Look Within
Introspection is internal work. The discovery has to be within oneself. You cannot change others, only yourself. Accepting this can free you from taking responsibility for other people's actions and reactions. You can influence others, but you only have the power to change yourself. Influence is about saying and doing what you can, like sharing your knowledge and skills with the intent of positively impacting another person.
People have free will and, despite the best of knowledge and input, they can still make decisions that are not good for them and that you do not understand. It can be confusing and sometimes heartbreaking to watch someone make bad choices. Their choice and their actions are not your responsibility and wanting people to behave in a way that aligns with your worldview and expectations will only lead to increased frustrations, hurt feelings, and wasted emotional energy. Focus all your available energy, attention and resources on the one thing you can control and change: yourself.
The clearer you are on who you want to be, the more you are able to see any gaps you might have. You have positive strengths that you need to acknowledge and nurture. You have blind spots, prejudices, weaknesses that you will need to work on.
Work on one thing at a time. Be clear on what a successful change looks like. Your lifetime habits and default responses take work to reprogramme. Back in 1910, Jessie Potter was the featured speaker at the opening of the seventh annual Woman to Woman conference and observed, ‘If you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you have always got.’ It is such a truism that her quote is now mis-attributed across the internet!
That quote is one of my favourites (which is why I searched to find out who originally said it). While we have free will we do not get to choose the consequences of our actions. I noticed that life kept giving me the same lesson repeatedly, in ever greater intensity, until I did something different. Now, when things don’t go the way I am expecting, I am learning to stop and ask myself what the lesson is! It helps me learn fast!
Accepting that the only person you can change with certainty is yourself, focuses your energy. Know what you would like to change, why and what your new identity looks like in terms of actions and outcomes. This allows you to measure progress.
The HALTS acronym stands for hungry, angry, lonely, tired and stressed. If you are aware that you might be any of these, the encouragement is to halt. You are not your best self if you are operating under any of these states.
Seek feedback. Ask trusted people to coach and hold you accountable. Pick something that you have a strong desire to change. If it is causing a lot of pain you can leverage the desire to avoid pain. Desire is a significant driver. Using strong emotions as leverage gives focus and allows you to put in the effort required. You act and behave because, at some level there is a ‘payoff’. Identify the thinking and habits causing your current actions. This makes it easier to stop or change your relevant behaviours.
Here is a useful exercise.
Write the five areas you think you would most benefit from changing.
What do you currently do?
What would you like to do instead?
What impact will this change have on you and those around you?
If you are still unsure, ask a trusted friend who can be honest in their feedback regarding areas where you would benefit from improvement, or take a personality profile that highlights your strengths and weaknesses. See what resonates most in the results that come back.
The more you do what makes you feel alive and aligned with your ideal self, the greater your likelihood of reaching this aspirational reality.
