Unless you’re a seer like Nostradamus then you don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. Sure, we have a pretty good idea what’s going to happen to us in the upcoming minutes or hours – more of the same is the most likely outcome – but we never know for certain. Things happen unexpectedly.
But that’s not something we can control.
What we can control is the most likely things – and we can influence those and make a better future for ourselves in the process.
Embrace change
Near enough the only constant in our lives is change.
Technology changes at a rapid pace, often outgrowing even the wildest dreams of science fiction writers.
So instead of grumbling about things changing, embrace the idea and welcome it into your life. It’s going to happen anyway, so why not enjoy it.
Practice Kaizen
Kaizen is a Japanese term that means “change for the better”.
The idea is that any change that makes a positive difference is good – it can be a small change, a large change, a one off item or something that happens regularly into the forseeable future.
Anything and everything is up for grabs in this process. If it needs fixing, get it fixed.
That could be a habit that’s been annoying you for longer than you care to remember. It could be the thing you’ve been putting off (in my case, tidying my ever-cluttered desk). It could be stepping back and thinking how you’d tackle something that you do regularly if you had to approach it fresh, today. Because we regularly get set in our ways and do things “just because”.
If the changes are small, they’ll take time to have an effect but they mount up, A good friend of mine suggests this in personal development – a change of just a third of one percent per day turns into 100% improvement in a year’s time. OK, none of use are likely to be OCD enough to do a small change like that every day for a year but you hopefully get the idea.
Reduce negativity
Start by switching off the news – that’s almost totally negative and if there’s something important happening, someone will tell you.
If you regularly think negative thoughts, catch yourself in the process as often as you can and turn them round. A simple way to remind yourself is to wear a rubber band on your wrist. Every time you catch yourself thinking a negative thought, snap the band. It will hurt briefly and acts as a stimulus response to help you reduce your negative thinking. You won’t catch yourself every time but that doesn’t matter as the pattern will build up.
If you’re able to distance yourself from negative friends and colleagues, do that as well. It’s not always easy, especially if you’re working with someone, but you can probably tune them out to a degree and that will help. cut down on their negative influence.
Keep doing personal development
Just because it’s not a class at school or college or a required subject at work doesn’t mean that personal development isn’t important.
I’m probably biased but I think that personal development is one of the most important things we can do throughout our lives.
Pick an area you’d like to improve – start small if you haven’t done this for a while – and work on it. You’ll instinctively know which area to start on – it’s the one that popped into your head as soon as you read the “pick an area” part, even if you instantly tried to think it wasn’t where you wanted to start,
Then work on that part of your life – just a few minutes a day is fine because these processes work in much the same way as a dripping tap.
Stay as healthy as you can
Some things about our health we can control so focus on those.
That means eating healthier (whatever your definition of healthy eating is) and keeping reasonably fit.
You can’t control all of things about your health but you can definitely influence them for the better.
Keep your mind active
That doesn’t mean binge watching the latest series!
Read – books, articles, Facebook posts from people you trust.
Be open to new ideas and new points of view but don’t blindly trust things – you need to know the source otherwise you’ll succumb to all the fake news that’s out there, including some of the allegedly unbiased scientific reports that just happen to be sponsored by the industry that’s favourably reported.
Get help
Chat with positive friends – you can find groups online for just about anything if there’s no-one in your immediate circle who’s into this idea.
You can also get other help – there are hypnosis MP3s that will help nudge your mind in the right direction to help you create your own future that’s positive and fun to be a part of.
Near enough the only constant in our lives is change.
