I am often surprised at how unconscious my coaching clients are of their negative self-talk. The first step toward replacing your negative thinking with positive beliefs is to pay close attention to what is going on between your ears.  Monitor your thought content for critical self-statements like, “You idiot!” or “How could you DO that???”  Listen carefully to the words that come out of your mouth.

Notice when you are harsh on yourself and ask gently, “Is that appropriate?”  If your self-criticism habit is firmly entrenched you will probably reply with an emphatic “Yes!”  Then ask yourself how you feel when you treat yourself so meanly.  If you are honest with yourself, you will notice that you feel deflated or discouraged or some other unhappy feeling.

Now, gently correct that thought or statement.  Tell yourself, “Just because I did that, doesn’t mean I’m an idiot,” or “It would have been better if I had done that differently, but beating myself up isn’t going to help anything.”

At the beginning, you may need to watch out for beating yourself up for being mean to yourself:  “You idiot!  There you go again!  What’s WRONG with you? You’ll never learn to be kind to yourself!”  Use humor when old habits of negativity reassert themselves:  “Oops!  There you go again!” Or, you could even say something like, “Sweetheart, you do not deserve to treat yourself that way.  Life is too short for such cruelty!”

As you correct your negative thinking begin to replace it with positive beliefs.  If you do something you are unhappy with, ask yourself, “What can I do to fix this?” or “What is the learning here?”  Encourage yourself by affirming that you’ll do better next time.  Over time you will change the habit of negativity to the habit of positive, encouraging thinking.  As you do this, you will empower yourself to act free of the fear of self-castigation should things not turn out exactly as you would like them to.  You will also feel much more confident and self-accepting.  All of which, of course, will help you to achieve your goals and make your good life better.

Jeannette Samanen, Ph.D.
Jeannette’s professional development began with graduate school at the University of Oregon.  Her first post-doctoral position was at the Boston University School of Medicine where, as an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry (Psychology), where she specialized in stress management and behavioral medicine.  Jeannette has had over 30 years of experience as a life coach and psychologist and derives great pleasure from helping clients transform their lives for the better.

First identify problem areas in your life that you’d like to change:

• It drives you crazy when your spouse does those same things you’ve been complaining about for years.
• You’d like to shed a few pounds.
• Sometimes you’re late paying your bills because they get lost in those mountains of mail on your dining room table.

The first step toward becoming an expert on the solutions is becoming curious about alternative choices you may never have considered before. Consider what you might do differently to impact on these situations.

You empower yourself when you begin to consider what you could do differently to achieve better outcome:

• You could react more calmly when your spouse does the things that annoy you.
• When you notice yourself going for that midnight snack, you could remind yourself of your weight loss goals and drink a glass of water instead.
• You could sort through the mail right away, throwing away the junk mail and putting your bills in a special place.

The next step is to begin the experiment of putting your alternative choices into practice. On the basis of these experiments you’ll learn what works by noticing the outcome of your new choices, compared with the way things used to be:

• You realize that your day doesn’t need to be ruined just because your spouse did something you don’t like. You might even notice that your spouse becomes friendlier in response to your greater calm, and begins to act more according to your preferences.
• You notice how proud you feel the next morning for making a healthy choice. Over time your weight loss shows you how damaging those late night cookies really were.
• You recognize how much better you feel, secure that you’re not missing a bill and free of mail clutter.

Lasting transformation occurs through the aggregate of these small actions repeated over time. By focusing on the solutions – choices you can make to improve the situation – rather than getting stuck on what isn’t working in your life, you bring about lasting positive change.
By the third or fourth session, my clients become expert at answering the ‘different and better’ question. Then I know that they have shifted their focus from what isn’t working in their lives to what they can do to transform their situation for the better. You, too, can make that transition. When you do, you will achieve your goals and make your good life better.

Jeannette Samanen, Ph.D.
Jeannette’s professional development began with graduate school at the University of Oregon.  Her first post-doctoral position was at the Boston University School of Medicine where, as an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry (Psychology), where she specialized in stress management and behavioral medicine.  Jeannette has had over 30 years of experience as a life coach and psychologist and derives great pleasure from helping clients transform their lives for the better.

