Wouldn’t it be fantastic if life came with a user guide, a manual of sorts?
I’m sure we can agree that life can often feel like hanging out by the lemonade stand and getting a free and unsolicited supply of lemons.
Now, we’ve all heard the brilliant advice to just make lemonade out of said lemons, but what does that even mean?!
Turn it into something great I suppose,…
Well, I’m here to offer a different solution, a new approach.
I call this the ABC of life!
A for Attitude
Attitude is our feeling or opinion about something or someone. This can be bad or good.
I firmly believe that we shape our own lives. What we achieve in life, is greatly due to our attitude. If we take the attitude that we cannot do something, we generally will not do it!
It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome. -William James
Our attitude towards ourselves determines the attitude towards the world as well, so that is an excellent starting point! Often, we underestimate ourselves and therefor underestimate what we could achieve.
So, the next obvious question is why do we do that? Why do we think so little of ourselves?
Clearly this could not only be a separate post altogether but an entire novel. The short and not so sweet answer though, is that not long after we are born people start to criticise us. An impatient parent may start to get fed up as the soft-boiled carrot is flying through the kitchen for the 7th time when we’re learning to eat, a frustrated tutor may tell us off, for not understanding the trigonometric equation effortlessly and even a pubescent sibling may scream at us for holding the baseball bat incorrectly, when in fact we are trying our best.
I’m not looking to point fingers here, I’m just illustrating how such events will affect us and our attitude towards life.
“Why should I even bother, I can’t do anything right anyway?”
“I always mess everything up, so why bother?” – sound familiar?
The good news is that we can change all of that! We were born just as capable and just as great as our more seemingly successful fellow humans.
When ever you find a person doing an outstanding job, means you have found a person with the right kind of attitude.
So go ahead and ask yourself next time you encounter a problem and feel defeated:
“Have I got the right attitude? -or am I doing some stinkin’ thinkin’?
Our environment is a mirror of our mental attitude, so that’s where we need to stat!
B for Belief
I think belief might be one of those tricky things that people don’t even realise they need. We go after love and wealth and recognition and don’t even realise when we struggle that belief is the single most important component to succeed. If you have no belief in yourself, you will end up self-sabotaging, failing, and falling from glory. And then we wonder what happened, why its all gone wrong…
“I worked so hard, I invested so much, I tried relentlessly!!” – and so on.
Much like in the previous section, you guessed it, this can also be traced back to our early years. Being told early on that we’re not good enough at something, not fast enough, or being compared to others will bash the belief in ourselves.
What can we do to fix this?
Identify your belief
What are the thoughts running through your mind and what beliefs are at the core of them?
Examine the belief- where could they have come from? Why do I feel this way?
The great news is, that once you start to pick a belief apart, it will lose its power over you.
Replace the belief with an empowering one. You don’t have to take the exact opposite of it, instead use something that feels right for you.
For example: the belief may be that you are not smart enough. You could say instead, if I sit down and understand an equation, if someone explains it, I will get it. Don’t immediately just label yourself as being incapable or just downright rotten at something, instead examine and determine how you can be better at it.
I do realise that this may sound easy but if you are struggling with identifying your limiting beliefs that is exactly something
Noble Knowhow can help with. Updating such beliefs is at the core of what I do and how I help to empower people, so please feel free to get in touch at eszter@nobleknowhow.com
C for Conversation
Not just any conversation, but the ones you have with yourself.
Just imagine for a second that you need to bake a cake. Nothing fancy or elaborate just a simple sponge cake. It’s your mom’s birthday and you promised.
She’s really excited but as the moment draws closer you can feel the tension, you start to worry about the famous ‘what if’s’.
“What if I forget an ingredient? What if I burn it? What if I put salt instead of sugar? -and ruin the whole day for her?!“- and as you ask these questions you feel more and more overwhelmed!
Instead, you could try the following. As you enter the battlefield, I mean the kitchen :) and the first thoughts of dread starts to creep into your mind, you can stop yourself and say:
“ I have the recipe right here, it’s only a few ingredients anyway..
What could possibly go wrong?
Uhhh, I can ask Mr YouTube for help, he’ll know what to do :)
If the cake somehow ends up on the floor, the bakery down the road is still open, they will be able to bail me out, and I’m sure we can have a good laugh about it!”
Now isn’t that a much better, more empowering way to think?
The conversations you have with yourself can absolutely make or break you!
As I’m in such a good mood today, let’s go for the bonus round.
D for Do it!
The only way to conquer fear is to face it and just do it! I say that because in most cases fear is behind our inactions. Fear of the unknow, of change, of uncertainty, etc. Of course there will be many occasions where your intentions are there but said fear, laziness or anything else comes up. Acknowledge your feelings, and just do it anyway! Go for it!