photo credit: lilit

Have you locked your keys in your car?

Not once but twice?

There are some mistakes that we make in life over and over again, causing us to feel unnecessary grief.

And the cause…?

Lack of attention and a plan to change our habits.

The second time I locked my keys in my car I knew I had to make a change.

The first time is no big deal, we all make slip ups now and again.

But the second time something happens you have hit on a pattern and the only patterns we want in our lives are those that make us happy!

After I watched the service man neatly hack into my car to allow my key to be retrieved I set two plans into action.

One was to always carry spare keys, the other was to take the key out of the ignition whenever I turn off the engine.

Generalising the process to other bad habits we want to put two things into action.

1. Mitigation
2. Elimination

My mitigation plan was to carry spare keys in case I screwed up again.

Mitigation plans on their own are all well and good but they do not deal with the cause.

This is why we must look at an elimination process, wipe out the cause.

In an elimination process you identify a new behaviour or process that you can put in place the will replace the old one that causes problems in your life.

I established the new process of taking my keys out of the ignition as I turn off the engine and consequently with attention I have wiped out the cause that resulted in leaving my keys in my car.

This may look like a rather trivial example but the same thing can be applied everywhere in life and on every scale.

Never forget to pay your bills by setting up a particular day of the month to handle them and having your calender email you on that day.

Create an abundant life savings by replacing the need for excessive expenses and setting up a automated savings plan.

When you start to pay attention to your life it is amazing how you can shape it.