Self Talk and Positive Thinking.com

Life will test you every step of the way to see if you are still serious about what you want. The faint-hearted will fall by the wayside at the first hurdle, but when you have a burning desire to make your dreams come true, nothing can stop you from reaching your highest aspirations. Remember that failure is simply the mechanics of success. You have to fail in order to learn, and if you give up every time you fail, you will never achieve anything.

key 1. When things are tough, find ways to believe in your dream again and find things that inspire you to keep going. Look for inspirational quotes that mean something to you, read the books that resonate with you, and seek out the people who inspire you to stay on track. Sometimes we need to take a break or spend some time getting our balance back when we have been overzealous about achieving our ambitions, but that doesn’t mean we have to give up. You might re-evaluate your goals and improve upon them, but never give up on your dreams.

key 2. Don’t take it all for granted. Think back occasionally in order to gain e sense of perspective and measure just how far you have come. It is astounding how much our lives can change when truly desire somthing better and work steadfast towards our dreams.

key 3. If you are not happy about the way things are going, then it is only you who can do something about it. When you reach the end of your life it will be you alone who will look back and wish you had followed your heart. You only have yourself to answer to, and you can’t blame anyone else if you fail to take control and seek out the things you want out of life.

key 4. Emerson said ” To be great is to be misunderstood”. Your dreams are special, and until your life changes in ways that people can understand and see, you have to have the courage to do it alone.

key 5. You can never hope to please everyone, and stay true to yourself. People  are generally quit negative and often it is hard to stay positive and committed to your dream when you are surrounded by negative attitudes. Negative people disrupt your thoughts and your equilibrium. Notice your discomfort around negative people and don’t spend time with them. Don’t waste time, either, explaining things to people who are controlling, manipulative or obstructive. Refuse to be disrespectful and you will gain self-respect.

key 6. You can chose who you spend time with, so chose to be with people who make you feel good to be alive. Positive supportive people are pleasant and calming to be with.

key 7. Think of the laws of cause and effect and treat others as you would like to be treated yourself. If you do this, you can’t go wrong. Life isn’t fair…life is simply the way it is. Learn to live without conditions or judgments and be open to the infinite possibilities  that surround you.

Usually, in order to make changes in our life’s, we have to make room for these new things by dropping something else. In order to study in the evenings, you will definitely have to cut down on watching television and maybe give up a few social events. People moan that there is not enough time to do anything other than just get through the day, but do you know – we have 24 hours as Einstein and Beethoven had! The differences is they didn’t squander their time, they used it for a purpose. Use your time wisely.

Evaluate what it is you want. Do you want your dream badly enough to make e few sacrifices? Achieving your goals may also mean being willing to pay the price. Are you prepared to get up in the morning to exercise or write another page of your book? If it’s worth having, it’s wo0rth working for.

The trouble is, there is no standing still.You are either gaining or slipping, either working towards something you want, or slipping away from it. You are making a choice whatever you do. Even if you do nothing, you are effectively making a choice to let it slip away while you procrastinate and try to make up your mind. Wait long enough  and you lose it completely because you’ve run out of time or the opportunity has gone to someone else.

Ultimately, you run out of life without ever having achieved your dream. So how will you spend your 24 hours a day?

A- Manage your time.

B-Try making a master list. You may want to do this on a monthly,weekly or daily basis, whatever suits you better. When you have your list written down ( better do it in the evenings ready for the next day), get the urgent and important stuff out of the way.

C- Prioritize your daily activities. Some stuff is urgent and has to be dealt with now; some is important, but not particularly urgent, so it can be planned into your day or week, or delegated if that is possible for you.  Make a list of things you really want to include in your day, and try to have some sort of routine to your day. Do whatever it takes to make your dream happen for you.

Millionaires develop a series of  habits to assure that they don’t lose money, and that their money grows steadily over time. One of the best habits you can develop is the habit of getting good financial advice before you do anything with your growing account. Ask around and find a financial advisor who is already financially successful by investing his or her personal money in the areas that he or she recommends to you. Your ability to choose excellent financial advisors can be the critical factor in making good investment decisions. Develop the habit of investigating before you invest in anything. The rule is, “Spend as much time investigating the investment as you spend earning the money that you are thinking of investing.”  Fast financial decisions are usually poor financial decisions. Develop the habit of taking your time, of moving slowly, of finding out every detail of the business or investment before you ever think of writing a check. Never allow anyone to pressure you into an investment decision. Never allow yourself to feel that a financial investment decision is urgent and must be made immediately. A wealthy man I worked for once told me, “Investments are like buses; there will always be another one coming along.”  Sometimes, the best investments are the ones you never make at all. Make a habit of thoroughly understanding the investment before you ever think of parting with your hard earned money. If there is anything that you do not understand, or which seems too complicated for you, do not put your money in that area at all.

