bythemethod.com blog

It can be really hard to forgive someone, especially if they have hurt someone you care about. Yet, research shows that forgiving is important for good psychological health.

Take a look at this article if you doubt my word.

Here is a four step plan (taken from the same article):

• Acknowledge the pain and anger felt as a result of someone else’s actions. For forgiveness to occur, the situation needs to be looked at honestly.
• Recognize that healing requires change.
• Find a new way to think about the person who caused the pain. What was happening in that person’s life when the hurt occurred? Sometimes, the motivation or causes for the incident have little to do with those most affected. For some people, this step includes saying, “I forgive you.”
• Begin to experience the emotional relief that comes with forgiveness. It may include increased compassion for others who have experienced similar hurt.

Christians have been advocating the importance of forgiveness since Jesus mentioned the importance of it over 2000 years ago. I encourage you to find some forgiveness for others.

The UK Governments health advisers are advising businesses to deal with stress in the workplace. Not only is stress is a killer and destroyer of lives it is also the cause of an awful lot of lost money. As much as 25% of all business losses due to sickness are down to stress, according to the research. My own research might suggest that as much as 80% of the costs to business of sickness could be due to stress.

The BBC has a fuller report on the recommendations but I can’t help but wonder why it is so hard to get businesses to take stress seriously enough to do something about it?

Recent research has shown that eating lots of processed foods could lead to feeling depressed.

You can read more about it in this BBC article …

It’s another reminder that there is a link between what you eat and how you feel. I’m suspicious of wonder diets and I fear people are too quick to appeal to allergies for their problems but there is little doubt that having a good – well balanced – diet is the best option for us all.

Have you noticed how angry everyone seems to be getting these days? It’s not a young person thing either, in fact it may be an older person thing. Psychologists have all kinds of answers as to why this might be – but whatever the causes of it there is no doubting that things are getting worse. I find it happening to me as well at times. It usually happens when I get tired or there are just too many things to think about and then something tips me over the edge and I can feel that anger rising inside me. Although I can’t say I’m perfect at managing it I do try and I think we should all be making an effort not to get so angry. So here are some tips for controlling anger.

1. Recognise you are getting angry
   The first step has always got to be to recognise the anger that is inside you. I’m not talking about frustration here, I’m talking about anger. We all get frustrated but anger is when we let that frustration out in an aggressive way. If you don’t notice the anger then you won’t be able to control it.
2. Acknowledge that you are in control
   You also need to understand that you are in control of the anger. You don’t need to give in to it.
3. Choose not to be angry
   Now is the time to reject getting angry. Sometimes this might mean removing yourself from the situation so you can calm down or just taking a pause to stop yourself from expressing the anger.
4. Use diversion techniques
   You should work out some techniques that will help you to stop getting angry.
5. Get help
   If you have a very big problem with anger then you should go to see your doctor. Anger can shorted your life and so it is important to deal with it properly.
6. Relax
   After the situation has passed you should make sure you get some relaxation to let go of the tension you are feeling.

Anger is very destructive and I can think of very few situations (if any) where it is justified to get angry. Anger seldom gets anyone what they want and always leaves others feeling small. It can be very destructive to relationships, even when you are not on the receiving end of anger but only an observer. Of course differences need to be settled and rights need to be maintained but anger is not the way to achieve this.

Perhaps one of the biggest questions about life that any of us has to answer is the question: “what am I here for?”

This post must involve a bit of a discussion about religion. I hope that isn’t going to put you off because I feel that this is one of the most important questions to answer.

The first point to make is that this is an even harder question to answer if you are an atheist (or even agnostic). I’m not saying this to force my viewpoint on anyone but that you need to admit that if you don’t believe in a creating god (whoever that may be) then it is impossible to answer any questions about what you are here for. The best you can answer this question might be to do the greatest good to the greatest number of people. But you might just as well say that your aim is to make yourself happy. Essentially you will have no set purpose and you simply make up your own idea of what you are here for, but if you are looking for an answer to the question then one doesn’t exist.

Of course if you do have a belief in a god then your purpose will be bound up in what your religion says about your purpose. There will most certainly be an answer to the question. I’m a Christian and so my response for me must come from the message of Jesus Christ. I’m here to worship and serve God.

There is more to it than this because I also have a part to play in God’s plan (you did know that God has a plan didn’t you?) – a part that is unique to me. So I can look at how God made me, what gifts and talents I possess and then work out how God wants me to use them.

The exciting bit is that no matter how insignificant I might feel I know that God wants me. No matter if I feel that I really don’t matter in the eyes of this world – I know that I matter in the eyes of God. I also know that even if things don’t quite work out for me now – this is not the end of everything.

I happen to believe that Jesus gives us the best chance of finding out the answer to the question of “what am I here for?” and if you want to explore this subject in more depth you can take a look at the Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren (official website here) but there are other religions and other options.

Buddhism for instance teaches that this world is full of suffering and life means detaching oneself from this world so you can get away from the suffering. You can find out more here.

Many other religions follow a set of rules to gain entry in heaven so the meaning of life is following those rules (Christianity is not one of these by the way – despite popular belief). You can see a list of the religions and what they see life as at the religion facts site. Although I must warn you that the Christian section is woefully inadequate and the chart, as far as Christianity is concerned, leaves an awful lot of information out. I’d recommend the Purpose Driven Life web site for this information. Or you can find out more about Jesus here.