At the outset of our work together, most of my clients declare that there isn’t anything different and better in their lives since our last meeting. Even under pressure from me – “Come on, there must be something!” – they insist that nothing has changed for the better. Then, 17 or 26 minutes or even 49 minutes into the session they mention some small thing they did differently – remaining calm in a difficult situation, or handling a challenge more effectively, or treating themselves or others more kindly . They simply hadn’t noticed it.

We all tend to focus on what isn’t working in our lives. We tend to take what’s going well for granted. After all, it doesn’t need our attention if it’s working fine, so we don’t give it much thought.

It is truly empowering to expand your focus beyond the problems to the small things you do that tend to make things better in your life.

When You Focus on the Solution, You Become Expert in What Works:

When you focus on the problems, you become an expert on your ineffectiveness and unhappiness. Focus on what isn’t working creates discouragement and undermines your confidence and  self-esteem. Paying attention to what isn’t working leaves you clueless about what you could be doing differently to transform your situation for the better.  When you switch your focus to your small successes, you become an expert on the choices you make that can improve your life. You are looking here for tiny changes and then noticing the effect these positive choices create.

Think Small:

I suspect that one reason my clients initially have difficulty responding to my ‘different and better’ question is that they are looking for massive change, which rarely occurs. When big changes do happen they’re hard to maintain. Sudden major transformation just doesn’t sustain. It’s too great a departure from the norm, which can feel strange or even scary.

True lasting change occurs in tiny increments practiced over time until they become new habits. Slightly larger successes build on previous wins. Gradually, winning habits of thought and behavior get established and become the new norm.

Life is made of little things. You make thousands of choices throughout the day – choices about how you act or react, choices about how you think or view the circumstances of your life. Most of us are not aware of the choices we make. We just act.

Tune in next time to find out

How To Become an Expert on the Solutions

Jeannette Samanen, Ph.D.
Jeannette’s professional development began with graduate school at the University of Oregon.  Her first post-doctoral position was at the Boston University School of Medicine where, as an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry (Psychology), where she specialized in stress management and behavioral medicine.  Jeannette has had over 30 years of experience as a life coach and psychologist and derives great pleasure from helping clients transform their lives for the better.

Are you procrastinating, overwhelmed by the size of an important task you need to complete?  When faced with a big job, think small.

It’s easy to become paralyzed when the job you need to do seems too big to handle.  In those situations it’s helpful to remember the salami image.  There’s no way in the world you can stuff an entire salami in your mouth, but you can polish it off easily one slice at a time.  The thinner the slices, the easier it is to do.

It’s crucial to break any big job into doable steps. When faced with a daunting task, first identify the steps necessary to reach your goal.  The smaller the steps, the easier they are to accomplish.  Once you get moving by taking baby steps, you develop momentum. That momentum will help you move forward, enjoying the task as you go.

The operative word here is “doable.” Most people stymie themselves with unrealistic demands.  Unwilling to be satisfied with small steps, they end up doing nothing. It is important to delight in any progress you make while working toward a goal, no matter how small that progress may seem.

A client came to me recently seeking help to finish his doctoral dissertation.  He needed a Ph.D. in order to get the job he wanted and he couldn’t get his Ph.D. until his dissertation was complete.  He had been working on the dissertation for over a year. By the time he came to see me he had done no work on it at all for several months and was completely stuck.

My client and I identified fifteen small steps that would enable him move forward.  We determined that he could reasonably expect to complete the first two of those steps by our next session.

“I couldn’t be happy with that,” he protested.  “I’d feel like I hadn’t done enough if THAT were all I accomplished!  I’d need to get at least eight of those steps done to feel satisfied.”  Of course, even five of the steps we had identified would have been too much to realistically accomplish in one week. Overwhelmed with so much, my client would have fallen back into his old pattern of doing nothing.

How often are you like my client?  Unable to live up to unrealistic expectations, do you end up doing nothing at all?

