No one can deny how small shifts can take care of some seriously big issues but what if you’re still having trouble executing them? Maybe you’re like me and you’re a master at being able to rationalize yourself out of any healthy habit sitting seemingly urgent excuses, blame or just simply too comfortable in overwhelm. (That was me.)

There’re a million different excuses we can all come up with….

• Time
• Lack of Focus
• Procrastination
• Kids
• Busyness
• Energy….the list goes on and on….

There’s a key difference between coming from a place of making ourselves wrong (again) and allowing ourselves to shift perspectives and look a little closer to reveal that we’re actually not wrong at all.

We can gain awareness and try to overcome them but how we approach them matters greatly in both our experience of the change and the efficiency of it. There’s a key difference between coming from a place of making ourselves wrong (again) and allowing ourselves to shift perspectives and look a little closer to reveal that we’re actually not wrong at all. In fact we’re sooo right! Learning to shift perspectives and look for the positive intention of the behavior will show you every time that…

There’s always a very good reason for why you do what you do or don’t do. In fact it’s often a solution to something we’re often not aware of.

The key is to learn how to deeply appreciate the reason for the choice instead of making yourself wrong, silently scolding and promising to get it right next time.

Awareness alone is not enough.

Finding the positive intention of the behavior is the key to the self-acceptance, personal power and whole-hearted love you need for the lasting change that many are craving.

What I used to do (and what most of my clients have done) is beat myself up for not getting it right and vow to get it right next time by adjusting my routine, creating a new and improved check list and lots of other sleek and albeit critical moves to ensure success. These are critical too but there’s a step before this most people are missing that needs to take place. The step is acknowledging and appreciating the RIGHT within you instead of making yourself wrong for the 999th time.

In short: Make yourself right by understanding with compassion the underlying reason for your choices. It is only through doing this, you can hope to create wholehearted change.

Maybe you’re thinking how can this be possible if I just ate a bag of cookies and skipped all my workouts this week? How can I possibly be right with those horrible behaviors?

Because there’s a very good reason you chose those behaviors and the strategy worked! You were over tired, overwhelmed, sad, lonely or fearful and that was one effective strategy for keeping you safe or filling the need. Was it aligned with what you wanted? No, but it was still an effective solution.

The thing is, making yourself wrong doesn’t allow you to align with your highest self and re-enforces the message of “not being enough” so you look for that wagon to jump on! Got to keep trying, right?

The “good and worthy” wagon is what I like to call it.

When you are on it than you are “good and worthy” and when you are not then you are simply not good or worthy so you try to get yourself up on that wagon again ASAP . The cycle repeats and repeats again.

OR….

What if you decided to get off the wagon forever? I know, scary right?

What if you decided to walk your worthy walk from here on out? And on this worthy walk you vowed to never make yourself wrong or declare yourself broken ever again. Instead you recognized your innate wholeness, worthiness and positive intentions in every behavior and you took action from this place every time.

Instead of jumping up on that next wagon every time you judged a step out of alignment, you jumped within, got curious and kept going on your path because you knew your unwanted behaviors were simply outdated strategies that need revising. You learned to change the right things instead of changing the wrong things over and over again.

When you can learn and deeply appreciate why you do what you do, then you are FREE to change and create new strategies from an empowered state. These are the opportunities to create lasting change and hold the opportunities to break through the patterns that keep you stuck.

Next time you find yourself wanting to berate yourself for not eating well enough, exercising enough or whatever the “enough” case may be, ask yourself these questions instead:

It may seem like there couldn’t be a positive intention for this behavior but assuming there could be what might the positive intention be?

See what comes up for you and if you can gain insight on how you can create new strategies for yourself that are in alignment with what you want to be experiencing instead of repeating a variation of the same thing over and over again.

Good Luck and feel free to share your experience in the comments!