Keep Stretching

What’s the point of going outside of our comfort zones? As people age we naturally become less comfortable with change. Most people gradually settle into a routine in their daily lives and it becomes more and more difficult to break out of those routines. As a good friend of my told me recently, “Life is pretty routine now. I have a nice ass groove worn in my couch and it’s not going anywhere anytime soon.”

When something beyond our control happens that forces us out of those routines it can be really traumatic. Think about how hard it is for parents when their children move out of the house. All of the sudden, their daily routines that were centered on raising children have to change.

People who continue to change and push their boundaries over time are much more adaptable and deal with externally driven changes much better than mentally rigid people. Getting plenty of exercise keeps your body healthy over time, and exercising your brain and your change muscles will keep you fit when unexpected things happen to you.

Select a Small Change

For this week, brainstorm and choose one small thing that you can do to stretch your comfort zone and exercise your change muscles. Notice that I wrote small change. Just like I would never tell an out of shape person to go run a marathon, I would not suggest that you make a drastic change in your life all at once.

So how do you decide what to do for your small change? Start by thinking about areas in your life that are stuck in a rut. Do you come home every evening, flip on the TV, change into pajamas and sweats, and wear your own ass groove into the couch for the rest of the night? If that’s your routine, pick one night this week to do something that will be a lot of fun and motivate you to stay off the couch. It can be as simple as going out for desert with a friend or doing something outside like sledding or going for a walk.

We all have areas where we’re just going along unconsciously, so take a few minutes to identify one area that is pretty stuck for you and think of one way to get it unstuck. I do this type of thing regularly, and have documented a few of them in the SmallChange category on this site. In the past year a few of the things I’ve done include:

• Having a No Complaint weekend
• Moving one step closer to a childhood dream, and
• Visiting an ethnic grocery store

None of these things is huge by themselves, but over the year I’ve become less resistant to change and have taken on bigger and bigger challenges. Now, when things happen that get me off course come along I’m able to adapt more quickly and get back to traveling in my Compass Direction.

Your exercise for today is to select one small change you can make that stretches your comfort zone and put it on your schedule. Commit to getting done this week.

When you’re finished, tell us what your small change is in the comments section. Also, don’t forget to follow me on Twitter. I’m tweeting a couple of tips per day to help you through this process.

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1) Selected a Compass Direction for 2009
2) Created a Possibilities List of ways you can start moving in your chosen direction
3) Chosen some items from the Possibilities List for your first week Action Plan
4) and most importantly you’ve been Acting on that Plan!!

If you’ve just joined us, follow the links above to go through this process from the beginning.

Now it’s time to look back on your week of action and make adjustments and course corrections as needed.

Reviewing the Week

When you’re navigating with a compass, it’s important to take a look at the path you’ve traveled so that you can make adjustments as needed. If the path you chose was too difficult you may not have been able to accomplish everything you wanted and you may be discouraged. If the path you chose was too easy, you may be bored now and lack motivation for continuing.

By taking a little time to review your travels at regular, short intervals you can keep adjusting your course to keep things fresh, interesting and helpful. Now that you have a week’s worth of action, reflect on your progress for a few moments. The following questions can help you with this:

• Do I feel better about where I am this week than I did last week?
• Did I take enough action to keep my momentum up? Did I try to do too much and get overwhelmed?
• Did life throw me any curve balls? Did those unexpected challenges throw me off course?
• Do I like and enjoy the path that I’m on? Do I want to change direction completely? Are there ways to make the journey more fun?

If you journal, this is a great exercise to do once a week. At the very least, take 10-15 minutes to think through some of these questions.

In my week, I’ve done pretty good job of Reaching Out. I attended a couple of great social events and made several phone calls to some friends I’ve fallen out of touch with. I commented on many blogs over the course of the week. I’m writing a guest post for another blog (to be announced soon) I’m also hosting the Carnival of Personal Development next week, which is a great way to “meet” other bloggers. I’ve also had a gigantic curve ball tossed in my direction, so I need to make some adjustments based on that.

