Tag: #growth

1 Question to ask when you’re in the in-between

Image by John Hain from Pixabay

The in-between is where your identity has not yet caught up with your reality you’ve created.  To keep up you need to continually back and forth where you identity shifts a little bit then you shift and create results but someone in us is the old identity so we take a few steps back into the familiar.  This can be associated to any kind of change: financially, personal growth, weight, whatever.  To achieve success at it you need to practice new thoughts and feelings about creating new ways. You need to become that person on the inside in order to become that person on the outside.

Podcast fave Tonya Leigh suggested this doesn’t happen overnight and we’re often in a hurry to make want those changes overnight.  It takes practice and sometimes years before you finally get to the point where its integrated enough and its now just who you are.

We self-sabotage by running through those doubting questions in our heads “what if it’s too good to be true?”, “what if I can’t keep this up”? “who do you think you are”? “Its too hard”, “you look silly”.  You need to be so committed to your change to be able to keep moving through those doubts if you want to continue to grow and evolve and see what you’re capable of. The pay-off is this awkward in-between stage.

The hardest part of the in-between is the discomfort of letting go of an old identity. TL suggested imagining you have two lines, one above the other, you are at the bottom line right now, but as you start to go towards to top line there’s a space in between. The closer you get to the new identity the more uncomfortable it gets and the tendency is to want to revert to what’s familiar. Muster up the courage to keep going towards that top line.  The question that TL poses to people in that in-between space is:

“What would my most expansive self do right now?”

If you want to continue to grow and evolve it will require that you stop contracting your energy.  When you’re in the in-between you’ll experience periods of both growth and contraction but when you feel yourself contracting ask yourself that question.

Go to the place of where you want to be and practice being that person, expansive version of yourself.  If you think something long enough and feel something often enough and do things to reinforce it eventually that will become your new norm; that upper line TL talked about. You get good at what you practice most.

What do you want to get good at and are you practicing it?  Are you willing to wade through the in-between of letting go of old identities and practicing the new ones to the point where it becomes normal.

Know that when you’re feeling awkward and have those two voices battling it out over whether you’re being a fraud or whether you’ve got this and to keep going, remember you get to choose which one to listen to.

Know that this in-between feeling is a normal part of the process.  Nothing has gone wrong when you’re having a sort of identity crisis, it is part of the process of change.  Be courageous enough to walk through it.

If you do just one thing…

We don’t all have the energy, capacity or resources to make transformative changes in our lives, but we can take little steps forward.  In February’s Red magazine Bella Evennett-Watts asked a number of different people to suggest small changes that could lead to long-lasting impact.  Here goes:

  1. Become a better listener – by resisting your own urges to give advice or suggestions
  2. Send “thinking of you” texts to future proof your friendships
  3. Boost your self-esteem by keeping a positivity journal
  4. Gift your partner with information to solidify your relationship
  5. Achieve Fen Shui while working from home by getting the lighting right
  6. Listen to your own advice to feel happier more often
  7. Make people listen by writing down your purpose with confidence and clarity
  8. Help yourself heal from heartbreak by looking forward
  9. Reduce your impact on the environment by investing in reusables
  10. Challenge your social awkwardness by being curious
  11. Stop blaming yourself by remembering you’re not always responsible for others’ behaviour
  12. Get better at public speaking by smiling
  13. Improve your relationship with alcohol by taking small breaks from it
  14. Choose hope over despair to build a better future
  15. Improve your relationship with the online world by slowly letting go of urgency
  16. Make a to-do list to improve your work-life balance
  17. Stop people pleasing by questioning your guilt
  18. Leave a book for a stranger in a microlibrary, waiting room or coffee shop
  19. Walk a dog, even if you don’t have one volunteer at the local dog shelter
  20. Befriend someone by using Age UK’s befriending service and sign up to visit an older person
  21. Do a two-minute clean up in your neighbourhood
  22. Become a mentor and make a difference in someone else’s life
  23. Save lives by giving blood
  24. Try translating if you speak another language
  25. Give away your old bike to the Bike Project
  26. Make someone grieving for a lost pet feel less alone by supporting the Blue Cross Pet Bereavement Support Service
  27. Get knitting for disadvantaged people
  28. Be a cheerleader and offer encouragement at the next local marathon
  29. Make a difference from your phone, check out apps that help spread goodwill
  30. Share an extra portion with a neighbour or homeless person
  31. Pass on a loved teddy bear to a children’s home
  32. Facetime a blind person to help them check out expiry dates or navigate new surroundings
  33. Search for anything to help plant trees around the world
  34. Perform a small act of kindness, ideas from the BeKind app
  35. Buy secondhand furniture to reduce wastage

What other small steps could you take?

Living the rich life

Our problems can’t be fixed by just having more money.  We hear a lot about how the NHS, where I work needs more money.  Yes, it does but simply throwing more money at it without a proper, sustainable plan, isn’t the answer.  Neither is it the answer for us on a person level. Having more money won’t suddenly make us happier.  Money allows us to enjoy different experiences, and not have to worry about a roof over our heads or food in our stomachs.  Yet we sometimes see images of people who have little money still leading a rich, simple and fulfilling life.

Its not about the money, it’s about our thinking about the money that creates how we feel about it.  Podcast fave Tonya Leigh suggests we should concentrate on living a rich life in the life we have now so that we can become a match for more riches. Riches come in many different ways. Stop putting off feeling good for “one day when…”, stop waiting for the money and start living for it now. We can train our minds to think richly, stop focussing on lack, scarcity and fear and focus on something bigger and greater than where we are. True wealth is not determined by how much you have in the bank but by what you feel.

TL offered some suggestions on how to live a rich life:

  • Want what you already have – we spend so much time thinking and worrying about what we don’t have, what’s missing from our lives.  When we change our focus, we start to see what is abundant in our lives.  TL suggests living in that state of appreciation for what we have now, our health, our families and friends, food and all those things we take for granted.
  • Enjoy and take care of what you already have – we can be so focussed on aiming for the next thing and the next thing that we forget to enjoy what we already have and take really good care of it. 
  • Check your assets – assets doesn’t just mean your bank account and savings.  It includes your health, friendships, intellectual capital, physical assets in terms of your home, food and clothing, time.  What are the assets you currently have that makes your life so abundant and wealthy?  Focus on that to feel rich.
  • Practice thinking like a rich person – when we think like a rich person we start to feel like a rich person.  When we feel like a rich person, we attract more riches. At the core is to train your mind to think abundantly.

We don’t have to buy things in order to be rich.  We don’t have to have more ‘stuff’. Just because you’ve got a lot of stuff, doesn’t mean you’re rich. Stop fighting for misery and excuses to feel bad.  Start looking for reasons to feel amazing and rich. 

There are over three billion people in the world who have no running water in their homes, when you think about your life from that perspective, you’ll see that your life is very, very rich.