Practice Makes...

By Amy Phillips-Gary

Practice makes perfect-- no, that's such a loaded word.

Practice helps bring about change, but it can be difficult to actually initiate and then stick to it.

I remember loathing sitting down at the piano each day to practice as I was growing up. This was most definitely a source of conflict between my mom and I.

Today, I goad my own self to practice various things and I experience similar, though internal, struggle.

For example, I'm all charged up about breathing lately.

I'm reading a wonderful book called Conscious Breathing: Breathwork for Health, Stress Release, and Personal Mastery by Gay Hendricks and I am convinced that, as the author asserts, the physical, mental, emotional and even spiritual aspects of my life can improve by breathing deeply, slowly and diaphragmatically more of the time.

The challenge is, I have pretty much always been a mouth breather. According to Hendricks (and my own observations), mouth breathing not only allows more unfiltered air into my body, it also tends to be shallower and limited to the chest.

Practicing conscious breathing has become a new goal for me. Each and every day-- throughout the day-- I am trying to remember to pause and pay attention to my breathing. When I do this, I deliberately breathe through my nose and drop my breath down.

As much as I want to re-learn how to breathe, life often comes swooping in and I find myself falling back into old patterns. I realize that I am sucking in air via my mouth when I get busy, stressed or am even just zoning out.

You might not care much about the way that you breathe. But it's quite likely that there are habits that you would like to change.

Practicing is the best way that I know of to bring about the change you seek.

Right now, you probably are hearing that amorphous “parent” out there telling you that it's time to practice which is absolutely the LAST thing you want to do.

I'm with you. At first glance, practice sounds like no fun, hard work and downright boring.

You are always practicing something.

When you really think about this, however, each one of us is always practicing something.

In the dictionary, the word “practice” is defined as: “a habitual or customary performance” and also as: “repeated performance or systematic exercise for the purpose of acquiring skill or proficiency.”

As you brush your teeth, you are practicing dental hygiene. When tell your children and your partner that you love them, you are practicing expressing how you feel.

When you tell yourself that you can't follow through with a particular aspiration because you are too old, don't have the right training or education or simply can't make room for that in your life...you are practicing.

We all practice behaviors, ways of being and beliefs all of the time.

So when you want to make a change, yet you feel resistant to actually incorporating this new way into your life, remind yourself that you already are practicing-- you are just practicing the habit that is holding you where you possibly no longer want to remain.

It's a mind game, I know.

But if re-thinking the whole notion of practice helps you to motivate yourself, why not try it?

Practice is a program or a re-programming.

As I sit here at my computer dealing with not enough sleep, a kid with a sore throat who needs my attention and an intention to accomplish a certain amount of work, I am given the opportunity to practice.

I can unconsciously rely on my accustomed manner of breathing to merely stay alive or I can create some space in my awareness for conscious breathing and potentially increase my vitality.

It's truly a moment-by-moment decision-making process.

As you know, with just about anything you've ever learned in your life, the more experience you have doing a new skill or action, the more naturally it happens for you.

Think of practice as a program that you are running in your mind/body. When you are trying to change an already established habit, it's a re-programming.

In either case, as you repeat this new or different way of being, thinking or acting, it becomes imprinted in your body memory. New neural connections can form in your brain as you practice this preferred habit.

Today I encourage you to recognize that all of your thoughts and actions are practices that you can choose to change or to continue, depending on what you desire.

It's up to you and your willingness to practice.

Launch Yourself into the 2010 of Your Dreams

By Amy Phillips-Gary

As I hang up my brand-new calendar for 2010 and prepare to welcome in a fresh decade, I can't help but think about what I want to do differently in the coming year.

Yes, I'm thinking about New Year's resolutions.

You might be doing the same thing. Many of us greet the new year with hopeful and ambitious lists of undesirable habits we're finally going to kick and the new, healthier ones we're going to adopt instead.

And many of us do begin to make changes-- at least for a little while. Sometimes we make a few changes but then fall back into those “bad” habits and tendencies after a period of time.

When the months fly by and we find ourselves back to late December again facing those same old limiting ways of reacting to life, it can feel frustrating, irritating and downright depressing.

