If the Buddha Got Stuck_ A Handbook for Change on a Spiritual Path - Charlotte Sophia Kasl [74]
Think big. Keep the possibilities open and flowing. And remember to stay away from nay-sayers and negative people who throw up obstacles. Fending off their negativity can drain your energy.
5. Make plans. This is where you say out loud, “It’s decided. I’m going to do this. Here’s my list and my schedule. This is what I’m going to do to eat better, exercise, be kinder to my family, be more diligent in my work, take time off, start looking for a new job, find someone to date,” and so on. It may be a one-time plan like signing up for a workshop or a change that requires a series of steps.
Make a list of everything that needs to be taken care of. With exercise, for example, do you have a routine, a video, a place to walk, a mini-trampoline, weights, an aikido program? Do you belong to a fitness center? Do you have their schedule, a bathing suit if you’re going to swim? When will you need to get up in the morning to exercise? (And when will you need to go to bed?) Work out all the details. And again, make dates with yourself on your calendar to get things done.
6. Remember, repetition is the mother of learning. You don’t become relaxed about jumping off a high diving board through analyzing, insight, or listing all the reasons why it’s scary. You jump! fear and all, then do it fifty more times. You recondition your brain and nervous system to realize, “I can jump off this high board, I will be all right, and nothing terrible is going to happen. Even if I get a little smack on my butt, I’ll survive.”
Albert Ellis, founder of Rational Emotive Therapy and author of How to Stubbornly Refuse to Make Yourself Miserable About Anything, writes about pushing himself to overcome his irrational fears. At one point in his young life, to overcome his fear of rejection by women, he gave himself the assignment of talking to every young woman he met sitting on one of the park benches on his daily walks. “No exceptions! No cop-outs.” Out of the one hundred women he talked with, only one woman made a date with him, but he completely overcame his fear because he saw that nothing terrible happened if he was rejected.
Accept help. You may not always be able to motivate yourself to get started or take on a project. A good way you calm yourself and take the anxiety out of a project is getting a friend to help you. I am a lover of temp agencies for everything from planting daffodils to getting organized. For example, I was totally stuck cleaning out the basement, so for a birthday present to myself I called a temp agency and asked them for someone who was good at throwing stuff away. The “throwing stuff away” woman, who had just moved to town to start graduate school, took the job on a lark and, in addition to a clean basement, I gained a new friend.
If one approach doesn’t work, try something else. If you have a change of heart, or a new possibility presents itself, or the plan is not feasible, you can drop it or change it. The point is to stay in forward motion.
7. Take action! At this point the dream, whether large or small, has become reality, you become a bit more congruent internally, and you experience yourself living more in the flow of your life. You’ve taken a morning walk three times in the last week, started the book group, bought the land, signed up for that class, invited your sweetie out on a date, attended your first Weight Watchers meeting.
Each clear step that expresses heart, mind, and body will stimulate your energy. You’re on the upswing. Big changes may also leave you feeling a bit disoriented. It might take a while for your inside world to catch up to your new behavior or situation. “Am I really living in this new house?” “Do I actually have this good job?” “Am I really losing weight? Exercising?” “Is this me?” “Do I deserve this?” A friend of mine had repeated dreams of smoking