Self Talk and Positive Thinking.com

Key 1.  Think Before You Act

Winners know that under pressure they always have more time than they feel they have. Taking the time for T- CUP is never a waste of time – it always saves time. Get into the habit of taking a pause for positive thought.

Key 2. Stay Focused

You will rise your self-confidence when you keep the ultimate goal in mind – wining. Your success rate will improve when you  won’t allow yourself to be distracted. When you lose focus just remind yourself that you have achieved many times before and you can do so now. A physical reminder such as a  to do list next to your computer screen, an alarm on your watch or a photograph on your fridge can help to keep you focused.

Key 3.  Prepare Thoroughly

Do not mistake wishful thinking for positive thinking. The mistake many people make is to study the biggest achievers, hear how supremely confident they are about there chances of wining and confuse cause and effect. Winners do not win just because they parrot a few positive phrases. It’s a combination of real self-belief and diligence and sticking to the winning way. Winners succeed because they have done everything they can to prepare for success. They work, think  and practice like winners. That is why winners maximize their potential.

Key 4.  Defeat The Fear Of Failure

Burst the tyre on the vicious circle of negativity – It’s just in your head. The way to do this, especially if our self-belief is not as high as it should be, is to keep the task as simple as possible. Don’t allow people to undermine you or put you off. Don’t allow your mind to run away with the worst-case scenario. Block out any negative thoughts that enter your head. Almost like a parachute jumper standing in the doorway of a plane at 12,000 feet, you have to force yourself to overcome the fear, believing that you will land safely. Keep your mind on the successful end result, visualize it, and go for it. Continually remind yoursef of your capabilities and your previous achievements.

Key 5.  Look At It Differently

Can’t see the wood for the trees? Making mountains of molehills? Sometime we are too close to the problem to see it objectively. Get a new prospective. Look at it from another person’s point of view. Talk to other people about it. Force yourself to think differently – almost like playing chess against yourself. Is there anything positive you can focus on? Suddenly the problem won’t seem as bad, and you might well find a solution you hadn’t thought of.

key 6.  Debrief Continuously

Make a habit of debriefing. Give yourself credit for the successes as you go along, and evaluate how you  can improve to make it less stressful next time. This will make you more efficient as you won’t repeat  annoying mistakes and will therefore be more positive. The problem is that when we feel down, we often don’t debrief in the right way. We concentrate on, and allow in, what went wrong. And when something goes right, we don’t debrief and analyze what went right. We don’t enjoy the success or figure out what we need to learn in order to repeat that success, and this dictates our state of mind. It’s important to debrief positively during and after each situation to learn the lesson, fix what needs to be fixed and then move on.

Key 7.  Stay Positive

If you have a positive self-image and self-worth, you will find ways of improving and hence enjoying your life – by constantly debriefing. This means you will continually strive to improve and focus on the positive, and that will change your state of mind. All of a sudden you will be used to, and comfortable with ,success. So you won’t feel such an interloper in the winners enclosure – it won’t be an accident.

Key 8.  Spoil Yourself

Sometimes all it takes is some pampering to make us feel better: a new haircut, a bit of retail therapy or a darn good workout in the gym. Maybe go and see someone who makes you feel good about yourself. Take some respite and have a good time and you’ll feel stronger and more prepared to take on the world.

Key 9. Don’t Be Sarcastic

Resist sarcasm and cynicism. They might seem harmless enough, but they can be deceptively corrosive and indicate of a negative mindset that will eventually ware you down.

Key 10.  Psyche Yourself Up

Give yourself a running start by pumping yourself up – for example using the “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” tactics. Get the adrenaline flowing and you won’t know your own mental strength.

Each failure potentially has a negative impact on your self-confidence. When feeling low on confidence, our natural tendency is to shy away from any situation in which we might have to do something. We naturally want to sneak away from additional proof as to our “failings” and thus make ourselves feel less bad. The reality is that this doesn’t work – we’ll resent ourselves for being pathetic, for not giving things a go.

By avoiding situations because of a fear of failure, our mind is unconsciously marking down our behavior as a failure anyway. When we see someone who has tried and failed – perhaps a friend who tried to set up her own business, or a colleague who left the company but didn’t like this new job – we see this as evidence that we should stick with what we’ve got: better the devil you know than the devil you don’t. But the fact is that more of us say “If only I had” rather than “I wish I hadn’t”. For every person who is a bit impetuous and rushes in without thinking things through properly, there are many more who haven’t the courage to act on their dreams, to give things a try, and who live with that regret forever.

Winners act in a way that maximizes the potential for success: they don’t rush in without thinking, but nor do they spend forever dreaming and never doing. It’s not like there is a particularly amazing secret to success. Again, a lot of it boils down to self-belief, as a theory called the Pygmalion Effect suggest. The theory goes that one of the main reasons why successful and decisive people are successful and decisive is because they believe they are successful and decisive in the way they implement the wining model.

Similarly, one of the main reasons that unsuccessful and indecisive people are unsuccessful and indecisive is because they believe they are unsuccessful and indecisive. In both cases, the power of self-belief makes it a self-fulfilling prophecy. Be proactive and make decisions and you are on your way to being a winner. And don’t worry when you make mistakes. It’s normal – winners makes mistakes too. It’s just that they learn from them for future reference, thus turning a negative into a positive.