This year, I'm re-thinking the whole New Year's resolutions thing. Instead of only focusing in on what I'm planning to change for the upcoming year, I'm going to devote significant attention to what I want to keep on doing.

Rather than my usual intention to throw out the old while resolving to re-fashion the bulk of the way I live my life, I'm going to create space for honoring where I am and what I'm doing that IS working the way that I want it to.

I actually believe that approaching a new year-- a new decade even-- from a base of acknowledgment and self-appreciation will help me to more effectively move into the changes that I desire. These changes may even come about with greater ease and be longer-lasting.

A funny thing about making changes...

Of course, I'm aware that my diet could use some cleaning up, I continue to be a bit of a perfectionist and my sense of patience with others can certainly use some bolstering.

There are tons of things about my usual habits that I'd like to improve upon.

What I've found in the past, however, is that I'm more motivated to take a risk and respond in a different way-- especially when it comes to well-practiced habits-- when I am in a place of honoring and appreciation.

My friend Mollie Hannon has been talking with some friends and I about the importance of making completions for the current year before moving on to the next. She even found a wonderful ritual online to do so.

Perhaps doing a completion ritual like this that involves you acknowledging the strides that you made toward your goals will help you to better appreciate where you are.

You might not be absolutely happy with what you achieved or did in 2009, but when you really stop and look at where you've been and where you are right now, there are bound to be some healthy and pleasing aspects about you and the choices that you've made.

By all means, make that list of what you aspire to do differently and what you want to manifest in the coming year and beyond.

But be sure to also include on that list what you intend to keep on doing, what you can appreciate about your current habits.

Build on all of those beneficial practices that you might not be noticing-- or giving yourself credit for. If you can't think of anything to include on a list like this, look harder.

Use your list of acknowledgments and self-appreciations as a sort of launch pad to propel yourself toward the future of your dreams. You might just be closer than you think

Find Your Edge and Upgrade You

By Amy Phillips-Gary

All week long I've been writing about upgrading your life and yourself in various ways. Upgrading your home, physical fitness and diet were specific areas covered. As I finish up this weekly theme, I want to include an important side note...

Nothing is wrong with you or your life!

Often, talk about making an improvement is accompanied by an implied (or overtly stated) assumption that the aspect of you or your life that is intended for change is somehow deficient or even bad.

Yes, there are certainly habits and tendencies that do not support you and the way you want to live. But when you attempt to motivate yourself from a negative approach or assumption, any improvement experienced usually doesn't last-- or it is tinged with fear or self-castigation.

This is no upgrade.

A truly sustaining and expansive upgrade stems from the reminder that you are perfect as you are...imperfections and all. You can affirm to yourself that you are inherently good and capable AND that you'd like to create an even better life and a more enhanced you.

From this place of essentially coming to peace with where you are and being clear about where you want to go, you can make that upgrade and even feel happy and fulfilled along the way.

Find your edge.

We've all got an edge. This is the symbolic boundary beyond which we are uncomfortable or perhaps we even blatantly refuse to go. It is the invisible-- yet seemingly iron-clad-- line that keeps us stuck where we are.

I encourage you to find your inner edge and then explore beyond it.

You may be accustomed to biting back what you really want to say to a close family member, for example. Perhaps you just want to keep the peace and over the years you've become really adept at doing this. The trouble is, sometimes your self-induced silence means that you feel hurt or disrespected.

Maybe speaking out and potentially “making waves” is a really scary prospect for you. In your mind, who knows what would happen: “Will this person I care about leave me?” “What if he or she hurts me even more if I talk about how I truly feel?” “It's just not safe to speak up!”

This is an edge.

When you are alone, think about a time when you met up with your edge. Clues could include: a contraction in your stomach, stiffening shoulders and back, headaches that seem to come on suddenly or a tendency to leave the moment by becoming distracted or unfocused.

As you meet up with your edge, get curious about the situation that was (or still is) going on. Was a particular person involved? Was a certain setting or specific words said? Gather this information and try to identify what the most loaded trigger is for you.

Ask yourself how you might replay the situation if you had no edge.

Explore in your mind what might happen, for instance, if you were honest with this family member about how you feel when he or she says those words to you. Include as unbiased a list of possible options as you can formulate. How does it feel in your body to finally speak up?

