"Good Morning, Beautiful Dreamer !"
Zan Newstrom
Personal Effectiveness
How Things Change
"To strengthen the will requires three things : namely, a lifelong commitment to knowledge and learning ; an active inner life ; and the ability to distinguish between the essential and non-essential."
- Dr Bernard Lievegoed
How Things Change
We’ve all tried to change some habit or situation in our lives, and failed – sometimes even for long periods of time. Things we’d like to change might be an eating, smoking or other substance habit, a relationship pattern – or maybe we might just like to add something new and positive to our lives, and find it hard to make it happen. Clearly we want to change something – but how ?
Trying and failing often go together as a kind of syndrome. The verb " to try" is in fact about action - but it has more the character of continuing, than of actually achieving something. The crucial but often missing factors are how to set our goals and how to organize our efforts. When we "try" to lose weight, we may be busy both inwardly and outwardly - but lack specific goals. We’re vague about what we want to accomplish.
Like a GPS device, our subconscious mind needs a destination - a place to go. Otherwise we tend to drive around a lot without getting anywhere !
We may also fail for lack of a clear plan of action - concrete steps to actually get the job done. In this case our vagueness has to do with how we’ll reach our goals. To be truly effective, we'll need to be both specific and systematic. The process unfolds in a definite sequence as we :
- Become truly ready to change something.
- Become quite specific what we want to change.
- Make a clear decision to change it.
- Identify specific goals.
- Make a detailed plan.
- Identify individual steps.
- Take action on these steps one by one.
- Assess our results daily.
- Repeat this process again and again.
If we stay vague about our problems and goals, we lack clear direction. If we lack an approach and procedure to deal with them, we meander. Through the process described, problems that once baffled and intimidated us become straightforward practical matters, and we find ourselves quite surprised by the progress we make.
Zan Newstrom
Personal Effectiveness
How Things Change
"To strengthen the will requires three things : namely, a lifelong commitment to knowledge and learning ; an active inner life ; and the ability to distinguish between the essential and non-essential."
- Dr Bernard Lievegoed
How Things Change
We’ve all tried to change some habit or situation in our lives, and failed – sometimes even for long periods of time. Things we’d like to change might be an eating, smoking or other substance habit, a relationship pattern – or maybe we might just like to add something new and positive to our lives, and find it hard to make it happen. Clearly we want to change something – but how ?
Trying and failing often go together as a kind of syndrome. The verb " to try" is in fact about action - but it has more the character of continuing, than of actually achieving something. The crucial but often missing factors are how to set our goals and how to organize our efforts. When we "try" to lose weight, we may be busy both inwardly and outwardly - but lack specific goals. We’re vague about what we want to accomplish.
Like a GPS device, our subconscious mind needs a destination - a place to go. Otherwise we tend to drive around a lot without getting anywhere !
We may also fail for lack of a clear plan of action - concrete steps to actually get the job done. In this case our vagueness has to do with how we’ll reach our goals. To be truly effective, we'll need to be both specific and systematic. The process unfolds in a definite sequence as we :
- Become truly ready to change something.
- Become quite specific what we want to change.
- Make a clear decision to change it.
- Identify specific goals.
- Make a detailed plan.
- Identify individual steps.
- Take action on these steps one by one.
- Assess our results daily.
- Repeat this process again and again.
If we stay vague about our problems and goals, we lack clear direction. If we lack an approach and procedure to deal with them, we meander. Through the process described, problems that once baffled and intimidated us become straightforward practical matters, and we find ourselves quite surprised by the progress we make.
Out of the sublime ethers of color,
directed by the motion of brush
willing the wish of form to combine
with the constant motion of light and color of a sunrise
onto the canvas and into reality ..…
testing the very boundaries
of what is possible
with synapses of color, form, and flow
of the light of a sunrise
directed by the motion of brush
willing the wish of form to combine
with the constant motion of light and color of a sunrise
onto the canvas and into reality ..…
testing the very boundaries
of what is possible
with synapses of color, form, and flow
of the light of a sunrise