EVERYONE:
Personal
Growth Topics

TONY'S BASICS:
A Guide
to Feelings

COUPLES:
Analyze Your
Relationship

Therapy helps people to change.
Sometimes the changes people want to make take years to accomplish.
But, more often than you'd imagine, the problem isn't with what they want to change
but with the process of change itself.

Knowing that we CAN change comes first.

We'll get back to philosophizing about change at the end of this topic,
but for now, let's toy with some ideas
about things you can change easily.

See if you can come up with a couple of new ideas of your own in each section.

TIME

For at least one week:
Change your alarm clock.
Move your shower from morning to night or vice versa.
Eat at entirely different times.
Change your work schedule.
Take definite breaks at work.
Surprise your friends by calling at times when they wouldn't expect it.
Stop a hobby just to see what you'll do with the extra time.
Purposely drive like a slowpoke or a speed demon - whichever is different.

PEOPLE

Call someone you haven't talked to in years.
Start a conversation with a coworker you usually ignore.
Sit on the floor with a child or a pet just to see what happens.
Ask a clerk what they do for fun.
Change how much you talk about yourself with friends.

SURROUNDINGS

Rearrange your least-used room.
Radically change your most-used room.
Visit a park in the middle of the workday, and stay for a while.
Take a drive in the country (or the city).
Take a short vacation to a place you thought you'd never want to visit.

ENERGY

Try a new type of exercise every day for a week.
Use more or less energy-boosting food (sugar, caffeine, chocolate, etc.).
Take brief naps.
Move when you are tired.
Rest when you are energetic.
Decide when to walk or drive, rather than just relying on habit.

ENTERTAINMENT

Throw a party for no reason.
Listen closely to music you usually don't like for thirty minutes.
Have breakfast at a restaurant instead of at home.
Watch a really stupid comedy, or a deadly serious drama.
Go to a rock concert or an opera, whichever "isn't you."

FAMILY

Do adult things with kids.
Do kid things with adults.
"Be" your partner for a day and spend your time and energy the way they do.
Let household tasks pile up (or don't, if you usually do).
Have sex when you never do, where you never do, or how you never do.

WHY SHOULD WE DO SUCH THINGS?

There are at least four good reasons to mix things up like this.

The most obvious reason is for the enjoyment of it.
Probably 95% of the things we do in a day
are thoughtlessly routine and mind-numbingly boring.
It can feel great to do things differently just because you can.

When we battle routine we use our brains
in ways we haven't used them for a long time.
Doing things differently on purpose shows us that we can experiment.
And being able to experiment is one of life's most valuable skills.

Who knows what permanent improvements you'll discover
just because you allowed yourself to experiment?

Most importantly, you will be proving to yourself that
you CAN change.
Then you'll know
you can change just about anything.

Please Tell Your Friends About This Site.

Enjoy Your Changes!

Everything here is designed to help you do just that!

Tony Schirtzinger, Therapist (Milwaukee, WI) 

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