Adjusting Course

Now that you’ve reflected on the past week, it’s time to set some tasks for the upcoming week. Be sure to look at your Possibilities List if you need ideas. Make sure that the items you select seem interesting and will take you further in your direction.

Working off of my Possibilities List, but taking into account my curve ball, in the next week I can:

• Continue calling friends I haven’t spoken with in a while
• Attend a weekend social event outside of my normal routine
• Take a group exercise class
• Look into doing more audio posts or possibly some video posts to better engage with my readers

That’s probably a good task list to start with. It may not seem like much, but it is appropriate given some of the challenges I need to deal with right now. Of course if I end up accomplishing more than I expected I can add more. The key is to keep reviewing and adjusting at short, regular intervals.

Your exercise for today is to do a short review, either mentally or in writing. Then make a one week plan and commit to doing your chosen activities for those days, starting now.

When you’re finished, share a bit of your progress in the comments section. Also, don’t forget to follow me on Twitter. I’m tweeting a couple of tips per day to help you through this process.

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Wait a minute! Didn’t I say yesterday that planning doesn’t work? Well, I did and I stand by that. Specifically, long term planning doesn’t work. However, I have found that it’s a lot easier to move forward in the short term if you have a realistic, flexible plan to work off of.

In this post, I’m going to show you how to select item(s) from your list of possibilities and turn those into a 7 day action plan. More importantly, we’re going to start working on these plans today. Not tomorrow, not Monday, but today. Because seriously, it’s January 7 as a write this and your New Year’s momentum is already starting to wane, isn’t it?

The Possibilities List

In yesterday’s post I asked you to make a list of possible actions you could take to turn your theme into a to-do list. For my theme of “Reach Out” I came up with the following list:

• Guest post on other blogs
• Become more active in forums
• Host a teleseminar or UStream event
• Join a group exercise class
• Lead a community service project
• Call one close friend every week
• Send a handwritten letter every week
• Network with a new group
• Travel to 2 new places

If you didn’t make a list yet, go back and do that now. Do you have a list now? Good.

Now your job is going to be selecting one or more items from the list and making a commitment to turn that into an action plan for this week.

Are You Extreme or Moderate?

When it comes to change, there are two schools of thought.  One is the extreme changers, who suggest that you go all out at the beginning of the change process to make quick progress. For example, the South Beach Diet has a two week phase to begin the diet that is extremely low in carbs. Following this plan will help you loose weight quickly. This might keep you motivated to stay on the diet, but it isn’t very sustainable over a long period.

The second school of thought is the more moderate changers. These people suggest that you set a sustainable pace by working on a change for as little as 10 minutes per day. Just keep moving forward a little bit and you’ll eventually make a lot of progress. This pace can be demotivating for people who don’t have a lot of patience, but it appeals to people with more measured personalities.

Before you put your plan together, ask yourself the following questions:

• Do I need to see quick progress to stay on track?
• Do I tend to go all out on a new project only to get burned out in a week?
• Do I have a burning desire to put all my effort into this?
• Do I need to conserve energy for everything else going on in my life?

If you need more help deciding your ideal pace of change, read my post Sliding Scales – Rapid vs. Gradual Change.

The All Out Plan

If you’ve decided that you need to go all out to stay motivated, craft your weekly plan around a lot of time and activity. Choose at least one thing on your list to work on every day. Lock yourself in the house this weekend and devote all of your energy to your list and try to check off as many things as you can. Keep sprinting until the end of the week, and then take a breather day if needed.

Looking at my list, a weekly plan that goes all out might look like this:

• Today: Go to the gym and join a group exercise class. Work out and talk to 3 people after class.
• Tomorrow: Sign up for BlogTalkRadio, schedule a weekly show and start marketing it on Twitter, Facebook and everywhere else I can think of.
• Weekend: Call 5 friends I haven’t connected with. Go out Friday and Saturday. Talk to 3 new people each night. Write a huge ebook to attract more blog readers.
• Monday: Join a local networking group and go to their meeting. Talk to 5 new people.
• Tuesday: Write handwritten letters to 5 friends to make up for not sending Christmas cards!
• Wednesday: Rest day

This total immersion plan obviously doesn’t leave time for anything else, but it will help me make a ton of progress if I can stick to it.

