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Posts in category Change

Change your life with Story Management

January 24, 2014 Written by Curt Rosengren

People tell themselves stories, and then pour their lives into the stories they tell.

~ Anonymous

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could wave a magic wand and the world would fall into line, just the way you want it to be?

Well, in a way, you can. Not by controlling everything that’s happening externally (and anyway, how exhausting would that be??), but through working with what’s happening internally.

The world you see isn’t the world “as it is.” It’s the world you see through the lens of whatever stories you tell about it. The shape of those stories determines the shape of that lens, which in turn determines how you experience the world you see through that lens.

And that’s good news!

Why? Because when you change your story, how you experience the world changes! So to change the world (or at least to change how you perceive it), you can skip the backbreaking and ultimately fruitless grind of trying to make everything around you match how you want it to be, and simply sculpt your stories.

The power of story management

During a session yesterday, a coaching client and I were talking about taking advantage of this story-generated lens. As we talked about the impact of our stories, the idea of “story management” came up. In a nutshell, story management is about cultivating more life-enhancing stories and shifting out of life-constricting stories.

Conceptually, it’s really simple. If I cultivate more stories that feed a positive view of the world, and reduce or eliminate the stories that feed a negative view, the world from my perspective changes, often dramatically.

Of course, like many conceptually simple ideas, this one can be easier said than done. It’s not a flip-of-the-switch solution. In fact, story management is really a lifetime approach. If you’re still breathing, you probably still need to work on managing your stories.

Life-constricting stories

We all have limiting beliefs about ourselves or the world around us. They’re usually marked by words like, “I can’t…That’s not…They won’t…” or other negative assessments about people, ideas, possibilities, etc.

Worry is a life-constricting story. Anger (sustained past its useful role as a catalyst for action) is a life-constricting story. “I’m not good enough” is a life-constricting story.

With story management, your first task is to be aware of these stories. Often, they’re operating in the background. We’re so used to their “reality” we don’t even think to question it.

Once we have shined a light on them, we can start to question them. We can either explore alternative ways of seeing things, or we can simply let those stories go.

Life-enhancing stories

Shifting out of your limiting stories can have a hugely positive impact on your life, but it’s only part of the picture. The other opportunity to sculpt your stories is to add to and feed the life-enhancing stories.

Again, the first step is noticing. When you are aware of your positive stories (e.g., “People are basically good,” or, “This situation is crappy, but I always learn from these challenges”), you can more consciously reinforce them.

Often, finding more life-enhancing stories is the result of your work to change the life-constricting stories – you swap one out for the other. So if you’re looking for a great way to start exploring possible life-enhancing stories, you need look no farther than the constriction. Every time you notice a life-constricting story at work is an opportunity to practice finding a more positive perspective.

Another way to manage your life-enhancing stories is to feed and nourish them. Provide them with the nutrients they need to thrive. One example of how to do that is focusing on gratitude. Gratitude nurtures a positive view of the world that both generates life-enhancing stories and makes it easier for them to thrive.

It’s not all fluffy bunnies

One final bit of advice for your story management efforts. Don’t mistake cultivating life-enhancing stories for living in denial of what’s challenging or painful.

It’s not about experiencing only sunshine and fluffy bunnies. It’s about more consciously shaping your experience of the world to one that is more expansive than constrictive.

Pain is an inevitable part of life. Fighting that pain – shoving it down, pretending it doesn’t exist, railing against it – has an enormously constrictive impact. Allowing the pain, on the other hand – acknowledging it, being with it, feeling compassion – lets its energy move through. You don’t get stuck there.

Consider this quote from Leo Tolstoy: “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” When you change your story, you change your perspective. And when your perspective changes, so does your world.

–

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Brought to you by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst TM

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Energize your life, Personal development
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The Self-Compassion Project: My year-long exploration

January 14, 2014 Written by Curt Rosengren

If you could focus on one thing in 2014 that would change your entire life, what would it be? What if you decided to spend the next year doing a deep dive into it?

That’s what I’m doing. For me, it’s self-compassion.

I have known for a long time that I would benefit from having more compassion for myself, but when the Ripple Revolution model evolved to include the Heart Base at its core, I knew it was time to do a deep dive.

The Heart Base is about love and compassion, both for ourselves and the world around us. The idea is for love and compassion to form the foundation for everything else in our lives.

