That is a quote from an article on cancer survivors in April 2009’s Alive Magazine (Canada’s Natural Health and Wellness Magazine, www.alive.com).

I find this an inspiring statement about how to get through any difficulty, health and otherwise.

Those of us who embrace life will ride through financial or business setbacks more quickly and with less damage. We will see the lessons to be learned and appreciate what we have rather than be entirely focused on what we lost.

It isn’t always easy to appreciate “all that life gives us” when we feel all we seem to be given are lessons of hardship.

May I suggest two ways to get you there?

• Put yourself in the mindset of an observer, looking with curiosity at the events of your life. Curiosity takes you out of victim mode. It also removes the pressure to find immediate solutions to your problems, since you are not making decisions but are just watching.
• Look deeper in the present moment for life’s enjoyable gifts. Even if things are really tough, you can still find some. Have you ever had a bad chest cold; didn’t you really appreciate the pleasure of a deep breath afterwards? Or how about the gratefulness you feel when your headache finally goes away?

When you start enjoying life’s moments more, you are more present and when you are more present, you start enjoying life more.

Your body, mind and spirit respond to joy by working to their highest potential which brings not only improved health but also more success.

In the last post, I talked about how starters are one source of clutter, because they leave their papers, books and tools behind when they walk away from an unfinished project.

Starters love brainstorming ideas and sketching them into possibilities, but often lose patience when it comes to implementation. As a result, much of what they start doesn’t reach the stage where it can help the bottom line.

Even worse, it drains them of time, energy and resources, unless they do two things:

• Discipline themselves to only have a certain number of projects on the go
• Outsource or partner with a finisher

A finisher is a rare and valuable bird that sees how to make the ideas work, coordinates all the moving parts, and matures ideas to their usable conclusion. In other words, they take intangible possibilities and make them real.

Most often, entrepreneurs that are starters underestimate the value of finishers and don’t reward them sufficiently. It’s a proven tendency of human nature to overvalue one’s own contribution to success, so they just “don’t get” how much they need the finishing skills.

A solo entrepreneur with limited funds may not be able to pay as much as she would like to, but can at least make the finisher’s experience as pleasant as possible by being reasonable with deadlines, organized in providing facts, generous with testimonials, etc.

There is a jar full of sand and various-sized rocks. Your task if to figure out how to put several larger rocks in the jar without throwing away its content.

The larger rocks represent your latest important projects

The ones that should improve your health, your profit, your relationships, your business direction, or your life. Of course, the more important they are, the more they tend to:

• Require sustained creative effort
• Bring up fear of failure or rejection
• Take time
• Generate internal resistance

Besides, most of you is telling the part of your brain that cooked up the project that you have no extra time and are in overwhelm already; your jar is full!

How to get the large rocks in the jar

Put them in first!!!

The smaller rocks and then the sand, will find their way and settle themselves in whatever small openings they find, and you will be amazed at how much more the jar could hold.

An embarrassing example

I normally never bother with New Year’s resolutions, but this year I made the highly predictable one, pledging that I will exercise on a daily basis. I let my gym membership lapse 4 months ago and have been sitting in front of my computer ever since (or so it feels like). Needless to say, my body is feeling the new lifestyle and will start showing it pretty soon if I don’t “shape up”, pun intended.

My record so far:

Day 1: Good start
Day 2: Already off the wagon, which is embarrassing for someone who teaches other people how to make changes successfully. Here’s what happened:

I felt mentally productive and decided to delay my workout, which I was sure I would do later since I was looking forward to it. Later became later still, which became never. Inertia had set in.

Day 3: I learned my lesson and worked out before turning on the computer.

When to deal with priorities

It may not always be first thing in the day; your past behavior will tell you when you need to deal with your high priorities. Just make sure you’re honest with yourself about it.

Unknown means unproven which may mean danger, who knows? So our instinct thinks we’re better off to stay the way we are.

But eating a healthier diet (for example) is good for me, not a threat!

Never mind that it may totally illogical that the particular change we are considering be a threat to our survival. Our primal brain is not logical.

It knows that you have survived until now doing it “the old way”, and it hasn’t yet seen you live through the new way.

