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How do you feel about what is around you in life?
What do you expect people, situations and things to provide to you?
So often we make statements like; ‘I don’t get any pleasure from. . . ‘, or ‘it/they no longer gives me what I want’, or ‘it doesn’t satisfy me.’
What are we really saying with this kind of statement and what are we telling ourselves when we say them?
This kind of statement reflects a perception that our satisfaction and pleasure is or is not provided by things outside of ourselves. This is not the case, no matter how much you want it to be.
It is however, a very common perception of life – that our emotional happiness is subject to people, places and things.
It may be rooted in our general tendency of not wanting to not assume total responsibility for ourselves but rather hope that our happiness and satisfaction will be provided to us. Or just an ignorance of our true capabilities for choosing and doing this ourselves, or most likely a combination of both.
The key is in who or what is creating your pleasure or satisfaction. The answer is you, not anything or anyone else.
People’s behavior and things do not come with any specific emotions attached that you must assume. You decide how you interpret what is around you.
You alone decide to be subject to what you perceive about something. Is it a positive or negative for you?
It does not come with this label, you attach the label, and then react accordingly based on your own established reactive thinking and behaviors.
For example, if you feel that your spouse or partner is no longer giving you pleasure; this is not really something that they can give you, but rather your perception of them and their behavior. They can’t make you feel or think anything, that is your choice.
So, it is not them, but you who have changed. Your perception of them and or your interpretation of it lead to your current feelings.
When you can come to this realization you will understand that you alone have the power and ability to feel happy and satisfied or upset and miserable with what and who is around you.
All that someone or something gives you is an opportunity to perceive, interpret and react based on your personal judgement.
A good clear example would be with owning an automobile. We get one primarily for the service it can provide us with traveling from place to place. And when this is occurring properly, as we see it, all is well and we are happy and satisfied with the car.
However, when a mechanical problem crops up and the vehicle does not operate properly, we tend to get upset – right.
Well, does a broken transmission or fuel pump project negative emotions that we must take on? Of course not.
The emotional feelings that we develop are completely of our own making, not vibrations given off by a broken auto part!
So, do you allow yourself to get upset by this or can you remain neutral? Either way you need to deal with the mechanical problem, it’s just a matter of how you direct yourself to feel about it.
This applies to all people, places and things – you decide, they don’t provide!
It has been stated many times that, your overall happiness in life is based on how you handle and deal with things rather than the thing itself.
Why drag yourself through anger, resentment, disappointment, and frustration over a broken auto part when you can deal with it just the same or easier, while remaining emotionally neutral about it and feel nothing?
It’s your choice, but only when you learn that you can make it and you actively do so based on your desired emotional feelings.
The sooner that you stop blaming the way you feel on outside people and things and admit that it is your responsibility and ability, you will realize more happiness in your life.
Your personal growth and development is largely based on your paying attention to how you are feeling about things and choosing to make adjustments in ways that better fit with the life you desire.
Just because you have been reacting in certain ways to specific people and things does not mean that you must continue. You can choose a new different ways that feel more enjoyable and with less stress, fear, or anger.
It’s up to you to do analysis of your emotional reactions and make any changes you feel would better support the life you want to enjoy day in and day out.
If you don’t get involved in how you feel and why, everything will go on as it has just fine without your input- is that what you want?
Start right now; take a look back at the last time you had some kind of negative feelings about a person, thing or situation. Look at it from the viewpoint that you are deciding how to emotionally react and that you can do it differently if you choose.
The more you notice times that you can do it differently and think of a new way, the sooner you will gradually develop the new ways to be your standard.
If you find it difficult to come up with new different ways of looking at things and reacting to them, look at what other people do that you admire.
Modeling people who behave in ways that you would like in your life is a powerful way to change quicker than you would trying to figure it all out on your own.
Change is the way of life and your choice – take it and enjoy more happiness and satisfaction.
Are you aware of the minute to minute stress responses that you experience, the little things that you do and feel as a stress response.
There are many seemingly little reaction that we grow accustomed to, so we don’t usually even notice them.
The racing heart rate,
Jittery stomach,
Nervousness,
Getting sweaty
Muscle tenseness,
Racing thoughts
Getting stuck on specific thoughts,
Heightened sensitivity to things and other people
Short temper,
Attitude more sour
Any and all of these can be associated with stress.
