Category: change
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So, what if you’re not perfect?
We aren’t . In fact, most of us aren’t. That’s why we’re passing along these suggestions from an article titled “Turn Setbacks into Success” in the Weight Watchers Weekly, July 8-14, 2012. Accept that you will make mistakes. Mistakes happen. If you can recognize that you’ve made a mistake without judging yourself negatively, you can…
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Making changes
In Richard Russo’s book Empire Falls, Janine tells her mother, “People can change, and I’m changing.” Bea, her mother, answers, “You aren’t changing, Janine. You’re just losing weight.” What do you think of Bea’s reply? Are you the same person after you’ve struggled to lose weight and finally reached your goal? Can you use that…
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Contemplation and action
When we found out that my daughter Ranna was going to the hospital for treatments every afternoon for two months, my first reaction was panic. How could I change my business schedule so that I could take Ranna to the hospital every afternoon? After a few minutes, I calmed down and thought about the five…
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Ready to make a change?
If you want to change jobs or change a habit, first take time for precontemplation and contemplation. That’s the lesson I learned recently during a presentation about James Prochaska and Carlo DiClemente’s Trans-theoretical Theory of Behavior Change. Prochaska and DiClemente outline five steps to making changes. Precontemplation—which involves becoming aware that you need to make…
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Moving forward into the future
In the introduction to the 2005 edition of Through the Narrow Gate, Karen Armstrong, a British author of 12 books, remembers that the first draft of this book was filled with anger. Armstrong was writing about her six years in a Roman Catholic convent, and those years were filled with struggles and pain that she…
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What kind of supporting actress are you?
I couldn’t resist buying the little book with a bright yellow cover—The Power of Nice—How to Conquer the Business World with Kindness by Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval. It wasn’t a very nice reaction, but I immediately thought of a number of people who might learn something from reading The Power of Nice. I…
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How to achieve effective self-management
My daughter Mary Elizabeth, who is working on a master’s degree in behavior analysis, heard Ian Ayres, author of Carrots and Sticks: Unlock the Power of Incentives to Get Things Done, speak at the 38th annual meeting of the Association for Behavior Analysis meeting in Seattle in May. In his speech, Ayres discussed three factors…
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“You can adjust the sail”
We were talking in my Sunday School class about the need to accept disappointments in life and to accept people as they are—and, most important, to accept that we can’t control everything. Will remembered the words to a song Ricky Skaggs sings—“We can’t control the wind but we can adjust the sail.” What a wonderful…
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Acting out of character
Introverts seem to be getting a lot of attention recently. We read a newspaper article about the advantages of being an introvert and discussed it in our last blog post, and we also read Bryan Walsh’s article “The Upside of Being an Introvert (and Why Extroverts Are Overrated)” in the February 6, 2012, issue of…