Life Transformation - Personal Growth

Continuing with the theme of establishing a set of new habits and goals during this new year period, the next topic up is personal growth.

• Seek out people who bring out the best in you, challenge you, and help you grow. Just as children are extremely influenced by the friends they make, so are you.
  
• Do something scary on a daily basis. Among other things, this implies overcoming any shyness and discomfort at talking to people you don’t know.
  
• Simple rules for success from Jane Goodall: “… really work hard, and take advantage of opportunities, and never give up…”
  
• Learn something new every day. Just as you exercise you body, you also need to exercise your brain. This becomes more important the older you get. Studies have shown that the most important brain exercise is to learn something completely new, not just incremental improvements in a topic you are already very familiar with.
  
• The more close relationships you have, the fuller you life and the better your health. Invest in friends, family, and relationships, new and old. Take time to really cherish them.
  

Two Wolves

Your attitude is your choice. Chosing optimism is an empowering political act.
A good friend of mine sent me an email with the following story.


TWO WOLVES

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said, "My son, the battle is between two wolves inside us all.

"One is Evil - It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

"The other is Good - It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith."

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: "Which wolf wins?"

The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed."

Life Transformation – Spiritual Health

Continuing with the theme of establishing a set of new habits and goals during this new year period, the next topic up is spiritual health. Just as we need to avoid toxic junk food for the body, we should avoid toxic junk influences for our spirit.

• Avoid as much as possible exposure to commercial influences, including exposure to commercial TV and radio.
  
• Avoid exposure to things that promote anger, fear, resentment, envy, disrespect, and pessimism.
  
• Avoid exposure to things that promote objectionable values: violence as entertainment, glorification of conspicuous consumption, treating people as sex objects, etc…
  
• Avoid exposure to people promoting such toxic behaviors, and seek out energizing optimistic people.
  
• Become enthusiastically involved in positive causes that are bigger than yourself.
  

Life Transformation - Attitudes

Continuing with the theme of establishing a set of new habits and goals during this new year period, the next topic up is attitudes. Keeping in mind the old phrase “my habits define my life”, these are the habits of attitude that I want to help define my life.

• They key positive attitudes I will keep and promote at all times are gratitude and compassion. Before getting out of bed each morning I will establish a mindset based on these to attitudes.
  
• Negative attitudes I will eliminate from my life: anger, fear, envy. Decisions made when under the influence of these emotions tend to be very poor decisions.
  
• I will not complain about anything this year. I will either accept things as they are, or do something to change them. Sitting around complaining is an unacceptable reaction.
  
• I will not be impatient (a big personal problem for me). Being impatient is essentially complaining that the world is not moving fast enough to satisfy you, which is a silly and useless waste of your mental energy.
  
• I will always treat everyone with respect. This can prevent all sorts of problems.
  
• Being optimistic is a decision you make. It is one that empowers and energizes you and makes all sorts of positive change possible. I have decided to be optimistic.
  

Life Transformation - Progress Report

I did manage to get my email inbox down to zero on Jan 1st, and have kept it that way every evening since. I filed some items for future reference, and put those emails that still needed action in a “to do” folder, then archived the rest in a special folder in case I need to reference them in the future. So far, so good.

I also got rid of the vast majority of my pile of magazines. I cut out and saved some articles for future reference, then threw the rest out. It turns out that I had many more magazines squirreled away than I realized at first, and my goal of getting down to just three magazines being saved at any one time will be more difficult than I thought.

One problem that occurred to me comes from the old phase "my habits define my life". While the previous postings on developing better habits for organizing, diet, and staying healthy are good, I don't want them to define my life. Next up to post about is the set of habits that address attitudes, purpose, and spiritual related issues.