If you are perceptive, you can look at them as warning signs, letting you know that stress has been triggered and that you are reacting to them.
By making yourself aware of these short-term responses you can notice what you are responding to and assess for yourself why you are reacting as you do.
Then, you can think about other more appropriate non-stressful ways of looking at these things and adjust your reactions.
The first step to changing your responses is to notice them. You can’t make any changes to something you aren’t aware of.
Most of us are not accustomed to thinking about how we think, we just let it all happen as it may without any thought about managing it.
If there is anything that affects your life negatively from your automatic thought, it is stress response.
Paying attention to what you think and why you think as you do is a learned behavior. You will need to train yourself to do this if you want to get a handle on how you feel.
There is no question that you have the ability to do this — ALL humans do!
Just because you have not been aware of your thinking does not mean you don’t have the ability to do so.
You have the ability to take command of your thinking and behavior, you have the right to do so, you are worthy of doing so, your past has no bearing on your ability, in fact, doing so is what separates you from all other creatures. This is the key to all personal growth and development, the real power of being human.
Just because you have, up to this point allowed your existing programming to run the show unchecked, you can develop the habit of noticing how you think and choose to think in ways that support the life you want.
The reason I’m going over this point so much is that it is so very important that you develop the self-aware ability if you want to make any changes for yourself.
Changing your stress responses to something more positive is a two sided process. Both addressing your responses to specific triggers, plus adjusting the ways that you generally think about life in general and what goes on around you.
I will be giving you some ways to address both aspects of your thinking.
You can both – change the way you look at things and, adjust your exposure to certain triggers.
But, the first step is learning to be aware of your thinking, your perceptions and your reactions.
John
“The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power
of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.” — Aristotle
“What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness
of himself.” — Abraham H. Maslow
“I think self-awareness is probably the most important thing
towards being a champion.” — Billie Jean King
What is it going to take to change the level and kind of stress you experience?
When taking a look at how to do something about your stress, you have basically two choices.
You can manage it or you can reduce it.
Managing stress is learning to better cope with the stress. Essentially, how you look at it and why you react as you do.
And reducing it is when you change what precipitates the stress.
Can you remove yourself from the offending situation, or reduce your involvement?
In order to do anything about managing or reducing stress you must have substantial motivation.
You need to have a compelling reason or reasons to have things be different than they have been.
Your motivation needs to be strong enough to help you overcome the natural tendency to allow things to remain as they are.
This is similar to changing anything in your life, the motivation for the new or different thought and action must be more compelling than the way it now is.
Knowing your motivation for anything is key to changing it.
There is nothing you do without a reason. Everything has a reason even if you’re not aware of it.
When you see and understand why you think or do something, you have the real root of the behavior.
You may not be able to make sense out of why you think as you do because you did not consciously decide to do so. It may be something that your mind came up with as a way of understanding, dealing or coping with something.
In you mind, some justification for it had some relevance at one point in your life.
When you can identify the reason, you can then more easily develop reasons for not doing it that are opposite to the reasons for doing it.
It will take some effort, maybe some great effort, to change from what you are accustomed to doing habitually. This is why the strong reasons for something new is so important.
This will entail doing things you are not use to doing, and setting the time out to do them.
It will take doing something out of the ordinary in order to develop new thinking and behavior.
The way to stay stuck is to keep doing what you have always done and expect different results.
The fact that you have identified something that you want to be different indicates you are ready to make changes to it.
So, the first steps to doing something about living with too much stress are:
1) Notice that there is something you want to be different in your life.
2) Discover what your reasons or motivation is for doing what you do.
3) Decide how you DO want to think and act in that situation.
4) Come up with some compelling reasons why you want the new way.
Be prepared that it may be difficult to get to the reason why you feel the stress in a particular situation. Your mind may be blocking this from your view.
Sometimes your mind will attempt to protect you from something uncomfortable or it wants to protect things the way they are.
Keep asking yourself the question, WHY, and eventually with persistence you will get the answer.
Remember, the easy way is to leave everything alone, and the harder way is to make changes.
But you will not progress and grow in your life without change.
Change is the growth activity that many of us feel we should not have to do – it adds work to our life.
Really, change is life — without it you are stagnant.
Yes, change takes effort, but it is worth it.
Addressing your stress and changing its affect on you is a major growth step and you will gain huge benefits in all areas of your life for doing it.
