Time to spring forward for a positive start to the new season

AT LAST, this week we saw the clocks move forward into spring.

I love this time of year, when the nights are getting lighter and nature is waking up out of its winter slumber. In many ways, for me, I feel as though a new year has now begun, there is a feeling of new life, of new starts and we can start looking forward to the year ahead and what we want to achieve.

For many, though, it’s not as easy to make that change or achieve that goal, having been used to not doing or feeling demotivated or can’t be bothered for some time over the winter months, moving into a pattern of doing and achieving can seem very difficult and unachievable.

A little of this goes back to what I chatted about last week, we get used to our comfort zone, even when it’s not that comfortable and we want to be doing something else, that fear of the unknown can be the one thing that is holding us back, even though it may be dressed up as ‘can’t be bothered’ or ‘I don’t have the motivation’ type thinking.

So how can be we become do-ers rather than do-nots?

Whilst it’s not unusual to have those feelings of doubt or demotivation, that I’ll do it tomorrow or later thinking whenever we start something new or try to do something different, it’s important to remember that this is just a thought in the moment, it can’t tell you anything about how much you really want to do it – because you do really want to do it, don’t you? It’s just a thought tricking you into staying in that comfort zone. So if you do experience it, let it go, ignore it – I even have one client who imagines walloping it with a cricket bat out of his mind.

I am a big fan of visualisation both on a big scale and on a smaller scale, so now is the time to start practising and using your imagination. Visualise exactly what it is that you want to be able to do? What is your goal? What is it that you want to achieve? Start to get really clear on the life that you want to create.

Secondly, imagine yourself actually doing it, fortunately for us, our subconscious doesn’t really know the difference between real things that we have done and things that we have imagined that we’ve done, so a good way of overcoming the fear of the unknown, is to imagine ourselves doing it – that way we can trick our brains into thinking that it’s nothing too scary after all, as we’ve already had a go!

Next, imagine how good you are going to feel once you have already done it, focus on that feeling of accomplishment, how amazing it’s going to feel when you have achieved whatever it is that you want to achieve.

In many ways it is about taking those small first steps. My father was a great one for saying you can’t eat an apple whole, you have to eat it in smaller bites, and often working towards something, or changing your behaviour is the same – take small steps that you can accomplish. If it helps record them in a diary or a notebook so that if you have those feelings of doubt or you can’t be bothered, you can challenge them by seeing how much you have achieved already and be able to readily let them go.