Stop saying yes when you mean no – this can show up in many areas of our lives:  continual unpaid overtime at work, not switching the phone off, going out when you really don’t feel like it, being a slave to the tyranny of ‘shoulds’ in your head, endlessly looking after other people and wearing yourself out.    Remember that when you say ‘no’ you say ‘yes’ to yourself and often it really is a case of ‘say no or get resentful’.    Help others but help yourself too.  If you really struggle with this one – sell it to yourself this way: ‘If I don’t take time for me I’m not going to have anything left to give to anyone else anyway!’

Stop thinking you’re not ready. –  None of us feel 100% ready when a really big opportunity arises, because we are only really growing when we are stepping out of our comfort zone!  And this feels uncomfortable!  However if you look back at your life you’ll more than likely see that those big scary steps you took where the bridges to bigger experience, learning and growth, and you survived it!    In the words of Dr Sheldon Kopp (author of ‘Raise Your Right Hand Against Fear’): “I have never begun any adventure for which I felt adequately prepared”

Stop ignoring your problems – None of us are capable of faultlessly handling every punch thrown our way, we aren’t supposed to be able to instantly solve problems, and we can’t always do it all on our own either.  No matter how confident, evolved or self-aware an individual we are we all have “blind spots” when it comes to ourselves, and often a bit of help from an objective source can go a long way to helping you resolve the seemingly unresolvable!  Facing and learning to deal with your problems, sometimes alone, sometimes with support, not only builds character but also courage, strength and wisdom.

Stop focusing on what you don’t want! – Have you noticed when you indulge in what I call ‘negative fantasies’ (losing your job, ending up alone, falling into ill health) how bad you feel?  And it hasn’t even happened! When you catch yourself doing this – say to yourself “stop it” and consciously switch your thoughts to things you ‘do’ want!  It won’t be easy – sometimes we are looking at changing 20 – 30 years of conditioning, but it’s absolutely worth it, not just in terms of how you feel on a day to day basis but also in terms of results.  It’s no secret that what we focus on we get more of so start getting excited about what you do want, the better it gets, the better it gets!

We are all guilty of this right?    We may have gone out with someone who we ‘knew’ wasn’t right for us, acted in ways that let us down, gone ahead with something despite our inner voice  telling us different (often experienced as an uneasy feeling), got ourselves into experiences that were difficult to extract ourselves from or simply stayed in an unhealthy situation for way too long.

I’m not saying anything new here when I say that unless we make mistakes we cannot learn or grow, often we need to experience a painful difficult situation, such as the burden of debt, so as not to repeat it.    We all make mistakes, have struggles and regret things in our past.    But there is nothing quite like beating yourself up for keeping you stuck in the same old pattern or situation.  What’s important is that you do something now to begin creating the life you do want – and begin to see those mistakes as painful but, perhaps, necessary stepping stones to greater awareness and clarity.  To quote Louise L Hay ‘the point of power is always in the present moment’.

A phrase that has always stuck with me is ‘when you say no, you say yes to yourself’.   By this I mean saying no to others demands in order to protect our own creative or relaxation time, noticing when you’re going into people-pleasing and workaholism and getting out of balance.

We all have to do things in life we don’t want to do, but when the balance gets tipped so that we are continually putting ourselves second, sixth or tenth, looking after everyone else’s needs but our own or being ruled by the tyranny of the to-do list on a daily basis then it’s time to re-evaluate.

So what happens if we don’t set boundaries?   Well we become over-stressed, our nerves short-circuit and we tend to get resentful, irritable and snappy!    When we ourselves feel like the food source, it is hard to find food for thought.

So when we do set boundaries – no work on Saturdays, no replying to emails after 8pm, screening the call from a friend who seems to be endlessly caught up in a personal drama we begin to experience a sense of safety and relief!

We are about to enter 2012, spend some time thinking about what or who you can begin to say ‘no’ to and how in turn you can say a great big ‘yes’ to yourself  next year!