Changing is not an overnight thing, it will likely take time and effort, which is why powerful compelling reasons for the new way are so important. You must have motivation to get yourself to stick with your change efforts.
John
“You can’t understand the world and how you respond to it until you
first know yourself. You can’t change the things you don’t like about
yourself until you search out the things that influence you and motivate
you and hurt you.” — Stedman Graham
“Change and growth take place when a person has risked himself
and dares to become involved with experimenting with his own
life.” — Herbert A. Otto
“What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness
of himself.” — Abraham H. Maslow
Continuing with more about stress here is more about understanding where it comes from and what you can do about it.
In order to be able to alter your stress and how it affects you, I think it’s important to get a clear understanding about how stress comes about, your beliefs and perceptions about it.
Seeing something in a new and different angle provides you with new insight and allows you more ability to work with it.
Stress comes from the way you think about something, not the thing happening.
The common notion is that stress is something that happens to you because of something occurring. But actually, stress is of your making.
It’s our reaction to a mental bind that we put ourselves in based on how we are interpreting something.
Usually this reaction includes our decision that something is not to our liking for some reason. It may be that we don’t want it to occur or that we’re unhappy that it’s occurring.
What I call the ‘mental bind’ is when your mind doesn’t know what to do about something.
It’s when you want something to be different than it is and you are either unsure of how to change it or you think you can’t do anything about it.
Another way to describe it is, any interference that disturbs the way we want things to be and that we would rather avoid.
You could use the common phrase, “between a rock and a hard place” to describe the place where stress
originates.
The stress comes out of the gap between your thoughts and feelings of what is, or might be, and what you want. It’s this difference that you react to.
Think about it, if you could snap your fingers and have anything and everything exactly the way you wanted, would you feel any stress?
Wayne Dyer says something that is appropriate to stress-
“When you change the way you look at things, the way you look at things will change.”
Most of us think that if only the things happening around us and people would change, that we would then look at things differently, not the case.
We can easily get stuck thinking this because there appears to be logic that supports this idea. For example, if no one ever fired anyone from a job, you would not need to worry and get stressed about it for yourself.
If no one ever got mad at you, you would not have to react to it.
But the problem with this logic is that things will continue to show up in your life for you to deal with and people will continue to be people. You and I can’t totally arrange our world in such a way that nothing not to our liking will occur. It’s our task to learn ways of handling these things
Sure, there are many things you can do to set up your life to be more of your liking and this will help in reducing your potential stress, but you still need to take a look at how you perceive things and then react to them if you want to live a low or no stress life.
The key here is to first realize that stress is of your making. You can change your reactions to things, you can change your interpretations of things and how you perceive them.
You can do something about it, It’s your choice to take command of your thinking and decide how you will look at things and react, or to continue allowing your existing programming to keep going as it will.
Look at yourself, your stress and seek to reveal it’s real source.
What specific thinking is behind it?
The seed of your stress is in your thinking.
John
Do you experience any stress?
Do you know where it comes from?
Well . . . I know you don’t really want to hear this, but it comes from you.
Your mind is the source of all your stress!
Think about it, does stress, or any emotional feeling, come pre-packaged with anything that occurs or that someone does?
We tend to think so, but it’s really our own individual judgement about something – not the thing itself.
Everything that happens or that someone does, is not equipped with something that forces us to react in a specific way – that’s our choice.
So, what about stress?
Stress is something that we each concoct for ourselves, with slight variations, but rooted in the same basis.
The root of stress seems to be lodged in the difference between what is going on now, has happened or may happen – and what you want or would rather have – or even are insisting on – in your mind.
Think about it. . .
You may not like what happened around you in the past or what you did in the past.
You may be afraid of what could or might happen.
You may not like something that is going on right now.
When you take on a difference of opinion about something and decide that you don’t like it – stress can develop.
Hold-on, are you saying I can’t have an opinion?
This is one of those “fine-line” places.
There is a fine line between having an opinion and wanting something versus being obsessed about it.
You can want something or have an opinion without letting the thought of it keep you up at night.
You don’t need to let yourself get irritated about your feelings about something.
The balance is in finding that fine line – wanting something and being able to live with something different.
This does not mean to give up on what you want either, but be OK with what is right now.
Stress is a choice- your choice.