I knew I wasn’t walking the talk on the self-compassion front. So it was time to give myself an opportunity to dive deep. The result is The Self-Compassion Project, my year-long project focused on, you guessed it, self-compassion.

No doubt it will evolve over the course of the year, but here are the components as I see it just now:

Researching

I’ll be reading bucketloads on the topic, as well as listening to talks and podcasts by subject matter experts. I have already found that it’s a little like surfing the web. Start poking into one thing and suddenly there are a dozen more to explore (e.g., neuroscience, mindfulness, etc.).

Writing

Over the course of the year, I’ll be sharing what I learn here on this blog. I’ll also share my experience with what I’m learning, both positive and negative.

Experimenting

While the above two aspects certainly offer a satisfying intellectual playground, they don’t really mean much when the rubber hits the road. I also need to experiment with what I’m learning.

I use the word experiment intentionally here (as opposed to applying what I’m learning, or taking action, or even just doing it), because I want to create as much of a feeling of openness and curiosity as I can, rather than feel attached to achieving a specific cause-and-effect result.

Discussing

Doing all of this in my own head is a great way to create an echo chamber with a less-than-stellar effect. I suspect an important part of the equation will be talking about it with others. That will include sharing my experiences, learning about others’ experiences, getting and offering advice, etc.

Guarding against inertia

One challenge that I can already feel is that I have a whole lot of inertia conspiring to keep me mired in self-criticism and it’s non-self-compassionate cronies. I’m also aware that there’s a risk of, “Oh, I tried this and I still don’t feel self-compassionate – screw it! This doesn’t work.” Or a variation on that theme, “I’m a failure at this.” I suspect that Brutal Bart (my inner critic) would love nothing better than to be able to bludgeon me for failing at self-compassion. Ironic, I know, but pretty common I think.

So the project isn’t just diving in and splashing around with ways to develop more self-compassion. It’s also to stay conscious of the things that prevent it and work to keep me where I am.

What about you? What would your year-long project be?

–

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Heart-based living, Personal development
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How to stop failing at New Year’s resolutions

January 1, 2014 Written by Curt Rosengren

For most people, ’tis the season for ill-fated resolutions, well-intentioned but doomed promises to themselves that they’re going to change for the better.

If you have read my posts here over the last couple New Year’s, you know I’m not a fan of New Year’s resolutions (at best they tend to be ineffective – at worst they reinforce people’s inner story that they can’t make positive change).

But if you’re determined to make them anyway, here is a way to approach them that increases their potential to have a meaningful impact on your life.

Commit to a year-long resolution project

Rather than looking for the immediate gratification of instant change, look at a resolution as a year-long project. Take action on it, but don’t assume that the New Year’s rush of optimism will be enough to carry it through into long-term integration into your life.

Look at your resolution as a starting point, and then commit to doing the work to integrate it over the next year.

As you do, don’t get caught up in needing it to be a perfect transformation. As the integration unfolds, you’ll likely experience backsliding as part of the process. Instead of beating yourself up for “failing” at keeping your resolution, think about it this way:

If every month you take two steps forward and one step back, by the end of the year you will still have taken twelve steps in the right direction!

Here are some tips to help you make the most of your year-long resolution adventure.

Set up monthly checkpoints

One of the biggest challenges with taking a longer term approach is that it tends to slide off our radar screen. To counter this, try setting up monthly checkpoints where you check in with yourself (or even better, with someone else!) to assess how it’s going. Ask questions like:

  • How well am I doing?
  • What do I need to do differently?
  • Where am I falling down? What can I do about that?
  • What is getting in the way of my progress? What can I do about that?
  • What support do I need? Where can I find it?
  • What knowledge do I need? Where can I find it?
  • How have I succeeded? (And then celebrate that!)

Look at your experience as research and development. You work on implementing your resolution for a month, and then bring it back into the lab to look at how it went.

The goal isn’t to assess whether or not you succeeded. It’s to learn from what you have done in the last month. Removing your resolution from the tyranny of a black-and-white definition of success gives it infinitely more potential to succeed.

As an added bonus, checking in once a month also gives you twelve built-in chances to get back on track when you wander.

Create accountability

One of the benefits my clients find in my coaching is accountability. Knowing that someone is going to be asking about what they have committed to do adds an additional incentive to actually do it.