Communicating with integrity and openness does not necessarily mean that you are combative or that you will instigate an argument, by the way. There are many ways to talk about how you are feeling and what you want that can actually promote connection.

The point to this exercise is to gently move yourself past your edge-- whatever that might be.

In the safety of your inner self, demonstrate that you do have the choice to step past that self-created boundary and then try a new way of communicating, acting and being.

This is an upgrade upon which you can build and grow and flourish.
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*Personal Growth Planet blog is taking part in National Blog Posting Month (http://www.nablopomo.com/). Every weekday in November, you'll find daily blogs linked by weekly themes.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

By Amy Phillips-Gary

Change is inevitable.

Change happens all of the time, every single day for each of us. No matter how boring and predictable we think our lives are, we-- along with everyone else-- are in constant flux.

Time passes. We get older. Seasons change and the Earth evolves.

In our day-to-day lives, changes are happening too-- on mundane levels as well as those more radical.

We finish one project at work and move on to another one. We make career changes; we end marriages or relationships and we eventually fall in love again.

If change is all around us-- and happening constantly within us-- you'd think we be quite comfortable with it.

Why do so many of us fall apart in the face of change?

I tend to get bored easily, so one might assume that I thrive on change. Not so. I have a habit of becoming nervous, fearful and even controlling when changes are afoot in my life.

There is something about change that feels utterly out of my control-- and, frankly, it is to some degree.

Changes taunt us with an allusion of powerlessness.

I think that this is one reason why change has been so difficult for me in the past. I am reminded of not only my mortality, but also how small and insignificant I am.

I don't mean this as a put-down. Every single one of us is truly very small and insignificant.

At the same time, I believe we are all inter-linked and extensions of an over-arching whole-- Source Energy or God. We are all-powerful, amazing beings even as we are tiny little specks in an immense Universe.

Whether or not we stand tall and confidently move forward toward what we want in life or crumple to the ground and stay stuck in a defensive posture is totally up to each of us.

We can be both directed and allowing. We can be in charge of our lives while, at the same time, we also let go and move with the flow.

Sometimes the false comfort of what we've always known and done causes us suffering and makes us resist change.

As much as a habit or tendency hurts you or the ones you love, you might stubbornly cling to that way of being simply because it's what you know.

Too often, we stay in jobs, relationships or situations in which we are not thriving (or worse) only because we are terrified that we can't come up with anything better.

And who can blame any of us?

We look around and admit that, yes, we are unhappy and dissatisfied. But there is a dark, blank unknowable quality to the alternatives we dare to consider.

There is a certain comfort in being miserable where we are-- and so we tend to stay there.

Stay Present & Focused

Being in the present moment is one way to stop resisting change and begin flowing with it toward what you want.

When you notice you are anxious or worried about changes going on, ask yourself if you are present.

Too often, I project myself into some future place of my fears when I am faced with the unknown.

Instead, I could notice what I am doing and consciously bring myself back to the present.

I can choose not to plan or cast ahead too far into the future when I feel overwhelmed or powerless.

I can remind myself of the decisions I can make right here and right now. And I can release my anxiety about all of the rest.

At the same time, I can also keep myself focused on the vision for what I ultimately want.

When faced with a change, create room in your attention for a clear vision of the outcome or experience you'd like to have.

You can be where you are, making decisions in the here and now. And you can also maintain a vision for what you'd like to encounter next.

After all, if you are charged up and excited about your future and you keep making choices that line you up with that future, it's less likely that you will drag your heels or short-circuit your own efforts.

Stand Behind Your Choices

So many of us speed along toward a goal and then encounter some obstacle (often an unexpected change) which seems to throw us totally off-course.

We then may feel insecure about the grand vision we had. The excitement is shattered and we often feel lost and, yet again, powerless and ineffectual.

When this happens, it's time to check in with yourself and decide what you want to do next. As you do so, stand behind your choices.

No matter how much of a mistake you think you've made, stand tall and confident with dignity and have the courage to get back on the path you were on or turn toward a new one.

Yes, change happens.

And isn't it wonderful that no matter what a moment or situation is like, it can always get better?