Practice a new response

Since we were kids, all of us have understood the value of practice. If you want to get good at hockey, reading, piano, singing, or any other engaged activity, you have to practice.

Practice is defined as the application of a skill repeatedly or regularly in order to improve or maintain one’s proficiency. I think most people would agree that the highest achievers in an area of life are those who practice the most.

How does this apply to our every day lives?

If you think about your overall quality of life, it is basically made up by the accumulation of moments. Each moment you are expending energy in a certain way. Sometimes you are in a positive state and other times you are negative; and there a varying degrees of intensity in between.

Most of the time, we are all operating on auto-pilot. What I mean is that we are going about our day and we react and respond to events based on how we have conditioned ourselves to do so. If we have spent the majority of our lives practicing an anger response when things don’t go our way, we have become very proficient at being angry. Likewise, if you have spent the majority of your life reacting with laughter to various events and circumstances, you have become proficient at maintaining positivity.

This is a great place for any person to begin when it comes to improving their life so that it works… on all levels.

How do you do this?

Start by doing a basic assessment of your results. Are you constantly in a state of stress or anxiety? Do you constantly feel frustrated or upset? For any result that is not positive, examine what you have been practicing in that area of your life. If your current result is that you get angry and upset whenever the slightest thing goes wrong, think about how you can practice changing that result. You can actually begin looking for the next “opportunity” for something to go wrong so that you can practice a new response. Just like learning an instrument or sport, it may not go smoothly the first time but it is a start. Then you do it again and again and each repetition gives you an opportunity to get stronger.

In a relatively short period of time, you can develop an entirely new skill set that serves you better and improves the overall quality of your life. Try it. Challenge yourself. And see how your results change over time.