Rediscovering your true self

When you look back to your childhood, did you become the person you dreamed you could be? Did you take an even greater path, or did you settle for a life that you don't quite know how you ended up with?

Life takes you on many journeys and through many paths. Sometimes you may feel that you're traveling in a single direction, only to wake up years later and wonder how on earth you arrived at your current life. The reason this often happens is that people often fail to spend time learning about themselves and discovering who they really are. What they really desire in life. The other reason people tend to give up on their dreams is due to the desire to please others, or live up to a conceived societal ideal.

Each day, week, month and year provides you with an opportunity to rediscover who you really are and who you would like to be. This doesn't mean you have to walk out the door and start your life again, but more to start finding ways to bring your true personality, interests and desired lifestyle into your current world of existence.

One of the other issues you may have faced is lack of self confidence that you could reach your goals and desires. This lack may have been the result of internal self beliefs, or the beliefs of others or society at large. Regardless of its origin, poor self belief has the power to prevent you from pursuing your desires. Thus resulting in living half a life and ending up in a place you find unfulfilling.

Dramatic change can be terrifying, which is why gradual steps towards self discovery are recommended. You may need to read more, travel more, research more, speak up more, or listen more... In order to find yourself. It takes time, but it's worth it. Take time to think back to that inner child and her/his hopes and dreams. How did others in your life respond to your desires? How well received where your ideas? These reactions would certainly have played a part in either increasing or decreasing your self efficacy in your ability to transform your dreams into a reality.

Through introspection and meditation you find the quickest path to self discovery. Your passions may seem elaborate and fanciful to others, but all realized ideas where once just pipe dreams. When there is a big leap to take you from the here and now to your future goals, give yourself permission to make gradual changes whilst you remain in a more secure position. (Eg financially). This will also give you time to adjust to your new self discoveries.

If you are completely happy with your life - that's great. Just remember there is always room to dream big and succeed. Life is here to be lived, enjoyed and experienced.

You are the creator of your destiny so don't wait for a better time. Now is the time to start really living your life.

Trying to have it all and remain relaxed

Do You want success, happiness, money, fun, family, holidays???..and the list goes on...

You grow up learning that you can now have it all, but if this desire for everything is not balanced well, you can be left feeling overwhelmed, overworked and underachieving in almost all areas of your life. More importantly, you may find your stress levels are so high that it impacts on other people in your life and you may find it difficult to even enjoy the fruits of your labour.

The expectations you place on yourself are often the keys to how well you manage your levels of stress and your ability to 'get the jobs done' well.

Being a working mother is a perfect example of dealing with high expectations. Mums expect themselves to be able to get the kids to school/daycare on time every day, organize their social lives (& their children's social lives), run the household, feed the family, look after their own (& their children's) health & fitness, get to work on time, achieve success at work/career and the list goes on.

The single mum can have it even tougher if she does not have great support financially & emotionally. She has the pressure of trying to look and feel good to support her kids and hopefully attract a new mate, whilst trying to look after her kids, work, cope with the side effects of separation and help her kids deal with the separation too.

The single woman has all the same stress and expectations, minus the kids & partner, but plus the need to socialize and look and feel her best in order to hopefully attract a suitable parter & often places more pressure on herself in terms of career success to ensure she can provide for herself now and in the future.

Men also have to deal with high levels of stress due to expectations to be fit and healthy, earn a substantial income, support a family/partner/kids, be a fun and supportive friend AND... Cope with the exceeding demands at work to produce more, work longer hours, be innovative and so on...

So in the midst of all these pressures and expectations from others, it's important to be realistic about what you can achieve within your constraints of time. Then it's important to communicate with others about your time pressures and ensure you and others also have realistic expectations about what is possible.

Being organized is also imperative, so take time to sort out your work and home life, so that you know where things are when you need them. Schedule time for you and with those you love - again within a realistic timeframe.

Being organized and realistic will assist you to stop berating yourself every time you fall short of your expectations and will also serve to help you reevaluate your expectations regularly to ensure you're not asking more of yourself than is really possible.

Who do you see when you look in the mirror?

One of the most common locations you are likely to find yourself self criticizing is in front of the mirror. Thanks to the instillation of reflective surfaces in lifts, bathrooms, cars, iPhones, wardrobes, department stores (and the list goes on...), it's hard to escape the temptation to 'check' whether you still look ok.

