CHANGE YOUR LIFE IN 30 DAYS Author: Rhonda Britten Publisher: Dutton Penguin Press USA Inc. Date of Publication: 2004 ISBN : 0-525-94789-2 No. of Pages: 272 pages
About the Author
Rhonda Britten Rhonda Britten is a Life Coach on the NBC daytime TV show, "Starting Over." As the founder of the Fearless Living Institute, she is considered the global expert on mastering emotional fears as well as the author of Fearless Loving: 8 Simple Truths that will Change the Way You Date, Mate and Relate and Fearless Living: Live Without Excuses and Love Without Regret (translated into 12 languages) where she shares her groundbreaking model of fear. She has her own PBS Special, appears frequently on Montel Williams and has been profiled internationally in magazines such as, "Shape UK," "Marie Claire AU," and "First for Women US" and in newspapers like the "London Sunday Times" and on radio worldwide. In the United Kingdom, Rhonda is the Life Doctor on "Help Me Rhonda," a reality-based TV show that transforms people’s lives in 30 days. With two different television shows on two different continents plus her nationally viewed PBS Special, Rhonda has proven that she can take the mystery out of any challenge for millions of people and is now revolutionizing the way the world views fear.
Wisdom in a Nutshell A guide to your journey of transformation, Change Your Life in 30 Days revolves around the principles. The underlying principle behind change is that for change to happen, a person has to be true to himself. The second principle which the author emphasizes is that a person should break the cycle of fear that holds the person back for change to take place. In this book, she outlines the steps to making those changes one day at a time. For people who want to make some major changes in their lives or who want to start over, each day is a journey that takes the reader through several questions to answer, create intention statements, define life goals and outline the steps needed to reach those goals. Within 30 days, a person can create a new fresh start in life.
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CHANGE YOUR LIFE IN 30 DAYS By Rhonda Britten
Day 1: A New Beginning Your journey to change starts here. This path involves knowing that life's dreams can be fulfilled. Whether your dream is tangible or not, you can see them all unfold by being true to yourself. How do you then know that you are being true to yourself? Answering yes to the following questions simply reflects that your main thrust is to be true to yourself: · Are you willing to put personal integrity above a promise to another? · Are you willing to listen to your heart while using your head? · Are you willing to quit lying to yourself in order to start loving yourself? · Are you willing to be authentic even if it means being vulnerable? · Are you willing to invest in the life you have to get the life you want?
The first step to change is defining the change you want in your life.
Define the success that you desire and the transformation that you wish to achieve. Answer the following questions as honestly as possible. Your answers will determine your commitment to your journey to change: · How would being true to yourself change your life? · If you are true to yourself, what are you afraid might happen? · What has stopped you before from becoming the best you possible? · Describe the you that you would like to be in 30 days. · What is one thing that you are willing to do today to be more true to yourself? Set the right pace of your journey. Remember the following points to throughout this 30-day process of change. · Defining a word helps to clarify what you
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believe. Being specific with an answer accelerates growth. Wanting a better life is really a desire to be more true to yourself. Telling the truth is an important part of discovering who you are.
Day 2: Give Credit Where Credit is Due Acknowledge yourself and give credit for what you have done in the past. This technique will help you build your confidence level. To do this, you must know how to filter the every information properly. The information that you receive and feed your mind can determine or affect your feelings, thoughts and behaviors. Some of the common filters people use to deal with information are: · “Rhonda doesn't know me” is a filter that really says “no one really knows the real me.” A person with this kind of filter finds intimacy and trust in people too difficult to gain. · “I haven't done enough” is a filter used by people who are perfectionists in nature. These kinds of people are workaholics and have little or no time to take care of themselves. · “Thank God somebody finally understands me” is a filter for people who are afraid of not being seen and seek validation in other people. · “I wish” is a filter similar to “I know me better than you do” wherein you find it difficult to take credit. · “If I'm doing better than I think I am, why don't I feel better?” relies mostly on feelings and not on logic. · “I am!” is a filter for people who doubt themselves a lot and question compliments from people. · People who say “Thank you” when given a compliment have high self-esteem and are gracious regardless of what compliment is given. · “Don't tell me that! I won't stay motivated” is for people who try to fix themselves but beat themselves in the process. Negative thoughts occupy their minds; suffering and struggling are familiar feelings.