Warren Buffet, one of the richest men in the world as the result of his investing acumen, refused to invest in any of the high-tech or dot com companies during the boom of the 1990’s. Everyone accused him of being out of step and old fashioned. He simply replied that, “I don’t understand these businesses and therefore, I will not put any of my money into them.” He turned out to be right, and all the others turned out to be wrong.  An important habit for financial success is the habit of insuring properly against any risk that you cannot write a check to cover. It is amazing how many people have spent years accumulating money and then lost it all because they did not have proper insurance policies in place. Develop the habit of using what I call “worst possible option” . Always ask yourself, “What is the worst possible thing that could happen in this situation?”  Whatever it is, make provisions to ensure or guard against it. Never trust to luck. Hope is not a strategy. Wishing is not a strategy. Only careful planning, organizing and insuring constitute a strategy for your financial life. Be sure that you have sufficient life insurance to cover your family and all their financial needs if something should happen to you. Be sure that you have adequate fire and damage insurance for your home. Check and upgrade your policies on a regular basis to make sure that they cover “replacement value.” Insure your automobiles for damage and liability. Be sure to have adequate health insurance that covers you for any emergency, and for long-term care.  No one likes to spend money on insurance, but it is one of the smartest things that you can possibly do on your road to financial independence. By insuring properly, you will never be caught off guard by an unexpected accident or emergency.  An additional benefit of being fully insured is that it gives you a feeling of calm confidence that allows you to think more clearly and be much more effective in everything else you do.

The business philosopher Jim Rohn once wrote, “Becoming a millionaire is not that difficult, but it is not the most important thing. The most important part of becoming a millionaire is the person that you have to become to accumulate a million dollars in the first place.” This is a wonderful insight. In order to become wealthy, you must develop a completely different mindset from the average person who worries about money most of his life. You must develop a completely different character, personality and set of habits if you are to achieve your financial goals, and then hold onto the money once you acquire it.   Once I heard somebody saying, “The first million is extremely difficult to acquire, but the second million is almost inevitable.” When you become the kind of person who can earn and accumulate a million dollars or more, you will also be the kind of person who can earn the second and third million as well. Even if something unfortunate happened, and you lost all your money, you would be able to make it back again fairly quickly because you would have become the kind of person who can become a millionaire. And once you become that kind of person, you never lose it.  Perhaps the most easily identifiable habit of self-made millionaires is the habit of frugality. Wealthy people are careful with every penny and every dollar. They allocate their funds carefully and with great deliberation. They never buy new when they can buy used. They never buy if they can lease, and they never lease if they can rent. They never rent or lease if they can borrow. They know that, as the English saying goes, “If you take care of your pennies, the pounds will take care of themselves.” For example, most self-made millionaires do not buy new cars. They wait until a good quality car is about two years old before they buy it. Even then, they have the car thoroughly checked out by a reputable mechanic. Once they feel confident that it is an excellent buy, in good condition, they buy the car and then they drive it for
five or ten years before replacing it.  Most new cars drop 20% in value as soon as you drive them off the lot.  After two years, many cars have lost 30% – 50% of their value. They are still in excellent condition, and often they are still covered by factory warranties. When you buy a good quality used car, you can save many thousands of dollars, all of which can be saved and invested and allowed to grow at compound interest toward your ultimate goal of financial independence.