So how do I convince my instincts to stop sabotaging my efforts to create a new habit?

Start by being very clear about the benefits of changing, and the dangers of not doing so. Thinking vague and brief thoughts is not enough; you’re needing to convince a powerful primal force here!

Spend some time clearly writing, talking, visualizing, feeling what might happen if you don’t reform your ways. Make a clear connection with the consequences of continuing your old habits.

Then do the same for the benefits of the change you want to make. The key is a clear and strong portrayal of why you need to change and how it will favor your survival.

Vigilance is unfortunately essential; wish it was easier

Have you ever successfully made a new start and then before you knew it were back to where you started? Of course; we all have.

Habits are a powerful part of your survival mechanism, so even if you were able to initially entice your primal brain to support you in your personal improvement plan, you still weren’t out of the woods.

Establishing new habits requires a constant rekindling of the “why” you need to change, as well as a “structural renovation” of your habits to allow them to support your new way of being.

So why can’t you, like most people, keep your promise to yourself?

You don’t believe you can do it

After all, you have lots of experience to the contrary; why should it be different this time?

You didn’t really want to do it

If you had, you wouldn’t have waited until January 1st, you would have just done it.

Or maybe part of you really wants to change and another part feels a lot of resistance.

What’s the resistance about?

• You think it’s going to be hard
• You kind of like your bad habits
• And don’t want one more thing to worry about
• Besides, your brain reminds you that you’ve survived the old way so far, haven’t you?

Should you just give up?

Yes…and no.

There’s no point in making resolutions if all it’s going to do is reinforce your record of failures.

But the ability to make changes in your life is necessary to your success and even to your survival. So from that perspective, giving up is not really an option.

One thing you can do to improve your odds

Make sure you really really want what you’re resolving to change, and that you fully explore whatever resistance you might have so you can plan for it.

There’s a lot more to it than that, but it’s a good start. I’ll be giving more tips in my next posts.

Now I realize that we all have different body clocks and that some of us are not hungry when we get up. If you’re one of those, you won’t at first see the point in forcing yourself to eat, especially if like most people, you’re always mindful of weight control.

The thing is, there is too much scientific evidence to ignore on the benefit of breakfast for optimal body functioning, and for weight management for that matter.

And some people are not hungry in the morning because they ate too much late at night. Some of that is sheer habit, and some is a way of destressing, whether we realize it or not. Once again, studies prove that having breakfast can help improve both the stress and late hunger levels.

Just about all of us are rushed for time so whatever we have must be quick, but it has to be nutritious so it can’t be a donut, danish, croissant or plain bagel with butter and jam. After all, despite all of the confusing and contradictory opinions on diet, there is consensus that refined flour and sugar are not good fuel for the body, quite the opposite.  

So here are a few ideas for breakfast newbies, some lighter in quantity than others to accommodate those who really would rather skip it all together:

• Whole grain toast and peanut (almond, or cashew) butter
• Have it un-toasted if you are really time challenged
• Have it with fruit (banana, apple, or pineapple slices)
• Have it with cheese instead of nut butter
• Whole grain cereal (preferably unsweetened) with milk, soy or almond milk
• Yogurt with berries and nuts tossed in it for protein
• Boiled egg(s) (boil several ahead of time to have them ready to go in the morning)
• Have a fruit as well with the egg(s)
• Leftover whole wheat pizza slice
• Protein shake (in a water bottle to go, if you must)

A few words on protein shakes: You can of course make your own, but I’m assuming here that most people wouldn’t want to take the time for that. Then you can simply buy a good brand from health food stores, grocery stores, or online. 

What makes a brand good? As in all foods, it’s always better to choose the brands with the fewest artificial ingredients. For example, there is growing evidence that aspartame and other artificial sweeteners are, shall we say, a bad idea. Also, you can work around any food allergies by choosing from different protein bases, whey and soy being the most common.

I personally like and use the “Nutrition Now” shakes which I order online at: http://www.phporder.com/RetailProductSearchResults.aspx?Search=nutrition+now&ID=hd . What I like is they have no artificial products or sweeteners in them.

