We’ve talked about different reasons why we may lack motivation: lack of „I desire” power (or it’s too weak 😔), being too stressed or too tired😴, mind traps etc… Today we’re gonna focus on sabotaging thoughts that often come to our mind and ruin our plans or desire to work 😬
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They often appear on a subconcious level so we might not notice them and that’s why we tend to think that they’re „stronger” than us 🤷♀️
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Try observing them while you’re fighting with some temptation or you feel like resigning from some important activity (e.g. workout). What do you notice? What happens then? 🤔
Mine are usually: „I don’t feel like it”, „I’m too tired” or „I don’t know exactly how to do it”.
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Don’t judge them but also don’t ignore them – take them seriously. Even if they seem silly, weird or without any sense to you carefully look into them 🧐.
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Sabotaging thoughts can:
➡️ Bring down your self-confidence 📉
➡️ Let you reject knowledge, good advices or hints from others 🚫
➡️ Increase general stress level (and that weakens your strong will! Remember!!)
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Keep observing your sabotaging thoughts (and when you notice them, write them down! 📝) while remembering to be good to yourself! 😉. Then for each sabotaging thought create a supporting thouht or helpful recreation 🤗. Now you’ll be able to not only notice a sabotaging thought but to stop and choose how you wanna react❗.
Tag: right mindset
Smiley Future – Step 23
I strongly encourage you to constant observing 👀 what strengthens and what weakens your strongwill, training it and doing visualisations.
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In next steps you’re gonna look into a very important issue that I often see around me: excessive rigor and self-criticism 👇
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Do you know what I’m talking about? Does it apply to you? Do you focus on your mistakes, setbacks, defects and failures? Do you miss out on your advantages, achievements and successes? 🤔 When you do a sum up at the end of a week/month/year what do focus on more? Failures 👎or successes👍?
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We all tend to notice negative and threatening affects of our lifes more. Our brain 🧠 works this way to catch potential danger as soon as possible and to prevent it.
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What’s more, if you’ve experienced rigor and excessive criticism at home or at school you might have a tendency of treating yourself same way 😟
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That’s why noticing positives is harder and requires more conscious effort.
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A task for today is to observe what do you concentrate on 📝
* Do you automatically focus attention on negative aspects? 🤔
* Does it apply to you or reality that surrounds you? 🤔
* What happens when you consciously try to redirect attention to what’s positive about you and what’s positive around you? 🤗
* Does anything change? 🤔
* How do you feel then? 🤔
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Source: @chodakowskaewa‘s new book “90 days – design your tomorrow”
P.s. Today is Father’s Day in Poland so I’m posting this special photo of my Dad and me! 🤗
Reaction
Do you know Tony Robbins’ famous story about two brothers? 👬 There was two brothers who had an abussive alcoholic father. Their childhood was very dark, they lived in poverty 😞. Years later, when they grew up, one brother was very successful 💰, had a well-known company, wife and kids 👨👩👧👦, was contributing to society, volunteering etc and another one was an alcoholic too 😪🍾. Somebody asked both of them „How is it possible? 🤷🏼♀️ How is it possible you didn’t turn out the same? Why do you think you became a volunteer? Why did you think you became an alcoholic?”. Both answered same thing „Who else could I become with a father like this?”
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We can’t control what happens to us but we can control how we react to it ⚠️. You can either feel sorry about yourself, be miserable and live miserable life or you can turn your disappointment/sadness into energy and use it to make your life better 💪
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There are so many people with same stories yet different endings. There are so many people who’s had abussive childhood but wanted to leave it behind them and achieve something big 🤩! There are so many examples of it among famous people like Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lawrence, Dwayne Johnson, Joaquin Phoenix, Oprah, Tony Robbins himself…just look at my Inspirational Stories 😉! All of them had difficult childhood and look at them now! 😎🎬🏆
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Bad things happen to people everyday. It’s sad but it’s true 🤷🏼♀️. But it’s our choice what we’re gonna do with it! First of all appreciate what you have 🙏, secondly learn from your mistakes/failures/sad experience and then use it to build a better future 📈!
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I know it’s harder than it sounds but it is all in your hands 🤲. You have all the tools to make your life happy, it’s your move to use them. Nobody is going to do it for you 😉. It’s all in your hands and in your mind.