Develop the habit of moving quickly and taking the initiative in each area of your life that is important to you. Instead of waiting for things to happen, develop the habit of making things happen. Instead of waiting for things to get better, take the initiative to change or improve whatever situation you find yourself in.  It is not easy to change your entire way of thinking and become an extraordinary person as the result of your own efforts, and your own work on yourself.  But it is definitely possible, when you accept complete responsibility and take full control over the evolution and development of your own character and personality.  The most important  thing is action. It is not what you read or learn, but the specific actions that you take. Researchers have found that there is a direct relationship between how quickly you take action on a new idea, and how likely it is that you will ever take action on any idea at all. The very act of moving quickly in one area seems to develop the habit of moving quickly in other areas.  If you have learned something that is important to you, or if you have an idea about something that you can do immediately that can improve some part of your life, resolve to take action on it immediately. Do it now. Develop a sense of urgency. Hurry. Resolve to become known as the kind of person who moves fast on any new idea or possibility. This can be one of the most important habits you ever develop.
Action Exercises:
1. Select a result, outcome or success you would like to have in your life, and then decide upon the one habit that could help the most to achieve that goal;
2. Develop the habit of future-orientation by thinking and imagining your ideal future in your business or personal life, and working toward it;
3. Develop the habit of goal-orientation by selecting one main goal, making a plan for its accomplishment, and then working on it every day;
4. Develop the habit of excellence-orientation by selecting one key skill that would help you more than any other, and then working on becoming better in that area every day;
5. Develop the habit of continuous learning by reading, listening to audio programs and attending seminars as a normal and natural part of your life;
6. Develop the habit of writing and rewriting your goals in a spiral notebook each morning before you set out;
7. Develop the habit of action-orientation by taking the initiative, by daring to go forward, by moving quickly on opportunities, or to solve problems.

“If you can win complete mastery over self, you will easily master all else.  To triumph over self is the perfect victory.” (Thomas A. Kempis)

Develop the habit of feeding your mind with positive mental food.  Remember, you are very susceptible to the suggested influences in your environment, whether radio, television, newspapers, magazines, billboards or conversations with other people. Your mind is your most important and precious asset. You must protect it and keep it clean, clear and focused on what you want, rather than allowing it to be polluted by the negative influences around you.  Refuse to watch terror or trash on television. Refuse to read about all the murders, robberies, rapes and tragedies in the newspapers. Refuse to listen to endless hours of mindless radio commentary on all the problems in the modern world. Refuse to engage in endless conversations with people about all the political and social problems in your nation or community. Keep your mind clean, clear, positive and free.  Not only do you become what you think about, but also you become what you feed into your mind on a regular basis. If you want to be positive, optimistic and happy, continually feed your mind with positive books and articles, positive audio learning programs, positive input and information from other experts in your field, and positive conversations with other optimistic goal-oriented people who are going somewhere with their lives.

Make a habit to get around the right people and only associate with the kind of people that you like admire, respect and want to be like. Do not drink coffee with whoever is sitting there.  Do not go out for lunch with whoever is standing at the door. Do not socialize after work with whoever invites you. Be very conscientious and clear about the kind of people that you are going to allow to influence your thinking and feeling by their conversations and opinions.  Dr. David McClelland found that fully your “reference group” would determine as much as 95% of your success or failure in life. These are the people that you habitually associate with and consider yourself to be one of. These can be members of your family, your coworkers, members of your political party, church or social organizations. The fact is that, “Birds of a feather flock together.” Or as Zig Ziglar says, “You can’t fly with the eagles if you continue to scratch with the turkeys.”

Finally,take action  in becoming everything that you are capable of becoming, develop the
habit of action orientation. In every study of successful people, in virtually every field, the quality of action orientation emerges as the most outwardly identifiable quality of people who are going somewhere in their lives and careers.  Action orientation means that you develop the habit of moving quickly when you have an idea or opportunity. You think continually in terms of the specific actions that you can take now to move closer to achieving a goal or getting a result that is important to you. Instead of talking endlessly about what you are going to do in the future, you act immediately to do something in the present.

How To Identify Your Weakest Key Skill
Excellence orientation requires that you make a list of the key skills that are essential for success in your field. There are usually only about 5-7 skills, or key result areas, that determine most of the success that one achieves in any field of endeavor. Your first job is to identify these key skills and write them down.  Here is an interesting discovery. You have achieved your of success in your field today because of your talent and ability in certain key areas. But at the same time, you are being held back by your weaknesses in other areas. The rule is that your weakest key skill determines the height of your results, and your income. In other words, you could be excellent at six out of seven key result areas, but your weakness in the seventh area will determine your overall results and rewards in
that job or field.  You therefore ask yourself this question, ”What one skill, if I developed and did it consistently in an excellent fashion, would have the greatest positive impact on my career?”
This is one of the most important questions that you ask and answer throughout your career. You must develop the habit of continually identifying and working on your weakest key skill. Bringing up your ability in this one area will usually have a greater and more immediate impact on your results than anything else you can do.  If you do not know the answer to this question (and most people don’t), go to your boss or your coworkers and ask them, “What one skill, if I developed and did it in an excellent fashion would help me the most in my job?”

