Positive Change. Staying out of your zones

"We must be the change we wan to see"

Gandhi said those words but I have yet to see if he ever explained how, recently I was sent on a course through the Jobcentre plus this course was meant to motivate me into looking for work not that I had trouble but they just would not listen, but that is a large organization for you.

I'll admit that having a positive attitude is at best difficult at first but with practice it does get easier, these tips might help also.

1, Feel good about yourself. This is the key to a positive attitude all the following points should hopefully help.

2, Talk positively about yourself and your abilities. What you believe about yourself is the foundation of all your future actions and will help you build your self confidence.

3, Take charge! Accept responsibility for your life, it is not up to your family or friends to run interference in your life when things go wrong, you must take charge and do what is right for you.

4, Let go of regrets about the past. Blaming yourself for mistakes and rehashing them only leads to negativity and returning to old and often bad habits as a way to comfort yourself, the past is called that for a reason learn from it and move on as best as you can.

5, Stop worrying about the future. While we all know that living in the past is bad for us, we often forget that worrying about what might be is just as bad, the future is not yet written and worrying about it is a bad habit to be in. Luckily habits can be changed given effort, instead of focusing on what could go wrong focus on what you hope and dream of.

6, Flatter yourself. Read every complimentary thing about yourself that you can find, from letters of praise and past awards to performance appraisals and any other positive recognitions. Use them to remind yourself of your worth and talents. Paste these things on a wall or notice board at home to boost your confidence and spirits whenever you feel down.

7,  Start the day on a positive, upbeat note. The start of your day will set the tempo for the rest of the day. Do something every morning that puts you in a good mood, whatever that may be (other than what you are trying to stop).

8, Get physical! There is truth in the saying "healthy body, healthy mind." getting in shape will help you keeping a positive attitude about yourself.

9, Create a schedule and stick to it. keeping yourself busy is again a key to keeping a positive attitude and away from your negative comfort zone.

10, Keep up appearances. While it is not expected for you to wear your Sunday best all the time, keeping up with your daily grooming will again help you keep a positive attitude. It isn't wrong to have a little pride in your looks.

11, Accept your cycles. While it is important to maintain a positive attitude, it is also unrealistic to think that you will be 100%positive forever. The trick is not to get down on yourself when you get down, try stetting a time limit on how long you will allow yourself to stay down when you feel a little depressed, please note this technique may not work if you suffer with Bi-polar disorder (manic depression)

I have been told about these techniques many times, but I didn't listen due to the fact I am a stubborn sod and it often takes many many attempts to get through my thick skull. Luckily Wendy is also bloody stubborn as well and for that I love her.

Comfort Zones 2 Image

Image can both be a help and a hindrance this I attest to personally, I used to be roughly 20 stones and wearing a 44" waist. At the time I thought I was happy being that big, and wearing a stetson (fashion faux pas number one), in fact I had become comfortable and an embarrassment to my partner this also hindered me in innumerable ways. Some of which were:
Lack of Stamina
Greater risk of type 2 Diabetes

I realized that I had to change not for Wendy (my partner) or anybody else but for myself, this was in itself highly uncomfortable due to the needed change in diet. This was because I, like a lot of people in the west, had become addicted to the food I was eating, or should I say the additives in the food that the food companies put into them to give them greater shelf-life. Of course most of these additives in the UK are known as E-numbers and these numbers are in fact perfectly natural and have been used in a lesser scale for centuries by humanity to avoid food poisoning but there are other additives like flavor enhancers that could be described as addictive and it was to those type of additive that I was addicted to. This change in diet brought about a whole raft of mood swings and  aggressive behavior as I came off processed meats and became a vegetarian.

The main benefit of this diet I found was that the fat just fell off me in a year I lost roughly 15 stone (after a brief yo-yo moment around half way) and I am still losing it I set myself a target of reaching my ideal Body Mass Index of 18 - 25 that means that my ideal weight of around 11 stone give or take a stone or two now I have almost reached that target and for this I have made a new target to keep the weight off.

What I am trying to say here is that again the image you have can be an anchor as much as a pair of wings, and that nothing is impossible. I thought that I would always be a 20 plus stone man on benefits and single, I took a chance and got myself trained in counseling and upped my qualifications ready to become a teacher and because I took that chance I opened my eyes to a whole raft of opportunities as well as getting myself out of the comfort zone of family.

Comfort Zones

"Do something each day that scares you."

I don't know who coined that quote but it is very apt, around a year or so ago, before I hooked up with My current Girlfriend I was what Psychiatrists (or is that Psychologists) would call comfortably depressed. I was actually entering a Codeine addiction but still I thought I was comfortable and happy, in reality however: I was the opposite I was in a co-Dependant relationship with my father where I ran around for him, doing the little things he should have been doing for himself, in order to feel validated. The reason for this was down to my long term unemployment, which has its own myriad of reasons most of which are frankly pathetic and also down to family relationships.

This of course looks quite self pitying and in a way it is but it is also an exercise in scene setting, you see because of my dependence on the Codeine based pain killers I put my partners life at risk, Almost killing her in fact because of the state of my flat at the time. Because of this I often feel very uncomfortable in her presence because of guilt, she often mistakes this for me sulking, but I take it as a pure misunderstanding nothing more.

Since then though, with her help, I have decided on a career path (something denied to me by both family and myself) as a teacher. This came to me through doing an access to higher education course and talking to my partner, both of these took me well outside of my then comfort zones especially when I had to do presentations. Like most people I do have some trepidations when it comes to speaking in public but I notice this fear rapidly turns into excitement as soon as I have to do it. But back to the quote most of my life I have avoided being uncomfortable, oh there are times in my life I was forced to be uncomfortable. One fond example of this was when My dad took me camping on Dartmoor because he was sick of me saying that I was bored and that there was nothing on TV, this both scared the hell out of me and excited me at the same time. But the fact remains I was a sheltered child of my own making, I often see this all around me people get comfortable and stagnate in their lives and complain but do nothing because of fear, usually of the unknown and the what ifs like "What if it doesn't work?" or "What If I fail". I as the question now Why worry? The chances of success or failure are 50% either way so take a chance, I have and so far it seems to have paid off. I have lost something like eight stone or so in just under 18 months when before I was rapidly heading to Morbidly obese sizes. I started tis witha quote so I'll end it with one.

"Failure lies not in falling down

it lies in failing to get back up."

Chinese proverb