I find it quite hard to get many things done when working all day and then trying to be creative, do exercise, be a great wife, friend, sister, daughter and look after the home. I am so grateful for everything I have that I get overwhelmed when I think I may not be making the most of everything.
I stumbled across Olga Degtyareva's blog while looking for ideas or inspiration for prioritizing my work and found a whole lot more... I love Olga's true, honest and absolutely helpful advice to being productive and accomplished. She gives examples through her own experience and explains how she came about her learning's.
Olga Degtyareva is an award-winning research scientist and a mother of two who blogs about peaceful productivity at our workplace. Her weekly Productivity Insights ezine is published every Friday. If you are willing to start increasing productivity at your work place while feeling happier and more on purpose then join Olga's community at http://olgadegtyareva.com.
I read her article "Turning around your limiting beliefs" and found it very inspirational for overcoming my own obstacles that hold me back from accomplishing my hearts desire, work projects or anything else I want or need to do.
Turning Around Your Limiting Beliefs - by Olga Degtyareva
One way of looking at your productivity and creativity is to find out what you need to do or get in order to achieve your goals.
There is a different approach to a productive accomplishment of your goals. It is to look at what we need to let go of to unblock and enable the flow of our productivity and creativity in the direction of our goals. It is to look at the most limiting beliefs and mindsets that stop us propelling towards our goals.
The truth is that to be successful you need to recognise and then release your assumptions about yourself and your ability to accomplish what you want. The truth is that we create obstacles for ourselves believing the limiting thoughts we have about ourselves and our abilities.
The more you become aware of your thoughts, the more you realise how limited you are by your assumptions. The more you will be able of release them or even better turn them around into empowering statements! :-)
Let’s look at some examples of limiting beliefs to give you an idea so that you start identifying you own.
When you think about your goal or desire, do you find yourself saying: “I won’t manageit time wise (so I won’t even bother starting)”. Or “Do you know HOW LONG it is going to take me to accomplish it? (So I won’t even try…)”
Yes you might think, there is just not enough time to achieve everything you need to achieve for your dream to become a reality. Especially when you want to achieve something that is not your main project at work. When the only way to achieve your goal is by working on it in small windows of time you get here and there, in between working on your main project.
So what happens if you belief this assumption? You don’t even start working towards your aim! And in a year’s time you find yourself in the same spot as you are now, far away from realising your goal.
The first step to overcoming this obstacle is to ask yourself: “Is it true?” (This question is the backbone of The Work of Byron Katie, check it out. I am a huge fan of her work but this is subject for another article :-))
Most probably your answer to this question would be No, it is not true.
Now turn around this belief into something like this: “I have all the time in the world to make my dream become a reality”. Is this true, or even truer?
With this thought you are empowered to use every small window of time for working towards your goal, and in a year’s time you’ll find yourself much closer to your dream.
Plus you’ll have all the benefits of living your passion and feeling happier and more on purpose while you are working on making your dream become reality.
This is exactly what I found when I started working on building my website and blog on Peaceful Productivity for Creative Types, using every half an hour here and there available between my research projects at Uni and spending time with my two children.
Another limiting belief you might recognise in your thought patterns is this one. “I’ll be sorry for the time and money wasted when I fail”. This was certainly the one that was stopping me from moving forward. You can turn it around into an empowering thought such as “There is no failure only feedback”. You may come up with something else.
An example that I personally found very useful was to turn around “I don’t have enough knowledge and resources to succeed” into “I find all the resources I need to succeed as I move along and I learn everyday everything I need to know”.
Start now by looking deep inside you to find those thought patterns and beliefs that stop you in your movement towards your goal. You can write down your limiting beliefs, as my coach Christine Kane made me do, for which I am so grateful to her :-) Give each of the limiting beliefs your full attention and find a turn-around. Then post the list of your turn-arounds somewhere you can see them to empower yourself on a daily basis on your way to success.
Happy accomplishing!