Sometimes I like to ask people this question, “If a group of children goes for a walk, which child determines the speed of the entire group?” They will always reply and say, “The slowest child.” Exactly.  Your “slowest kid” is your weakest key skill. It sets the speed at which you move ahead in your career, and determines the heights that you reach.  And here is another important point. You are almost invariably weak in an area that you do not
particularly like or enjoy. But the reason that you do not like or enjoy that area is because you have not yet mastered that area.  As soon as you write it down, make a plan, and develop excellence in a particular skill area, you will like and enjoy performing in that area for the rest of your career.  The fact is that you could be only skill away from doubling your productivity, your performance and your income. The acquisition of one key skill where you are currently weak could make it possible for you to use all your other skills at a higher level, and accomplish more in your work than you ever thought possible.  What one skill could that be?                                                                   Decide today to develop your weakest  key skill.  Make a plan, work on your plan every single day. In no time at all, you will be amazed at how quickly your life changes for the better.

Good Luck!

There are many formulas and recipes for goal setting.  As a rule, “Any plan is better than no plan at all.” In February 2003, USA Today reported on a study of people who had set New Year’s Resolutions the year before. They found of the people who had set New Year’s Resolutions, but not in writing, only 4% had followed through. But of those people who had written down their New Year’s Resolutions, fully 46% had carried them out. This is a difference in success rates of more than 1100%! Here is one of the best and most effective goal setting plans or formulas you will ever learn:

Step One: Decide exactly what you want in a specific area and write it down clearly, in detail. Make it measurable and specific.

Step Two: Set a deadline for the achievement of the goal. If it is a large goal, break it down into smaller parts and set sub-deadlines.

Step Three: Make a list of everything that you will have to do to achieve this goal.  As you think of new items, add them to your list until it is complete.

Step Four: Organize your list of action steps into a plan. A plan is organized on the basis of two elements, priority and sequence.  In organizing by priorities, you determine the most important things that you can possibly do on your list to achieve your goal. The 80/20 Rule applies. 20% of the things that you do will account for 80% of your results. If you do not set clear priorities, you will “major in minors” and spend much of your time doing small and irrelevant tasks that do not help you to achieve the goal.  In organizing by sequence, you determine what has to be done before something else can be done. There are always activities that are dependent upon other
activities being completed in advance. What are they, and what is the logical order or sequence?

Step Five: Identify the obstacles or limitations that might hold you back from achieving your goal, both in the situation and within yourself.  Ask yourself, “Why have I not achieved this goal already?”  Identify the most important constraint or limitation that is holding you back and then focus on removing that obstacle. It could be a certain amount of money, or a key resource. It could be an additional skill or habit that you need. It could be
additional information you require.  It could be the help or assistance of one or more people. Whatever it is, identify it clearly and go to work to eliminate it.

Step Six: Once you have determined your goal, developed your plan, and identified your major obstacle, immediately take action of some kind toward the achievement of your goal. Step out in faith. Do the first thing that comes to mind.  But do something immediately to start the process of goal attainment moving forward.

Step Seven: Do something every day that moves you to toward your most important goal.  Make a habit of getting up each morning, planning your day and then doing something, anything, that moves you at least one step closer to what is most important to you.  The habit of doing something every single day that moves you toward an important goal develops within you the power of momentum. Daily action deepens your belief that the goal is achievable, and activates the Law of Attraction. As a result, you begin moving faster and faster toward your goal, and your goal begins moving faster and faster toward you.   People told me that the habit of taking action every day on one or more of their major goals has been life-transforming.  They have told me that this single habit has been more responsible for their success than any other idea they ever learned. Try it for yourself and see.

Good Luck, and Have A Great Day!