One final word about my old breakfast favorite: muffins. They are convenient, tasty,…and are basically cakes. If you happen to love cooking at night or on weekends, or have a family member who does, you can find healthier recipes for them and then they can be an option. Just make sure you have protein with it: cheese or nut butter.

If anyone has any ideas about breakfast, I’d love if you shared them with us in a comment.

How do you start your day?

The vast majority of us would describe it with one adjective: rushed. That’s how I did it for most of my working life. After all, I was tired and so I waited as late as I could to get up to get as much sleep as possible. Even after I realized that I didn’t enjoy being in a mad frenzy and set my alarm a little earlier, I still felt rushed because there never seemed to be an end to what needed to be done before heading out the door.

I remember sitting around with colleagues one day and the subject turned to how nice it would be to be retired so that we wouldn’t have to rush around in the morning.

Two things jump out at me about this conversation:

• That we were wishing our lives away, wanting to be older to escape the work pressures.
• And that of all the many benefits of not having to work, a leisurely start to our day topped the list. So we intuitively know how important it is.

Dr. Cooper says that: “Amazingly, researchers can predict how much energy someone will likely have in late afternoon and evening by measuring that person’s behavior patterns in the morning. You essentially make a choice for your entire day by the way you get up in the morning and by what you do – or don’t do – in the first hour or so after rising. ”

Basically, being in a mad rush first thing in the morning sends a warning to your body that it better brace itself for more to come, so we end up in a state of tension that depletes us before the day is done. We also operate in battle-mode which is detrimental to our health, and our productivity (I’ll say more about that at another time).

My experience taught me that just waking up 15 minutes earlier isn’t enough of an answer; it often ends up being just an extra 15 minutes of running around or mental tension. Instead, we need to have a routine that sets the stage for the rest of the day.

Many people balk at that because they assume I’m talking about meditating. That’s too much of a stretch for most people and my routine doesn’t include sitting cross-legged clearing my mind for 15-30 minutes. Dr.Cooper’s suggested morning routine doesn’t either. 

Here are a few possibilities you might want to incorporate:

• Select an alarm clock that doesn’t jar you awake. Even if you are a heavy sleeper, there are many models available now that start off with a softer tone and increase it only if you don’t respond.
• Instead of jumping out of bed with an adrenaline rush, take a few deep breaths and consciously stretch and relax your muscles. (If you’re worried about falling back asleep, do this while sitting or standing by your bed).
• Mental relaxation is also highly recommended and I teach a number of quick techniques. Just noticing any mental tension and telling yourself that the problems can wait just a little longer, is a start.
• You may not have the time or inclination to go jogging, but even a few minutes of light movement will help improve your bodies’ functioning for the whole day.
• As much as possible, expose yourself to natural light.
• And have some nutrition (yes, breakfast, and not a donut). It doesn’t have to be a lot, but there is too much scientific evidence that breakfast helps with energy levels and weight control to go against that advice.

Do I hear protests that this will take too much time? How much time do you think it takes: 30 minutes?

That would be ideal, but you can do a decent job with even 15 minutes. And trading 15 minutes of sleep for being a lot less tired during the day seems like a good decision to me. 

This is not a blog about nutrition, but since breakfast brings up such a mental roadblock for some people, it might be helpful to list some quick suggestions in the next post.

Sure we can reduce stress for a while, go on vacation or even, if you want to get fancy, do biofeedback sessions, but those things don’t last; they don’t solve most of our lives. We know this from experience.

 We also believe that we don’t have space in our schedules to squeeze in time for stress-reducing practices. If we tried to meditate, a lot of us would probably spend the time going over our to-do lists. Dr. Cooper acknowledges that reality and suggests a number of techniques that can be fitted into our modern lives.

According to the author, we have more than one kind of energy. Here are the four that he lists, along with their opposites:

Calm (being in the flow; low tension and high energy) vs. tense (caffeine and adrenaline -deadline rush)  energy

Active (alert, resilient, and moving) vs. reserved (immobile) energy

Sensory (present, aware, engaged in life) vs. routine (in a rut) energy

Heartfelt (meaningful) vs. surface (shallow) energy

To revitalize our life, we need to the levels of all four energy types, and Dr. Cooper gives 21 different tools to do so. I’ll give examples of these tools in the next posts.