31Ways2GetItStarted™! January 3, 2013

Day 3: Allow Yourself to Succeed

Yesterday I implored you to be realistic as you set about making changes--since it is a process, not a one-time thing...well, it is if you want to be successful!--so on a related note...allow yourself to succeed. Whether you're trying to make big changes or small--and all big changes start out small--you have to allow yourself to succeed. Translation: Don't sabotage yourself! Some of you are rolling your eyes at this one...and yet, I know I'm not the only one who has, routinely, sabotaged herself. 

And by "sabotaging," I mean, consciously, or even sub-consciously, creating situations, or at least not stopping certain situations from creating, which I know are going to waste my time and stop my emotional development. I've dated men, or worked in jobs, which I knew were wasting my time and allowing me to luxuriate in bad habits simply because I didn't have the courage/determination/desperation to say, "Basta! This is not the person I want to be. This cannot be my life!" Or, for example, I've let myself sleep through morning workouts, on days when I knew there wouldn't be any other time to workout, and then groggily rolled out of bed at 9am, feeling like crap and pissed off at myself, which meant that I'd be eating crap food all day since, whatever, who cares, I didn't work out anyway, which meant I didn't do all the other things that day which would have made me feel good which means, Hello Shame Cycle!

(None of this, I stress, means I'm perfect now. Oh my no. It means I can see where bad behavior and bad habits will eventually lead me, IF I ALLOW THEM, so I refuse to allow them, since time is passing and I have a lot of people to nag, um I meant "help." Yes, help, right.)

So, my hint for today is about allowing yourself to succeed. Whatever you're trying to do, before you go wild, take a moment to be honest with yourself and make sure you're not, in fact, setting yourself up for disaster. Take it step by step. You don't have to change your life today, and in fact just thinking of it that way is exhausting and makes me want a mug of Scotch. So how about you pat yourself on the back for acknowleding that you want to make changes, and you understand how difficult making changes can be, and you do one small thing today which will make tomorrow easier? How about that...?

Want some help making those changes? Email me @carlotazee@gmail.com!

31Ways2GetItStarted™! January 2, 2013

Day 2: Be Realistic!

Let's face it, many of us find that reality is not our friend. Reality frequently can be a huge Debby Downer. And reality is especially uncooperative if your New Year's resolutions included you engaging in behavior which either completely goes against your personality, or would require you to bend the laws of time and space in your favor. So if, for example, you decided you were going to lose a lot of weight super quickly by waking up at 5am every morning and running 5 miles...even though you 1) hate to wake up early and 2) you hate to run even more...um, I think we all know how that's going to end. Hint: The only thing that'll be getting a workout will be the snooze button on your alarm clock, while you end up loathing yourself. In fact, you end up furiously frustrated, again, with yourself, and probably give up and sink further into bad habits and self-destructive behavior. NO ME GUSTA!

On the other hand, if you were to, for example, decide to get off the subway one stop early, and take the stairs whenever possible, and not order both appetizers and entrees, and just be patient with yourself and understand that life is a progression...well, well! You might, in a month say, start realizing that your tight pants are actually lose, and you have more energy and dear God could it be, that your resolutions are actually sticking?

Thus, kids, my admonition, my plea, is "be realistic," fer f**k's sake, and appreciate that change is difficult. Change is, in fact, exhausting but you can do it...if you resolve to be realistic about how much any one person can humanly do each day and don't consciously set yourself up for failure.  

Want some help taming reality to your will? Email me @carlotazee@gmail.com, and become a fan of my business Facebook page, "Carlotaworldwide Creativity Yenta," for a free consultation!