I’ve had several clients recently who have talked about the difficulty in letting go of previous relationships and who are seeing me to help them overcome and move on from their ex.   I also have many clients who struggle with their self-esteem.   In my 9 years practice as a Hypnotherapist neither of these issues are new but what is new is the addiction to social media that clients often use to inadvertently hurt themselves by either checking up on their ex via dating sites, Twitter and Facebook or use to ‘compare themselves to others’.

Social media has made spying on and checking up on the ex or going ‘comparison shopping’ an incredibly easy thing to do.

It’s worth remembering that social media sites such as Facebook are an unrealistic portrayal of someones life, it’s very easy to convince ourselves that everyone else is out whooping it up in exotic locations whilst we are sitting at home with a nothing but a ready-meal for company.     It’s called feeling ‘less- than’.

When we are doing something that we know is a bad for us and hurts us but we keep on doing it anyway, it’s not just a lack of self-care it becomes a form of self-harm.   If we are working to heal from a relationship we need to allow ourselves the time and space to do that, constantly checking up on your ex’s movements and ‘all fun you think they are having’ does nothing but hurt you, hinder your progress and keep you ‘stuck’.   The same with self esteem – if you are dedicated to healing your low self esteem one of the first things to do is lose the ‘comparison shopping’ – I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – we are all on very different and unique journeys – with wildly varying talents, skills, advantages and disadvantages therefore the only person we can truly compare ourselves to is ourselves and how far we’ve come.

If you recognise any of the above it may be time to put self-caring higher on your agenda, self-harming is easy to recognise – if you feel worse after a certain activity it’s probably a form of subtle or not so subtle self-harm!

I can’t remember where I read this but isn’t it great? Whenever anyone is asked what they want in a prospective life partner / potential love for their life they give similar answers; warm, loving, honest, supportive, dynamic, faithful, GSOH and the list goes on, what we forget to ask ourselves is how many of these we are? We can get so hung up on ‘ticking all the boxes’ in the hunt for love that we forget to look at our own part of it – how many of our own boxes are we ticking? Remember ‘like attracts like’ and the more you embody what you want the more likely you are to get that right back!

By this I’m talking about the process of change and healing.   When we’ve been in a dark place it can be unimaginable that we’ll be able to find a way out, it can feel insurmountable.   When we begin to do the necessary work of talking, exploring, processing and clearing past negative events and unhelpful beliefs things begin to change, however it can be slow-ish.  When you’ve been mired in deep depression, anxiety or addiction growth needs to be slow-ish in order to solidify into ‘health’.   When clients have been in a dark place and begin to heal they tend to report seeing ‘glimmers’ of hope that can be a couple of hours in a day or a day in a week when they feel better, what I always explain is that these ‘glimmers become pathways’, those hours or days become days and weeks – they are a hint of the health, wellbeing or positive states that will become more of your ‘default setting’ replacing the old darkness.   Glimmers are good news as with the right work and attention they become paths forward through life.

But so many of us act and talk like it is!   “I’ll be happy when I… get my promotion / make more money / lose a stone/ meet the right girl / when he stops drinking so much, etc” is a brilliant way to delay feeling any pleasure or happiness right now and put it off indefinitely.  Happiness is a process – it’s highly unlikely we’ll ever reach a point in our life when we think ‘right I’ve ticked off everything in the box now, I’ve got the perfect partner, income, job and body I can allow myself to be happy’, because life is constant flux and change and often challenge.  Seeing happiness as a process – noticing the different ways in which you feel happy - curious, engaged, playful, light – helps you enjoy the journey and process of happiness rather than striving to reach the destination and missing out on all the fun along the way!

“Our beliefs about the world and ourselves create the behaviour to create the reality in which these beliefs come true”.   I’ll elaborate;  say you believe you are terrible at public speaking, getting ready for your presentation you will  be saying all sorts of unhelpful, negative things to yourself, based on your belief, you stand up to talk reminding yourself that you are rubbish and feel yourself a bag of nerves, this will reinforce your negative feelings and it’s likely it won’t go too well, and this will reinforce your belief that you are terrible at public speaking!    This is why it’s so important to change your beliefs if they don’t make you happy, and this is where Hypnotherapy, EFT & NLP come in….  if your belief system could do with a bit of a spring clean then drop me a line!