Seize the moment and set a destination for that new life

HASN’T THE weather been gorgeous? I even managed to persuade my kids to venture out of their rooms, disconnect from Xboxes, Netflix and Minecraft and visit our local adventure park.

Now my older two are a little old for climbing, and at first weren’t particularly happy about going, but were soon persuaded to help their younger sibling climb the 20ft high netted structure and zoom down the zip wire. It was interesting to see that once they had forgotten how “boring it was” and started to enjoy it, how easily they became so carefree and started to have some much-needed fun after a long, hard term at school.

It made me wonder how many of us, as adults, seize the opportunity to do just this. I often speak to people who are feeling stuck in their life, each day like Groundhog Day, the same old drudgery day in, day out. They know that there must be more to life, that they could live life differently, maybe even catch themselves wishing that it was different but not knowing what to do to make it happen.

It’s a bit like watching the other children having fun in the playground but not knowing how to get out of your own way to allow yourself to have fun too.

So how can we start to really seize our lives, so that we can enjoy it more and get more out of it? I thought I would put together a few pointers to get you started,

I always start with creating a vision, you know that you are unhappy and you want your life to be different – well what would that different life look like? What would you be doing, feeling, seeing? At this stage you may not know exactly, and that’s ok, it’s something that can be refined, changed or added to as you need to. It’s always useful to have a vision, even if it changes, as if you don’t have one, it’s like wandering vaguely, whereas when you have a destination, there is a little more purpose about it, it’s more motivating!

Secondly, you need to decide now that it’s time to do things differently. It may not seem it, but we all do have a choice about these things and those people that make the change are those that have decided to do so, it doesn’t happen by chance.

Often when we’ve made the decision to change, it’s this decision that holds us in check too, it helps us filter out the unhelpful thinking that is holding us back, because we’ve made the decision that we are moving forward, making it easier for us to ignore the restrictive thinking that we may have.

Finally, when we know where we are going and our thinking settles, we have to take action. You may sit on your sofa wishing that you were really living in the Bahamas enjoying the laptop life, but no amount of visualisation and positive thinking is going to make that happen. We have to take action, take those small steps towards our goal and really start to seize our lives!