|
To do or not to do, that is the question?
By Thea Westra - ForwardSteps.com.au Back To Articles Main List
In a recent interview with Sandra Bullock about her role as Nelle Harper Lee in the movie Infamous, she talked at length about how she went about studying her character before acting in the role. What jumped out at me was her comment that she as much studies what Nelle Harper Lee would never do or say, as she would what Nelle would likely say and do. Such as, the style of clothing that Nelle wouldn't be seen wearing, the haircut that Nelle would not have, the nature of words that Nelle would not ever say and the range of mannerisms that Nellie would never use. In personal development circles it is a recognized tool to study people who are already successful in the area of life in which we want to experience success and then to model their style of behaviors. Anthony Robbins has a well-used quote about success leaving us clues. "Happy, vibrant, successful people think and behave in certain ways. So do miserable and unfulfilled people. In other words, there are patterns of success and patterns of failure. The good news is, success leaves clues."-Tony Robbins In the pursuit of our own personal goals do we place as much attention on adjusting or eliminating the activities that do not produce results for us, as the time that we spend focusing on upgrading and incorporating effective behaviors that give to us our desired results? For achieving our determined outcomes, once we have established which activities and regular practices are no longer of service to us then how do we go about eliminating them from our daily living? Many times I have heard myself saying to the people I coach, that we will never rid ourselves of negative thoughts and we'll never totally eliminate unproductive habits, we can only ever replace them with a new thought or with another, more effective habit. The following are a couple of offbeat examples to illustrate this. When folding our arms in front of our body with the right arm over the left, we cannot simultaneously fold those arms with the left arm over the right. If we no longer want to fold our arms right-over-left then we don't go to work on eliminating the option of arm folding. If we've been folding our arms right-over-left for the past 30 years and we no longer want to do it that particular way, yet we still want the flexibility of having an option of folding our arms, then we could begin to practice folding our arms left-over-right until it feels uninvolved, routine and right for us. If there's a thought that we no longer want to have, then we don't go directly to work on eliminating thoughts. We simply want some new thoughts that will empower us. Therefore, we are best to work on replacing the undesired thoughts with more favorable ones. Should we never want to think of "purple kangaroos" ever again and we begin by telling ourselves "Don't think of purple kangaroos", guess what shows up in our mind's eye? Now if we instead say to ourselves "Think of orange wombats", then where have the purple kangaroos gone, during the moments that you see the orange wombats? In a nutshell, if we're modeling new patterns of behavior based on observing other people who are already experiencing success in our chosen pursuit, then consider giving equal time to noticing the range of thoughts, habits and activities in which that person would never engage, proportionate to the time that we would spend on distinguishing their existing behaviors. Once we have established the specific practices that we want to discard, we can then set ourselves the task of creating positive substitutions for these rather than expend negative energy on the outright rejection of these habits. © Thea Westra lives in Perth, Australia. She publishes a wealth of material for increased life power, self improvement, inspiration, personal success, online business, and internet know-how. Enjoy her many self-improvement resources at http://www.myforwardsteps.com and her latest book at http://www.timeformylife.com Want To Use This Article? Thea Also Recommends A Visit To Her Book Time For My Life
|