The Moderate Plan

A more measured approach would include anywhere from 10-30 minutes of activity off your list every day. This might mean that you can only work on one item, depending on how big the project is. Choose something that’s really interesting, otherwise you might get bored and loose motivation. A plan for me might look like:

• Today: Go to the gym and pick up a group exercise schedule. Read through schedule and select a class.
• Tomorrow: Go back to gym and sign up for the class I choose.
• Saturday: Attend my class. Smile and say “Hello” to classmates, but don’t seek major contact.
• Sunday: Research teleseminar providers for 30 minutes.
• Monday: Work on topic for future teleseminar.
• Tuesday: Post a poll on blog about interest in teleseminars. If interest is high enough, pick a date and time.
• Wednesday: Keep on trucking…

As you can see, this plan helps me make progress, but it’s at a fairly slow pace. If I followed this one, I could continue to catch my favorite TV shows and spend 3 hours making a pot of soup on Sunday if I want.

Ultimately you have to decide how much time and energy you can devote to traveling in your compass direction. Just keep your theme in mind and you’ll never go wrong!!

Your exercise for today is to make a one week plan and commit to doing your chosen activities for those days, starting now.

When you’re finished, share a day or two of your plan in the comments section. Also, don’t forget to follow me on Twitter. I’m tweeting a couple of tips per day to help you through this process.

Photo by Kriss Szkurlatowski

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Yesterday we talked about the difference between a New Year’s resolution and choosing a Compass Direction for your year. If you haven’t done that exercise, read Traveling By Your Inner Compass: A Guide to a Better 2009, do the exercise and come back in a few minutes.

[Long Pause....]

Welcome back! Now that you have a compass direction, you’re probably wondering, “How in the hell is this going to help me live a better life?” If you just leave it at the level of abstraction, it isn’t. Today we’re going to begin looking at ways to create action plans based on our directions.

I hope you’ll follow along.

Long Term Planning Doesn’t Work

I’ve been doing organizational and individual planning for about 8 years now and I can tell you without doubt that it’s useless to plan for anything longer than a year. In fact, for most people most of the time, a plan is good for about a week. After that, something is bound to change. You’ll be blown off course and you’ll have to start again.

The good news is that you’ve set a compass direction, so a storm won’t get you lost, it may just require a course correction. The whole idea behind Traveling By Your Inner Compass is to give you a heading to steer toward. It doesn’t matter how many times you have to tack (sorry for all the sailing analogies – they just work!), you’ll get there eventually.

So, if long term planning isn’t useful, how do you begin to translate your compass direction into a to-do list?

First, Start With the Possibilities

Chances are that your compass direction is pretty broad. As an example, mine is “Reach Out.” There are a lot of different activities that can fit under this broad direction. I made the following list of things I could do to “Reach Out” both online and offline in 2009:

• Guest post on other blogs
• Become more active in forums
• Host a teleseminar or UStream event
• Join a group exercise class
• Lead a community service project
• Call one close friend every week
• Send a handwritten letter every week
• Network with a new group
• Travel to 2 new places

This took me less than a minute and I could go on for quite a while.

Your exercise for today is to make a similar list. Trust me, it won’t take very long before you have an overwhelming number of possibilities. You are not committing to doing all of these, or even one of them right now. This is just a brainstorming list.

When you’re finished, leave a list of 4 or 5 of your possibilities in the comments section. Also, don’t forget to follow me on Twitter. I’m tweeting a couple of tips per day to help you through this process.

Tomorrow we’ll be Plotting Out the First Week of action!!

Photo by Kriss Szkurlatowski

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It’s a New Year, and if you’re anything like me, I bet you’re full of energy and ready to make a lot of positive changes in your life. The bad news is, this energy isn’t going to last! Within a few weeks (or maybe even a few days!) life is going to get in the way and your attention is going to move on to something that seems more urgent.

So we’ve got to act fast. Today is the day to start moving in the direction you want to go. If you don’t start now, you may just put it off for another year, or two, or forever! Then one day you’ll wake up and realize that you’ve missed your chance to do something incredible. Life is short and I don’t want that to happen to me or to you!