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“You bet I am. I've worked hard” is for people with a healthy dose of selfconfidence and give one's self credit where it is due.
To undergo change successfully, you must first be able to define your purpose and passion in life. Day 4 focuses on the discovery of these things.
Identifying which filter you use can save you from the pitfalls in making changes. To build up confidence, simply acknowledge and accept some of the things that you have done in the past.
Purpose defines the reason for your existence and passion is what ignites, drives and motivates you to do your purpose. Purpose and passion direct your life and help you achieve happiness, completeness and genuine success. These can help you achieve your goals and do things far beyond your imagination.
Acknowledge yourself for the accomplishments you have done at least 50 times. This can help in changing how you view yourself, thus increasing your confidence. Writing your accomplishments is important. This is one act of being true to yourself.
Day 3: Building Your Confidence Muscle As an extension of Day 2, Day 3 focuses on confidence building. This activity involves recalling and writing down the times or situations when you feel most confident and not confident about yourself. These moments can serve as stepping-stones in doing things differently the next time. How do you know if your confidence is growing? Here are the five clues: · You can count on yourself. You do what you say and you get the job done. · You are willing to feel your feelings and take a risk anyway. No matter how scary things get, you always remember that feelings do not determine success, risk does! · Facing your fears is a daily experience. See fear for what it is: an affirmation of your growth. · You have learned to be comfortable in the uncomfortableness of change. You put your negative voice in perspective and realize it does not run your life. · You are willing to give up all you know to discover your true you. You have given up justifying your actions; instead, your life speaks for itself. Your main commitment is to keep growing, and therefore you have let go of your need to always be right.
Day 4: Purpose and Passion
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Remember the following points to integrate purpose and passion in your life: · Your purpose is already within you. · Passion gives you the desire to succeed. · Passion without purpose can be perceived as being unfocused and confused. · Purpose without passion can make life feel like a chore.
Day 5:Affirmations, Intentions and Goals Day 5 shows how you can use affirmations as powerful tools in introducing changes in your life. Affirmations combined with intentions and goals can produce powerful results. Affirmations and intentions are positive, powerful statements that can cause miracles and can make your dreams come true. Think of the things that you want to achieve in life, write them down and start claiming that you have achieved them.
Day 6: Stretch, Risk or Die Stretch, Risk, and Die signify the three levels of your fear. With comfort zone being the most ideal state, your actions motivated by fear move significantly from stretch (something you do that is associated with your “lowest level of fear”), to risk (something that requires courage to carry out), and then eventually to die (something that you do that is so scary, you wanted to die). Completing the process is the beginning of change. You have faced your fears and taken the big risk. Your old confining negative thoughts and behaviors are now overcome. A part of you has died. You are already experiencing change.
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CHANGE YOUR LIFE IN 30 DAYS By Rhonda Britten have accomplished. Shining or giving or receiving compliments helps boost self-esteem. Knowing when to shine or to give shining compliments is a choice that you can make.
Day 7:Are You Making It Up or Is It True? Face the truth. This is one important prerequisite to being true to yourself. Instead of blaming or making up excuses, examine the whole truth in the events of your lives. The following are questions that can help you stick with the truth: · Are you making it up or is it true? It keeps you honest and open with others. · When you make things up, you are afraid to become vulnerable and therefore intimate. · See the situation “as is,” take your perceptions out and focus on the facts. · Facing what and when you make things up will help you to heal.
An important and wonderful exerciseis writing yourself a letter of gratitude.
Day 10: Integration Day 10 is the time to gel together and examine the insights and lessons you have learned since Day 1. Integrating all the past day exercises can help you gauge whether changes have already been made. Rate yourself honestly and get a clear picture on where you stand. This letter can help you accept your accomplishments regardless of the results.
Day 11: Regrets This day is the time to examine your core needs-- an expanded and more personal version of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. By doing so, you can identify what you really need in order to be fulfilled, happy and satisfied with life.
