CUTTING OUT THE FAT

Diane Birch, Executive Director of BITA, asks ... What makes you content?

We are creatures of habit. This isn’t something that people want to hear, but if we are honest with ourselves it’s mostly true. Is being called a creature of habit, or predictable, just a code for being boring, or is it saving valuable brain space? Our habits take place in a small patch of ground that we’ve cleared for ourselves in our minds and lives. Things may change slightly; perhaps we’ll go for chicken chow mein instead of chicken fried rice tonight, or we’ll grab a drink before going home; but for the most part the things we do are in this same patch of land that we consider safe.

Within our patch, we’ll have doctors’ appointments, catching up with friends, the time we set our alarm in the morning and when we go to bed. Some of us may have gym sessions or singing lessons in our patch, others won’t. But the tracking mechanism on google maps (check your timeline!) will usually be quick to show you how little your life deviates from one day, week, month to the next.

There is nothing wrong with this, doing something new every day would be exhausting. Trying to consider doing something new can become difficult when we are tired, and it’s much easier to stick with our tried and true methods instead of risking disappointment.

Problems arise when our habits are damaging to us. We are still moving around the same patch of ground, but now there is broken glass everywhere and we don’t realise we need to move on. It’s here that many get stuck, afraid or unable to move, caught in harmful cycles.

We all have responsibilities; Gen x and Boomers get a bad press, but we often have children and grandchildren that we care for, as well as elderly parents. We still work, we need wages and are time poor. And the younger generations, struggling to find a permanent full-time job with good pay, are worried about being left short of money and often priced out of homeownership, leaving them in unsecure tenancies or living with their already time-poor parents.

Despite, or more likely because of these responsibilities, many of us get home and ‘zone-out’ by watching TV instead of planning meaningful change for our lives. Planning for an extraordinary life takes time and effort. Change takes action. We are always being told to budget our finances, but we need to start of shape to play might mean taking up jogging. The main issue may be a lack of friends, could you reconnect with old ones or join a local rugby group? Once these roadblocks have been identified, and a solution decided on, the last thing to do is action change.

Book the physio, call old friends, or get your running shoes on. Sometimes roadblocks can’t be moved, at which point consider adapting your goal. If a bad knee can’t be fixed, perhaps coaching your child’s rugby team will be a worthy substitute. Keep the goal in mind to help you focus, work in manageable chunks and take it slow; none of us can change overnight.

This is a 12-month plan, to be started whenever, not just at the new year! 12 months to identify, consider, plan and effect change to make your life extraordinary and something to relish. To take one example, perhaps a main key to contentment is playing rugby with friends at the weekend, which would mean health and fitness would be number one. Examine what it is that each of these areas will help you achieve; health and fitness would lead to rugby at the weekends, but it would also mean not being out of breath going up three flights of stairs at the office and fitting nicely into an old suit.

The next step is to consider what the impediments are to playing rugby; a bad knee may require physio, being too out budgeting our lives and free time, it’s the most valuable resource we have as we can’t generate more. Cutting the fat from our lives will leave us with only the best cuts and a healthy marbling of obligation.

To quote the 1990’s sages, the Spice Girls, we need to decide what we want, what we really, really want. Clear some time and have a think about what you need to be content. Is it an afternoon a week to relax alone, or perhaps you have always wanted to take up the piano? Do you yearn to ramble across the countryside, or crave to get under a fix-her-up car in the garage?

Making time for things that will enhance your life is key to unlocking the extra from your ordinary. The areas that you concentrate on depend on what you feel you are compromising in the first place. We need to stimulate those patches that we have allowed to gather broken glass in the first place and rewire our brains.

Helping people rewire their brain is something I assist many of my clients with, and each of them have found the following exercises helpful. The first step of which is to clarify where it is that you’ve been compromising. A rather morbid but useful exercise is to consider what it is you would regret not doing if you were on your death bed, right now. Take a look at the 10 areas opposite and rate them 1 – 10 in order of importance to you and your new extraordinary life.

Contact Diane; Email: diane@bita.ie Tel: 00 44 7887947163