Houses of Healing

Too Much to Do

I am going along creating my life and have things all planned and mapped out and on schedule – and from “out of nowhere” other priorities get bumped up.

My husband and I have this ongoing project to remodel our very “unmodeled” front hallway. We started the project the end of last year. We were happily plugging away at moderate pace when we suddenly got a great opportunity to refinance our variable mortgage at a nice fixed rate - but the hallway had to be done (no exposed beams). We switched into high gear and put the hallway up to the front of the line in our projects.

My husband has been doing most of the work and has now become the chief contractor for the hallway - and now only the occasional visitor in Evenstar.

On top of that, he was offered some time sensitive lucrative projects from his retired career. He took the opportunities. The end result being sort of a hiatus from his position as the marketing and technical director here at Evenstar. 

The point of the long story is – this is why you have not heard from us this past month. Things are settling out now and our scheduling is taking hold so we are back on track with our outreach to you.

In this little hiatus from our usual activity, I made good use of the opportunity to pull back and observe where we were and what we were doing. I discovered that we had gotten caught up in doing so many things that we were actually getting frazzled trying to keep up. I also discovered that you don’t have to do a million things to get what you really want – solid vibrational alignment yields better results than frazzled action. It’s OK to let go of trying to do everything. Better all around to keep yourself feeling good and reaching for feeling even better.

While I was watching my new order of priorities take shape and taking my hiatus from business as usual – I was offered a long desired opportunity (that I had peacefully accepted that it wasn’t time for yet) - and I got my own Life Coaching column in a home town newspaper in Maryland and I will be writing their monthly Alternative Approaches articles!

You too have probably discovered that can’t take enough actions to keep up with all the things you want and desire. It’s easier and more effective to just let the energy behind those desires work its magic.

Between Activity Recovery Rituals

Do you find yourself continually on the move? As soon as one activity is complete, you are already into the next thing. Non-stop action can be a detriment to good mood and energy management.

The time between activities is critical to maintaining good mood and energy management and adequate healthy recovery. Any time between meetings, phone calls, events and activities is not wasted, dead time, it is the essential renewal and preparation time that ensures that you are not pushing or stressing your body past its limits. Between activity recovery can be conscious rest and renewal in preparation for the next wave of activity.

Between activity recovery rituals allow your mind, body, and spirit to synchronize. These rituals allow you to become complete with your just finished activity, to process and integrate the experience, and allow space and time to gain insight from your actions.

Between activity recovery rituals pave the way for you to be fully present and focused on your upcoming activity. The more present you are in your current action the more of yourself you bring into what you are doing and the less drag you create for yourself and those around you. Being present fosters full access to your wisdom and strengths.

Some questions to help guide you in designing your Between Activity Recovery Rituals:

• What can you do after phone calls to recover and prepare for the next action?
• What can you do between meetings to recover and prepare for the next action?
• What can you do during the day to take recovery breaks and prepare for the next wave of activity?
• What rituals and routines regarding timing activities do you use to keep your mood and energy at their peak throughout the day?
• Do you follow any trained recovery program to keep your mood and energy at their peak?

Just Do It

I am a great planner and most of the time I do a lot of reflection and strategic thinking before making changes. So much so that I sometimes find myself mired in the process and seem to be held hostage by the many “ifs, ands, or buts.”

Luckily, I have learned over the years a sure-fire remedy for this.

Begin where you are.

Maybe you have promised yourself to start attending your children’s sports activities but today it's late - if you leave now the game will be almost over when you get there.

Go anyway.

Don’t wait for the perfect time or the perfect place or the perfect mood. You don’t have to start your new life on a Monday. If you have missed every day but today, start today.

Forward movement begets more forward movement. Going anyway begins the momentum you need to keep pulling you forward.

Works every time.

Want help with “time management"? Personal Coaching can help you experience that you are the one in charge of your life – not your time pressures, deadlines, and overwhelms. Give me a call at 434-263-4996 or email me at maryann@evenstaronline.com to begin making the changes in your life that have eluded you.

Thoughts Become Things

“I Want to Be Healthy, Well and Experience Well-being but I’m so tired, annoyed and frustrated.”

You don’t have to bother debating the “truth” of worldviews like the Law of Attraction or do experiments to prove its veracity to understand that if you keep thinking, doing, or feeling the same thing over and over that that is what is going to keep showing up in your life.

If you are feeling tired, depressed, lonely, defeated and you keep talking about it and talking about it there is just “no room” in your life for anything else to happen.

