“For anything to really change, we must first change our thinking”  (Rael Kalley)

 

I have a brother who is a life coach. Twenty-five years ago he founded his company which offers both personal and corporate coaching. I admire his many achievements. His book “Life Sinks or  Soars; The Choice is Yours", imparts valuable life lessons through his story of one man’s journey from despair to joy.  But what I most admire is his amazing ability to be consistent.

 

He writes a blog about habits. It’s called “Habits cause Have-its”, and it's posted every Wednesday. On Saturdays he writes a second post about other topics relative to personal coaching.  When he first began to write this blog, he vowed that he would post consistently every Wednesday and Saturday, and so he has for more than 600 posts. 

 

I, on the other hand, find it hard to be consistent about anything.  Like probably most other people, I start off with great intentions, and then things sort of fizzle out. A good example is my morning stretch and range-of-motion routine. To do it thoroughly, I worked out that it takes me about 30 minutes. I also set myself the task of writing for 30 minutes. So my planned morning routine goes something like “wake around 5:30, wander into kitchen to brew coffee,  write - or at least stare at the computer for 20 to 30 minutes, do my active stretches, by which time I’m ready to listen to the daily Monday to Friday coaching sessions on Facebook Live.

 

Sounds pretty straightforward. Coffee - write - stretch - listen. Should be easy to be consistent five days of the week. So why is it that most days my grand plan gets derailed?

 

I consulted my brother. He said "for anything to change you must change your way of thinking. If you are not doing it, it is obviously not important to you.” He was right. So I decided I needed a little psychotherapy season with myself. I’m a Gemini so luckily there were two of us to confer about this matter.  We agreed that the active stretching was probably the best thing I could do (after indulging in my coffee) to make me feel great the rest of the day.  So every morning when I complete my routine, I put a checkmark on my calendar for that day.  I read somewhere that after 30 consecutive repetitions you can call it a habit. Don’t have time to dig into the research on that but I’m hoping it’s true.