The same is true any time we express our commitment to something to someone else. It’s much easier to let something slide when you’re the only one who is watching it lapse.

Is there anyone in your life you can use as an accountability partner? It could be as simple as checking in with them once a month to update them on your progress, what you’ve learned, and how you plan on moving forward.

Find a resolution partner

While we’re on the topic of the value of incorporating others into your efforts, you might want to find someone who can be your resolution partner. In this case, instead of just you creating accountability by reporting in to someone, you partner up with someone who is also working on their own year-long resolution project.

Acknowledge your progress

Finally, acknowledge your progress as you move forward. Spotlight your successes. Recognize the steps you have taken in a positive direction. Give yourself credit for those positive steps, without minimizing it with a yeah-but focused on how you haven’t been up to snuff.

Reward yourself. Praise yourself. Ask someone else to give you kudos. All too often the only feedback we get from ourselves is a kick in the ass when our efforts fall short. How motivating is that?

Trying setting up a reward system where you get a reward each month if you meet certain goals. For example, if you’re cutting down on sugar, treat yourself to something special each month you hit a target goal (like 25 days out of the month where you keep your sugar intake within a set range).

At the end of the day, real change takes time. Making your new year’s resolution a year-long project will make that time an inherent part of the process.

–

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Brought to you by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst TM

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Personal development, Uncategorized
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From professional malcontent to Passion Catalyst

May 15, 2013 Written by Curt Rosengren

Twelve years ago today, I hung out my shingle as a Passion Catalyst. Since then my career has focused on helping people answer these three questions: 1) What lights me up, 2) What difference do I feel called to make, and 3) How do I weave those into a career and a life that lets me thrive?

It started, as all good stories do, with me in a career free-fall with no hope on the horizon. I had been a professional malcontent for many years. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I knew I was on the wrong path. I felt disillusioned, frustrated, and stuck.

Then, in early 2001, I took a vacation from my work as a marketing consultant for technology companies and traveled for a few weeks. When I came back, the dot com implosion was in full swing, and I discovered that I was self-unemployed. Worse yet, I was broke (I had been accustomed to being able to snap my fingers and have new business fall into my lap, and that was my plan on my return). I had no idea how I was going to keep a roof over my head – I was falling with no safety net.

In the course of trying to drum up new marketing business, I had a lot of conversations over coffee with people. One of those conversations turned from talk about the business the guy worked for to a business he and a partner wanted to start around something they were passionate about.

By the end of the conversation, he was vibrating with excitement, filled with new ideas and new ways of seeing things. I had a contact high because he was so on fire. Later in the day I thought, “What is that, because it happens all the time!” People frequently came away from conversations with me lit up with new perspectives and possibilities.

I talked about it with many people over the next couple months. One time, trying to describe the effect I seemed to have on people, I said, “It’s like I’m a passion catalyst or something.” I stopped and my eyes got big. “What a great name!” And so the idea started to take shape.

After a couple months of talking about it, I finally realized that I can talk a good idea to death, so I needed to either shut up or do something with it.

Enter the guinea pig. One of the people I had talked to while trying to drum up business was in transition, trying to figure out what to do next in his career. He agreed to be my guinea pig. We would do a short series of sessions (I believe it was five) and he would pay a nominal fee (which was primarily my nod toward needing to convince myself that I could get paid for this thing I had always done naturally, for free).

Twelve years ago today we had our first session. I remember sitting there at the table of the Zeitgeist coffee shop afterwards and thinking, “I don’t need a guinea pig! This is who I am!” For the first time in my life, I experienced what it was like to be doing something that is hand-in-glove aligned with who I am. For the first time in my life I was doing work that not only flowed naturally, it also energized me. There was no turning back.

Since then, my approach has become more refined. I have developed frameworks to help clients find clarity in quest to energize their careers and their lives. I have written an e-book taking the reader through the process I use to help my clients find passion in their careers. And now I am building on all of that with The Ripple Revolution. But under it all lies the foundation of who I am, and what energizes and inspires me.

I have had my share of ups and downs over the last dozen years, but on the whole, it’s a pretty amazing place to be.

Thanks for being part of my journey!

–

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How to energize your career (starting right now!)

February 14, 2013 Written by Curt Rosengren

How energized do you feel in your career? How energized do you want to feel?

