April 2018 – LLUMI Australia

April 30, 2018

Productive Season

It’s starting to cool down in Australia, with Autumn chilling the morning and evening breeze. Winter is our favourite time to ‘get things done’ and to re-evaluate goals, lifestyle and plans for the rest of the year. With more indoor time, it’s easier to look out on your everyday activities and be purposeful with the steps you are taking.

We all have different ideas about the seasons – some thrive in the colder months and go on huge adventures. Some like to stay indoors, snuggling up with friends and loved ones and catching up on books unread.

Whatever season you are entering, make your daily vision of it align with your ideas of perfection and peace. This is the most productive thing that you can do – even if you are busy this season. Make room for peace and focus.

April 18, 2018

Goals in View

We all have ideas about the way we wish our life looked. But how actively do we concentrate on making this happen? How ‘front and centre’ are your goals in your day-to-day life?

If you aren’t paddling or stepping towards your bigger goals, worse yet, if you can’t verbalise specific goals, there is a limited chance that you will ever reach them?

SO…how do we set reachable goals? What’s the difference between a goal that you can reach and one you can’t?

Here are some examples:

Immeasurable goal:

1. Be good at running

Measurable goal:

1. I will complete the Marathon in (Capital City) on 28th March, 2019 in ***hours, ***minutes.

Immeasurable goal:

2. I want a ‘minimal’ house.

Measurable goal:

2. I want to have a 33 piece capsule wardrobe by 14th August 2018.

We have to set times, measurable outcomes that we can look at in our lives and say with confidence “I have reached that goal”.

Write down one goal that you want to achieve today – make sure it is specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound. Then, you are more able to take definitive steps towards that goal!

April 15, 2018

Know WHY You Are Doing It

In the day-to-day routine of life, we often just repeat our habits to ‘get through’ what we have to do. Imagine someone came to you and evaluated how you spend your time, and the only question that they could ask is, “Why?”. What would you say to the things that take up the most amount of time in your life – your job, your hobbies, the way you spend time with others. Would you be satisfied with your response? Is “to pay the bills” enough for you to feel a sense of achievement? Or is there something niggling inside of your answer, pushing you to seek something that aligns more closely with your goals? How long do you spend scrolling through Facebook/Instagram/Snapchat? Are you satisfied with the value that it gives you as a trade for your most precious asset – your time?

Your time is something that you can never get back. Nothing you can do can extend your time here on earth – so, how are you using it? Does what you do each and every day enrich you and those around you?

Some heavy questions for a Monday, but important ones as you start your week off.

April 12, 2018

Reshaping Failure into a Stepping Stone

Failure itself does not prevent anything. If we flunk an exam, it is not the result that gets in our way, but the conversation that takes place in our minds once we receive it. A person can rely on the whims of emotion, lash out in anger or disappointment and vow to drop out of the course or only put the bare minimum effort in from here on. On the other hand, they may reflect and take on the feedback or learning from the experience, and ask ‘what can I do from now on to get stronger from this?’. Our emotions and self-talk are vital ingredient in our success and it is not something that we are passive in, or victims of. You are the only person who constructs your inner self-talk. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been brought up a certain way – you decide on how you view each event in your life. So attempt to reshape any rash or negative reactions in your mind to seeming ‘failures’, and view it as a turning point that can propel you onto the perfect course for you.

April 11, 2018

Does your Real Self resemble your Ideal Self?

We all have ideas about the type of person that we want to be. We may imagine ourselves as organised, fair, healthy and happy. A useful exercise is to look at your everyday conversations and behaviour (your real self) and see if they align with the descriptions that you have of yourself (called your ideal self).

For example, you may see yourself as optimistic and uplifting, yet you may notice that you spend a significant amount of your interactions with others focused on things that worry you, things that annoy you or general frustrations. Could you adjust your interactions to attempt to see the good in the situations on your mind – what effect might this have on your mind, and the experience of the other person?

Often we excuse away glaring inconsistencies in our own behaviour, and hold tightly onto the descriptions of ourselves as if they were more important than our everyday truth. A real satisfaction comes from knowing that your daily behaviour is coming closer and closer to your ideal.

April 5, 2018

The Evolution Lifestyle

lot of time that we spend on this earth is spent in our comfort zone – we gravitate naturally to things that are familiar, we follow the patterns of the society that surrounds us. We work, we buy, we sleep, we eat, we love, we learn. Mostly in ways that we have seen before – we repeat our surroundings.

We want to challenge you to re-assess this all-too-easy path and to determine whether or not it is leading you to what you want. Do you have time to do the things that you love? Do you prioritise the things that you value?

Do you set yourself goals and challenges each day and do you fall asleep feeling like you have accomplished something wonderful?

These aren’t questions just for the ‘dreamers’. These are questions to help guide you to stretch past what you know and to challenge yourself to continually build – experience new things, meet new people, try new hobbies and be absolutely captivated by your existence.

Is it possible? Even just for a day – try to do something a little bit challenging – recognise the discomfort and reassure yourself of that sublime feeling of accomplishment when you have conquered this first step.

Trust us, it becomes addictive!

April 2, 2018

Re-Setting when Faced with Change

Are you looking back on the last little while and feeling that you have ‘fallen off the wagon’ lately? That life got too busy, and you aren’t prioritising those things that you hold as central to your identity and values?

Often, when we are faced with change, we go into ‘survival’ mode and our emphasis shifts from a focus on thriving and living our best life to simply ‘getting by’. If this goes unchecked, it can create a new life-pattern of simply ‘surviving’ and making do with a sub-par experience of our one chance at life.

Allow this to be a reminder to take a break and to re-assess the direction that your life is channeling towards. Do you find yourself saying, “Well, that would be nice, if I actually had time to do that”?

You don’t have time NOT to.

Time will not wait for your life to ‘settle down’, we must become adept at recalculating, re-positioning, re-prioritising while we are on the run, while we are in the midst of large changes. Otherwise, we will look back and realise our lost opportunities due to living in a fog of busy-ness and meaningless and harmful habits.

So today, I encourage you to take stock – realign and implement at least 1-2 ideal habits that you are missing due to change and overwhelm. Take control of your life once more.