The Change Your Life Book by Bill O’Hanlon a Book Review

Change can often be very stressful, and no one wants major upheavals in their life. Making incremental changes over time result in major changes. In The Change Your Life Book, Bill O’Hanlon provides 52 small shifts that anyone can make. He recommends that you try a shift for a week.

There are three ways to make changes in your life:

1. Change the Doing: Change the way you act, interact, and how you view and speak about situations and experiences.
2. Change the Viewing: Change the way you focus on things and how you interpret your experiences.
3. Change the Setting: Change the physical location or the context of the experience.

The 52 small shifts are divided into the three ways to make changes, and more than half of them are in Change the Doing section.

The Change Your Life Book by Bill O’Hanlon is a short book which can be read in an hour. The book is packed with some great tips, but all of them may not be relevant to your situation. I recommend the book, and here is how you should approach it. Read through the book in one sitting, and place a check mark by any of the 52 shifts that apply to your situation.

After you have done that, read through the shifts that you checked off a second time. Next, work on each of the checked off shift for a week or until you feel confident that you have made the shift. If you are the type of person who needs your hand held with step-by-step instructions on how to make any of the 52 shifts in your life, then this is not the book for you.

O’Hanlon provides examples for each of the 52 shifts, however, it is up to you, and rightly so, to apply it to your unique situation. The change is more meaningful and relevant that way.

10 Shifts from The Change Your Life Book

1. Stop Doing Something: If you find that you are always busy and cannot work on things that are important to you, make a conscious decision to stop doing something to free up some time.
2. Your “Not-to-Do” List: Take fifteen minutes or so to make a list of the things that you do not enjoy doing, or could do less of. Is there a way you could outsource some of those things?
3. Don’t Be Yourself: We all have patterns of behaviours that are not very flattering. Say for instance, you always keep your friends waiting because you are constantly late, how about if you surprise them by being a few minutes early. If you are late because you took time to check your email and respond to them, or answer the phone before leaving, how about if you stop doing that, and head straight to your meetings.
4. The Value of Doing Nothing: In a world when we are constantly on the go, how about if you took some time each week to absolutely do nothing, to give yourself a mental health break. After you let go of the guilty feeling, you’ll be surprised by how refreshed you will feel.
5. The Nicest “No”: If you are stressed because you have too many things on the go, then it’s time to start saying “no.” Look to people who you respect and admire who graciously know how to decline, image what they do.
6. From Tense to Getting the Tenses Right: Many people take their baggage from the past into their future. Learn to leave things in the past to have room in your future because the best is yet to come.
7. Reclaiming Territory from Fear: Fear can be crippling if not dealt with. If you have fears, if you do what you fear, most times you will not be adversely affected. If you work on the 10^th floor and take the stairs because you are scared of taking the elevator, take the elevator to the third floor then take the stairs. When you are comfortable doing that, take the elevator to the sixth floor, then take the stairs the rest of the way. Do this until you can take the elevator all the way up. Taking the stairs is good for your health, but you should be taking the stairs because you want the workout and not because you are scared of taking the elevator.
8. Ask Different Questions: The quality of your questions, determine the quality of your results, so make sure that you are asking the right questions. If the questions you ask in a situation do not get you what you want, reframe your questions and/or evaluate your situation and think of better questions to ask.
9. Reorient to Gratitude: Make a list of all the things you are grateful for in life, and the things that are going right in your life. Take time each day to focus on the items on your list and express gratitude.
10. Allies for Change: If there are things you need to change in your life, find an ally who has to make changes as well (not necessarily in the same areas). Support each other and have regular check-ins to tell each other how you are doing with the change.

These are only 10 of the 52 shifts in The Change Your Life Book by Bill O’Hanlon, and if you chose 10 shifts, they would probably be different from the ones that I chose. I recommend The Change Your Life Book by Bill O’Hanlon.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

More from Bill O’Hanlon

Bill O’Hanlon – Giving And Taking Your Own Advice

Cannot view this video, click here. Uploaded by PracticalWellbeingUK on Nov 30, 2010

ntpagesTV – Bill O’Hanlon in Australia – sharing insights with Gordon Young

Cannot view this video, click here. Uploaded by NTPagesTV on Jun 5, 2011

Bill O’Hanlon – The Story Of The African Violet Queen

Cannot view this video, click here. Uploaded by PracticalWellbeingUK on Nov 8, 2010

Book links are affiliate links.

Kindle