Whether you’re on fire in your work or feeling frustrated and stuck, you can start taking action right now to inject more energy into your career. It’s not rocket science, and you don’t have to quit your job to pursue that dream of being a rock star/ballerina/elephant trainer to do it.

Think “energy management”

It all starts with the way you look at it. The energy you feel in your work (or your life in general) isn’t the result of one big broad brush stroke. It’s the cumulative result of many separate elements, things that either give you energy or deplete it.

For example, you may love diving into creative projects, but feel your energy immediately sag when you think about budgeting (or vice versa). You may love working with a team, but at the same time feel depleted when you don’t get enough uninterrupted time to just sit and focus.

That’s good news if you want to energize your career, because it’s a lot easier to work with smaller chunks than with that broad brush perspective (in fact, managing your energy at the broad brush level is next to impossible – no wonder so many people feel stuck and overwhelmed!).

Maximize the Gain-to-Drain Ratio

There’s a simple concept I use when I do energy management work with my Passion Catalyst clients. I call it “maximizing your Gain-to-Drain Ratio.” It’s both deceptively simple and reliably effective.

The Gain-to-Drain Ratio is a fraction, Gain over Drain (see a deeper explanation). You want as much of what gives you energy (the Gain) and as little of what depletes your energy (the Drain) in the picture as possible. Simple, right?

Another way to think about it is that the overall energy you feel is the sum total of the energy gain minus the sum total of the energy drain. The more energy gain you have, and the less energy drain, the more net energy you’ll feel overall.

Do a Personal Energy Audit

The first step in maximizing your Gain-to-Drain Ratio is being aware of the details of what is actually happening. To start, do a “personal energy audit.” Take a look at your work and ask two questions: “What energizes me?” and “What drains my energy?”

Variations on those questions might include:

Gain

  • What about this gives me energy?
  • What about this is fun?
  • What leaves me feeling engaged?
  • What feels rewarding about this?
  • What do I feel drawn to experiencing more of?
  • What do I look forward to?
  • What leaves me feeling confident?
  • What feels in the groove with my natural way of working?

Drain

  • What about this drains my energy?
  • What about this is a drag for me?
  • What about this do I dislike?
  • What do I wish I could avoid?
  • What leaves me feeling tired and flat?
  • What leaves me feeling insecure and uncertain?
  • What leaves me questioning my abilities?
  • What feels counter to my natural way of working?

Make changes

The purpose of the personal energy audit is to break it all down into discrete chunks. With that granular level of detail, you can start to make choices and take action to bring more of what energizes you into your work and decrease the amount of what drains you.

When you have identified specific Gains you can ask, “What can I do to bring more of each of these into my work? How can I build on these? Where are the opportunities moving forward that would involve more of these?”

When you have put your finger on the Drains you can ask, “How can I eliminate each of these? If I can’t eliminate them, how can I reduce them? What can I change moving forward that would involve less of these?”

So for example, the person I mentioned above who realizes that they love working with a team, but also needs the focused solo time might look for more opportunities to collaborate, but also commit to carving time out of their schedule where they have no interaction. That could be shutting their office door, leaving the office altogether to camp out at a coffee shop and work, or just donning headphones and hanging a sign on their cubicle wall that says, “Focused and undistracted right now – please come back at 3:00.”

Options for reducing the Drain

It helps to look at reducing the Drain from several different directions. These questions are a good place to start.

  • What can I eliminate this altogether?
  • How can I change how I do this so that it is less of a Drain for me? Is there any way you can make how you approach doing something that is more in line with how you naturally do things, or that makes it more fun?
  • How can I change my story about this? Sometimes there is nothing you can do to change something that drains your energy. When that is the case, you have one last option – changing the story you have about it. If something irritates you, leaves you with steam coming out your ears, or has some other negative effect, ask yourself, “What other story could I tell here?” If part of what is draining your energy is a persistent story that things “should” be different than they are, you might consider shifting that story. As Byron Katie says, “When I argue with reality I lose – but only 100% of the time.”

Add energizers

When you have gone through all of the Gains and Drains you identified in your personal energy audit, you have one more opportunity to bump up the Gain in your work. Look for ways to incorporate energizers that have nothing to do with your work itself.

If you get energized by interacting with people but don’t have enough of it in your work, for example, you might start instigating a group lunch hour. Or you might make it a habit to get up once an hour and move, taking a brisk walk or doing some stretches. You might decide to incorporate watching inspiring videos on YouTube into your lunch hour routine.

