From Wanting to Acting
The Benefits of Rewriting our Stories
Photo by Giorgio Trovato from Unsplash
No person or circumstance can gift us peace, confidence, or self-belief. These attributes are the result of our choices. They come from within. Peace, along with confidence, is an inside job.
If we want things to be better, we must decide.
If we want things to change, we must change.
The way to transform our lives is two-fold. We transform:
by taking responsibility for ourselves — for our words, our actions, our mindset — all of it.
by making substantive changes regardless of obstacles, critics, or what we have to do to make them.
Deciding is not just a mental process. Real decisions require action.
What about wanting? Wanting is passive and not enough if one seeks to grow and change, or for things to expand in positive ways. We can want from the couch. Deciding is different. Deciding and Acting are catalysts that place us in the arena.
Previous posts outlined Innovation 1, Innovation 2, Innovations 3, 4, 5 and Innovations 6, 7, 8. Today we’ll look at Innovation 9 and Innovation 10. They are accessible steps that are just one decision away from where you and I are today.
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Innovation 9: Rewrite Your Story.
9. Our perspectives and lives are largely about the stories we tell ourselves and others. Storytelling is a uniquely human phenomena. While stories profoundly affect us, few of us recognize the power our stories hold. Your story is your destiny, your present, your future, and your reality, so take care. Note the stories that hum along in your mind, and consider new stories. If you find there are tales that impede your health and growth, you can create new reality-based stories that inspire action and inspire YOU.
Author James Loehr notes that far too many of our stories are not truth, but are dysfunctional narratives in need of reckoning and editing. Stories that hold us back might feel comfortable but make no mistake — they are burdens that dash dreams and contribute to learned helplessness. The first steps to rewriting is to become aware of our stories.
Each of us is an amazing combination of strengths, experiences, insights, power and potential. We can actively build belief in ourselves and shape life by working in three areas of self-development that will change our stories. Steps to take:
Work to increase internal and external self-awareness. Internal self-awareness involves recognition of our own values and aspirations. External self-awareness involves our attunement to how others view and experience us. Research shows that people with high external self-awareness are more empathetic, and are regarded as having more broad and inclusive perspectives.
Take responsibility for words, choices, and behavior. When all is said and done, the place where we must all begin is with ourselves. Taking responsibility for the language we use, the company we keep, our decisions and actions is key to building the lives we seek. What to do? Stop complaining. To the extent possible leave blame and the past behind. Stick with the present and look forward to the future, with a penchant toward gratitude and action. Assume the best, and look for what is lifting, what helps, what’s working, what’s good, and why you’ve got what it takes to move forward.
Prioritize Consistency — People seek what is dependable and consistent. They want consistent work, good health, positive reviews, consistent friendships, and they like things to be in place where and when expected. At the same time, few people behave with on-the-money consistency when it comes to exercise, paperwork, deadlines, adequate sleep, etc.. Make it a maxim to show up day in and day out and do what is to be done when it’s time. Consistency can have hugely positive effect on our stories, and our ability to shape our present and future.
Rewrite your story is about positive perspective change.
Rewrite your story is also about putting an end to self-sabotaging tales that play over and over in the mind, tales that hold us down and hold us back. Don’t let tragedy, circumstance, trauma, or illness take anything, or anything more, from you. Your time is now, and the time to tell new possibility and action-themed stories is today, now.
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Innovation 10: Choose Kind Curiosity
10. At work and in life, caring is underrated. Kindhearted curiosity about people, their stories, how something works, and new ways of doing shows CARING, and caring shows willingness to connect and learn.
Curiosity is a key to a can-do growth mindset, key to drawing people together, and to humanizing our interactions with our work, purpose, and each other. In our transactional world, what can we employ to build trust and caring? to connect to causes and others? to grow personally and professionally? We can employ benevolent curiosity about people, things, places, traditions, habits, and methods with which we are unfamiliar.
Kindly curious people are caring people, and caring people are learners. Research shows that people feel attracted to and more at ease with people who show genuine curiosity. Curiosity helps us more-fully see people, more-fully take things in, more-fully meet challenges, and more-fully understand and adapt to nuance. Curiosity is critical to acquiring knowledge, to growth, to remaining relevant, and to staying young. Curiosity is caring, and caring is good for us and the world.
Curiosity is key to developing a can-do growth mindset, key to leadership and craft, key to relationships and collaboration, and key to deepening interactions. The power and positives of caring and benevolent curiosity are many and clear. If you are kindly curious, you care.
Choose kind curiosity is about openness, learning, and flexibility.
Kind curiosity is also about deepening interactions and understanding.
Summary of Innovation 1 through 10
Image by Tyler Nix from Unsplash
Innovation 1 is Greet the morning.
Innovation 2 is Drink cold water.
Innovation 3 is Stand tall.
Innovation 4 is Mind your thoughts.
Innovation 5 is Watch your words.
Innovation 6 is Position yourself.
Innovation 7 is Eat and train.
Innovation 8 is Agree and commit with care.
Innovation 9 is Rewrite your story.
Innovation 10 is Choose kind curiosity.
Moving through out days from a disposition of welcome, kind curiosity, and peace benefits our relationships, career, and our emotional and physical health. Paying attention to our energy, how we move, where our focus lies, and how we speak forms a proven and powerful physiology-focus-language triad we can use in our pursuit of positive change.
Take time through the day for breath and gratitude. Take responsibility for your health, fitness, thoughts, actions and words. Be grateful for all that is good, and all that you can do. With the actions above, we’re on our way to clarity, self-efficacy, and a compelling present and future.