Smiley Future – Step 18
Do you know that willpower is a part of our intincts? 🤔 Last week we talked about „fight or flight” response and today we’re gonna talk about „pause-and-plan response” – my favourite 😉
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This mechanism stops an arousal in our body (the one we feel e.g. when seeing a cake 🤤) and increases the amount of the energy that goes into your mind 🧠. Prefrontal cortex, a part of our brain that is responsible for controlling impulses and planning, starts to work harder 💪. It shares an information with other parts of the mind: Launching self-control! Thanks to it we can take deep breath, stop with a hand on a bag of chips, think and…put it down 😉
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Now the good news – not only is self-control a strong instinct like „fight or flight” reaction but you can actually help launching it! 😊 There is an easy, free and accessible for everybody way to do it – the key is to learn to breathe properly. That’s right, breathe. 💨
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In order to improve your willpower slow down the rhythm of your breathing, do 4-6 breaths in a minute 🙏. Try to make each one last 10-15 seconds. But don’t hold your breath (it will only make you feel stressed!) but slowly make each inhale and exhale longer. It is easier to start with prolonging your exhale first. Make sure to exhale all out, this way it is easier to take deep breath in.
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It requires practicing so don’t get mad when you don’t get that rhythm right away. The more you practice the better! 😉
Next week: Empowering your willpower :::
Source: @chodakowskaewa‘s new book “90 days – design your tomorrow”
Rest
How do you rest? ⚠️
Do you lie down on a couch in front of a TV? And when you do, do you relax, focus on a movie and let your problems aside? ☺ Or do you watch a movie but in reality you keep thinking what you haven’t done, what still needs to be done, you analyze your problems and in fact have no idea what’s going on in the movie? 👀
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You need to LEARN TO REST! That’s right, learn to rest 😉
When it’s relax time you need to focus on here & now and enjoy the silence/movie/chill. 🤗
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Learn to „lock” your problems in a cage and keep them there for later 🗝, now enjoy your time off.
If you’re having a problem dividing relax time and „worrying time” 😅 plan it 😉. Find a spot in your calendar where you can sit for 15-30min and think about your situation, about solutions for possible problems etc. Do it during this time and then have proper time off.
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When it’s relax time it relax time! Remember! Otherwise you’ll never rest and you’ll never feel relaxed ⚠️
Self-criticism
Are you often criticizing yourself? 🤔 Always unhappy with your accomplishments? Furious about failures? 🙄
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First of all you need to lower your expectations ⚠️. We all tend to challenge ourselves more than others, which is good in a way but you need to know the limit.
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When you fail to do something or do something wrong and you start pulling your hair and are furious think if you’d react same way if your friend had done it 😉
Would you shout at him/her, feel being let down etc? Or you’d pat them on a shoulder, smile and say „That’s ok, you’ll do it tomorrow” or „That’s fine, you’ll do it right next time”? 😊
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You should say same thing to yourself. If it wouldn’t be a big deal for another person it shouldn’t be a big deal if you’d done it. Treat yourself right. ⚠️
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Second of all, we tend to focus only/mainly on failures and stop seeing what we’ve accomplished 🤷🏼♀️. We get angry with ourselves for not doing something and we forget about all the other things we’ve managed to do. For example, you get mad because you haven’t wokred out and you ate something unhealthy and suddenly forgot that you’ve managed to workout and eat healthy other 6 days of the week.
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It’s ok to have one bad day and you shouldn’t feel bad about it. Focus on other 6 good days 😉
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If you feel like you’re criticizing yourself too much and you’re never happy with your work try writing down every evening 2-3 things you’ve managed to do that day ✒📄.
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But remember! If you’ve tried to do something and failed that should still go on the list! 😉 It means you TRIED and that’s the most important thing. Most people don’t even get to that step 😉
📸 pic taken in Dominican Republic in 2018
Smiley Future – Step 15
🧠SMILEY FUTURE🧠
— Step 15
Today we’re gonna talk about 3 mind traps which might weaken your willpower and your willingness to act:
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1.Thinking „everything or nothing”
Have you ever thought „I do everything from my ‘to do’ list or drop everything”?
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If yes, then you got into „everything or nothing” trap which can have huge impact on your actions and effects (or lack of them) 🤷🏼♀️
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Thinking like that you don’t see your failures as small errors that you can learn from, you see it as total failure and you might start withdrawing generalized conclusions about yourself like „I’ll never succeed”, „I’m a failure” etc. STOP! 🚫
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* If you get trapped into those thoughts write all of them down ✒ Then write a counterargument to each one of them. Get back to it when you have another „everything or nothing” moment.