Instead, look for just one point of your life that you can feel different about and lavish it with attention. Bespeckle it with jewels of appreciation and gratitude. Expound on it with deliciousness, joy and bliss – low and behold it can grow and multiply.

Before you know it, you will have brought to your awareness all kinds of inspired actions to help you create different things in your life. And that one bright spot can grow and expand to touch all the areas of your life until soon you aren’t thinking, feeling, or acting the same and your life is different.

Focusing on your desire is not about getting strangled in the frustration of not having it. Focusing on your desire is really about being now who you would be and having the experience, thoughts, and feelings you would have when your desire shows up in your outer world.

How would you be if what you wanted was already in front of you? If you were totally healthy, well and full of well-beingness what would you be doing? What kind of experiences would you be having?

However that would be for you then - that is the way to be now. Dream about it. Think about it (again not the absence of it but already having whatever you want). Act as if you have it. Experience having it. Write about having it.

In all ways have that reality even before it shows up. And even as you do this - if something is in front of you to do that doesn’t quite fit your desired reality - just do what is in front of you to do and don’t give it any power. Do it and move on in the experience of your desired reality.

So if you are constantly tired. Give up telling elaborate stories about being tired. Instead, image what it is like being full of vibrant, sparkling energy. Think about it. Dream about it. Act as if. And take the inspired actions – supplements, adrenal stress test, extra naps, regular meal times, see the new health care practitioner, - whatever – that your mind has come up for you to take - but do them in the reality of having your desire rather than in the reality of the absence of your desire.

The Do Nothing Break

"We do not see things as they are. We see them as we are."
--The Talmud

Finally, Amy just threw up her hands and in her frustration declared that she just didn’t know what to do and was sure that she would never be able to figure it out.

Amy and I were 3 months into her Mood and Energy Management Program. She was doing the work to resolve her food allergies, her problem with candida, and her adrenal stress. She was going through a lot of change – taking new herbal tonics, mapping out strategic times to take her supplements, eating more frequently and she had let go of eating super sized fast foods. As she cleared her physical symptoms she began to get a sense that her financial life needed changing. But how, what, where, when and why – she kept asking these questions and ending more confused than ever. So I suggested that she start all over again.

Years ago, my first formal training in healing was in the Seven Steps of Healing with Susun Weed. It was a logical and esoteric system for building a comprehensive, multi-dimensional approach to healing. The first step is defined as "returning to the void". It is here that we reconnect to our natural rhythms. It is a creative step for returning to the source of the problem - a place where course-correction can take place.

Returning to the void is like calling a time out. You stop trying to figure things out. You cease all your attempts to make things happen. In essence you "do nothing". It is a place of silence and stillness. You don’t go there to seek answers. You’re not asking any questions. You just do nothing. You might rest, sleep, sit quietly, walk in the woods, sit on the beach, cry, knit, even sky dive. You are just being where you are and allowing things to sort themselves out.

There are times when doing nothing makes a lot of sense. It is only when we return to our natural rhythms that life around us is given the space to naturally sort itself out. As we are doing nothing, we are more likely to notice things falling into place as opposed to when we are so busy trying to make something happen that all we can see is the jumbled mess we are making.

I suggested to Amy that she let herself return to this creative do nothing space. She spent the rest of the day sleeping, and crying. She let her husband tend to the kids, get the meals and follow up what needed to get done that day. She dozed and slipped into doing nothing.

The next morning she awoke with the same problem but her frozen, frustrated state had dissolved and she had a clear plan of action in mind –she felt confident in her first actions and she knew where she wanted to end up.

Is it Time for You To Do Nothing?

Are you confronted with a problem that you are sure can’t be solved?

Are you in the midst of a healing crisis that doesn’t seem to be resolving?

Have you gotten caught up in something that has gotten way out of hand?

Are you trying to follow everyone’s else’s advice and getting nowhere?

If you find yourself in a maze of confusion, are confronted with an unresolvable problem or find yourself in a situation that you don’t want to be in - take a Do Nothing break. Let things settle out.

Stop… Do nothing … and allow things to untangle themselves as you reconnect to your natural rhythms.

"Listen to the sound of the river and you will catch a trout."
-- Irish proverb

 

The ultimate guide to productivity – What’s your secret?

I've been tagged! Aaron Potts tagged me to participate in a new round of assembling a volume of great information from a wide variety of sources.

The idea was originally started by Ben at the Instigator Blog and he called it The Ultimate Guide to Productivity Group Writing Project.

