Most people are familiar with the saying that “people don’t change.”  While this may seem to be the case, there are many ways in which people actually can and do change—when they want to, on their terms.

It must be stated up front that if you are trying desperately to get someone to change, your efforts are no doubt being met with much resistance.  This is only natural.  Do you remember what it felt like to be a teenager, with everyone telling you what to do?  Many people rebel when backed into a corner.  Even if someone knows they need to make a change, they won’t do it just because someone else really wants them to do so.

On the contrary, people will make effective changes within themselves when they are ready.  We have all heard the success stories of individuals quitting smoking, taking on a new hobby that becomes a lifelong passion, finishing their degree during mid-life, and losing significant amounts of weight and getting back in good shape.

Nothing is impossible.  Changes, both good and bad, happen all the time.  This will only happen when the individual is ready to make the changes wholeheartedly.  When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.

Often, people are very surprised when they run into someone from their past and this person seems like someone completely different.  What caused this fundamental shift within the individual?  The answer is desire and the willingness to do whatever it takes to manifest that desire.  This is how we get everything that we have in our lives, for better or worse.  Whatever is in our persistent thoughts appears in our lives.

So, yes—people can change if they really want to.  Starting with habits and routines, we can break the cycle that imprisons us in situations that we wish to escape.  If you want to make big changes in your life as a whole, start small.  Pick one thing that you can change, right now.  Once you’re comfortable with this minor change and your habits are evolving, begin to improve other areas of your life.  You’ll be amazed at how quickly these changes become routines.

Throwing in one more cliché, it’s been said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing every day and expecting different results.  Stop driving yourself crazy.  Take a good, long look at your life and how you got to where you are now.  What can you do to make a difference right now?  With that starting point, there are many things that can be done.  Take charge of your future and show the world that you are not just a work in progress; you are a masterpiece.  

Do I take an Ambien to help me sleep and pop it kinda early, then go after I’ve showered, to wash my face and see it for how it is. Not what it is seen for on TV. No, this is my face. and I brush my teeth. Can’t go to sleep without brushing my teeth. Took a while to form that habit to be honest. I lay down with my book. and I take my hair down. I’m wearing a white t-Shirt with no bra and my favorite underwear of my boyfriends which are Calvin Klein boxers with blue and white stripes. I lay on my bed, turn my bed side lamp on, make sure I’m MOSTLY under the down comforter with the feet stickin’ out and I lay and read my book with my cat snuggled to my side. It sucks when I have to pee, because I have to make the cat get up. Baxter hates being pushed around. Same thing happens when i open the sliding glass door so I can smoke my 2 nightly cigarettes. (ONLY 2 ALL DAY FYI) I have my first one when i just begin reading…..then i have my last one maybe 2.5 pages before the end of a chapter. then I take a drink of my water, then i put on my Burt’s bee lip balm with pomegranate oil on. Then I shut the door, dim the lights and I set my alarm for the next day and I try and snuggle into sleep. 

All I’m saying is that we all have that time…. we don’t all see each other, so we aren’t interested in what your night routines are. we see celebrities all the time… Wouldn’t any of them volunteer to put a show together to more than anything make other people realize that they’re normal people….

I would totally volunteer for this… But I need to be made into a celebrity first.

So let’s get moving.

I am still in my pajamas and a very comfy robe. This is the outfit that most of my neighbours see me in. Fortunately, my nightgown has a shelf bra, so I don’t worry about sagage. Gravity is not kind to the well endowed. Any more sagging, and my belly button will be part of my cleavage.

Okay – while you try hard to get that image out of your brain, I should confess that I don’t exactly work from home. Working usually involves earning money, and I write for Triond and Helium. Enough said.

I used to be rather obsessed with showering every morning. Even on Saturdays, I couldn’t get dressed or go anywhere without showering first. When my children were born, I took a five year maternity break to stay home with them, and I still showered every day. Sometimes that meant doing my aerobic workout during morning nap-time, and then getting into the shower during afternoon nap-time.

I’ve been home on permanent disability for about 10 years now, and for the first 9 or so I was pretty good about showering, getting dressed, and brushing my teeth. I was usually ready to face the world by at least 4 or 5 in the afternoon.

I’ve heard that to establish a good habit, you should attach it to something that you would do every day anyways, so about five years ago I started to do my stretching routine in the shower. So even with a weight gain of almost a hundred pounds (the result of medications, not being able to exercise, and being at home all day and comforting myself with food and medicating myself with ice cream), I am now more flexible than I was before Parkinson’s.

But for the last year or so, I don’t know – maybe I’m just getting more fatigued, and more addicted to the computer, but I just can’t seem to find the energy to get moving at all. I hardly leave the house except for doctor appointments, so there have been way too many days when suddenly it’s bedtime and I’m still in jammies from the night before.

I don’t know if this is typical behavior for people who work from home. It would probably depend on whether or not meeting clients or coworkers was part of the job. Now with web-cams and Skype I suppose there could be incentive to look presentable. I dread the advent of the videophone.

Well – it’s almost 2:30 now, and I really should go brush my teeth. I guess I really should have a shower too.

I have devised a way to do all these jobs little by little each day with an entire 80 min set aside to do my major weekly clean on one afternoon of the week, a day for paying bills and home office type work, a day for the shopping, a day for menu planning for the week and a day for gardening.

I plan to have a morning, afternoon, before dinner, after dinner and before bed routine. ( these will string together those chores that need to be done every day).  ‘ROUTINES’ 

It sounds like all too much already dosn’t it?  Well that is because it is.  Our homes and ourselves didn’t get into a mess in a day and fixing it in a day would be impossible.  Doing this 10min at a time and only taking so much on board until its working like clock work, before we add the next activitys is the way we will see light at the end of the getting organized tunnel. 