I will be looking at stress for the next few weeks, it’s a huge topic and such a big part of life for many of us.
I would also like your input. What are your thoughts about stress, in general and your own?
Please give me your input below in the question section.
John
“Pain is a relatively objective, physical phenomenon; suffering is our psychological resistance to what happens. Events may create physical pain, but they do not in themselves create suffering. Resistance creates suffering. Stress happens when your mind resists what is…The only problem in your life is your mind’s resistance to life as it unfolds.” — Dan Millman
“If a warrior is to succeed at anything, the success must come gently, with a great deal of effort but with no stress or obsession.” — Carlos Casteneda
Today I want to go into something not usually talked about – Music
— Blues music!
Why blues music?
For it’s transformational quality.
Right . . . you say.
I know, most people think – how can music about things going wrong somehow be helpful let alone transformational.
Now, this may not be for you at all. You may not be able to see blues music in the way that I do.
I enjoy many different kinds of music, but blues is at the top of the list.
OK, what’s the point?
Blues music can be very cathartic.
Here’s the thing, the words you hear sung may relate to something not going right, but the music is very upbeat.
So, how can you really feel down when the music is bringing you up?
Blues music can be very therapeutic in that it helps you make the emotional transition from what has gone wrong, is uncomfortable or not to your liking through your brains reaction to the music.
The words help you bring out your misery or displeasure, which is healthy to do, and the music helps carry you out of the negative wallowing into a more uplifted feeling.
Physically your body reacts to the upbeat music, which your mind will likely follow, if you allow it.
The music will tend to get you to want to move with it.
Your mind and body are linked to where one responds to the other, so if you want to feel better and pull yourself out of a funk? — Listen to some music that helps your body get moving.
As you move, more endorphins are released in your brain, helping you to feel better.
Maybe some other music does this for you, that’s great.
But realize that some music can just keep you in that ‘stuck’ place, it’s the vibration level and how it affects your brainwaves that makes the difference.
John
I was talking to a friend the other day and we ended up discussing how he had a hard time letting go of the past.
It’s very common for many people to keep allowing things from the past to be a large part of their current life which keeps them stuck.
It’s worth looking at your life to see if you are allowing things from the past keeping you under their influence, sometimes you’re not even aware of it.
Yes everything in your past happened, back then – not now.
If you choose, and you do choose, to re-live something from the past, you are keeping it alive today. And not just as a memory, but as an active part of your life today.
The question is, do you really want to keep reliving the past?
Do you really want to continue to bring it up over and over, and give it power today?
You don’t have to.
You don’t have to let it stop your future progress or continue to hurt you.
Your past is actually only a memory, not the director of your life today.
It’s what happened then, based on who your were then, you are different now.
But you can’t fully move on if you keep reliving past regrets, anger, mistakes or whatever.
You are only hurting yourself by holding on to any past negative feelings.
What you think and feel about something is of your own making. Something that happens does not come with a set of pre determined emotions attached.
You chose what to think and feel about it when it happened and you choose today.
You are what you think about, what you focus on.
When you keep focus on a past event, feeling or perspective, you are bringing it alive today.
It is not forcing itself on to you, you are bringing it up.
We’ve all had things happen that are painful, devastating and regretful but they do not need to be relived today.
If you want to grow, prosper and be happy in life look at your past as a way to learn about life and yourself.
What can you learn from something that happened or that you did or didn’t do?
It may be how not to do something again, or to do it differently.
Maybe to look at things differently, make different choices.
It’s done, over, finished, let it be what it was in the past and allow yourself to move on – to grow and develop into all you can be.
You can’t change anything from the past, and continuing to dwell on it now will not do anything except keep you reliving the same emotional feelings you had when it happened.
There are lessons available in all that we do and in all that comes into our life, seek them not a rerun of how you felt.
There are also lessons of forgiveness, understanding and acceptance in our past, which can be very powerful.
To let others and yourself off the hook and move on.
If you could change what happened in the past, then dwelling on it now may be of some value but you can’t. However, you can change how you think and feel today.
If you don’t like something from the past, why would you want to have it continue? For the misery, self-punishment, to rejoice in your resentment or hatred?
All these only hurt you every time you subject yourself to all the same debilitating emotions.
Let go and move on.
It’s really a choice – yours!
Don’t dwell on what you can’t change, dwell on what you can change – today.