Participants list their best productivity habits, highlighting the most effective one if they want to, and link back to Ben's site, as well as to who tagged them for the project.

Here is my contribution:

Personally productivity - getting things done – is a hot topic. As a culture, we are obsessed with getting things done. Just look at all the time management systems and our “need” to go faster to get it all done.

What are you thinking about most of the day? Your To Do List, am I right?

And what are you waiting for before you let yourself think about all those wonderfully dreamy things you long for in your life? To get your To Do List done.

Many believe Getting Things Done is the path they must take to have what they want in life. Have you seen the backlash about the DVD The Secret? What’s  the biggest grip? That positive thinking and positive feelings alone aren’t going to get you what you want in life - you have to Do things if you expect anything to happen in your life. And you have to do a lot of things. And you have to do the right things. And you have to get these things done on time for them to matter.

My nature is to be super productive and get scads of things done. I’m as attached as anybody to getting things done. I have endless ideas and projects popping up in my mind. Every day there are hundreds of things I would like to do. Some things I have to do. And more things I should do. There is an endless conveyor belt heaping more and more things to do on my ever-expanding plate.

Having seen my productive capacity land me in burn out a few times, I've learned to approach productivity more strategically.

I have changed my definition of productivity

I have redefined productivity as the art and science of successfully moving toward what I want to experience in my life. At this stage of my life productivity isn’t just about getting things done. I've taken the focus off just doing things and put the focus on a strategic plan as to what, where, when, why and how to do things.

These days I am more interested in sustainable productivity. Sure, it used to be no problem staying up all night to meet a deadline, skipping meals, getting up early, going to bed late, rushing and hurrying to get more done. But that is not sustainable. Going about it that way - you will sooner or later (usually sooner) fall over in exhaustion or just succumb to incompetence and lack of effectiveness – and end up with little or no productivity.

I now have two main guidelines when leveraging my productivity:

• Productivity is really all about learning to effectively manage your energy – all of the different kinds of your energy – physical, mental, spiritual, psychological, and emotional. See Ten Things I Do Everyday to be Simply Successful for some of my best energy management tips.

• I go to great lengths to NOT rely on will power. Will power is a very expensive premium fuel. It does not burn cleanly and it leaves a lot of residue. Instead of will power, I use a number of tricks to overcome energy inertia (see below).  Plus, I leverage the power of daily rituals and routines (more below). I save will power for when I have to do something I really don’t want to do and there is no way out of it. Which is – thanks to the way I have set my life up –rarely.

With those two principles in mind, I then use a little productive strategy.  I am on my sixth reading of Sun Tzu’s The Art of Strategy and it has permanently rewired my brain to think about the Five Working Fundamentals of strategy: Tao; Nature; Situation; Leadership; and Art. And I am always taking those into consideration when nurturing and supporting my productivity.

Here are some of my favorite Productivity Tips

1. The Power of Place

I’m a firm believer in the power conscious environmental design. Set up the right environment - in the right way - and it pulls you into productivity.

My office has everything I need to do the work that I do in the way that I like to do it – at my fingertips. I don’t fumble around for anything. My organization is exactly suited to me. And my office is beautiful – I love coming into my office and it uplifts me.  I have the greatest office chair in the world. I spent a ton of money on it but it has more than paid off in enabling me to work effectively and efficiently. I have no environmental bumps that get in my way – it's sheer “zoom, zoom”.

And it is not only my work space that is set up to facilitate my productivity. All the rooms in my house are elegantly set up to support me (and the family) in doing what the room is designed to do.

I don’t get distracted by running off to gather what I need to be productive.  I anticipate what I will need and put everything that I will need in one place and keep it there. I design my environments to make it easy to focus on the task at hand.

This little forethought enables me to carry through to completion without delays, distractions or unnecessary running around.

2. Rituals and Routines

I have a plethora of rituals and routines that keep me on track. Here are a few of them:

• The beginning and ending of my days are very ritualized. This is a long term strategy to keep me going over the long haul.
• I respond to my email once a day. And I have an effective strategy for keeping my email box clear – this keeps me ahead of information overload.
• Like Aaron Potts, I use the concept of “task times”.
  • The main hours of a work day are devoted only to work. The main hours on an “off day” are devoted only to life. I avoid mixing life and work on the same day – way too much angst as to when to stop doing one and start doing the other. Before you know it half of the day is gone because you couldn't decide what to do when.
  • I take 3 days off work every week so that I am not life deprived and yearning for something beyond work.
  • My work days are divided up into client days and project days. Most weeks I give myself some client days and some project days. And my project days are further sub-divided into writing; marketing; networking; etc.
  • This year I’m taking the task time division a bit further. Every other month I take an entire work week with no days off. And every other month I take an entire vacation/life/holiday week with no work days. Still working out the kinks in this but so far I like it.