If there is an important project that you are stuck on, ask yourself, “Am I insisting on too much from myself?”  If your expectations are unrealistic, you may thwart your own progress.

Examine whatever daunting task you are facing.  Break it down into the smallest possible steps. Set realistic goals related to accomplishing those steps.  By giving yourself permission to take baby steps, you will begin moving in the right direction.  The progress you make will encourage you to keep going. In this way you will eventually achieve your goal.

In fact, my client felt great after completing the two small steps he set out to do that first week.  Getting at least something done was a definite improvement over the inactivity of the preceding months.  The following week he accomplished the next small segment. Before long he was rolling ahead toward completing his dissertation.

When you allow yourself to be satisfied with baby steps, you, too, will achieve your goals and make your good life better.

While this may seem like an obvious statement, failure to acknowledge the validity of the other person’s perspective is one of the top ways that disagreements escalate into conflict.

When a friend, a co-worker or a family member disagrees with you, it is easy to slip into a win/lose mentality.  Either you’re right and you win or they’re right and you lose.  No one wants to be a loser, so it’s easy to get locked into the rightness of your position.  Things can quickly escalate into angry conflict when both people get stuck in this behavior.

The truth is that in most situations, both positions have validity.  The trick is to be willing to recognize and acknowledge that the other person’s point of view is plausible, even though it differs from your own.

To do this it is crucial to remember that every person has their own point of view.  The other person simply sees things or does them differently from you.  They have been doing things a certain way all of their lives, just as you have.  Their way has worked perfectly well for them, just as yours has worked for you.

Just because one person’s viewpoint or way of doing something works doesn’t mean that the other person’s does not.  You can both be right.  When you keep this in mind, it is easier to take disagreement at face value, rather than experiencing it as a put-down or an attack.

When you validate the other person’s position, it makes it much more likely that they will be willing to consider your point of view, as well.

When you are able to experience disagreement in this way, you and the other person can move beyond a win/lose position – your way or their way – to a win/win exploration of what’s the best way to deal with the situation at hand.

Instead of being adversaries, you become a team, addressing the challenge together.  Conflict is avoided.  What’s more, by drawing on the best of both positions, you are likely to come up with a solution that works for both of you, a solution that will probably be better than anything either of you would have come up with on your own.

You win, the other person wins, the relationship wins and you will be making your good life better!

When you worry you are lost between your ears.  You are focused on some feared outcome in the future.  Though these thoughts and feelings may consume you, whatever you are imagining is less real than what is around you.  Take a deep breath.  Turn your attention to your surroundings. Notice anything in your environment that you can appreciate – the beauty of nature, someone you love, some music you really enjoy.  Whatever your worry, it’s a hypothetical situation off somewhere in the future.  The moment you are living in is real.  It is a gift.  That’s why it’s called the present. Appreciate it fully.  It’s really all you have.

Focusing in the present helps to put what you are worrying about into a larger perspective.  You can see that while your concern is a part of your life, it is only one part of a much larger whole.  When you focus on what works in your life, you diminish the power of your worry.  When you re-channel your worry energy in more positive directions, you’ll be sure to make your good life better.

Keep a journal in which you record all of your worries.  You can carry a small notebook wherever you go and keep a running account of your worries throughout the day.  Or you might want to keep a notebook next to your bed and each night before you go to sleep record the major worries of the day.  Worries have a way of circling endlessly in your head.  One worry can seem like twenty when it comes around again and again.  When you write your worries down they become more manageable.  Sometimes a worry loses its power when seen in black and white.  You can go back over your worry journal weekly or monthly.

It can be extremely instructive to review your worries and notice the actual outcome in each situation.  Often the things you worry about never occur.  Other times they happen but you handle them just fine. This powerful lesson in reality can help you reduce your worry in the future.

