Living Well

Change begins with hope of what's possible in your life. Hope leads to a sense of expectancy. Combine this with setting short term goals and the likelihood of being more happy and successful moves from possibility to reality.

Short term goals, when created with well-formed criteria, offer incremental steps towards successfully achieving your bigger goals. In this step-by-step guide you'll discover the secret to creating short term goals that will set you up for success and help you sail past challenges of staying motivated easily.

I carried a backpack for a long time. Not a literal one. More a ‘case history’ of life’s wrongs caused by choosing partners I could have, should have and (would have) avoided like the plague if only I’d watched and learned from the humble snail.

Years gathering this library of ‘evidence’ created an attitude that kept me stuck in a problem state of mind.

In hindsight, it was a case of mismatched values. Mismatched life goals. Mismatched attitudes.

Here’s what a humble snail taught me.

Jon Kabat-Zinn was the first to cleanse mindfulness of its Buddhist roots and use it as a tool to help manage stress in a Boston clinic, which was part of University of Massachusetts Medical School. Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) - an 8-week program teaching outpatients how to change their relationship with pain after medicine had done all it could, was born.

If Your Life Sucked Yesterday; It Will Again Today Unless …

“Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own …” — Epictetus.

No one ethically knows the outcome of a game. We cannot make someone love us. We cannot dictate the weather.

The only control any of us has is around 3 things:

1. Whether you let yesterday influence today
2. How you let your environment influence your beliefs
3. The choices you make

That’s what learning is. Opening a door, one leading from an ordinary world to a journey unknown. They’re rarely smooth. I’ve taken them before. It will challenge me. Sometimes drag me through fire. At other times I’ll feel as if drowning. It's the path to a more successful life.

And every step of the way will open another opportunity. Another view. Yet one closed, if I hadn’t turned the handle.

Without seeking, nothing is found.

Animals Know What We’ve Forgotten

• How to focus, then let go of disappointment fast
• How to release muscle tension when stress passes
• How to be in the present moment.

Reaching goals can bring out our best and worst. The thrill of leaning into a goal needs weighing against the angst of making slow progress. It can be a stressful business.

And while 75–90% of all visits to doctors are stress related (estimation), it’s time to take onboard these 7 ideas:

Compliance is a costly mistake bred into education systems. It’s where masses of young people first learn group-think, permission-seeking and how to fit-in.

Those who don’t follow the rules are treated harshly, ostracized from the group or ‘managed’ through a process of fear designed to ignite the reptilian brain and destroy individuality.

Breaking out of this mindset can be a challenge. Because on one hand we’ve got the reptilian brain monitoring personal ‘safety’ and releasing fear when out of its comfort zone. And on the other hand the social rules of ‘compliance’ creating invisible boundaries of a pre-ordained life.