If you have to go through every day deciding every minute what to do from the hundreds of things vying for your attention it will be exhausting and a big waste of time. Setting up effective rituals and routines enables me to use my energy getting things done rather than negotiating with myself about what to do with every minute.

3. Overcoming energy inertia

Despite all the strategies, support and environmental designs and systems that I have in place I still find myself sometimes languishing. I have even written (and use!) an e-course filled with strategies for overcoming the natural inertia that overtakes us all some times and that keeps us from taking the actions that count and responding effectively to change.  Here are few of my favorite techniques excerpted my popular The Way of Change e-course: 

Implement a follow through strategy

Many times we don’t take action until things get serious and our survival is threatened. Our brains are hard wired to be alert for the things that our threatening to us right now. We are not really hard wired for taking a preventive approach.

To override this natural tendency you can trick your brain into following through more naturally. In their book, Following Through: a Revolutionary New Method for Finishing Whatever You Start, Steve Levinson and Pete Greider outline several amazingly effective follow through strategies. My favorite is called "Leading the Horse to Water". As Levinson and Greider explain it - you can’t make a horse drink water if he is not thirsty. But put the horse where the water is and he is more likely to drink it.

Here is how I use the strategy: I have made a resolution to walk four days a week. Many days I just don’t feel like it or I feel that there are more important things I should be doing. On those days I make a deal with myself that I don’t have to walk if I don’t want to - but I DO have to put on my walking shoes. Strangely, once I get my walking shoes on I have no problem following through with the walk.

Do Something! - Go for the Breakthrough

Sometimes you just have to start and get quick results– even if you don’t feel that you are ready or have everything you need to start. Waiting until "you are ready" can frequently lead to nothing happening. Consider using a Breakthrough technique that is designed to produce quick results and get you started right away. This might seem a bit scary but the big advantage in starting now is that only in actually taking the steps will you be able to explore all of the relevant issues that will come up as you are actually doing something. You can continue to research and refine your project as you go along.

Here are the steps to the Breakthrough technique:

• Choose a project that you will complete and present to the world – make this a stretch goal

• Side step elaborate planning and go for a result now

• Set 5 compelling, urgent and short term goals with regards to your project- skip over the planning and analysis phase

• Set a non-negotiable date for completion – think in terms of days, weeks and months and not years

• Every day take some action towards accomplishing the purpose

• Include "Just in time" education and training as needed

• Focus on what you can do now with what you have

• Take the time to reflect and capture insights that are being gained along the way. This will allow you to discover the breakthrough expansion routes that are naturally clarified as steps are taken toward the goal. As you do this you will naturally expand your capacity to create the desired future.

Be willing to play the divine fool - Explore and discover

Let’s face it - life is nothing but change. Your life will be full of quirky twists and turns. There is no straight path to some as yet to be revealed ultimate destination. You will never know everything and you will never be able to be sure you are making the right choice at the right time in the right place. In order to successfully navigate change and move and act in spite of the uncertainty - you have to merge a bit with the archetype The Fool. You know the one who once in awhile forsakes practical wisdom and prudence and is willing to travel in the dark with her eyes closed skipping over the hills with lightness and freedom.

In the end, there may be a deeper kind of wisdom in being willing to be wrong, take the wrong path, make mistakes and end up in some strange and unforeseen place. Only by being courageous enough to take the action and make the mistake will you ever really know the hidden wonders, glories, and possibilities of the heart and the spirit.

4. Every day in as many ways and as often as I can I build positive emotions and moods.

This creates an upward spiral of exploration and discovery within and around me. When I feel good, I’m naturally inspired and have great energy for getting out there and doing what I want to do.

Negative emotions and moods engender withdrawal and constriction. They help us to fight, flee, or protect ourselves. Negative emotions and mood also restrict and lessen our energy -- not a great supportive environment for making changes and exploring new things. And certainly not conducive to productivity.

Positive emotions and moods "build and broaden". They build capital for creativity, growth and development and more exploration and discovery -- a better and more conducive environment for successful change.

