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Mary Blacklock - Pursue your dreams. One behavior change at a time.
Attitude•Behavior

How does the willingness to show up change us?

willingness to show up

Quote from Brené Brown in Daring Greatly: “The willingness to show up changes us. It makes us a little braver each time.” Found on page 42.

Image by Mary Blacklock. Photo taken by Mary on a hike in the Sandia Mountains in Albuquerque, NM.

Read: Dare to Gain Clarity through Vulnerability | Read Daring Greatly.

Attitude•Behavior

Shift Your Focus in the Midst of Change

Focus in the Midst of Change

When it comes to change, we know that it will eventually happen. However, that doesn’t mean that we are willing to change or find change easy. Sometimes change is downright challenging. Why is that? Change can activate a fight or flight response. When we are in the midst of change we can feel more stressed and when we are stressed we are more likely to enter into fight or flight behaviors. We need to learn how to shift focus in the midst of change.

Change Gets a Bad Rap

There are many jokes on the subject of how difficult it is for people to change. There’s the classic joke that asks how many people it takes to change a light bulb. The answer is always a loud and hesitant, “Change?!” 

I’m amused at this joke mostly because I heard it first as a Protestant.  It went like this, “How many Presbyterians does it take to change a light bulb?”

When I converted to Eastern Orthodoxy I heard the same joke. “How many Orthodox does it take to change a light bulb?”

“Change?!” 

Perhaps we aren’t as different as we think.

Analogy from a Turning Boat

Two weekends ago I was able to attend a retreat for young professionals of the Orthodox Christian faith. Among opportunities to learn and grow in faith and community there was a social event on a yacht in the Boston Harbor.

We all braved the Massachusetts chill to cruise around the harbor, eat great food, and dance. I think it’s safe to say that we all enjoyed this opportunity and that it was a great way to bring the retreat to an end.

Dancing on a boat that occasionally turns is where I see the analogy. 

If one really focused on dancing, they might not notice the boat turning. However, in my experience, there were times I would suddenly become aware that my feet were moving to the beat of the music, but my body leaned another direction to the pull of the boat. It is that pull of the boat as it turns that I am referring to.

Shift Your Focus in the Midst of Change (i.e. Lean into the Turn)

As the boat slowly turned in the water, I quickly discovered that if I leaned into the turn of the boat with a spin of my own, it was not only easier on the mind but more fun. 

Why was it easier on the mind? It took my mind off the slow and somewhat wobbly turn we were experiencing.

Isn’t leaning into the turn what we need to do sometimes when life brings about change? Instead, we tend to focus on how wobbly everything is around us or how unstable or how slow things seem.  To shift our focus in the midst of change, perhaps we need to look for a way to spin and lean into the change.

What Does Leaning into Change Look Like?

I can’t say that I know what leaning into the change looks like in every situation, or that I’m particularly good at it.

However, if I can begin to learn how to shift my focus from what is slow and wobbly in the midst of change to ways I might lean into the change, I would consider that progress.

Are you with me?


More Articles to Read

For those that are looking for ways to change attitudes, gain clarity, and make the changes to our behaviors that build a better us.

Posts on Attitude:

Attitude Will Make or Break You

Posts on Behavior:

How do you know good help from bad help?

Posts on Clarity:

How taking the first step clears the way for clarity

Posts on Faith:

Our thoughts impact our life | Introduction to Logismoi

Attitude

Attitude Will Make or Break You | Attitude Development

attitude will make or break you

Why all this talk about attitude? Does attitude really make a difference? Will attitude really make or break you? Perhaps these are similar to the questions you are asking. Or maybe you wonder if there are ways to monitor or cope when our attitudes are in transition from a negative to positive focus. You might also be wondering how to better develop and grow attitudes that will help you move forward in life and be successful. If this is you, you are in the right place.

3 Areas of Focus in the Attitude Category

There are three subtopics that I want to address through the articles in the attitude category of this blog: importance, coping skills, and growth.

Importance

I want to highlight the importance of different aspects surrounding our attitudes: the environment that we’re in, the outlook that we have. If we’re feeling stuck or we are holding back for some reason, it’s important to know why. It’s also important to know what might help us stay more positive.

Coping Skills

When we are in a place of transition do we have the right coping skills to help us stay positive and focused?

Growth

This is along the lines of how we can develop our attitudes and what influences them. Let’s learn about our attitudes so that we can leave them in the past, adjust them, or allow them to come with us.

While these are the 3 areas of focus, a single post might hit on any or all of them. You can expect posts on attitude on the 3rd Thursday of the month.

Join the mailing list so you don’t miss a post focused on attitude!

Suggested Articles in the Attitude Category

Read previous posts in the attitude category:

Why is personal growth important?

Develop a grateful mind

How to handle fear (the courage habit way)

Journal prompts for the end of the year

Is there a secret to confidence?

3 Reasons to change your bad habit

Attitude

3 Reasons to Change Your Bad Habit

Change Your Bad Habit

We all have bad habits. It’s incredibly difficult to only have good habits no matter how much we want them. Hopefully, though, there will be a time when the good habits are more motivating than the bad habits. Hopefully, one day we will find it easier to change a bad habit than maintain the disruption, disguise, and dictation of responses that a bad habit invokes.

Why Change Your Bad Habit?

We are aiming for the day when good habits are more motivating to maintain than the bad habits. To do this we need to understand why we would want to change a bad habit. What’s wrong with having a few bad habits? Should you change your bad habit?

A bad habit:

1. Disrupts

When you engage in a bad habit it takes you away from something. You are choosing one set of choices over something else. A habit of checking your phone every couple of minutes is disruptive. It keeps you focused on something that isn’t in the room with you. You end up missing moments with the people around you. A habit of staying up too late is disruptive. It throws off your sleep pattern and lowers your energy.

Can you think of a common bad habit and why it would be disruptive?

2. Disguises

Bad habits are probably easier to engage in than a good habit sometimes. Why? It might help us disguise the deeper issues we need to face. Maybe that bad habit was picked up to avoid dealing with something else. It could be an intentional or unintentional decision, but if we look closely at our behavior and get in touch with our emotions and do some reflection. We can start to understand what might be motivating our bad habits.

What do you think are some of the common emotions or situations that people disguise with a bad habit?

3. Dictates

When we engage in a bad habit for an extended amount of time we are training our brains to respond in that way. A bad habit dictates how we handle situations. We automatically pick up the phone as soon as we wake up. Before we even wake up, we’re on social media. We didn’t even think about it. It just happened. You could argue that a good habit also dictates how we handle situations, but the difference is that a bad habit is often not helping us accomplish our goals and a good habit can help us move forward.

How do you know if one of your habits is a good habit or a bad habit?

Summary of Reasons to Change Your Bad Habit

In Conclusion, if we let our bad habits reign we have developed a negative coping response. By that I mean, we’re ignoring our underlying needs and we’re giving into what might be easier solutions to the pain or sadness, anxiety, or whatever emotion or situation it is that we don’t want to deal with. A bad habit might hide the problem, but it doesn’t really give us the inspiration to move on or move forward.

How do we know if we are faced with a bad habit?

Ask yourself these three things 1) Is it disruptive? 2) Does it disguise a deep issue? 3) Is it dictating in a way that helps me move forward and accomplish big things or is it holding me back?

Behavior Challenge:  Reflect on one or two of your habits and consider it in light of the 3 D’s mentioned above. Is it a good habit or a bad habit?

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