Day 8: The Freedom of Discipline Start practicing disciplined freedom on Day 8-working in a disciplined manner and taking responsibility for one's work. While both words (freedom and discipline) have different meanings, both can be used in life as means of being true and sticking to the truth. Examples are taking on projects that you can realistically finish on time, or responsibly working on something that you enjoy. Enjoying work in disciplined manner helps you succeed in life.
Day 9: Shine Your Light Shining one's light actually is a form of acknowledgment for the wonderful things that you
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Instead of waiting for others to compliment you, you should take action by sharing the good news with others. Good news can be an accomplishment or a success story that serves as a pat on the back that can help you rise. Shining moments can be empowering. It greatly helps you gain selfconfidence.
By examining these needs, regrets from the past can be put to rest. You can then move forward in your journey to change. By identifying at least five of your core needs, the healing process can start and past issues can be put to rest.
Day 12:Ask For What You Want Knowing what you want by separating feelings and thoughts is one way of introducing change in your life. Understand your fears and the things that hold you back, this can help you ask the world for what you want. Asking for what you want involves riska risk you have to take as this is a part of the process. Get what you want by confronting your fears and emotions and by
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CHANGE YOUR LIFE IN 30 DAYS By Rhonda Britten important before you learn to truly trust others.
defining what you really want.
Day 16: The Myth of Balance
Hurt is a powerful burden that a person can carry throughout life.
Day 13: The Power of Words Words are powerful. These can empower or disempower you. Using disempowering words can get you stuck in a cycle of negativism. You are truly what you think. When you say “it's hard”, life or any activity becomes really hard. By identifying phrases or words that can be disempowering, and by being careful with them, you can move fluidly towards a happier and better life. The key is to identify and remove negative words and phrases. Replacing them with positive thoughts and words instead.
Day 14: Liar, Liar Don't lie, or to the very least, avoid it. Change the habit of lying in situations. Flush out all that is untrue and focus yourself only on the truth. Telling the truth can open the doors for being a better you. Practice today as a No Lie Zone. Free yourself from lying for the next twenty-four hours and feel the benefits of keeping your integrity intact. Try your best to be true to yourself and to others.
The Myth of Balance is the belief that you can have it all. Striving for this is stressful. We all live in an information age where we are bombarded daily with different information wanting attention. Jobs are becoming stressful simply because of information overload. What makes the demanding things around us stressful is that you only 24 hours a day to live through them. Wanting to have all in this too complex world can really cause stress in your life. In Day 16, start knowing what matters most and start making commitments. This may be a relationship, a job, a hobby or simply finding one's self. Just focus on knowing what you value the most. Through this, you can create balance in your life. Start creating a life log. This can help you know when to start and track your commitments.
Day 17: Excuses Excuses can tie you down, keep you where you are, and justify the wrong things that you have done. Exercise releasing excuses. Write down the top three excuses that you always make. By acknowledging them and eventually removing them, you can start moving on and making changes in your life. This exercise is also a way of becoming truer to one's self. By giving up excuses and instead moving on to be a positive person, change can happen tremendously as it releases the burden of excuses.
Day 18: Intuition Day 15: Trusting Heart Trust is an important element in change. It is essential to learn how to trust yourself in the things that you do. Also, learn how to trust other people specially those closest to your heart. Without trust, peace of mind is not possible. You will always doubt yourself or others. Trust yourself first; this is
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Intuition is an important gift that you can use to make judgement calls. While there is no scientific explanation for how intuition works, it is generally believed that intuition can guide your life. The basis is faith in oneself. The difference between fear and intuition is that an inner voice can tell you, in a calm manner, to go on with the decision. Listening to your intuition can make you feel empowered, secure,
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CHANGE YOUR LIFE IN 30 DAYS By Rhonda Britten and enlightened. Fear, on the other hand, holds you back because of past failures and risks. Listening to intuition when making decisions is a good habit to practice, this can bring change in the process.
blaming things on luck, fate or destiny. The differences among the three is that with luck a person is just waiting for things to happen; with fate things happens to a person; and with destiny a person is already preordained in life. By defining life's purpose and knowing what you can and cannot control, changes can happen.
