 “I’m too busy” is a phrase I hear often and a phrase I’ve even said to myself when I was having trouble moving forward with something. The reality is that we all have so many tasks and responsibilities, and it makes sense that we might feel overwhelmed or overworked at times. With that, you may still be wondering how to make the best of your busy schedule so that you can still move forward with your goals and responsibilities. So how do we make the very best of our busy schedules? Here are three things you should do. Take Inventory Of Your Time The first thing to do is to find out what you are doing with your time. If you have never taken inventory of your time before, you may find that there are pockets of time throughout your day or week that may need to be modified. It's possible that during that time, you are watching TV, or scrolling on social media, or in general doing something that doesn’t align well with your goals and priorities. While these are not bad things, instead it's likely that you may be doing some of these things in excess and can reduce time spent doing them. Discontinue The Things That Don’t Matter The second thing to do is to make a decision on the things that don’t matter, and to discontinue or reduce time spent with those things. In other words, the things that do not align with your goals or priorities should not take up so much of your time. For example, if you’ve taken inventory of your time and realize that you are watching TV 4-5 hours of your day, or have been on social media for a similar amount of time, you might find that reducing or discontinuing that activity will give you more time to devote to other things. If you’re having trouble deciding what should be discontinued, really ask yourself this question: “What are my goals and priorities right now?” Ideally, the things you spend the most time on should align well with your goals and priorities. Prioritize The Things That Do Matter The final thing to do is to begin to prioritize the things that do matter. In other words, do more of the things that align well with your goals and priorities. After you’ve taken inventory of your time and discontinued the things that don’t matter, you will likely notice that there is more time than you realized and it can now be used for the things that will truly move you forward. Are you feeling ready to form better habits and work toward your personal development goals? To book your personal development consultation or talk more with Dr. Amber Thornton about personal development, book your FREE 15 minute consultation here.
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1/29/2020 0 Comments How to Break Bad Habits “How do I break bad habits?” is a question I get asked a lot. We all have “bad habits” or habits that don’t serve us well. Maybe they are unhealthy or they might limit your productivity. Your bad habit might even interfere with your personal growth or performance in some way. If you’re noticing that you have a habit that does any of those things, it may be time to break it. Breaking a bad habit is very similar to building new habits, except in reverse. As we know, building a new habit involves removing barriers, obstacles, and friction. However, in breaking bad habits, we need to do the exact opposite. That means placing barriers, obstacles, and friction in between you and the habit you are hoping to break. This small act then makes it more difficult to engage in the habit you are trying to break. Like many of you, I too have had several habits that I’ve needed to break. Most recently, I’ve developed a habit of eating too many of my absolute favorite dessert treats at the end of my day. Once I realized this was becoming a problem, I decided that instead of eating 2-3 of these per night, I’d rather limit it to one. What I decided to do was remove my desserts from the freezer in my kitchen and place them all in the freezer in my basement. What this did was place a barrier between myself and the desserts, and as a result it decreased the likelihood of myself making a second or third trip to the basement for more. Here’s another example. Maybe you have a habit of hitting “snooze” in the morning when your alarm goes off. You set your alarm for 6am, hit snooze one too many times, and before you know it- it's 7am. How can you break this habit? Think of ways to put more barriers, obstacles, and friction between you and the snooze button. This might mean removing your alarm from within arm’s reach and moving it further away, i.e. across the room or in a different room completely. This would place a barrier, obstacle, or friction between you and the habit you want to break. Are you feeling ready to form better habits and work toward your personal development goals? To book your personal development consultation or talk more with Dr. Amber Thornton about personal development, book your FREE 15 minute consultation here. 1/28/2020 0 Comments Forming New Habits, Pt. 2 Now that we know willpower is not enough to form new habits, I want to talk about two more strategies that can help you to form and continue to strengthen new habits. RewardsYes, rewards! No, they are not just for children. Rewards can be a very healthy and strategic way to help you to form a new habit. Research tells is that immediate rewards are excellent for helping to reinforce a new habit. In other words, when you engage in a new behavior and you want it to become a habit, rewarding yourself immediately after engaging in the behavior will help your brain to learn that this is a good thing to do and that you should keep doing it. For example, if you want to create a habit of drinking more water and you plan to reward yourself at the end of the month for meeting your water goals, the likelihood of you meeting this goal is low. This is because you are forcing yourself to wait an entire month to experience the rewards of all your hard