Motivation for Downshifters in 4 easy stages
By Sally Lever
Are you committed to downshifting or de-stressing your life but can’t find the motivation you need to take the first step? Are there some external factors in your life, such as hefty mortgage repayments or an unsupportive partner that you feel are preventing you from realising your dream? Some conventional methods for moving ourselves forward in situations such as these often fall short on staying power and realism, so I’ve come up with an alternative approach.
The Problem
Entrenched Habits. I believe the biggest single factor that keeps us in a high stress, high paced lifestyle when we know it is not doing us any good is our habits. For most of us who have been raised in the West, this is so deeply entrenched that we rarely stop to even question whether there is another way. Habits such as spending hours each day commuting, racing against the clock, writing “to do” lists that do not include time to rest or eating on the run have become a way of life that can seem like a serious challenge to break.
Comfort Zone. You may well have already heard of the term “comfort zone”. Our personal collection of habits, favourable or not, are what makes up our individual comfort zones. That’s the irony of this situation and we remain in our comfort zones, acting mostly out of our habits, because it feels comfortable and familiar, not because it’s necessarily the best thing for us, our friends and loved ones or the planet.
Waking up. The first sign that we are starting to wake up to our dilemma is when we start to become aware of our behaviour and it’s detrimental effects and question the reasoning behind it. For some people a moment of intense stress triggers this realisation, for others it is a more gradual and evolving sense of a new perspective.
Conventional Wisdom on Changing Habits
Will power. Will power is when we force ourselves to act despite what our values may be telling us. When we are engaging our will power, we are likely to force extra tasks into the time available expending even more energy on projects and activities that are not helpful to us. This just leads to more stress. First we need to free up some space and time in which to address how we want our life to change.
Metamorphosis - a new view.
Apparently, when a caterpillar changes into a butterfly, rather than the butterfly growing out of the caterpillar, the caterpillar disintegrates into a kind of chemical soup inside the chrysalis and it is out of this soup that the butterfly emerges. In a similar way, for us to change our lifestyle in a way that is sustainable (i.e. robust, self-contained and long-lived) we need to completely break down our old decision-making process and come up with some totally different approaches to motivating ourselves.
The Four Stages
There are other, much easier and more pleasant ways of motivating ourselves to change our lives for the better and I’ve devised a 4 stage process to help you.
1) Responsibility
Taking responsibility for changing our lives is all about deciding to respond rather than react to situations we find ourselves in. Ultimately, the individual choices we make at all the little crossroads we encounter through our days and weeks, determine which route our life will take. When we react to situations, we act out of habit without questioning why we make the choices we make. On the other hand, when we respond to situations, we question our habits and engage more consciously with making new choices. We can then make choices that are more appropriate for the person we are now.
So, this is about deciding to take control of our life as it is now rather than reacting in accordance with our conditioning from the past.
Since it is our thoughts that determine our actions, we can choose to stop being the victims of our unconscious actions and instead be the master of our conscious choices.
2)Re-view
Who are we now and who do we want to become?
What we do in the present will determine who we become in the future. If you don’t believe me then carry out a personal audit of just one major aspect of your life e.g. your physical health, and notice to what extent the state of your health now has been determined by the decisions you’ve made in the past about what to eat, how to exercise and when and how to relax. If your physical health is currently not at it's best and you find the audit a bit depressing, you might like to focus instead on the opportunities you have to accept how you are now and to make improvements from this point on. Make a written note of your thoughts and keep them ready for stages 3 and 4.
3)Renewal
The most important part of the renewal stage is the discovery of our real needs through being more aware and sensitive to them. This is different to being aware of what others tell us we need to be and do. It’s about knowing at our very core what it is that’s important to us.
With my personal coaching clients I will do what is known as a values elicitation exercise at this point. Once we know our core values – what really makes us tick, not what we’d like other people to think makes us tick! – then we can distinguish between where we’re forcing ourselves to change and where we’re feeling inspired to change.
This is key – the difference between coercion and inspiration -, because we can then be more honest with ourselves about what drives us and where our strengths and weaknesses lie. The next step then involves nurturing, co-ordinating and harnessing our personal resources for maximum effect.
In starting out on a lifestyle change in this way, we are moving from a disciplinary approach to a visionary approach. One of the things that I encourage my clients to do to support themselves at this stage is to find out what kind of material inspires them and then to include a little bit of this in their lives every single day. For example, this might be spending time in nature or reading inspirational material or painting or playing music or meditating. Do take some time to reflect on what inspiration material is for you and then carry this knowledge into the next stage.
4)Re-create
What you need to create will become evident once you have made the time to complete stages 1-3. The inspiration and truths you unveil will point towards some new possibilities for you to explore. Then you can put together, piece by piece, a new regimen – not imposed but something that will work naturally and authentically for you. You’ll know that you’ve reached this point when you feel enthusiastic and energised about what’s about to happen.
From this point, I would suggest that you build one new decision at a time into your daily and weekly regime. For example, suppose you’ve decided to buy your food from local suppliers rather than through a supermarket, your first new decision might be to pay a weekly visit to your nearest farmers’ market, buy what you can from your grocery list from there and then only buy the balance from your usual supermarket.
Conclusion
Conventional wisdom tells us that in order to achieve something great, such as downshifting, we need to apply some kind of force. These 4 easy stages offer us an easier, more realistic and enjoyable alternative, fuelled by our inspiration rather than by coercion.
© Sally Lever 2007 www.sallylever.co.uk
Sally Lever is a Sustainable Living Coach who specializes in supporting and inspiring those who are downshifting or otherwise moving towards a more sustainable way of life. She offers one-to-one coaching, teleclasses in “How to step off the treadmill” and a free email newsletter.
This article was posted by Sally Lever