You may actually value your worrying.  After all, worry can feel protective.  Considering every possible negative outcome can give you confidence that there will be no unpleasant surprises.  The problem comes when worry takes over your life, intruding at any moment of the day or night to distract you from what you really need to focus on.Instead of letting worry take over, set aside brief periods throughout the day devoted to high quality worry.  It’s up to you to decide how often you need to worry and how long each period should last.  You might want to devote the last five minutes of every hour of your waking day to high quality worry, or you might prefer 20 minute sessions morning, afternoon and evening.

During high quality worry time you focus all of your attention on whatever you’re anxious about.  You can allow yourself to get as worked up as you want about anything that’s bothering you.  Once the designated time is up, you turn your attention back to whatever needs to be done in your life.  If worry intrudes at any other time in the day, you very patiently and gently remind yourself that now is not the time to worry.  You turn your attention back to whatever it is that you were doing, confident that before long you will once again have some high quality worry time available to devote yourself wholeheartedly to your concern.  If the schedule you initially choose doesn’t work for you, modify it until you find one that does.  As you practice high quality worrying, you may gradually decrease your sessions in length or frequency.

When you exercise, your body produces endorphins, those hormones that create a natural high.  Walking can put you into the meditative state in which creativity flows.

Taking a walk is not taking a hike.  A walk can be very, very brief.  Just taking a walk around the hallways in your office building or around the block can make a difference.

Here are three ways that taking a walk can help you improve productivity, manage stress and enhance creativity:

1. Take a walk during your lunch break

Leave the building and walk around outside.  Breathe the fresh air.  Be on the lookout for an unexpected treat – the beauty of bright clouds blowing across a blue sky, the gift of birdsong, a bright flower growing in among the grass. You’ll come back to work refreshed and you’ll work more effectively.

2. Take a walk when you’re under stress

If there is something upsetting you, walking around for a few minutes can help you calm down and gain a different perspective on the challenge you face.  You’ll be better able to deal with the situation when you return.

3. Take a walk to inspire creativity

As you walk along, be open to insights that come to you.  Walking is actually a type of meditation that can help your creativity to flow.  Many of these newsletters have come to me while taking a walk along the Schuylkill River in nearby Valley Forge Park.  As I walk along, my mind as my arms and legs moving in rhythm, the ideas and the words to express them just flow.

When you take a walk regularly, you create a habit that can benefit you physically, mentally and emotionally for the rest of your life!

Being willing and able to endorse your excellence has a number of benefits. Here are some of them:

1. Familiarity with your own strengths provides awareness of the qualities that can help you to succeed.

When you set a goal for yourself it is important to know those characteristics which have helped you to succeed in the past. If you are aware of your strengths and willing to acknowledge them, you can consciously utilize them to help you achieve your goals in the present.

Your strengths may be diligence or enthusiasm or perseverance or any other character trait that has helped you to succeed in the past. Whatever they are, these strengths will always be available to you. You can draw on these same strengths to achieve your goal in the present, no matter how daunting it may seem.

If you would like to learn more about your own strengths, I highly recommend you visit the website www.authentichappiness.com. There you will find the VIA Signature Strengths Questionnaire which measures 24 character strengths. It takes only about 20 minutes to complete this questionnaire and it is free! You will have a list of your top strengths. Awareness of these strengths will help you answer the question, “How can I ever accomplish THIS???”

2. When you acknowledge your successes you become an expert in what you can do to achieve your goals.

When you recognize what you do that works, you can build on your successes to reach your goals. Pay attention to the tiny winning choices that you make. Notice the differences they make in your life.

Are you more effective when you take a brief break a couple of times a day? Do people react differently when you treat them with greater kindness? When you become an expert on the outcome of your choices, you learn what behaviors work. You become keenly aware of what you need to do more of to succeed. When you are empowered in this way, the choices you make will create your success.

3. Honestly present your excellence to others.

There are certain situations, such as job interviews, where success depends on your being able to affirm the contributions you have made. This is not bragging when done in a matter-of-fact manner.

A simple acknowledgement of your strengths and accomplishments conveys necessary information while projecting the self confidence every employer seeks in a potential hire.

As you practice endorsing your excellence it will become easier. After all, it is natural to feel good about how great you really are!