work. Instead, I would recommend that you reward yourself more frequently. Ideally, the reward should be small, frequent, yet enticing enough to keep you motivated and encouraged about your new habit. Temptation BundlingOne trick that works extremely well is “temptation bundling”. What this means is forming a new habit by bundling the behavior you want to become a habit with something you already really enjoy. The trick? You are only allowed to engage in the thing you really enjoy when you are actively engaged in the behavior you are working to make habit. Another example: If you want to develop a new habit of exercising and you know that you love listening to a particular podcast, that means that when you exercise, you will be able to treat yourself by listening to your favorite podcast. However, you are only allowed to listen to the podcast while exercise. Temptation bundling takes a bit of self-discipline, however it is extremely effective and will definitely help you to form and strengthen that new habit. Are you feeling ready to form better habits and work toward your personal development goals? To book your personal development consultation or talk more with Dr. Amber Thornton about personal development, book your FREE 15 minute consultation here. 1/5/2020 0 Comments Forming New Habits, Pt. 1 It is completely a myth that new habits are formed because of willpower. We often hear people say “I just don’t have enough willpower to make this change.” Well...that's not entirely true. The most important thing to consider when attempting to form new habits is the actual science behind forming new habits. The thing about habits is that they are very automatic and unconscious. We generally don’t think much when we are engaging in our most solidified habits, which is why it has very little to do with willpower. That is the goals when forming new habits. We want this behavior to become automatic and unconscious, and there are many researched based strategies that can help us achieve this. This article will talk about two strategies that will help you form a new habit. Remove Barriers and Obstacles The first thing to consider when attempting to form new habits is the level of difficulty. If there are a lot of barriers between you and the change you want to make, or if there is a lot of friction while you are attempting to make this change, then the likelihood is that this change may not form into a habit. It's best to think about how to take the level of difficulty from high to low. How do we remove all the barriers that live between you and this change so that there does not need to be a lot of excessive effort. For example, if you want to form a habit of going to the gym more frequently, you should choose a gym that is 1 mile away from your house instead of the gym that is 10 miles away. This is because it is easier to get to the closest gym. In this scenario, time and distance are barriers and we want to eliminate them as much as possible. Another example- If you want to form a habit of drinking more water, you need to make sure you have a water bottle readily available to you at all times. You shouldn’t leave your water bottle downstairs or in a different room. Keeping the bottle or other means of accessing water nearby makes it easier to actually consume the water and removes any barriers related to inaccessibility to water. Repetition Is Key The second thing to consider when attempting to form a new habit is repetition, or how repetitively are you engaging in this change. If you are only engaging in this new changed behavior once a week, once a month, or even less frequent, the likelihood of this becoming a habit is very low. However, if you are engaging in this new change frequently, i.e. multiple times per day or at least once a day, then the likelihood of this change becoming a habit is even higher. So repetition is key! We want this change to be something that is occurring over and over again until it becomes more automatic and unconscious. Are you feeling ready to form better habits and work toward your personal development goals? To book your personal development consultation or talk more with Dr. Amber Thornton about personal development, book your FREE 15 minute consultation here. 12/23/2019 0 Comments The Best & Worst Ways to Manage Stress Let’s talk about STRESS. Whenever I’m working with therapy clients or personal development consultation clients, the one thing that always comes up is “how can I better manage my stress?” The reason that it seems to be such a popular topic is because we all have stress. We all feel busy, we are all taking care of our families, or we are working hard on our jobs. Hence, stress is inevitable but the real issue is that we don’t always know the best ways to manage that stress. Here are three of the most common ways to manage stress, starting with the least effective to most effective. Damage ControlThis is an approach to stress management that I commonly see however this is not a strategy that I would recommend. Often, we don’t notice the stress that we are experiencing until its too late or we don’t take the time to properly address it while it's manageable. When this is the case, we are later forced to manage it after it's already caused damage. This usually comes about when we are burned out, feeling exhausted, or feeling physically, mentally, or emotionally unwell. In-The-MomentThis approach might include practicing breathing techniques, doing mindfulness meditation, or any other practice designed to momentarily bring down your stress level. While this is more effective than doing “damage control,” it is still not the most effective approach to managing stress. What you might notice is that “in-the-moment” stress management feels very effective in the short run but over the course of time, it's not as effective because it may not manage stress in the long run. Preventative & ProactiveBeing preventative and proactive is absolutely the most effective way to manage stress. This generally involves practicing healthy habits, lots of self-care, setting healthy boundaries, and a lot of self-discipline. All of this allows us to build healthy habits that helps to buffer the negative impacts of stress over the course of time. In life, we are going to experience stress no matter how good things may feel. Yet, if we can be preventative and proactive in our approach to manage stress, we will see the very best outcomes when it comes to our personal well-being and development. Are you feeling ready to better manage stress and work toward your personal development goals? Check out the video below to learn more about personal development consultation and how it may help you in meeting your personal development goals! To book your personal development consultation or talk more with Dr. Amber Thornton about personal development, book your FREE 15 minute consultation here.  It's really important for us to have BOUNDARIES. I know that we are hearing that word a lot more now. Even with the topic and idea of boundaries becoming more popular, sometimes we still aren’t sure where to start when it comes to setting healthy boundaries. The very first step we need to take when learning how to set healthy boundaries is to learn where our boundaries need to live. It may sound simple but it can be complex. It's important to take some time out to learn where our boundaries are so that we are able to effectively communicate them to other people. What I encourage you to do is take a moment to reflect on all the things that feel good and all the things that don’t feel good. As you notice things that do not feel good, that is an indication of where a boundary may need to be set. For example, if you notice that you attend events late in the evening and starting to realize that you don’t enjoy being out that late, maybe that means there needs to be a boundary set around when or what time of day you will attend those types events. As you start to learn more of what does and doesn't feel good for you, you then get to decide whether you are going to set a boundary or not! Boundary Setting Activity
I hope this helps you as you begin to set new healthy boundaries in your life! Are you feeling ready to establish healthy boundaries and work toward your personal development goals? Check out the video below to learn more about personal development consultation and how it may help you in meeting your goals for 2020! To book your personal development consultation or talk more with Dr. Amber Thornton about personal development, book your FREE 15 minute consultation here.  In my work with clients, one of the very first questions I like to ask is “What are the barriers or obstacles that have kept you from your personal development goals?” All of us will come across situations or circumstances that make it challenging to enhance or improve ourselves personally and we need to be able to identify those barriers so that they do not keep us from the growth we so rightfully need and deserve. As we prepare to move into a new decade, I want to be sure that we all know what is keeping us from the best version of ourselves, so here are the five biggest obstacles keeping you from your personal goals! Fear and DoubtWe are often so fearful and so doubtful that we have the ability to make changes that we desire in our lives. This fear and doubt sometimes leads us to not even try to meet our goals or make the changes we want to see. Ultimately, we are afraid of not succeeding, or fearful of failing. If fear and doubt are keeping you stuck and not working toward change and personal growth, it's definitely something you want to address so that you can move forward with your goals. The "Inner Critic"We might have an inner dialogue that is very chatty but also very negative. It may tell us that we don't deserve good things, that we aren’t worthy of working toward change, or that we shouldn’t even try to grow. This very critical inner dialogue also needs to be addressed in order to move forward with personal development goals. Very Large GoalsMany of us attempt to change too many things at one time in our pursuit to personal growth and development. This leads us to feel overwhelmed, frustrated, disappointed, and then we ultimately discontinue working toward our personal goal. Instead, it's better to start with one goal and add on as you make gradual progress toward that goal. Small and manageable goals are much better for working toward personal goals. ComplacencySometimes we are too complacent, and we only do the things that are familiar or comfortable. If we want to see change and grow, we have to do different things. Trying new things is hard and can be scary, but it's often what is needed in order to move forward toward personal growth. Not Asking for HelpLastly, the biggest thing that keeps us from meeting our personal development goals is that we do not ask for help. We often assume that we should be able to handle things on our own, or that we just aren't trying hard enough. This is false. There might be a family member, friend, significant other, colleague, or a peer who has exactly what we need to help. It is also okay to ask for professional help when you need it. Are you feeling ready to remove the obstacles and work toward your personal development goals? Check out the video below to learn more about personal development consultation and how it may help you in meeting your goals for 2020! To book your personal development consultation or talk more with Dr. Amber Thornton about personal development, book your FREE 15 minute consultation here. |
Dr. Amber ThorntonClinical Psychologist | Personal Development Consultant | Balanced Working Mama Coach | Speaker | Mental Health Expert Archives
March 2020
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