“A man, as a general rule, owes very little to what he is born with – a man is what he makes of himself.” Alexander Graham Bell

When I was 25, I was  living in a small one-room apartment, in the middle of a very cold winter, working on a construction job during the day. I usually couldn’t afford to go out of my apartment in the evenings, where at least it was warm, so I had a lot of time to think.  One night as I sat there at my small kitchen table, I had a great flash of awareness. It changed my life. I suddenly realized that everything that happened to me for the rest of my life was going to be up to me.  No one else was ever going to help me. No one was coming to the rescue.  I was thousands of miles from home with no intentions of going back for a long time. I saw clearly at that moment that if anything in my life were going to change, it would have to begin with me. If I didn’t change, nothing else would change. I was responsible.

I still remember that moment. It was like a first parachute jump.  It was both scary and exhilarating. There I was, standing on the edge of life.  And I decided to jump. From that moment onward, I accepted that I was in charge of my life. I knew that if I wanted things to be different, I would have to be different.  Everything was up to me.  I later learned that when you accept complete responsibility for your life, you take the giant step from childhood to adulthood. Sadly enough, most people never do this. I have met countless men and women in their 40s and 50s who are still grumbling and complaining about earlier unhappy experiences, and still blaming their problems on other people and circumstances. Many people are still angry about something that one of their parents did or did not do to or for themtwenty, or thirty, or even forty years ago. They are trapped in the
past and they can’t get free.

The greatest enemies of success and happiness are negative emotions, of all kinds. It is negative emotions that hold you down, tire you out and take away all your joy in life. It is negative emotions, from the beginning of time, that have done more harm to individuals and societies than all the plagues of history.  One of your most important goals, if you want to be truly happy and successful, is to free yourself from negative emotions, and fortunately, this can be done, if you learn how. The negative emotions of fear, self-pity, envy, jealousy, feelings of inferiority, and ultimately anger, are mostly caused by four factors.  Once you identify and remove these factors from your thinking, your negative emotions stop automatically. When your negative emotions stop, the positive emotions of love, peace, joy and enthusiasm flow in to replace them, and your whole life changes for the better, sometimes in a matter of minutes, or even seconds.

Next time I will talk about four factors that causes negative emotions.

Have A Good Day!

Earl Nightingale once wrote:  Happiness is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal, or goal.  You only feel truly happy when you are making progress, step-by step, toward something that is important to you. Victor Frankel, the founder of Logo therapy, wrote that the greatest need of the human being is for a sense of meaning and purpose in life.  Goals give you a sense of meaning and purpose. Goals give you a sense of direction. As you move toward your goals you feel happier and stronger. You feel more energized and effective. You feel more confident and competent in yourself and your abilities. Every step you take toward your goals increases your belief that you can set and achieve even bigger goals in the future.  More people today fear change, and worry about the future, than at any other time in our history. One of the great benefits of goal setting is that goals enable you to control the direction of change in your life.  Goals enable you to assure that the changes in your life are largely self-determined and self-directed. Goals enable you to instill meaning and purpose into everything you do.  One of the most important teachings of Aristotle, the Greek philosopher, was that man is a teleological organism. The word “teleos” in Greek means goals. What Aristotle concluded was that all human action is purposeful in some way. You are only happy when you are doing something that is moving you toward something that you want. The great questions then become: What are your goals? What purposes are you aiming at? Where do you want to end up at
the end of the day?

Your inborn potential is extraordinary. You have within you, right now, the ability to achieve almost any goal that you can set for yourself. Your greatest responsibility to yourself is to invest the whatever time is required to become absolutely clear about exactly what it is you want, and how you can best achieve it. The greater clarity you have regarding your true goals, the more of your potential you will unleash for good in your life.  You have probably heard it said that the average person uses only 10% of his or her potential. The sad fact is that, according to Stanford University, the average person functions with only about 2% of his or her mental potential. The remainder just sits there in reserve, being saved up for some later time. This would be exactly as if your parents had left you a trust fund with $100,000 in it, but all you ever took out to spend was $2,000. The other $98,000 dollars simply sat in the account unused throughout your life.

The starting point of all goal attainment is desire. You must develop an intense, burning desire for your goals if you really want to achieve them. It is only when your desire becomes intense enough that you will have the energy and the internal drive to overcome all the obstacles that will arise in your path.  The good news is that almost anything that you want long enough and hard enough, you can ultimately achieve.  The great oil billionaire, H. L. Hunt, was once asked the “secret of success.” He replied that success required two things, and two things only. First, he said, you must know exactly what it is you want.  Most people never make this decision. Second, he said, you must
determine the price that you will have to pay to achieve it, and then get busy paying that price.