John
“The things you want are always possible; it is just that the way to get them is not always apparent. The only real obstacle in your path to a fulfilling life is you, and that can be a considerable obstacle because you carry the baggage of insecurities and past experience.” — Les Brown
“Losers live in the past. Winners learn from the past and enjoy working in the present toward the future.” — Dennis Waitley
“Having looked the past in the eye, having asked for forgiveness and having made amends, let us shut the door on the past–not in order to forget it but in order not to allow it to imprison us.” — Desmond Tutu
Let me ask you a question,
What do you think about yourself and your capabilities?
Are you following your dreams or are you letting them remain dormant because you’re not sure of yourself?
What do you believe you are capable of?
What about all those ideas you have of things you would like to do?
Are they really viable?
Yes!
Why else would you have the ideas that you have?
Why else would they have come to you?
You are here to express yourself in a unique way and how would you know what that was if not for your thoughts.
Your thoughts of curiosity, of interest, of desire to do and be, are your calling.
Your purpose waving its hand – pay attention to me!
I’m not talking about egotistical, selfish or anything else based on instant gratification. You need to be careful about your thoughts and ideas, some may be ego based and not related to your life purpose.
When you become to understand yourself you are able to distinguish between your feelings and ideas, having strong feelings about what you should be doing.
But when you feel this way and yet you do not allow yourself to follow through with your purpose rooted ideas, you can become very frustrated.
We all have ideas about what we would like to do, why do some break loose and allow themselves to fully express those ideas, and some do not.
I think most of what holds us back is a lack of confidence in our ability to carry them out, since many are things we have no experience doing.
Many times we think all those ideas would be nice if they ‘happened’ to us, but we don’t see them as something we can actually pursue.
We believe stronger in our feelings that we don’t know how or have the time or resources than we do in the possibility of being able to fins a way to accomplish what we think.
We believe that they are just nice ideas, not something we can and should be doing.
Another way to look at these ideas is that they are a challenge directly aimed at you.
Since you have the ideas, they are something you can do, if you believe you can.
And you can.
Your only challenge is to accept the idea and begin moving in its direction.
You don’t need to know all about it, just move in the direction of it and be open to its possibility.
But first you must believe in your ability to do, be and have what is just an idea.
Your ideas become your reality if you allow yourself to be carried by them.
So often people allow fears, doubts and worries be the overriding force in their life rather than the idea.
Fears are ideas as well and can be enhanced, followed and experienced if we choose.
Which way do you want to live?
Furthering your ideas or your fears?
It’s really just a choice, as long as you believe in the purpose of your ideas.
These ideas come into your mind for a reason, the universe, God is trying to tell you something about how you can fully express yourself.
Take a hard look at what you believe about yourself and your capabilities.
John
“A basket full of bread sits on your head; yet you go from door to door begging for crusts. Attend to your own head. Knock on your heart’s door.” – Rumi
“Ideas can be life-changing. Sometimes all you need to open
the door is just one more good idea.” — Jim Rohn
“Ideas are like stars; you will not succeed in reaching them with
your hands. But like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you
choose them as your guides, and following them you will reach your
destiny.” — Carl Schurz
“There are plenty of good ideas
if only they can be backed with the power of action.” — Winston Churchill
Some thoughts I had thinking about “Crocodile Hunter”, Steve Irwin after his passing.
I have admired him for some time and now that I know more about him, that thinking has just increased.
Yesterday, the “Discovery Channel” replayed a series of shows about Steve done previously, which give a lot of detail about his life.
As was his custom, he was very open about himself, who he was and insight about his parents and how he grew up, very worth seeing if you were at all interested in him.
Learning about Steve and his life, you quickly realize that he was allowed and actually assisted in fully immersing himself in what he loved.
When he was about 10 years old he was out with his father hunting for ‘crocs’ for their new zoo, when young Steve jumps into the water latching onto a crocodile that was larger than he was, refusing to let go. His father pulled both Steve and the ‘croc’ into the boat together! It was a small crocodile, but it was pulling young Steve under the water.
Now some of you might be thinking, what an irresponsible parent his father was. I can see your perspective.
But let’s look at it a little differently.
He was allowing Steve to grow into his passion with out developing the mentally concocted fears, doubts and worries that so many of us end up with by the time we are ‘adults’ looking to find our way.
