Things I DONT LIKE!

One thing that has surprised me since I became a life coach, is how often people don’t know what they want.

Seriously, it seems people want changed but don’t really know what change or how to find out what it is they truly want.  I would asked them to make a list of things they like or what they would like their life to look like but without some jogging from me, people would generally get stuck quite quickly. So, I decided to go about this a different way.

I now ask them to make a list of all the

things they DONT LIKE!

Boy oh boy, does this list grow fast and furiously.   It seems the general negative mind set most of us have, can easily list things we dislike. In fact things jump into our minds very quickly and it can end up being quite a long list.

So as a weekend exercise I thought you might like to try this too.

Spend just a few quite minutes this weekend jotting down ALL the things that you do not like.  Don’t judge yourself or try to edit as you write, just write it down and BE HONEST with yourself

It might include things like:-

• “I don’t like not having enough money to pay my bills”
• “I don’t like bullies”
• “I don’t like mushrooms”
• “I don’t like my boss /job”
• “I don’t like being overweight”
• “I don’t like being unfit”
• “I don’t like people being hungry”
• “I don’t like running the kids all over town”
• “I don’t like not having a social life”

So just let the Don’t Likes flow, what ever they are.  It does not matter whether you think you can do anything about any of it…………just write it down.

Once you have finished this large list (Oh I promise you it will be large).  Then you can start to break it up into general groups and it might look something like this:-

Group 1 – Global issues

• I don’t like bullies
• I don’t like people being hungry

Group 2 – Family issues

I don’t like driving the kids all over town

• I don’t like not being able to pay my bills

Group 3 – Personal issues

• I don’t like being overweight /unfit
• I don’t like my Boss /Job
• I don’t like not having a social life
• I don’t like mushrooms

(This may not be the way you would group, you might want to try grouping by time frame needed to do something about them. For example: – Can do something about now; Can do something about his over the next year; Can do something about over long haul. What ever works best for your mind set is what is the right way for YOU to group thing.

So now you have it all the things you don’t like and they are grouped accordingly. What would be a good place to start?

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I like to look at this in terms of what is most important to you RIGHT NOW? What would make the biggest change to your mindset / life. if you tackled it right away?

Using the above examples you might feel that being overweight / unfit is a good place to start but before you head off to the gym or grocery store try to answer this:-

Why you are overweight /unfit in the first place?

Are you simply lazy or is it perhaps just a symptom of not liking your job OR not liking driving the kids all over town OR even, not liking the fact you are struggling to pay your bills?

IN order to succeed at anything you need to understand the root cause of the problem and tackle that as your priority.

So if we again use the above lists, if you look at the FAMILY issues, you may find that ‘driving the kids all over town’ is the root cause because :-

• It costs so much in fuel & fees for clubs/teams and makes paying the bills harder.
• It costs too much in terms of your time & means you have no time to exercise.
• It means you have no social life, as you’re always on call for the kids.

Notice the bits I have highlighted:-

Costs so much – no time to exercise – always on call.

(These are all pretty powerful reasons you may not be exercising enough).

So in this case, as a Coach I might be suggesting that you would start by trying to deal with this FAMILY issue first.  Some reorganising of schedules, some better sharing of the families time and resources (money, car) may in fact free up both time and money; enough to allow you to get that exercise and get fit, which in term may help your weight and even your social life.

Sometimes the order in which we tackle problems is key

to how successful we are at achieve the results we want.

I hope you have enjoyed doing this exercise and I hope it helps you to understand what the underlying causes of your problems may be and how to find what motivates you so you can begin to understand – What it is you truly want.

Coach Lin