I recently finished Belinda Anderson’s 21 day change your mindset challenge and had such a lightbulb moment on one of the days.

There was so much wisdom and important practice every day that I am really looking forward to coming back to reviewing the challenge again but I couldn’t go past implementing this one thing.

I am embarrassed to admit I thought I had mastered changing “I can’t” to “I can”. I jumped out of a plane, I started coaching, I finished a marathon, I started running in the first place, I started a blog, I went to a singing lessons etc. And then one of the exercises was about being aware of the language you use when talking to yourself during the day. And suddenly, wham, bam, whack in the face. I spend most of the day saying “I can’t” to all the little things. I can’t deal with that email right now, I’ll do it later. That phone call seems too hard I need to put it off. I’m too tired to wash up, it can wait until tomorrow. It’s lunchtime and I can fit in a meditation, no I can’t I’m a little busy at work. I was constantly saying “I can’t” to myself over and over and over and over again. I was so shocked. I thought I was a totally different person.

The next day I decided to see what might happen if I changed my mindset. Every email that I opened and thought I would deal with later, I decided to answer/do straight away. The piece of work requiring a lot of concentration I decided to just start and see what happened. It was the most light feeling, productive and wonderful day. Then for a few nights instead of thinking there aren’t many things to wash up I’ll just do it tomorrow, I started cleaning up the kitchen. It felt so good going to bed without anything hanging over my head. I responded to texts. I drank the glass of water. I made the appointment.

I now achieve more in a day than I thought possible and it feels fantastic. Life suddenly feels so much easier.

It’s still a constant practice to not fall back into the old habit (which is an interesting conundrum because it seems the easiest solution to put it off but you are actually making it harder to even start) but every day I practice the better I become.

Fascinating how the really small simple things can have such an impact.

What small negative words in your head have made things so much more difficult for you than they actually are?

Be kind to yourself.

Wxx