Steve developed his ‘way’ as he grew up and his passion was allowed to flourish.
The wisdom of his parents was to see Steve’s interests and allow him to follow them.
Most parents would not get an 8+ foot Python for a 6-year-old!
Most parents would be spending their time trying to get him to conform to their ‘acceptable’ behavior.
Not too loud, not too rambunctious, not too off the beaten path.
There is no doubt, after seeing him in action, that Steve was not totally passionate and fully committed to what he was doing.
He was energetic, intense and focused when he was working, of course it was what he loved.
How many adults can say that about what they are doing?
No, I don’t mean to say that everybody has to be as animated as Steve, but what about his level of passion.
Steve’s chosen trade would be considered extreme by most, since he was putting himself in physical danger regularly, most fields of endeavor are not quite this potentially dangerous.
But how can you relate to the passion, the drive, the focus and the commitment that he exuded?
Aside from Steve’s mission with animals, we can all learn from how he lived his life.
His zest for life in general and intensity for what he was doing specifically go hand in hand, and can be used as a gauge for you and your life.
Think about how Steve Irwin lived his life. What about that appeals to you?
What would it feel like to have this kind of intensity and passion for something?
What are you passionate about? Can you become more involved in it?
Can you alter how you participate in it, to increase your level of excitement?
Do you have fears, doubts and worries that hold you back?
What can you do about them?
When you are excited with what you do, it rubs off on everything else in your life.
How about your children, how do you look at what they are interested in? Do you help them or hinder them for your convenience?
Steve felt his mission was to help people come to better understand and appreciate wild animals, as he felt people would strive to protect what they cared about.
What is your mission, and how can you get passionate about it?
How would Steve do it?
Just as Steve learned about human behavior studying animals, we can learn by studying other people.
I suggest keeping your eye out for when Discovery Channel replays the series on his life and that you watch it if you want to get some ideas on living your life to the fullest.
Now. . . take a moment to be thankful for Steve and what he has done and send your thoughts of love to his wife, children, parents and others who were close as they deal with his passing.
Keep growing,
John
“If we are not passionate about expanding our consciousness, there’s a good chance our narrowness will destroy us.” — Tijn Touber
“Your reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul. If either your sails or your rudder be broken, you can but toss and drift, or else be held at a standstill in mid-seas. For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction. Therefore let your soul exalt your reason to the height of passion, that it may sing; And let it direct your passion with reason, that your passion may live through its own daily resurrection, and like the phoenix rise above its own ashes.” — Kahlil Gibran
“A man/woman should conceive of a legitimate purpose in his heart, and set out to accomplish it. He should make this purpose the centralizing point of his thoughts. It may take the form of a spiritual ideal, or it may be a worldly object, according to his nature at the time being; but whichever it is, he should steadily focus his thought forces upon the object which he has set before him. He should make this purpose his supreme duty, and should devote himself to its attainment, not allowing his thoughts to wander away into ephemeral fancies, longings, and imaginings. — James Allen
“Most people have no idea of the giant capacity we can
immediately command when we focus all of our resources on
mastering a single area of our lives.” — Anthony Robbins
“And I’m really grateful to have something that I’m passionate about and that I think is profoundly important.” — Marian Wright Edelman
Do it quickly after you have reached a goal. The rewards are most effective if immediate. Plus it creates the break you want right then, not tomorrow.
Allow time for yourself when doing for others. Sometimes we can get so wrapped up in doing things for others that we bypass ourselves. This can feed stress build up. Treat yourself to a self moment periodically.
Do it often. This can depend on the size of the reward. Do small things often and larger ones less frequently but regularly.
Vary the rewards. Remember they are meant to be special. But of course only you can decide this. If taking time for sipping a cup of coffee each day is enjoyable, fine. But do add some variety also.
Break the routine of your tasks. Maybe allow yourself one part of a day to not do what you had scheduled.
Space the rewards somewhat evenly with in your tasks so that you don’t get stuck in long periods without an attitude lift.
Also, space the work out evenly within the rewards; don’t allow yourself to put off the more difficult parts to the end. You will be setting yourself up for stress and meltdown, or avoidance!
Don’t punish yourself for having to do what you have chosen, you can choose to enjoy the process.
John
“One characteristic of winners is they always look upon
themselves as a do it yourself project.”
— Denis Waitley