Self Talk and Positive Thinking.com

One of the most important habits that you can develop for health, happiness and long-life is the habit of maintaining a positive mental attitude toward the people and situations in the world around you. Remind yourself of the Serenity Prayer: “God grant me the ability to change the things I can, the willingness to accept the things I cannot, and the wisdom to know the difference,” (Reinhold Niebuhr).

key 1. Resolve to maintain a positive mental attitude no matter what happens. Refuse to allow yourself to become upset or angry when people and situations do not measure up to your expectations. Instead, be calm, relaxed and focused on solutions to the problems and difficulties facing you.

key 2. Practice Solitude Daily Develop the habit of taking time for yourself, in solitude and meditation each day. Reserve for yourself a 30-60 minute period where you can be completely alone, in the silence. Turn off all radio and television, put aside all reading materials, and just allow yourself to commune deeply with the world around you.
Blaise Pascal, the French writer once wrote, “All the problems in the world originate because of man’s inability to be alone in a room with himself.”

Most people have never practiced solitude and meditation. We are so busy, with so much to do, and so little time, that we feel that we cannot take the few minutes necessary to sit quietly and be alone with ourselves. But this is mistaken. Each time that you sit in solitude for 30 minutes or more, you will feel your mind becoming clear and calm.

The problems and difficulties facing you will become lighter and easier to bear. You will receive superconscious insights and ideas to deal with the challenges of your day-to-day life. You will arise from a period of solitude greatly refreshed, mentally, emotionally and spiritually and with wonderful thoughts about how you can improve the quality of your life and work.

key 3. Set Peace of Mind as Your Most Important Goal Develop the habit of making “peace of mind” your most important goal in life, and then organize all of your life and activities around this goal. Listen to your inner voice. Trust your intuition. Only do what feels right and natural for you to do. When you begin to focus on developing greater peace of mind, and listening to your intuition, you will probably never make another mistake. You will always find yourself doing and saying the right things, in the right way, at the right time.

As you trust your inner voice, you will receive an endless flow of ideas, insights and creative solutions to solving your problems, and achieving your every goal. Fully 85% or more of all physical illnesses and ailments today are psychosomatic in origin. “psycho” the mind, makes “soma” the body, sick. The very act of letting go and relaxing, practicing solitude and meditation on a regular basis, dramatically lowers your levels of stress and tension, and raises your levels of energy and awareness.

The more centered you are within yourself, and the more positive and optimistic your thinking, the healthier and happier you will be and the longer you will live. By placing peace of mind as the central organizing principle of your life, you will become a more effective, efficient and happier person. The journey of your life will be far longer than that of the average person, and you will enjoy every step along the way.

“The man who succeeds above his fellows is the one who early in life clearly discerns his object, and towards that object habitually directs his powers.”
(Edward George Bulwer-Lytton)

Abraham Maslow, the transpersonal psychologist, once wrote, “The ultimate end of human life is to become everything you are capable of becoming.” Your purpose should be to fulfill your potential as a human being and to accomplish every goal that you can possibly set for yourself. Your aim should be to get the very most out of yourself in every area of your life. There are some people who accomplish an extraordinary amount with their lives, as opposed to the great majority who accomplish very little. These peak performers or self-actualizers seem to earn more money, have better families, friends and relationships, enjoy higher levels of health and energy, achieve much higher levels of success, esteem and prestige in their fields, and live longer, happier lives than the average. This should be your goal as well.

1. The Determinant of High Performance
The only difference between the high performers and the low performers is their habits. High performing, successful, happy men and women are those who have taken the time and disciplined themselves to develop the habits that lead them onward and upward in every area of their lives. Unsuccessful, unhappy people, on the other hand, are those who have not yet developed those habits.

The good news is that all habits have been learned, and are therefore learnable. You can learn whatever habits and behaviors you consider desirable and necessary. The only limits are the limits your place on yourself. The question is always, “How badly do you want it?” If you are willing to work on yourself long enough and hard enough, you can form and shape yourself into the kind of excellent person that you are designed to be.

No matter what you have done or not done in the past, at any time, you can draw a line under your previous life and make the decision that your future is going to be different. You can begin thinking different thoughts, making different choices and decisions, taking different actions, and developing different habits that will lead you inevitably to the successes that are possible for you.

2. Personal Strategic Planning
The purpose of strategic planning in a business is to increase “return on equity” or R.O.E. It is to improve the financial results of the business over what they would have been in the absence of the new strategy. In the same way, the purpose of personal strategic planning is to increase R.O.E., or “return on energy.” It is to increase your “return on life.” The aim is for you to organize and reorganize your life in such a way that you are earning the highest returns on your mental, emotional and physical equity invested in your life.

Your goal is to organize yourself and use your time to achieve the greatest amount of pleasure, satisfaction and rewards from everything you do, every hour and every day. And this is very much under your own personal control. The first habit therefore that you must develop to insure a great life is the habit of personal strategic planning. You invest the time and effort to think through and plan out your life, in advance, to assure that you get the very most that is possible for you in every area.

