things better, but forgiving yourself – letting yourself off the hook – is an essential step towards feeling happier, too.

Need to go a bit deeper?

If, after trying S-A-M you find you’re still telling yourself (or others! ;-)) stories about what happened and how awful it was – and what a terrible person that makes you – then you need drastic measures!

We’re talking Mindfulness!

If you find yourself stuck in the ‘beat yourself up’ mode of thinking, after you have put your foot in it, then it’s vital to learn more about techniques like mindfulness, which can help you to:

train yourself to let go of thoughts that cause you pain
take back control of your Monkey Mind
come back to living in the present moment, rather than stressing about the past or worrying about the future
let go of old stories, hurts, stresses and worries
smile more!

For a micro-mindfulness fix for this problem, how about trying out this exercise – it only takes a moment:

Mindfulness – For when you have put your foot in it!

As you spot your mind replaying the “I can’t believe I said that!” story (again!), pause for a moment and move your focus to your breathing.
As you breathe in, say to yourself: “I accept what happened.”
As you breathe out, say to yourself: “I release what happened.”
Keep going – gently watching your breathing, until you feel a sense of relief.
Smile. It’s ok.

How did that feel? Did you notice the shift, as you let go?

If you’d like to discover more about how mindfulness can change your life – in under 60 seconds – then you might enjoy the easy-to-learn, quick-to-use life-changing techniques in my best-selling book: 52 Mindful Moments. No pressure – it’s just that it could be what you’re looking for, right now.

I’d love to hear how you get on with this technique – and how it helps you, especially if you use it to heal and let go of an old situation when you put your foot in it. Please feel free to share, via the comments box, below!

Namaste,

Is It Time To Banish The Winter Blues? Here’s A 7 Step Strategy To Get You Started.

How To Change Your Life

You don’t need to be suffering from full-blown Seasonal Affective Disorder to feel generally down, low on energy and warmth in winter time. Yet the winter blues are a fact of life, for millions of people. Want a fail-safe 7 step strategy to help you set yourself free from the winter blues this year?
[Read more…] about Is It Time To Banish The Winter Blues? Here’s A 7 Step Strategy To Get You Started.

How To Beat The Winter Blues – How Do You ‘Do’ The Winter Blues?

How To Change Your Life

Welcome to How To Beat The Winter Blues!

Over the coming weeks, you will receive an instalment each week, full of top tips and insider secrets, to help you feel happier, warmer and more vitalised, whatever the winter weather throws at us.

Week One

Today we’re talking about making choices.

I’m sharing with you a little-known secret about the winter blues – and how knowing this secret can make the vital difference between hating winter and feeling miserable, or setting yourself free to feel differently about it this year.

And you’ll get to discover two simple questions you can ask yourself, to break free from the winter blues – fast.

Interested?

It’s a cold, hard fact that over 90% of our experience of the winter blues is down to how we choose to feel about it!

It’s not the cold that makes us miserable, it’s our response to it.

I’m going to say something that might get you throwing rotten tomatoes at me now, but it’s important, so I’m happy to take the risk: 🙂

The winter blues aren’t something you ‘have’ or ‘suffer from’.
They’re something you ‘do’.

Yes, a certain amount of it is “hard-wired” as our brain receives less sunshine and phsyiological chemical reactions change, but the rest of it is still down to our perception and reactions.

This is great news!

It’s great news because it means we can do something about it. And that “something” can be fast and effective, too.

So here is this week’s strategy for banishing the winter blues:

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Figure out “where you’re at”
Figure out “where you want to be instead”

It doesn’t make sense to try to force ourselves to feel as vibrant and energised in winter as we did in summer. Why? Because the body, like Mother Nature, has a natural rhythm – a cycle that runs through the seasons and the year. We have a natural tendency to want to hibernate (or at least snuggle up warm) in the winter.

But that doesn’t mean we have to put up with feeling exhausted and miserable.

So let’s start with the first step of today’s strategy:

Where are you?

How about grabbing a piece of paper and scribbling down the answers to this question:

How do you “do” the “winter blues”?

If you had to teach an alien visitor how to “do” your version of the winter blues, how would they do it?

Which thoughts would they have to think?
What would they have to feel?
What would they have to see?
What would they have to hear?

Really allow yourself to pour a stream of conscious-style guide onto the paper, capturing “where you are now” with your winter blues behaviours.

Time for some winter fun?

Moving on to part two:

Taking a clean sheet of paper, write down the answer to this question:

“What do you want instead?”

Which thoughts do you want to think, instead, about winter?
Which feelings do you want to feel?
Which physical sensations do you want? What do you want to see? To hear?

Make your answers positive – so instead of writing, “I don’t want to feel cold”, write something like, “I want to feel cosy”.

How about sharing your answers to this section with us, over at the forum? I’d love to hear how you ‘do’ the winter blues – and what you want instead! And you might find it interesting to discover how similar we all are – and how different – by see what others have shared:
How do you ‘do’ the winter blues? And what do you want instead?

How Do You Apply This Stuff?

Simple!

Each time you catch yourself having a winter thought that drags you down, simply choose another thought that makes you feel slightly better.

Look at your list of “what do I want instead” answers and, if you’re feeling cold, low, lethargic or winter-blues-laden, pick one of your “insteads” and play with it.

Pick baby-step-sized actions to move you towards your “instead”.

Winter isn’t going to go away until it’s good and ready. And we have a choice – we can either spend the next few months grumbling and shivering, or we can do something about our response.

I know which option I’m choosing today!

Here’s this week’s positive affirmation:

I know how I ‘do’ the winter blues – and I know what I want instead.
This gives me the power to choose whether or not I want to do the winter blues, moment to moment.

See you next week for Week Two – we’ll be sharing top strategies for revitalising a sluggish winter body – and keeping your energy levels where they need to be.

I’d love to hear how you get on with this week’s techniques. Please make sure you share, via the Forum. It’s so much more fun, if we share this journey!
Thanks!

Namaste,

P.S. Not part of How To Beat The Winter Blues yet? Join in today and you could start changing your life in the next five minutes. You’ll get instant access to this article – and much, much more 🙂

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When You See The World Through The Eyes Of Gratitude: Download This Week’s Gratitude Screen Saver / Desktop / Wallpaper Image!

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Want to have something inspirational as your screen saver and desktop background on your computer or phone?
How about choosing to use it to help you focus on gratitude?
And to stop you from getting bored (we all know how that stops us ‘seeing’ what’s in front of us ;-)), you can have a new one each week!
Here’s where to download this week’s image: [Read more…] about When You See The World Through The Eyes Of Gratitude: Download This Week’s Gratitude Screen Saver / Desktop / Wallpaper Image!

Archives for October 2013

Could This Be The Solution To Not Having Enough Time?

Need to go a bit deeper?

Mindfulness – For when you have put your foot in it!

Week One

This is great news!

The rest of this article is only available to people on the How To Beat The Winter Blues course.

The rest of this article is only available to people on the How To Beat The Winter Blues course.

Where are you?

How Do You Apply This Stuff?

Here’s this week’s positive affirmation:

If you’re already a Soul-Sized Living member, please login before upgrading! Thanks!