Positive affective states undo negative affective states and give us more energy for new ideas and experiences. Positive affective states are the fertile ground for more successful interactions and achievements. Build an upward spiral of positive emotions by practicing appreciation, gratitude, and forgiveness. Savor your pleasures and mindfully create fun in your day. Want to know more about how to create positive moods? Check out Top Ten Ways to Generate More Positive Emotions in Your Life

I know you have probably heard this many times and it seems so common place as to not be important. But I cannot stress enough how much more you can do when you are in a good mood than when you are in a bad mood. Talk about energy efficiency – being in a good mood is the ultimate premium fuel.

5. Act on a whim

Now this may seem counterintuitive to all of the structures and systems I have set up to encourage and nurture my productivity but it is actually the balancing act.

I love structure and routines, systems and rituals because they free me to be as wildly creative and spontaneous as my nature embraces. Nothing kills productivity like being bored and uninspired and doing what you don’t want to do when you don’t want to do it.

Paradoxically (or so it seems), the more order and regularity I bring into my life the more space and energy I have to be original and creative in my work doing what I want to do when I want to do it. Because I have so much order and regularity in my life, I can trust myself to follow the call of the wild when I get a whim to do something that I just am so excited about.

Ever notice that when you really want to do something how amazingly easy and effortless it seems? How quickly you get it done and how great it turns out.

When you allow creativity, spontaneity and flexibility to be present in your life and you are guided by inspiration productivity is not much of a problem.

When you are doing what you want when you want to do it you don’t have to worry about getting things done – it just happens.

I believe that as a culture we are so obsessed with getting things done and with time management because we have lost our connection with knowing what we really want. Instead of being guided by what we really want to do, we keep whipping ourselves into doing what we have to do or what we should be doing.

When you know what you really want and stay connected to that you have an infallible energy guide that takes you step by step through what to do and when to do it. Building a little trust in your intuition and staying anchored in what you really want to do allows you to hear that little voice of your inner inklings or whims.

If you are not doing what you want to do in life you might as well forget about productivity because there is no way you are going to be truly productive. You might churn out a lot of things, cross off task after task on your to do list but you will not have the experience of “having the power of producing; producing readily or abundantly; or causing or bringing about” something. True productivity is grounded in a fertile, fruitful, and prolific relationship with “what you really want in life”.

6. I keep a sharp eye open for “productivity snatchers”

My favorite is “let me just get one more thing done”. You'll recognize this: It is time to break for lunch and you make one more phone call or write one more paragraph and before you know it your can’t think straight because it has been eight hours since you’ve eaten and you have not had a drop of water all day.

So now, whenever, I hear myself saying “just let me do this one more thing and than I will...,” I immediately launch into my mentally pre-taped message to myself that goes like this: “You know that if you don’t stop now you will end up missing lunch. Then you will get cranky and grouchy and there goes your positive moods and creativity. And you will get tired and your thinking will get clouded. It might seem like you are getting so much more done but it will end up taking you 2-3 times longer. So step away from the desk, take the break and come back to finish up quickly and easily. Step away from the desk - NOW!”

It used to take about an hour before that talk would get through to me but now I can zap that productivity snatcher in only a few minutes.

Other productivity snatchers include:

• Having to do any number of unrelated tasks before you get to the one that really counts
• Having to know every step before you start anything
• Having to learn “just one more thing” before you do something
• Continuing to do things that just aren’t working in the name of persistence
• Going for perfection in the name of excellence
• Filling your day with busywork

The trick is to learn to distinguish the productivity snatchers from the intuitive whims. But the more order and regularity you have in your life and the better you are at managing your energy the easier it is to know what voice you are hearing.

The Real Value of Productivity

I believe that being productive is an important part of life. I don’t think, however, that our ultimate success or failure in life is going to depend upon the actions we took or didn’t take.

Life is much more multi-dimensional than to be just centered on our actions. I believe that our actions are simply an outward manifestation of our internal vibrational state. I have started to see the actions that I take more as an outward flowing of my entire vibrational state rather than as my attempt at effecting some change in the world. First, I work internally and then the inspired actions just flow.

Without internal power and alignment behind our actions, I don’t believe that an action can carry much power in this vast universe of things.

I do believe - and my experience validates - that there is nothing more delicious in life than having a dream or desire and then taking actions that seem to flow you toward the manifestation of that dream. I have to side with “Abraham” (the Law of Attraction) that taking actions increase the joy and bliss of bringing forth my dreams into the world. When I take actions that are merged with my internal dreams and desires and I see their manifestation – I do feel the natural and wonderful power of being effective in the world.  And for me, that is the true value of productivity –as a path for us to experience ourselves as effective in the world.