Research tells us that children as young as 6 years of age are suffering from body image problems and thus engage in a fair bit of self criticism. The saddest aspect of this behavior is that the images they are judging themselves against are not reflective of the average person. In fact, most of the ideal beauty portrayal is fabricated by the media. For instance, Jennifer Anniston was once reported as saying that she felt a lot of studio pressure to stay very thin during her years filming the show Friends, when this was not natural for her at the time. If she had been allowed to remain her beautiful curvier self throughout the show, perhaps she could have led a movement of self acceptance similar to the one she began with her hair styles.

It's not just females who criticize themselves regularly, now more than ever we are seeing males with dysfunctional body images. Just think about the physical transformation sportsmen have gone through over the past 20-30 years. Now, its perfectly acceptable for them to have the latest fashionable clothes, perfect white teeth, manicured hands and feet, wear tanning products and have cosmetic procedures in order to look attractive, youthful and sexy (perhaps David Beckham has had some influence changing this ideal too).

When I was a teenager my mother took me to the dentist to look into having braces. I remember at the time crying my heart out because I was so worried I was going to be teased at school. Lucky for me at the time, I had a perfect bite, so my dentist did not want to potentially damage that with braces.

HAVE THINGS CHANGED SINCE THEN!!!

If I had been in this position now, I would have been excited about choosing all the different styles of braces available Now, it's very common for kids to have braces because they lead to perfectly straight teeth - a very desirable quality.

It would great, though, if we could teach our kids that whilst it's important to feel good about your physical appearance (being clean, tidy, healthy etc...), attractiveness ultimately comes from within. The reason people put so much effort (& money) into their physical appearances is really to feel good about themselves on the inside. However, whilst initial attraction is based on the physical, positive feelings are the drivers behind others finding you attractive. Yet, people often assume its because they have 'improved' something physical that others like them more. When in fact it's the positive energy that it most attractive to others - especially long term.

The cheapest way to start feeling better about yourself is to flip reflective criticism into reflective complements. For instance, you're at work and catch yourself saying "gosh I look tired today". Flip it... Stop. Tell yourself "I'm not doing this today". Then say something positive, such as "I love the way I tied up my hair today", or "I'm on fire in meetings today", or "this outfit looks great on me".

The point is to start to like the person you see in the mirror. That way you give her/him the best chance of shining through - every single day.

Is your health getting in the way of your happiness and success?

In the pursuit of happiness it's very easy to neglect your physical body and to ignore the impact that your health is having on your ability to achieve and maintain a happiness and a successful life.

As adults, we spend a lot of time trialling various behaviours that may lead to short term feelings of uphoria (such as excess drinking, watching TV, smoking, and eating junk food). However, whilst you may experience an immediate positive feeling from these behaviours - long term these behaviours tend to lead to negative emotions. Therefore, short term gain can lead to long term pain.

What is even more interesting, is that short term gains in mood are also likely to lead to short term pain. For instance, eating junk or drinking excess coffee can lead to feeling bloated, tired, aggitated, stressed and anxious. These negative moods can leave you feeling unmotivated, unsociable and cloudy headed. Yet, in the moment, junk food and coffee can satisfy an immediate need for an energy boost. So, we can easily fall victim to pleasing immediate needs without thinking about how they will make us feel later and in particular how they will affect our goals..

So why do we ignore the nourishing mental and physical needs of our bodies - only paying attention when something really breaks down?

I believe we often ignore our body because we justify that other activities in life are more important, however if your body is not working efficiently, you will find yourself losing motivation, feeling too tired to achieve your goals and losing confidence in yourself if your physical body is not operating as well as it should/could be.

In addition, the message we have been receiving from the media for many years now is that the purpose of our external bodies is to portray a (pre-defined and culturally defined) beauty. As a result, MANY men, women and kids find themselves comparing their bodies to those they see in the media. Unforuntely these images tend to be well prepared and photographed (or air brushed), giving most people the belief that they could never measure up to these images. Thus, it's easier to give up trying to reach such an unrealistic goal and enjoy the here and now instead.

The problem with this defeatist attitude is that internally these media images "stick"" and as a result people often feel guilty for not engaging in healthy behaviors in order to try to emulate the beauty stereotype. This guilt leads to feeling down and so the search for an instant 'pick me up' strikes again.

So what can you do to stop this behavior?

