What Have You Achieved in Your Life That You Once Thought Was Impossible For You?
|What Have You Achieved in Your Life That You Once Thought Was Impossible For You?
For me, I never would’ve imagined that I would’ve taken up jogging.
Another more recent example is that I’ve long admired and been curious about other people’s 30 day projects (like this guy’s and this guy’s. The latter is even getting his own TV pilot as a result! – The audiobook of his book called “My Life As An Experiment” is available free by clicking the Audible ad in the sidebar of my blog).
But, I never thought I’d have the oomph to do my own. I thought the commitment to doing something everyday would be a burden. It turned out that was a thought distortion. I’m now doing my 4th consecutive 30 day project on the blog’s Facebook page, and there has been less than a handful of days when its felt like a burden. And, the 30 day projects have been FAR more revelatory than I imagined. This is consistent with psychology research studies, and my previous writing, showing that changing behaviour is typically the best way to change thoughts and feelings (the causal link from behaviour to thoughts/feelings is usually at least as strong, if not stronger, than the link from thoughts/feelings to behaviour).
If you are struggling to make a change in your life, is one of the reasons you’re staying stuck that deep down you think its not possible for you to change in the direction you want to change in?
If you believe you cannot change, you might want to try paying attention to disconfirming evidence – meaning in this case, examples in which you have changed over the course of your life in some meaningful way.
I like to keep mentally on-hand a few examples of when I’ve surprised myself in achieving change I didn’t think was possible for me (like the examples above) to counter such thoughts.
What are some of your examples? Jot down 2 or 3.
This month’s 30 day Facebook project
I’m doing another project in which I experiment with implementing advice I give to clients, in my own life.
This time I’m trying 30 days of working on A and B tasks ahead of C Tasks (see this link for the background info you’ll need to understand what on earth I’m talking about).
What thought is getting confronted?
That deep down I’m not sure I believe I can be disciplined, organized, and work in systematic ways (I’m good at this in some areas but not in others). So, I thought I’d try on the identity of a disciplined, organized, systematic person for the month!
I started this 30 day project last week and can be slow in announcing the projects on the blog, so if you want to be first to know about the projects, you can join the blog Facebook page. I’m doing daily (weekday) updates about the project to Facebook.