Day 19: Forgiveness Be willing to forgive and let go in order to free yourself of this burden. Identify the hurts you faced in the past and know its source. Take the first step to forgive. Whether it's forgiving one's self or others, what is important is you let go of the burden.
Embracing beauty is a part of making a person’s life beautiful.
Learning how to accept rejections is an important factor in the change process. Rejection keeps you frozen with fear and humiliation thus causing you to be stagnant; not growing, not moving forward. Learn how to accept rejections. Overcome and conquer the fear accompanied by it.
Day 23: For orAgainst
Day 20: Momentum Day 20 is another milestone that you have to take time to examine. Use the lessons learned or changes that happened during the past 20 Days as reality check. Taking time to answer some questions will reveal whether changes have already occurred in your life. Don't lose momentum for the past 20 days of this process. Keep on going and practice the lessons you have learned so far. Integrate these lessons into habits and start how dramatically your life will change.
Day 21: Luck, Fate and Destiny When bad or good things happen to people, they usually blame it on luck, fate or destiny. However, by taking a proactive approach in life, people can really make changes just by identifying things that they can control and can't control. Day 21 helps you to be realistic instead of just
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Day 22: The Gift of Rejection
For or against are mindsets that people use as filters in seeing how the world behaves-- “for you” or “against you”. To overcome these two mindsets, learn how to be grateful for every situation you are in and every circumstance you encounter. Being grateful is the first step in doing away with a negative, jaded outlook. It helps you focus on a better perspective and on making living each of your days better.
Day 24: What’s Love Got To Do With It? Loving one's self is an important step in introducing change in one's self. Loving is important because it gives a person self-worth. Loving another person is impossible if you do not know how to love yourself. How will you be able to love others if you do not even know how it is to love yourself? The following are some ways on how to love yourself selflessly: · Say no and mean it. · Forgive yourself. · Ask for help. · Pray. · Get a pedicure. · Go our dancing. · Plan a vacation.
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List your assets. Pay your bills. Drink water.
days. Observe the ritual of honoring yourself through growth at this stage. Do this by writing down 5 acknowledgements for shifts and changes in life.
Day 25: Forget Motivation
Day 28: Beautiful You
Put behind motivation-- a short-term solution in making people take action. Focus on contentment instead. Motivation happens when a person faces fear of losing or being branded as a loser causing a person to work more, putting more pressure in his life.
Embracing beauty is a part of making a person's life beautiful. Britten offers three simple exercises that you can use to introduce beauty in your life: smiling, reading the daily newspaper and asking questions.
Contentment however is the opposite. Apart from general knowledge, change can still happen even in the middle of contentment. A contented person is confident about undergoing change and doesn't feel pressured by it. Internal satisfaction is important to be true to yourself.
Day 26: Never ConfrontAgain Day 26 focuses on clarifying issues when dealing with situations involving people. The underlying principle is that no two people are alike. Misunderstanding happens and confrontations occur when they do not meet halfway.. By clarifying issues before going out of hand, you can avoid confrontations and accomplish what needs to be done instead. Rejections too can be avoided painlessly. Clarify the issues that you avoid in life. This will not only bring change in life but in love as well.
Beauty does not have to only be physical. It should go deeper. Practicing excellence helps you create beauty in life by being passionate. Take time each day to identify beautiful moments. This is a good exercise in reminding yourself of the importance of beauty.
Day 29: Heaven Day 29 is another milestone for you. This is the day when you have already transformed, changed, better. This day is simply “heaven”. However, to fully become a changed person, you need to complete the final exercise: writing a commitment letter. This is a tool for affirming the changes you have undergone during the past 29 days. This second to the last step serves as a steppingstone for refining the rest of your life. Reviewing your commitment letter every year will help you put life in perspective, as change is a continuous process.
Day 30: Let Me Introduce You To Yourself Day 27: Redefining You This is the time of self-seeking. Ask yourself if there have been any significant changes that have transpired in your life. This is the point when changes would already have occurred.
The last day summarizes the past 29 days that you have undergone. This is the time to review what has happened in the past 29 days through a set of guide questions.
Three areas are very important at this point: home, relationships and love. These are the three key anchors in life should already have been affected by the changes you have undergone for the past 27 Copyright 2004
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