Make a list of possible energizers, and start incorporating them into your day.

It will be better!

None of this is a magic wand. If you truly have a crap job, it’s probably still going to be a crap job after doing all of this. But it will be better! Even if it’s only 20% less draining/more energizing, guess what? That’s 20% more energy than you had before you started! And that’s energy you can put into your continuing to work toward positive change – maybe even look for a new career.

And even if you already feel energized by your work, taking this approach can both help you make it even better and make sure that it stays that way.

So give it a shot! Take a look at the Gains and Drains in your work and start taking a conscious approach to managing your energy. You have nothing to lose, and nothing but energy to gain.

–

Join the Ripple Revolution TM

Brought to you by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst TM

Time for a career change? Start with The Occupational Adventure Guide

Energize your career, Energize your life, Overcoming obstacles, Personal development
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Are any of these 50 cognitive distortions skewing your world view?

January 18, 2013 Written by Curt Rosengren

I find it fascinating how each of us creates our own reality. Not from a manifestation mumbo jumbo perspective, but from the perspective of the lens we’re looking through as we view the world.

None of us sees the world as it is. We see the world as the lens we’re looking through shapes it. If you have a deep feeling that people are fundamentally friendly and good, guess how you’re generally going to experience people? Or if you have a deep distrust of people’s motives, how do you think you’re likely to interpret that random smile from a stranger?

The exact same situation can be experienced in vastly different ways, depending on the lens we’re using. Sometimes that lens can be enhancing and affirming. Other times it can drag us down and hold us back.

There is no actual lens, of course. It’s all in our minds. And if we’re using limiting lenses, it can create humongous self-inflicted obstacles.

One way we create those limiting lenses is through cognitive distortion. For a better sense of what those are, check out this article with an excellent overview of 50 common cognitive distortions that get in people’s way.

Do you recognize yourself in any of them?

Try this: Go through the list of 50 cognitive distortions and jot down which ones apply to you. Keep that list with you as a reminder and, for the next week, just pay attention. As you notice those distortions come us, ask three questions:

  • When do those things color your experience?
  • What effect do they have?
  • What possible alternative ways of experiencing the situation can you see?

You might just be surprised at how the world starts to change.

–

Join the Ripple Revolution TM

Brought to you by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst TM

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Overcoming obstacles, Personal development
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Be judgmental (then shift your focus): 30-Day Experiment

January 15, 2013 Written by Curt Rosengren

[This is one of a series of 30-Day Experiments to do this year instead of New Year’s resolutions.]

Have you ever tried to stop being judgmental? Just quit, cold turkey?

I’ve tried, but those judgments keep jumping into my brain, wholly unbidden and unwelcome. “That person is too _______. This person isn’t ______ enough. Oh my, what an unfortunate haircut.” And on and on it goes.

I don’t think I’m alone in that. Nor, to be fair, do I think I am more judgmental than the average bear. It seems to be a very human characteristic. But it is out of alignment with who I want to be and how I want to relate to others. And it’s something I would love to change.

If you can relate, this one is for you.

Your 30-Day Experiment: Use your judgments as a springboard to the positive

The experiment has two simple steps.

Step one: Notice your judgments

As always, the starting point is awareness. Start paying attention to the judgments as they arise. If you’re already tuned in to them, go straight to the next step. But if they are such a habitual part of your mental landscape that you don’t even notice them, try spending a week just noticing first. Bring a sense of light curiosity to it.

Don’t make yourself wrong for having the judgments. Don’t condemn them. Don’t even try to eliminate or replace them. Just use them as a prompt to focus on the positive (step two).

Step two: Shift your perspective

Every time you notice a judgment about something, look at it as a flashing neon sign letting you know it’s time to explore shifting your focus. It’s an opportunity to practice again (and again, and again) noticing what’s positive.

Here are some questions to get the juices flowing.

  • What do I appreciate about this person?
  • What do I admire about this person?
  • What can I notice about this person that is positive? How many positive things can I notice about this person?
  • What is positive about this person’s _______ (sense of style, personality, beliefs, appearance, etc.)
  • What has this person done that is positive?
  • What positive characteristics does this person have?
  • Is there a positive way to look at this thing I’m judging?
  • Who sees this person in a positive light? Why?
  • What is positive about this person’s story?
  • What can I imagine this person’s story to be? (This one is for someone you don’t know anything about.)
  • How would Love look at this person? What would Love see?

