TPCL

Are you a prisoner of your mood?

Too often we let ourselves be ruled by our moods — which leads to procrastination, a lack of exercise, eating poorly, constant online distractions, and more.

Mood is a poor indicator of whether you should do something.

Consider the following examples:

You want to write a book, and you commit to writing every morning. When it comes time to write, you feel like checking your favorite online sites instead, and don’t really feel like writing. So you put off writing. All procrastination works this way.

You tell yourself you’re going to work out today … but when it comes time to do it, you’re tired. So you put it off and say you’ll do it tomorrow.

You plan to meditate, but instead get distracted by your phone. Checking your phone is always something you’re in the mood for, but meditation rarely is.

You create a healthy meal plan for yourself, but in the afternoon you feel like a snack, so you eat some chips or a pastry. You aren’t usually in the mood for vegetables, but you’re always up for fried, salty, fatty, or sweet things.

Allowing our moods to dictate our actions leads to procrastination, distraction, lack of exercise, unhealthy eating, and bad habits.

What’s a better way? Use smarter things to decide your actions: whether something will lead to accomplishing what you want, whether it’s good for you, whether it will help others. Make these decisions ahead of time, and don’t listen to your mood.

When the time comes for action, instead of saying
“I don’t feel like it” (or not saying anything but just following your mood), say one or more of these instead:

It’s on my plan, I gotta do it.

Past Me said to do it, and Future Me will thank me, so let’s do it.

Once I start, I’ll be glad I did. All I have to do is take the first small step.

I don’t need to decide on this, or think about it. It’s already decided.

This is a compassionate act for myself. An act of love. Let’s get to the loving.

I am doing this for others, to set an example for others, to make the world better.

Yes, “just this once” does hurt. Let’s not fall for our old thinking traps.

It’s time, let’s get to work like a pro.

The best writers, best athletes, best entrepreneurs … they don’t just do their work or workouts when they feel like it. When it strikes their fancy. They show up every day and get to work. That’s how you’re going to approach your decisions from now on: show up as planned and do it.

Changing Mindsets for Workplace Excellence

The greatest setback in organisations is the trapped mindsets of its people. A trapped mind is unable to adapt, change and thus stifles the capability of a person. People with trapped mindsets become unimaginative and cannot think creatively to provide new solutions. Their views are so entrenched, they practically operate in an auto mode.
Our mental processes--our "cognition "--play a complex and dramatic role in our lives. Our cognition makes us human. We can cope only by first sensing and understanding the environment. Sometimes we misperceive and wrongly interpret the situation, causing problems. Our expectations and response sets partly determine how we see the world. Our attitudes, suspicions, and conclusions about others also determine how we relate to people.

Our hopes, dreams, and/or fears become self-fulfilling prophesies and determine the future to some extent. Our values and goals determine the directions our lives take. Our knowledge of human behaviour and our rational planning partly determine our success in achieving our life goals.

Our motivation also determines how far we go in the directions set by our needs and values. The discrepancies between reality and our ideals will determine how satisfied we are with ourselves and our lives. Most importantly, humans are the only species which can systematically study its own thought processes; we know some of our inner selves.

All of this phenomenal world of cognition is due to 2 1/2 pounds of 100 billion nerve cells inside each human head. The brain weighs less than 3% of our total weight but burns 25% of our total oxygen intake. It is a busy, powerful, phenomenal, mysterious place.

Sun Tzu wrote his classic book, The Art of War, 2500 years ago. In it he said, "If you know the enemy and you know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself, but not the enemy, for every victory gained, you'll also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will lose every battle."

Between you and me, Sun Tzu had it easy. In 500 BC, all he had to do was learn about himself and his enemy

Honestly looking at ourselves and changing may be stressful, but we need to do it.

It is often comfortable and easy to stay the way we are. Changing may be gratifying or stressful and is frequently both. Temporary stress is a natural, necessary part of recognizing a weakness or feeling we had previously hidden from ourselves, trying out a new behaviour, facing a fear, releasing a pent-up emotion, and changing.

Many of our attempts to change ourselves fail because we are unwilling to put in the time and effort necessary. Our entire culture expects quick, easy solutions. Related to this is my experience that many managers do not make efforts to understand. It is not because the methods are too complex to be understood but because many managers are careless humans and in a hurry. They think they understand, but they often don’t realize that they need to revisit the concept again and discuss it with someone else. Trust me.....This takes time.

Don't wait for magical solutions. DO SOMETHING to help yourself. Be strong! Confront any resistance to change and challenge all your defeatist attitudes. Learn to believe you can change things.

There are many reasons why people like us avoid change--fears, lack of motivation, resentment of pressure, helpless feelings, procrastination, wanting to fail and/or avoid responsibility, wanting to live spontaneously without planned change, wanting sympathy and to be taken care of, feeling that it's too much trouble to change, pride and stubbornness, being willing to accept our own rationalizations ("it runs in my family"), being inflexible and "set in our ways," feeling that we are not okay and deserve to be miserable, and other motives.

It may be hard to understand your reasons for avoiding change if you are a procrastinator, but remember, there are reasons for everything Look for your reasons (it's likely to be several reasons). For example, shyness may enable you to avoid the stress of socializing; being irresponsible may get other people "off your back" since they are likely to stop expecting you to be a mature, capable, dependable person

If you decide some self-improvement is especially important but haven't made plans for changing within a day or two, then focus on the reasons for your inactivity. If you can't be sure of the reason(s), then guess at it. Try to deal with the possible resistance to change like any other problem, i.e. develop a plan of attack by analyzing your resistance to change as well as the problem itself. Question the validity of your pessimism. And, people who have failed to change in the past won't believe they can change until they have drafted a good plan and done it. So, give it a try.


As Epictetus said 2000 years ago, "No man is free who is not master of himself"

A wealthy man requested an old scholar to wean his son away from his bad habits.

The scholar took the youth for a stroll through a garden. Stopping suddenly he asked the boy to pull out a tiny plant growing there. The youth held the plant between his thumb and forefinger and pulled it out.

The old man then asked him to pull out a slightly bigger plant. The youth pulled hard and the plant came out, roots and all.

"Now pull out that one," said the old man pointing to a bush. The boy had to use all his strength to pull it out.

"Now take this one out," said the old man, indicating a guava tree. The youth grasped the trunk and tried to pull it out. But it would not budge.

"I – It's impossible," said the boy, panting with the effort.

"So it is with bad habits," said the sage. "When they are young it is easy to pull them out but when they take hold they cannot be uprooted."

The session with the old man changed the boy's life.

REFLECTION

Habits form character and character is destiny- we sow our thoughts and reap our actions; we sow our actions and reap our habits; we sow our habits and reap our characters; we sow our character and reap our destiny. Thus, first we form habits, then habits form us.

Bad habits are like a comfortable bed, easy to get into, but hard to get out of. It is easier to prevent bad habits than to break them.

There is an old saying that, one can't kill a frog by dropping him into hot water. As we drop him into the hot water, he reacts so quickly that he immediately jumps out unharmed. But if we put him in cold water and gradually warm it up until it is scalding hot, we have him cooked before he knows it. The encroachment of bad habits in our lives is very much like this.The chains of bad habits are generally too small to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.

Conquer your bad habits soon or very soon they will conquer you