In order to fight against this way of thinking you need to start viewing your physical body as your tool to achieving success and happiness in life. This means looking after it and treating it well, so that it will in turn assist you when you need it most (eg when you want to play sport with the kids/friends, brainstorm great ideas for a new project, perform well at work, present your best 'self' in an interview or on a date, or stay up late to complete an important project).

Living a healthy lifestyle is much more about giving you the best chance to achieve success, than it is about you looking good.

Let your body be your best tool to drive you to achieve your goals and desires in life.

Defining Your Relationships by How Comfortable You Are Communiicating

It's interesting to note that whilst personal relationships should be the ideal place to communicate freely, it is in these relationships that you are likely to experience the most fear in doing so. It is the fear of rejection (on any level) that leads to anxiety over displeasing others - and... This fear of rejection usually can be traced back to your relationship within your family.

The way in which you communicate and the level to which you feel free to speak up within your family has a direct impact on how you communicate within your friendships and within your intimate relationships. When you personally experience difficulties in relationships and thus feel anxious about the consequences of speaking up, you are likely to have a deep understanding of the NEED to be assertive. On a conscious level you are likely to be a great advice giver (detailing the ways your friends should be assertive in their own relationships) because you can see objectively the result of poor communication within relationships, however, taking your own advice and acting upon it - are very different matters.

Imagine that you enter into an exciting new relationship. At the start of the relationship you are so focused on pleasing the other person that you allow many indiscretions to slide and avoid speaking up, for fear that you may be rejected or criticized. You compromise on things you would never suggest your friends compromise on and you allow things to be said that would normally upset you.

For a few months you keep up the act, but soon your self respect kicks in and you can no longer hold your tongue. Subsequently, at (most likely) inappropriate times, you explode and end up having a huge argument with your partner. Your partner then responds in a nasty manner because he/she is not used to this behavior. Your outburst is significantly different to the passive and supportive role you have been playing up to that point.

After the outburst you apologize profusely for your behavior and as a result avoid the conversation underlying the outburst. You revert back to passive behavior and, as expected, in time another outburst occurs. Eventually as a result of not having sufficient grounding in the relationship, your partner is confused and disheartened by your change in behavior.
It's interesting to note that whilst personal relationships should be the ideal place to communicate freely, it is in these relationships that you are likely to experience the most fear in doing so. It is the fear of rejection (on any level) that leads to anxiety over displeasing others - and... This fear of rejection usually can be traced back to your relationship within your family.

The way in which you communicate and the level to which you feel free to speak up within your family has a direct impact on how you communicate within your friendships and within your intimate relationships. When you personally experience difficulties in relationships and thus feel anxious about the consequences of speaking up, you are likely to have a deep understanding of the NEED to be assertive. On a conscious level you are likely to be a great advice giver (detailing the ways your friends should be assertive in their own relationships) because you can see objectively the result of poor communication within relationships, however, taking your own advice and acting upon it - are very different matters.

Whilst in the example above, the partner would appear to have poor empathy, it is logical to expect anyone entering a new relationship to have low tolerance for change in one's personality. For a partner to enter the relationship as a positive and relaxed personality and then to turn into a negative person with a temper would cause many people to wonder where their partner had disappeared to. However, this shock in one's behaviour tends to occur as a result of feeling afraid to speak up and discuss personal issues of concern in a relationship.

Often, people find themselves in over-dominant past relationships which result in a partner being aggressive every time they speak up. Unfortunately, the baggage of this past relationship can carry over into new relationships with the expectation that all partners will result in the same manner. However, HEALTHY relationships need HEALTHY and open discussions to work.

In order to be assertive, you have to feel confident that your point of view has value and is justified. Then you also need to be mindful, but not too concerned about the possible outcome of addressing your concerns. If raising your concerns leads to an argument, it is likely to be unpleasant, but with calm and rational discorse, these types of discussions can in fact enhance the closeness of your relationships.

Assertiveness takes time and practice, but it's vital to success in every relationship (personal and professional) in your life. The key to assertive behaviour is believing that a small bit of discomfort is much more tolerable than losing yourself and not being true to yourself - simply to keep the peace.

For support in your relationships visit Happy Life today at:

http://www.happylife.net.au

Or

http://www.lifesuccesscoachs.com

How to find the career that will make you happy

How do you find out what you really want to be in life and what will truly make you happy?

It's an interesting question when you think that we expect 17 year old youths to have a very concrete view of thier future life and career path. At this age, they are asked to make study, or work choices that will potentially shape the course of the rest of their lives, yet they really have such limited life experience to genuinely know if thier chosen career path will bring them life fulfilment and happiness. This is why so many adults find themselves in unfulfilling careers, feeling lost and 'stuck' in jobs that only fulfill the need to sustain a certain level of living.