2. Excessive pessimism or optimism
„If I haven’t succeeded in 1 year I’ll never succeed” – that’s excessive pessimism when you have only negative thoughts about your future 👎
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Excessive optimism is when you ignore your past attempts and previous experience and keep thinking that „this time will be different, it will be perfect” 🙄 For example, you wanted to workout regularly, you’ve had couple attempts at it and failed eaxh time but now you think that you’ll have the willpower and you’ll workout 6 times a week for 3 months 💪🙄
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* If you know what I’m talking about write all of such examples down ✒. Now try to make each one of them more realistic e.g. „I’ll try to workout more regularly. I probably won’t be able to workout 6 times a week right away so I’ll workout 2 times this week, 3 times next week and keep improving”. :::
3. Exaggeration
You exaggerate all difficulties and make everything sound impossible. „I won’t make it”, „I never do anything right”. * If you do that write all of those thoughts down and write a counterargument to each one
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Source: @chodakowskaewa‘s new book “90 days – design your tomorrow” 📸 pic taken in Italy in 2019
Smiley Future – Step 14
Today we start realising our goal! In upcoming steps willpower will be one of most important subjects. ⚠️
Here’s what’s most important.
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Willpower divides into 3 parts:
· Power to do something even though you’d prefer to avoid it (power „I want to!”) 💪
· Power helping push temptations away (power „I don’t want to”) 🚫
· Power that remembers what you desire in long-term (power „I desire!”) 🤩 :::
Willpower is what differs us from animals. By forseeing future you are able to not give in to impulses or instincts ⚠️. Thinking about will power you often want to delete lower impulses or some feelins but they are important too! 😉
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For example disgust protects you from bad food, fear from danger and desires help you setting goals 😉. If you want to improve your willpower it is not about fighting impulses but about using them to help you 🤗
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How to manage your willpower? 🤔 For that you need to get to know yourself better. Only when you understand your way of thinking in a situation that requires your willpower then you can strengthen it 💪.
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You make many decisions on autopilot (and it’s good because there are s omany of them during a day that your brain would not be able to get to them all!😅) so your task for today is to notice that autopilot and improving you self-awarness.
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Observe and write down ✒
·What situations need your willpower? 🤔
· What thoughts, feelings, impulses appear in those situations? 🧐
· What decisions they lead you to? Supporting your goal or the opposite? 🤔
· Which moments/elements are crucial to making a decision? Noticing them will help you stop that bad autopilot and prepare for those situations earlier. 🧐
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If you want to learn more about it I advice you to read Kelly McGonigal’s book „The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It” 📖
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Next week: Mind traps
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Source: @chodakowskaewa‘s new book “90 days – design your tomorrow”
Happy month!
You’ve probably already heard me saying „It’s all about mindset”, right?
Well, it is! 😉
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You don’t have much impact on what is happening in the world 🤷🏼♀️ You can’t force some people to like you and say only nice things about you 🤷🏼♀️. Facts you hear in the news are facts and opinions that people share are their opinions and you can’t change them. But it is your decision what you’re gonna do with it 👊.
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You can either let somebody’s opinion disturb you and make you feel bad or you can ignore it.
It’s your decision, your mindset.
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You can either think about your day/week/life in negative light or look at it through pink glasses and notice only positive/good parts of it 🤗.
It’s your decision, your mindset.
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When you’re stuck at home now you can either look at it as a punishment and keep thinking of the things you cannot do these days or you can look at it as an opportunity to finally work on your projects 😉, to get back to reading 📖 now that you don’t have any distractions or events to go to, to finally start a new hobby you’ve always didn’t have time for 👩🍳.
It’s your decision, your mindset.
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When you lose a job you can either become devastated, think of yourself as a loser and keep worrying 😫 or you can see it as a push to finally look for something better, to get the courage to get your dream job which you’ve always lacked in your previous job 💪
It’s your decision, your mindset.
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There’s no easy job and there’s no easy life without problems 🤷🏼♀️ The key is to always find good aspects and being grateful for the litthe things ❤. To decide to ignore/set aside the sad/dark/difficult stuff and focus on the good ones 🙏
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You can have a happy life if you want it! You just have to change your thinking! 🙃
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As we’re stepping into a new month it’s a great opportunity for it to become a HAPPY MONTH.
Scroll down to see what I prepared for you to make it easier for you to make this month the happy month (you’ll find full version to download in my bio (DOWNLOADS section) ! 🤗
📸 pic taken in Zakynthos in 2017
SELF-LOVE: Read good book
SELF-LOVE 🙏
Turn off your tv.
Turn off your radio.
Put your phone down and have a moment to yourself ❤
Calm down.
Relax.
Forget for a moment about the world out there, just let it be.
Get a blanket, make yourself some nice tea, light some nice candles, put on some calm relaxing music and soak into a good book.
This is your time.
I personally recommend “The Organized Mind” by Daniel Levitin.
It will show you how to organize your thoughts, how to deal with stress and get rid of chaos in your head 🤯
How to be HAPPY 