Those who are most despondent and dejected about their lives are those who rarely, if ever, contemplate switching their daily activities. You could say that these individuals do not even have a pre-meditated agenda but rather do what they’ve always been doing. It’s ironic because they do have a routine but it is abided by unconsciously. The greatest tool to one’s self-satisfaction is the ability to know what you are doing at a particular moment. Living in the present (a central pillar of Asian philosophy) is often scoffed at by westerners however its importance in this routine is unparalleled.

This concept of living in the present is diminished by a routine that is never examined. You need to consciously know what you are doing one day in order to enjoy it in its present state. If you wake up, and surrender yourself to whatever circumstances ended in what you did yesterday you will be unhappy. In short, you must wake up every morning and physically write out what you are going to do that day. This way, when you approach that task, you will be conscious of it since you willed its completion earlier that day. This gives you control over your life and dispels the feeling of being bullied around by the paralyzing monotony seen in other days.

What’s more is that you from the onset become the sole author of your day. When consciously knowing that, you feel empowered and go to sleep rewarded knowing that you did what you wanted to do. Even if you fall short, you still feel accomplished and receive further motivation to work harder the next day. That said, you give yourself a purpose. Moreover since you are assigning yourself your daily activities, you become the master of your own life.

As mentioned before, routines are amazing tools, however be wary of repetition and wake up with a new set of tasks for yourself. When you do this, you will regain sovereignty over yourself, give yourself a purpose, and enliven your daily activities through the notion that you consciously willed them. Monotony is nothing more then living unconsciously. Shake yourself from this apathy and give yourself purpose as opposed to waiting for life to assign it to you.

“He who every morning plans the transaction of the day and follows out the plan, carries a thread that will guide him through the labyrinth of the most busy life.”

Victor Hugo (1802 ~ 1885)

If I asked you what is most lacking in your days, would your answer be time? Would you say that there just don’t seem to be enough time in the day or in any week, to do the things you want to or should do? But time hasn’t decreased, has it? It has remained constant – the same twenty-four hours in every day. Man has learnt to harness and manage many things over the centuries. Yet, we have not mastered the management of time.

Is it really that difficult? You can learn to manage your time more efficiently by learning how to manage the tasks that make up our days. And therein is the secret. Actually, it is not a secret at all. So today, we’ll look at tried and tested ways to use our God-given time.

Chances are that in any one day, there will be routine tasks that you do. The left over time is usually filled by occasional duties like weekly or monthly commitments. The drudgery of some of these daily chores often renders us robotic in our movements and we just go through them in a daze without a plan, a thought or an eye to efficiency. We just want to get them done. However, those unavoidable routine tasks can be managed in a way to make them less burdensome and time-consuming.

Schedule Time Limits

Schedule routine household and personal tasks just as you would work-related ones. Use a notebook, diary or appointment book. This practice will block the amount of time you devote to a particular activity. When the time is up for each task simply stop and move on to the next.

For this to work though, you must have a fairly accurate idea of how long tasks will take to complete.

Stay Organized

The whole system will go haywire if every activity is preceded by half an hour spent hunting down the necessary materials and tools. That is a waste of time.

Ideally, tools and supplies for a particular task should be stored close to the activity centre. Most of us attest to less-than-adequate storage in our homes, but that’s no excuse for having things scattered, cluttered and missing when we need them.

Use whatever storage you have available or improvise. It is not uncommon for people to store supplies and tools in the most unlikely places in their homes – under the kitchen sink, in the garage, on upper shelves in closets, in cardboard boxes and baskets stacked as side table or coffee table and in bags hung on a door or in containers under the bed.

Whatever method you choose, keep your stuff organized and easily accessible.

Delegate

It’s a common thing to see one person undertaking all the household tasks while the rest of the household relaxes. Once this practice becomes ingrained it is very difficult if not impossible to reverse.

“Every man jack,” (my father’s expression), should pitch in and help. And it is up to the head of the home to inculcate that policy early or he or she might come across as a tyrant later on.

Initially, delegate only those tasks that you believe someone else can handle to your satisfaction. It makes no sense passing off a chore that you will have to return and complete yourself. Once others in the household have proven their ability and more importantly their willingness to complete tasks you assign to them, you could delegate additional or more difficult ones.

Multitask

Despite its pitfalls, I think multitasking is here to stay. To minimize the frustrations that come with multitasking, only multitask as far as it is comfortable to do so. Maybe we should aim to “double-task” instead. Are you one of those people who insist that you can concentrate on only one thing at a time? Try combining a task that requires motor skills with one that necessitates mental skills.

For example, fold laundry while talking on the telephone. Use an ear-piece attached to your cell phone so that your hands are free to load the washer, wash dishes or sweep the floor. Pay all you bills on the same day, use a one-stop shop bill payment service, or set up a Standing Order with your bank.

When waiting for your children while they take lessons, practice and play sports, or attend rehearsals, instead of fretting, catch up on calls to your parents or friends, write letters, or lose yourself in a portable hobby like, crochet, writing, drawing etc.

Do Things Right the First Time

A major time-eater and time-waster is having to re-do tasks that you didn’t take the time to do right in the first place. This usually happens when you have too much on your plate, you fear saying “No” or you did not allocate sufficient time for efficiency.

If you tend to move slowly, and nothing is wrong with that, it might be best to focus your attention on one task, how ever long it takes. Do it well and completely.

Learning to manage your time is not a done deal but an ongoing process of learning to balance your responsibilities. If you start today, you can get a good handle on maximizing the twenty-four hours in your day.