There is not much we can do about the academic system, however, we can certainly try to have an influence on our children's futures by guiding them towards career paths that at least appear to be in line with their passions and interests. It is also important to advise children that often it takes time to work out what we really want to do and that we often have to take wrong turns to gain insights into careers that will not bring us the joy we perhaps envisioned at one time or another. The key message here is that it is NEVER too late to change your career path.

When I was studying psychology at LaTrobe University, one of my friends in class was a well known radio announcer who later in life decided to pursue a career in psychology which had always been a passion of hers. If you were to look at her life from outside, you would question why she would want to move out of a career which resulted in her being in the public eye, gave her a lot of validation and enough money to retire on. However, money and fame did not bring her everything she desired in a job. Whilst she enjoyed the fruits of her labour, she felt something was missing and made a decision to finally bridge this gap.

This life change is often a fantasy for most people because they pigeon hole themselves in careers that bring a certain amount of financial independence. Thus, the difficulty in changing careers later inlife is committing to doing something that will make you happy, at the expense of the lifestyle you have created for you and your partner/ family.

Whilst this is a difficult decision, it does not have to be an 'all or nothing' choice. Many clients come to see me because they are tired of working in a job that's not in line with their passions, however they do not know how to break out of their current situation. Of course the first step in the process is spending time in self discovery to truly understand what brings you joy. For instance, do you have a passion for the artistic, political, legal, or social? Which areas of these spheres do you feel you could happily talk about and engage in all day? These questions will lead you to discover your true passions.

Then, you need to decide if you require further study, coaching or experience in this field. In order to minimize the impact on your current lifestyle, it's best to try to arrange your current work around the study, experience, or coaching. The only down side to this step is feeling overwhelmed and tired. Therefore, in order to minimize this side effect, a great deal or organization, determination and commitment is required. These skills are always valuable in life, so they are an added bonus to your professional development skills.

If you are organized, committed and determined, it doesn't matter at which age you finally decide to live your professional dreams. Whilst we need to work to live, we also need to feel that we are contributing the best of ourselves to the world. There is a reason why you are talented in specific areas. Allow others to benefit from your talents. Your life is worth living the way that makes you happy, satisfied & fulfilled.

How to have success dating when you're single

The dating scene has changed quite significantly over the past 20 years, partly due to our busy schedules and largely due to the boom in modern technology. Just look at mobile phones for instance. During my Masters Degree I investigated the social impact of mobile phone use and it was astounding how many respondents noted they would be anxious if they left home without their mobile phones. Yet, it wasn't that long ago that mobile phones did not exist.

Technology like the mobile phone has meant texting (which can be quite impersonal at times) has become the commonly used mode of communication in dating. Instead if picking up the phone to arrange a new date, potential couples often send text messages that can lead to misunderstanding, misinterpretation and upset feelings. The same applies to emails.

The unfortunate aspects of these newer technologies is that they are not very good at expressing intonation. Thus it's very easy to get offended by a text that reads "I have to cancel tonight". However, if you were able to hear how the person felt when he/she cancelled, you'd be less likely to take the cancellation personally. This is why it's a good idea to practice calling people rather than always texting - otherwise it's very easy to become anxious about having to make stressful phone calls in the future.

Online dating sites have also become common place these days. They provide a great opportunity to meet new people. However, I believe they need to be viewed with realistic expectations and with a reality lens in order to not be offended by other potential partners's (perceived) rejections. It's human nature that only certain people will be attracted to others, so you should not be offended if another person online is not receptive to you. Think about it this way, if you were to walk into a bar, it's highly likely that you would find 1 person in 20 attractive and then once you meet the person, there is the issue if whether you like his/her personality. The same applies online. Out of 20 potential suitors, you'll probably find 1 attractive and hopefully he/she will find you attractive and then you move forward from there. By changing your expectations and appreciating dating sites for what they can offer, you can achieve much more success with online dating.

In view of the changing nature of dating, it's important to be mindful that all relationships take time and effort. By taking a step back and allowing new relationships to develop slowly and organically (and not expecting every new relationship to be 'the one'), you can go with the flow and attract better relationships into your life.

Technology always has a good and bad side, but if you focus on its good qualities and use them to your advantage, you can have long term success with your dating efforts.