Research undertaken on behalf of the BMJ has found that despite common expectations retiring early does not prolong life. In the research it was found that those who retired at 55 were actually more likely to die in the first 10 years after retirement than those who retired at 65. Whilst it is true that a percentage of the early retirees would have done so for health reasons the research shows that there is no reason to believe that retiring early will prolong a persons life.

You can read about this here …

Also a recent study undertaken by Nottingham University has found that stress tends to peak in workers who are aged between 50-55, after which stress reduces. There could be many reasons for this and most would seem to revolve around lifestyle changes and older people taking less pressured jobs. However with greater demand for people to work longer it seems it could be important to appreciate the pressure points and seek to help workers overcome them.

You can read more on this story here …

This is the last part of the self motivation posts (at least it is for now).  One of the great keys to being self motivated is knowing what you are trying to achieve and why you are doing it. In essence we find ourselves back at the beginning.

You have to be able to describe what you are trying to do and you have to do this in as few words as possible and yet make sure that the words are meaningful. If you don’t know what you are trying to do then you will never do it.

Do you have a clear idea of what you are going to do? If you don’t then set yourself some time to think this through.

Then you need to have a why. You can’t get motivated about something if you don’t know why you are doing it.

This is why teenagers often walk around dragging their feet – they fail to understand “why” and adults can’t usually be bothered to tell them. We all need to know why we are doing something and the usual parental response of “because I said so” fails to get the point across for many young people who are trying hard to find their place in the world.

Yet this applies to much of what we do. A good employer will spell out for you the why of a project if they want you to be motivated. Of course the less interesting the job is the more important the why becomes.

So make sure you know what you are doing and why you are doing it.

The next step in self motivation is to set some time for reviewing what you are doing. You cannot assume that what you initially set out to do is going to remain the same for ever. Ask yourself the following questions:

• What progress am I making towards my goal?
• Am I happy with the progress? – If you aren’t then you may need to review the way you are measuring your progress rather than how you are going about achieving your goals.
• Is my progress having an adverse reaction on my relationships? If yes, why and am I happy about this? – Sometimes people don’t take stock of who they are affecting as they seek to achieve something. Whilst it is right to work towards goals you want to achieve sometimes the cost is too great. Don’t underestimate the importance of relationships.
• How could I set better goals that will both inspire me and move me towards my aims.
• What have I found that motivates me?
• What things are demotivating me?

I’m sure you can come up with some more questions for yourself.

If you don’t keep reviewing two things will happen: 1) you will start to see your goals and objectives as laws you must keep (they are not meant to be laws) and 2) the power of your goals to motivate you will diminish. On top of this. of course, you will not be as effective as you could be.

An important element of motivation is feeling that you are making progress.  The only way to do this is to find some measure for your progress. This is really hard to do in a lot of cases because measuring progress in something that is not easily measured is going to be difficult. Without this measurement, though, you are going to struggle to stay motivated at a task.

Let’s take the losing weight example we have used before. Most people use weight as a measurement of how well they are doing on a diet. However weight is a bad measure of progress (or at least it can be). Most people lose weight on a diet on an ever decreasing scale – that is they lose weight fast to begin with and then it gets slower and slower to the point that they may feel they are making no progress at all. There are several ways around this. The first would be to recognise that this is going to be this way and then adjust your targets accordingly. This is a bad way to stay motivated though because you will still feel that your progress is slowing. Another way would be to increase the times between weighing yourself so that you can stay on track with weight loss but it will just take longer to lose the weight. Probably the best approaches though will include either measuring yourself or checking your body mass index.

However what about if you are trying to become more relaxed or happier. These are hard things to measure. Well in these cases you have to try and work out a scale for measuring and then set certain times to think through the scale. For instance you could have a stress scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is relaxed and 10 is breakdown and then every day before you go to bed you think about how stressed you are on that scale. It’s then a question of setting the appropriate targets.

Now without any target you will soon lose enthusiasm and your goals become a slog. You need to measure progress – not just at the end of a task but (probably more importantly) during the task. If you know you are making progress on a regular basis then you will feel enthusiastic about continuing.

So measure your progress and work out how you are going to do it before getting stuck into a task.

To get yourself motivated you need to have a clear picture of what success for you will look like. The clearer your picture the more motivated you will be. Without a picture you will find it hard to get motivated at all.

So take some time to think through what success will actually mean for you. The more detail you can put in the better. Think about the faces of the people that will be present. I don’t personally think that success is about possessions but if that is how you measure your success then get a good picture in your mind of the kinds of things that you will measure your success by.

Then start to think about the sounds and the smells and put them into your picture as well.

Some people have found it helpful to develop a scrapbook of pictures that illustrate the success they desire. Others have used a notice board and pinned images to it. You can even create a desktop picture for your computer (although if you are like me you seldom see your desktop picture).

The stronger the image, the better it will work.

You also need to spend time daydreaming about this picture. Make it a part of your everyday life.

If you are ever struggling with things then remember the picture and it will bring back lots of feelings of motivation.