Keep it fresh!

Our minds are much like our homes.  They both get cluttered with old ideas, old attitudes, old conversations, old hurts. Both need a routine cleaning out of stuff that we collected for one reason, and are holding onto out of habit, neglect, or just sheer willfulness.

When it comes to working on ourselves, though, it's usually more difficult than cleaning out a cupboard. But difficult does not necessarily translate to being undesirable. We need stimulation. We can look for it within or externally. When we get away to explore a new place, we feel refreshed by the new sights, smells, environment or culture. Certainly when I do this, I can feel it doing me good. If we seek out richer and more exciting environments it has the side-effect of not only enhancing our self-esteem but also boosting our immune system.

As the motivational speaker Ed Foreman says: "If we always do what we've always done, then we're going to get what we've always got." If we wish for different things we tend to want change to be outside ourselves – to be in the form of a saviour, such as a Prince Charming, or a win on the lottery, or a significant-other undergoing a character change. And this is normal. But just because passivity is normal, it doesn't mean it's viable. Changes that make a positive difference don't have to be dramatic; they can be tiny, fine-tuned adjustments, such as deciding to cultivate a different variety of plant or learning a new word a day. Even when we make a very small difference to our routine or outlook, it can make a significant impact on our feelings of well-being.

When we experiment with something new, it's normal to feel in two minds about it. Sometimes it feels the more good it's going to do us is in direct proportion to how much dread we feel when contemplating it. We often talk to ourselves in a defeatist way by saying: "This isn't really me", but we can clock such excuses and decide to experiment in spite of them. If the experiment doesn't make us feel more stimulated, more interconnected, more alive, no harm will have been done and we can drop it.

Try this out: get a large piece of plain paper and draw a circle in the middle. Inside the circle write examples of activities that you feel completely comfortable doing. In mine, I might put something like going for a short walk.