Okay! To further the project I tag:

Andrea Lee
Suzanne Falter-Barns
Robert Middleton
Vicky White

Are you still trying to manage time?

"Make the state of your mind more important than what you are doing."
--Hugh Prather

My husband, David, and I had a little tiff yesterday. We trade off making the meals and it was his turn to make dinner. And, one of the changes we are working on is eating earlier and taking a walk after dinner in the extended twilight. When I noticed that it was time for dinner, I didn’t remember him leaving the office to make dinner. Turns out he hadn’t – he was busily trying to get ONE MORE THING done.

This is a classic example of the ongoing struggle with time. Probably every one of you has more to do than time to do it. We hurry. We rush. We are absolutely convinced we can do more than one thing at a time. And, do in 5 minutes what actually takes more like 30 minutes to do. Somehow, we continually trick ourselves into believing that we can get it all done.

There is nothing to do about time. Time marches on, as they say. You can’t manage time; you can only manage yourself. Everyone has the same amount of time in every day and, as much as we want to speed up what we do in that amount to time, there is always a limit. David is always wishing he was The Flash but even The Flash can’t go fast enough to get everything done.

Here are some things you may be doing in hope of getting more time:

• Missing vacations - Because there’s not enough time to stop working.
• Microwave your meals – Who can afford the time to really cook when it’s so much quicker to just zap it?
• Choosing cut up frozen vegetables – Chopping that broccoli is just plain tedious.
• Limping along on 6, 5, 4, or 3 hours of sleep – Who needs repair and regeneration of the body, anyhow?
• Recess? – Get rid of it. Put those 5-year-olds to work learning something for heaven’s sake!
• And using all that technology that’s suppose to save us time - When not waiting on downloads, answering IMs or sleeping with our beepers, that is.
• And on and on

Keeping up with the times can deceptively keep you from the things you really want to do. Rather than being a victim of time or having time be your taskmaster, you can begin to look at how you can better manage yourself in relationship to time.

Ultimately, you are the one who gets to choose what you do in each moment of time in each day. When you choose to do something, you are simultaneously choosing not to do many other things. That simple fact often escapes our conscious recognition. So choose wisely.

When David chooses to get ONE MORE THING done, he is also choosing to forget about our exercise and accept the natural consequences of that choice. (Which is me being upset)

The first step to managing yourself in relationship to time is to keep reminding yourself that you are in charge of your actions. You can break the grip that ticking time has over you. You can chose for yourself and stop getting caught up in tyranny of the clock. You can manage yourself and give up trying to manage time.

" You are in the driver’s seat of your life and can point your life down any road you want to travel. You can go as fast or as slow as you want to go … and you can change the road you’re on at any time."
--Jinger Heath

Change Quick Tip – We All Like Treats!

We think a lot about change in the first part of the year. Change ….

It is part of human nature and the natural order of things.
• What we want to change.
• What we don’t want to change.
• How to change.
• How we haven’t follow up on change in the past.
• How we are going to change this time for sure..

Our body’s basic physiological functioning is set up on a reward system. Each of us has a brain reward center that drives our behavior in the direction of doing things that reward us by making us feel good.

Our brains are not into delayed gratification so much - which is why change is sometimes hard for us.

Sure we know all the good reasons to make certain changes but unless we are actually getting some kind of pleasure out of what we are doing there is a good chance that anything we perceive as needing more immediate attention will distract us. The results from the change we are making are so far down the road and our brain is looking for that reward – now.

A secret: if you want to stick with something that will bring you long term results pair it with something that brings you immediate pleasure.

I am more likely to ride my recumbent exercise bike if I also read my journals or magazines while riding. I look forward to reading so by pairing the two my eagerness to read gets me on the bike.

And I have paired my morning walk with a process called The Creative Workshop outlined in Ester and Jerry Hicks book, The Law of Attraction.

During my morning walk in the woods I think about and talk out loud to myself - and the trees - about all the great and wonderful things I want to see in my life. Most mornings, I can’t wait to take my morning walk because I so much enjoy thinking about what I want to see in my life – and it seems to be a perfect partner with the walking.

Instead of fighting and moving against the inherent design of your body join in and leverage the way it works – it is way easier to work with the body rather than trying to master going against the body.

How about you? What kind of treats can you pair with those hard to do tasks you know you want to do but just aren’t rewarding enough in themselves?