With personal strategic planning, you develop the habits of future orientation and long-time perspective. These habits enable you to project forward in your life several years and determine exactly what it is that you want to accomplish and where it is that you want to end up at a specific time in the future.

3. Think Long Term
The greater clarity that you have regarding your long-term goals, the better and more accurate decisions you will make in the short-term to assure that you achieve your goals on schedule. For example, if you decide that you are going to be a self made millionaire 10 to 20 years from now, you set that as your long-term financial goal. You then assess your current situation, and determine how much you are worth today. You draw a line from where you are today to where you want to be at a certain date in the future. You then plan out a strategy or roadmap of exactly how you are going to get to your goal of financial independence in the time that you have allotted.

The rule is this: be clear about the goal but be flexible about the process. Be open to the fact that a thousand things will change on the road to your long-term goal. As long as your goal is clear, you can continue to remain flexible and openminded. You can reevaluate and try different things. You can accept feedback and self-correct. You can go over, around and through obstacles, and even change and go in a completely different direction. This is the normal and natural process of getting from wherever you are to any long-term goal.

4. Review Your Goals Daily
Develop the habit of regular goal setting. Get a spiral notebook and rewrite your current goals every morning before you start out, in the present tense, as though they were already realities, This exercise programs your goals deeper and deeper into your subconscious mind, and causes all kinds of remarkable things to happen that move you toward your goals, sometimes by the most remarkable of coincidences.

The habit of daily goal setting seems to act like a turbocharger on your potential, moving you more rapidly toward your goals than you ever thought possible. When you practice this technique for thirty days, your entire life will change in a very positive way. One month from now, you will be amazed at what has happened to you.

You are an accumulation of your habits. From how you make your breakfast in the morning to how you shower; how you dress; how you walk, sit and talk; how you respond to the world around you; how you act in front of others; and how you think, you are living out your habits. They free up your mind so that you can concentrate on how to live every day. You don’t have to think about how to cycle so you can be on the lookout for danger while you are cycling.

Unfortunately, habits can also keep you blocked from your success. To become successful, you will need to drop bad habits and develop new ones that are in line with the life you want to live. People do not suddenly  live there dream life,habits determine their outcome! What are the habits you have that are keeping you from living your life as you always dreamed off? Are you always running late? Do you return phone calls within 48 hours?  When you speak do you  look people directly in their eyes? Do you get enough sleep? Ask others what they think about you and make a list of all the things that keep you from your success.

Imagine what your life would be like if all those habits were their productive counterparts. What would your life be like if you stopped procrastinating, overcame your fears and began networking with people in your field? What would your life be like if you ate healthy meals, exercised and got enough sleep? What would your life be like if you saved money, stopped using credit cards and paid cash for everything? Write down the more productive habits and visualize your life as it would be if they were your habits right now.

Decide to develop two of your new habits each six month. Find ways to  support your new habit. What will keep you motivated? How will you remind yourself of your new habit? You could write it down on a card that you keep with you and read over several times a day. You could make it a part of your daily visualization. You could enlist the help of an accountability partner who also has habits to change. Be specific about the steps that you are willing to take in order to change an old habit and adopt a new one. Do not be vague about how you will change your habits. Spell it out for yourself so that you can recognize situations that call for you to act out your new habit.

Once you have picked your habit that you are going to change, make a 100 percent commitment to stick to it. Do not tempt yourself by making it optional every time a situation arises. If your new habit is to go to fitness class   four times a week, then go, even if you are not feeling like you want. Just go there and do it, don’t compromise on your new habit. If you make an exception once, you are more likely to make an exception the next time, and soon you will be back to your old habit.

Even one new habit each tree month will dramatically change your life to be more in line with your vision. And the more in line it becomes, the easier the other habits are to replace because your perspective is changing and you see more clearly how your old habits are not serving you anymore.

An important habit that you can develop is the habit of thinking before acting. Often, when we are pressured from all sides with decisions that have to be made, we leap to conclusions and make decisions without carefully considering all the possible ramifications of those decisions. Instead, develop the habit of buying time between the pressure to make a decision, and the actual decision itself. There is a rule that says, “If the decision does not have to be made now, it has to not be made now.” Your mind is incredibly powerful, and never more so than when you give it time to reflect upon a decision before you make the decision in the first place. Make it a habit of asking for a day, or a weekend, or even a week or a month, before you make a final decision. Put it off as long as possible. The very act of allowing the various pieces of information to settle in your brain will enable you to make a much better decision later on than you might have made if you decided too  quickly.
It is amazing how many people say, “If I had just thought about that for a little while, I would have made a completely different decision.” This is almost always the case. Make it a habit to delay and defer decisions as long as you possibly can. They will invariably be better decisions when you finally come around to making them.