If you’re anything like me, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to practice using judgments as a positive focus prompt.

If you decide to take this 30-Day Experiment on, keep us posted here on how it goes!

–

Join the Ripple Revolution TM

Brought to you by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst TM

Time for a career change? Start with The Occupational Adventure Guide

Personal development
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Train your brain to change: 30-Day Experiment

January 14, 2013 Written by Curt Rosengren

Do you have have any limiting habitual ways of doing or perceiving things? Maybe you’re overly self-critical. Maybe you get impatient with people. Maybe you habitually look for the problem and see it as proof that life doesn’t work.

Just resolving to change those things tends to be as effective as deciding to run a marathon after years as a committed couchpotato-ist. If you’re going to run that marathon, you have to go through the steps to prepare and enable yourself to do it. Making changes that stick is not different. You have to train your brain to change.

Your 30-Day Experiment: Train your brain to change.

However sincere your intent to change an ingrained way of showing up, it’s unlikely to happen with the flip of a switch. In my work with helping clients create careers and lives that light them up, here’s a process I have found to be much more effective than a flip-switching approach to change .

1. Train your brain to notice what you want to change.

In this step, you’re not worried about changing anything. When something is an ingrained habitual way of seeing or doing things, it can be so automatic that you don’t even notice it. And you can’t change what you don’t notice. So this step is aimed at shining the light of attention on it, training your brain to start noticing it. It is often one done in hindsight with, for example, an end-of-day review.

2. Train your brain to see better options.

Again, you’re not worried about making a change yet. You’re just taking your brain to the gym to help it start seeing different, more constructive options. This is done in hindsight as well, looking back and exploring, “What could I have done? What were some alternative ways of looking at that situation? What were some other things I might have said that would have been more constructive.”

3. Notice it as it happens.

Finally you’re noticing it on the fly, as it happens. But you’re still not getting caught up in insisting that you must make a change. Often the momentum is too strong to let a silly little thing like noticing get in the way. If you expect the change to implement here, it will probably feel like failure. So just give yourself time to notice it when it happens, without having to do anything about it. Let your brain get adept at noticing in real time.

4. Notice it as it happens. Stop, re-evaluate, and make a different choice.

Ahhhh…we’re getting closer. You noticed the train going down the track. You noticed the bridge was out. You saw it happening, but you couldn’t stop it from getting derailed. As soon as you can, back up and say, “OK, what would a better option be?” Again, you’re training your brain to get to the next step, which is…

5. Notice it before it happens and make a different choice.

You see that knee-jerk response coming up, notice it, and decide on a different option. Over time, as this becomes more natural, it leads you to the result you’ve been after all along…

6. Make a different choice.

Now you have a new habitual way of showing up.

Think of this one as a multi-step experiment. Let’s say you want to stop being so critical of yourself. Your experiment might look like this.

Week one: Notice what you want to change. Just notice. Don’t worry about changing anything. Do an end-of-day review. Every evening, scan back and ask, “Where was I critical of myself?” Maybe make a laundry list. this is a no-judgment zone. You’re just noticing, objectively observing like a scientist.

Week two: Keep doing the end-of-day review. Each evening, pick one (or more, if you feel inspired) thing from the list of times you have been overly self-critical and ask, “How could I look at this differently? Was it really as bad as my story would have me believe? Was there anything positive about what I did? What can I learn from this? How could this prepare me to do something different in the future?”

The point of the exploration is to train your brain to see different alternatives than your knee-jerk, habitual one. Doing it after the fact gives you time to sort through it and give it some thought, taking the pressure off.

At the same time, challenge yourself to catch your habitual way of being as it unfolds. Don’t worry about implementing the new alternative (if that happens, it happens, but if it doesn’t, that’s not your focus yet anyway).

Week three: As you notice what you’re aiming to change, encourage yourself to start incorporating the alternative. Start with an immediately after-the-fact approach. “Hey, there was that old pattern. What would a different way of seeing it/behaving have been? How could I have played that differently?” If possible, hit reset and do it over.

As you recognize the old pattern coming up, challenge yourself to catch it before it happens and replace it with the new approach.

Week four: Reinforce. Reinforce. Reinforce.