That is why I’ve put together a ton of motivational and useful content over the next two weeks. I hope you’ll follow along, do the exercises I share, think about what your life looks like now and what you want it to be in the future, and most importantly, start to take ACTION toward making it happen!!

How is This Not a New Year’s Resolution?

On the surface, this process may seem a lot like what many of us go through when we make New Year’s resolutions and we all know that those don’t work. Bear with me, and I’ll show you how this process is very different. This site is about change, and how to work with change, rather than fight against it. I’ve searched far and wide to find ways to change my life for the better even though the world is changing, and I’m going to share a very unique way of thinking with you. I hope it benefits you in the same way it has helped me.

I call this process Traveling by Your Inner Compass. It’s a lot different than the typical SMART goals that most coaches and counselors advise you to make. In brief, Traveling by Your Inner Compass means:

• Living by your heart, not society’s expectations (or your own guilt)
• Following an interesting path, even if it isn’t the straightest one
• Accepting that all plans have to change, and looking forward to the new opportunities that change brings
• Recognizing that nothing lasts forever – even the really good and really bad stuff

If that sounds like something that speaks to you, I hope you’ll follow along. This is the first post in a five part series, so keep reading all week!

Finding Your Direction

The first step in taking a journey is to find out where you would like to go. Sure, you could just start walking. If you’re the type of person who is comfortable with that, I definitely support your wandering. However, if you’re reading this site, you probably want some sort of guidance in your travels.

Before you can start Traveling by Your Inner Compass, you first have to find where it’s pointed. What do I mean by that? We all have hopes and desires that excite us to the core of being. Think about an idea, relationship or a project you’ve been involved in that just made you feel giddy, like there were 1,000 butterflies having a dance party in your stomach. That’s the type of excitement we’re looking for!

Most of us have spent a lot of time and energy trying to squash the thoughts that get us this excited. We’ve decided to do what is “ safe” by going to school, picking a “practical” occupation, and finding a “secure” job. If you’ve done this and you can honestly say that you are 100% happy with your choices, then I applaud you. No need to read further. If you’re one of the 99.9% of the planet’s population that thinks things could be a bit better for you, this post is talking to you.

It may seem hard to discover what excites you, but I think you’ll find that it’s actually quite simple. Here’s an exercise you can do in 10 minutes to figure it out:

Take out a sheet of paper and list all of the things that you do in a typical week. (This doesn’t include vacations are anything unusual like that.)

Put a + next to everything you think is Fun, and a – next to everything you think is Not Fun.

Think about what the Fun things have in common. As an example, they might be activities where you get to help people, they may be times of quiet reflection, creativity, extreme sports, or what have you.

Give the Fun things a label like “Adventure,” “Serving Others,” or “Constantly Learning.” That is your direction for the year. (Some people call this a theme, so if that helps, use it.)

I know this seems way too simple to work, but that is the whole point! This process should be easy and it should be super fun! Even the hard stuff should be super fun! If you have to force yourself to work on something, then it isn’t what your heart really wants. Keep doing it if it’s the only way to pay your bills, but other than that, let it go. (We’ll talk about this more in other parts of this series.)

My Direction for 2009

I’d be a total hypocrite if I didn’t follow my own advice, so I’ll be doing the exercises as we go along as well. When I made my list of Fun and Not Fun stuff, I realized that I have been enjoying all of the opportunities I’ve had in the past few years to travel and meet new people. I’ve also had the chance to meet some cool people in the virtual world. I’m not always the best at nurturing relationships, but I value them a lot. Because of that, my direction for 2009 is: Reach Out.

I think it’s a great direction to travel in and I’m super excited about it. In fact, my first action based on Reach Out is to invite all of you to travel along with me for the rest of this week. Tomorrow we are going to explore ways to start taking the first steps in your new direction.

I also invite everyone to do the 10 minute exercise and share your theme in the comments, or on your own blog. If you’re a blogger, just send me a link at maria (at) neverthesamerivertwice (dot) com and I’ll include you on an update to this post.

Here’s to an awesome journey in 2009!!

Photo by Kriss Szkurlatowski

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