Resolutions2Reality

Whew! I guess three times a week was a bigger step than I had thought! Things have gotten distracting in my life as my mother approaches the end. I will continue to target posting three times a week, but change my baby-step goal to once a week – short-circuiting my habit of feeling bad about not reaching my goals and giving me more experience with ’success mode.’

Baby steps are all about building experience with success. A baby step should be something that is such a little bit of a stretch that if you put any energy into it at all, you cannot fail. If you find, as I did, that your proposed baby step didn’t bring you a success experience, re-evaluate. Use it for a success experience in getting to know yourself better. Choose a truly manageable step and build your success experiences.

One of my first posts spoke of using baby steps to succeed. My first baby step was to put a posting on this blog. I did it so I could celebrate success.

It took me a while to get ready for another step, but I took that step and posted again. Another success. And comments coming in from readers are encouraging and affirming.

I’m not worrying about getting it right all at once, but I AM getting it going. My current baby step is one for consistency. I am making a commitment to post on the blog every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday for the next month. I started last Saturday – and am back today, Tuesday. Success again!

This is the baby step pattern that many self-changers use to get on down the road from resolutions to reality. Anyone can do it. But even dyed in the wool do-it-yourselfers like myself reap great benefits through finding a persistent, patient coach to believe in them and stay with them as they work through their contemplation, planning, and first ‘get it going’ baby steps – at their own pace.

‘Get it going’ with your own adventure from Resolutions to Reality with individual coaching through my website.

The topic of the moment in the USA seems to be Health Care Reform. I was talking about it with my mother recently and decided that some of the contention relating to the topic has to do with the words ‘health’ and ‘medicine.’ So I went to the old unabridged dictionary we have in our home and looked up the origins of the two words. Here I will try to put into words some of my take on the subject.

As I understand it, medicine come from the perspective of offering remedies, healing products, or treatments for the purpose of overcoming diseases. In other words, medical care focuses on fighting illness. And those who practice medicine and provide medical products and care, make their income from finding, learning about and fighting sickness or disease.

Health, on the other hand, comes from root words meaning ‘whole’ or ’sound’ and is defined as the ’state of being whole…in body, mind, or soul;…being free from physical disease or pain.’ In other words, health care focuses on not being sick. Those who offer health care and help people maintain health make their income from learning and teaching about, building and promoting strength – and preventing disease.

Both perspectives ostensibly have the same goal – the client’s health. However, one perspective makes money when people are sick and want to become more healthy, the other makes money when people are healthy and want to keep from getting sick. Hmmm.

Are our government programs more focused on Medical Care – providing the care needed by people who have gotten diseased – or on Health Care – providing what is needed so people don’t become diseased? I wonder how consideration of these perspectives could affect our personal,  community, and political approaches to the issues now before us.

As you can see, I have not been a consistent blogger. This is a new ‘trick’ for this ‘old dog’ to learn, but I believe in life-long learning and ‘never too old’ so I am committing myself to practice communicating regularly through this medium. As I think about the challenges of fulfilling this ‘resolution’, I notice that while my current non-schedule that easily changes from day to day has its points, it also has its drawbacks. I am deeply involved with the daily demands of caretaking for my elderly mother so being very flexible about dealing with whatever comes up is a positive thing – on the days that many things are needed. On other days, I sometimes find myself ‘at loose ends’ but having no specific plans of what to do with ‘free’ time, I wind up feeling that I have spent valuable time on activities that were of little worth.  However, my mother’s care also involves making and keeping appointments for a variety of activities revolving around her needs. Since I want to build a business for myself as well as care for my mother, I am going to need to make an appointment with myself for doing some important things like writing on this blog. As my next baby step, I will make a plan to do that.

By the way, Prochaska’s six stages of change move from contemplation to planning. Successful self-changers must make their plans before they jump into action. My dear followers, take the time to make plans you know you can live with first. Making plans is a part of ‘getting it going’ that may be invisible to your friends but is vital to your successful move from Resolutions to Reality. See you soon!

Working on some of my own resolutions. Looking at myself with Prochaska’s six stages of change, I recognize some of my difficulties are due to hanging out in the contemplation stage. However, I have recently attracted and read a great book – The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks. His discussion of the Upper Limit Problem is opening my understanding about my self-sabotaging behaviors. So I am resolving to ‘heal myself’ using my own coaching pattern. This post is one ‘baby step’ towards applying Mike Litman’s mantra – You don’t have to get it right, you just have to get it going!

It’s a great day to get it going. Resolutions can become Reality with my baby step coaching for do-it-yourself change. To help you out, I’ll share some of the insights I have received – and am continuing to receive – on this blog. May you create a wonderful day!