10 things I have to remind myself on a regular basis
Sit with the discomfort, this is where growth starts.
When something challenging happens it can be really easy to want to run and hide away, to ignore all the feelings that are coming up and just push them away. What I’ve come to realise is that this doesn’t help, it just delays the inevitable. If we can instead sit with these feelings and give them the attention they deserve. Yes it may feel uncomfortable but we can learn so much from these situations.
Don't ask - Why is this happening to me? Ask - What can I learn from this?
As soon as we ask WHY in this situation, we fall into victim mode. We resent these challenges and only see the negatives. If we switch this and use WHAT it opens up the possibility for some understanding and growth. This has been powerful for me to experiment with.
If you don't start you will fail. So just start.
This ones pretty obvious right?! I’ve failed at so many things, not because they failed but because I failed to start and try them out. I’d already decided - that won’t work, it’s too hard, I can’t do that. Sound familiar? This one comes to mind when I have an idea and immediately Little Kat chirps up with these unhelpful negative thoughts!
It's just a thought.
This one was a huge ah-ha moment that my Life Coach offered me last year. You see we have a lot of thoughts everyday - apparently 70,000 - some useful, some not so useful. So chose to pay attention to the ones that are helpful, because there’s another one coming right up!
What's 1 simple step I can take to get me moving forward?
My number cure for overwhelm. Big projects feel BIG! So I break them down into mini steps and ask myself this question to get the ball rolling. It’s always something simple that I can do right away.
When am I my best self?
I use this one when I am contemplating an event or sharing my time with others. I can sometimes fall into being a YES person. Saying yes to everything and not stopping to ask if it’s something I really want to do. So this is a good question to ask to help guide my decision.
This moment will pass, everything will change. Let it go and move forward.
If you find yourself getting stuck in the emotion of a challenging situation, struggling to see an end and how things will ever get better, remember this - everything changes. This has really helped me navigate through some heavy emotions and focus on moving forward. Our bodies change, our situations change, our finances change, our health changes, our environment changes and everyone around us will change too. So hold things a little lighter - the good and the bad.
Remember how far you’ve come, you once dreamed about being exactly where you are.
Wishing you were further ahead, had more of this and less of that? Yes me too! I like to grab my journal and a pen for this one and remind myself on a monthly basis of how I’ve moved forward. I also carry out a yearly audit and goal setting which I review regularly to identify all the things I once hoped for that I now have. You are doing better than you think, trust me.
Knowledge is only potential power. Take action.
I sometimes go through a stage of overconsumption of knowledge, I listen to lots of podcasts, read books back to back and binge TED Talks - anyone else?! Whilst this can be seen as all good content and relevant to my work the problem comes when you don’t allow any time to just sit with the information, digest it and take action. Stuffing your brain full of content, however useful, is only good if you take action from what you have learnt.
Don’t underestimate the little things. All the little things add up to big things.
It can be easy to brush off those little daily actions as non-impactful but these are where those big goals start. Want to run a 10k? That 100m you run tomorrow will count, it will move you closer to your goal. Want to start journaling? Start with 1 question, don’t even write the answer down, just start asking yourself better questions. This will move you forward.
What’s one message you tell yourself regularly? Share it in the comments below.