Now, realistically, do I think it will be a nice, tidy, linear process like this? No, probably not. But this lays out a way for you to approach it that takes you out of the tyranny of must! change! now! and lets you take an approach that is more likely to stick.

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Brought to you by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst TM

Time for a career change? Start with The Occupational Adventure Guide 

Overcoming obstacles, Personal development
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Be a Solutionist: 30-Day Experiment

January 8, 2013 Written by Curt Rosengren

[This is one of a series of 30-Day Experiments to do this year instead of New Year’s resolutions.]

Whether you’re after internal change or external change in your life, you’re bound to run into problems and challenges. That’s just the way of the world works, it seems. And what you do with them makes all the difference.

When we run into problems, it can be tempting to let them define the path, to see them as insurmountable obstacles rather than just something to be navigated around. When that happens over and over, we can become obstacle-driven, not only quick to notice obstacles, but also quick to see them as impenetrable barriers.

To counter that, challenge yourself to become a solutionist. It’s a way of training yourself to automatically go into solution mode when you see obstacles. In this experiment, you’ll be using the obstacles you encounter as a solution gym, building mental muscle memory that makes it easy to go into solution mode when you find the path blocked.

Your 30-Day Experiment: Overwhelm your obstacles with solutions.

How do you become a solutionist? The simple answer is this: Overwhelm your problems with solutions. A great place to start is to aim for a 5-to-1 ratio. For every obstacle you identify, challenge yourself to come up with five solutions. Even more, if you can.

They don’t need to be great solutions. They don’t even need to be readily implementable. In fact, if you’re really letting the creativity fly, a good chunk of them probably won’t be. The key is to get your brainstream flowing in the direction of creating solutions.

Over time, the ideas will flow more naturally. And presto! You’re on your way to becoming a solutionist!

Solutions by themselves don’t count for much, of course, unless they’re implemented. So to keep this from becoming an arbitrary exercise with little to no real world impact on your life, aim to implement at least one solution a week. More if possible.

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Join the Ripple Revolution TM

Brought to you by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst TM

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Overcoming obstacles
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Tap away problems & pain with EFT: 30-Day Experiment

January 7, 2013 Written by Curt Rosengren

[This is one of a series of 30-Day Experiments to do this year instead of New Year’s resolutions.]

A friend once told me about a hiccups cure that sounded so wacky I wouldn’t try it in front of him. I was sure he was just trying to trick me into doing something silly. But when I got home I tried it, and sure enough, it worked. What’s more, it has worked 95% of the times I have tried it since then.

That’s a little how Emotional Freedom Technique (also known as EFT, or tapping) seems to me. It looks weird, and it doesn’t seem like it should have any effect. But in my experience, it does.

In a nutshell, EFT is a process where you tap on different points on your body while focusing on a particular issue you’re having trouble with, maybe an uncomfortable emotional response to something, or some pain in your body. The goal is to diminish or eliminate the problem.

Your 30-Day Experiment: Tap every day for 30 days. 

To get you started, here is a video with a good introduction to the tapping process.

Start your 30-Day Experiment by making a list of things you would like to change for the better. That might include things like a sore shoulder, a feeling of irritation with someone, or a negative feeling about yourself. Then pick one and follow the EFT process while tapping on it (caveat: please don’t try this without professional support on something that is heavily triggering, like a traumatic childhood event).

Keep doing that every day. I follow my morning meditation every day with a round of tapping. Sometimes something is seriously up for me (e.g., I’m having a negative response to something someone did, or my inner critic is raging), other times I have to look for something to tap on.

If you want to dive deeper into the process, here’s an excellent basic EFT primer from the man who developed it, Gary Craig.

I didn’t really become a diehard fan of EFT until I started using it on a regular, ongoing basis. I had tried it once here, another time there, with mixed results. But when I started using it daily, I discovered that there seems to be a cumulative effect to it for me.

As always, your mileage may vary. You might discover that it has an immense impact on you, or that it has little to none. That’s the beauty of an experiment – you get to try it and see!

(By the way, here’s that hiccups cure: Take a glass of water with ice in it. With a metal spoon, stir the water fifteen times. Then put the round back side of the spoon against your temple and guzzle the entire glass of water.)

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Join the Ripple Revolution TM

Brought to you by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst TM

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Overcoming obstacles, Personal development
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