Talk Yourself Into It

Psychologist swear by the power of self-talk. So instead of saying “I can’t” say “I can” and “I will”. Return to the big decision you have to make. Now you say to yourself: “I will do it”. And believe it. Don’t leave it up to fate. Don’t worry what might go wrong. Just do whatever it takes to achieve it. Boost your “I will” power and automatically your mindset will become a wining mindset. Making proactive and positive decisions can help us:

A.  Beat the fear of failure and of the unknown.

B.  Break away from the restrictive status quo.

C. Reduce our sense of powerlessness.

D. Reduce our feelings of regret and “If only”

E. Maximize our wining potential.

Being a winner is not just about of making the opportunities,but about taking them too. There may be a few ups and downs along the way. That’s natural: wining doesn’t happen in a straight line. Just don’t stop where others stop because of poor self-belief or self-discipline. Be a warrior and fight back against any setbacks and obstacles. Take control of your life and you will feel more empowered, more proactive, less stressed and more likely to achieve your goals. The decision is your.

How To Feel Like A Winner

A. Live in the now – to be able to enjoy your achievements, you’ve got to be aware of them to begin with. So you need to give yourself credit when you succeed.

B. Don’t live only in the past – either by dwelling  on the past failures or harping back to the good old times too much.

C. Don’t live only in the future – if you’re always looking to the next step, always worrying about tomorrow’s problems, your life will slip away without your being able to consciously enjoy it. Many people miss out  on the enjoyment in an effort to keep chasing the next success, and that is why they are never happy. Live for the moment and in the moment.

Achieving your dream takes dedication and sustained effort, you also need to balance this with other activities in your life. Balance work with play and rest, and make sure that you take care of your health and well-being. It is stupid to let yourself “burn out” and end up giving up on your dream. I have been there too, and it is hard to bounce back and find the will to get on track again. You need to pace yourself and take time off now and again to recharge your batteries.

Read a book, go for a swim or a good work-out in the gym, and take an evening off now and again. You will find that you come back to your goals with renewed energy  and enthusiasm, ready to achieve far more than if you had plodded on tired and jaded. In doing this, you are not taking time off from your dreams – just taking time out to re-balance your life.

Find things that are restorative and relaxing for you physically, mentally, and spiritually. Make a list of little things you can do to balance your life in each of these areas. I find a good long walk on the beach or in the countryside is just the thing – physical exercise, a chance to think and plan to contemplate the wonders of the universe. Find your own way to de-stress… take time out and consider it a priority. Take time to look after your body and mind, and to build the physical and mental strength you need to work towards your dream.

To protect yourself against negative influences, whether of your own making, or the result of the activities of negative people around you, recognize that you have a WILL-POWER, and put it into constant use, until it builds a wall of immunity against negative influences in your own mind. Recognize the fact that you, and every other human being, are, by nature, lazy, indifferent, and susceptible to all suggestions which harmonize with your weaknesses.

Recognize that negative influences often work on you through your subconscious mind, therefore they are difficult to detect, and keep your mind closed against all people who depress or discourage you in any way. Clean out your medicine chest, throw away all pill bottles, and stop pandering to colds, aches, pains and imaginary illness.
Deliberately seek the company of people who influence you to think and act for yourself.

Do not expect troubles as they have a tendency not to disappoint. Without doubt, the most common weakness of all human beings is the habit of leaving their minds open to the negative influence of other people. This weakness is all the more damaging, because most people do not recognize that they are cursed by it, and many who acknowledge it, neglect or refuse to correct the evil until it becomes an uncontrollable part of their daily habits.

You have ABSOLUTE CONTROL over but one thing, and that is your thoughts. This is the most significant and inspiring of all facts known to man! It reflects man’s Divine nature. This Divine prerogative is the sole means by which you may control your own destiny. If you fail to control your own mind, you may be sure you will control nothing else. If you must be careless with your possessions, let it be in connection with material things. Your mind is your spiritual estate! Protect and use it with the care to which Divine Royalty is entitled.

You were given a WILL-POWER for this purpose. Unfortunately, there is no legal protection against those who, either by design or ignorance, poison the minds of others by
negative suggestion. This form of destruction should be punishable by heavy legal penalties, because it may and often does destroy one’s chances of acquiring material things which are protected by law.

Mind control is the result of self-discipline and habit. You either control your mind or it controls you. There is no hall-way compromise. The most practical of all methods for controlling the mind is the habit of keeping it busy with a definite purpose, backed by a definite plan. Study the record of any man who achieves noteworthy success, and you will observe that he has control over his own mind, moreover, that he exercises that control and directs it toward the attainment of definite objectives.

Without this control, success is not possible.

Here are five questions that you can ask over and over again until they become a habit, guiding you to always using your time at the very highest level.
1. Develop the habit of asking, “Why am I on the payroll?” What have I been hired to accomplish? What specific measurable results are expected of me at my work? If I were trying to explain to someone else why they pay me money at my job, what reasons would I give? Most people fall into the habit of thinking that, because they are at work, they are working. They confuse activities with accomplishments. They are often busy all day doing more and more things of lesser and lesser importance. At the end of the day, they claim to be exhausted or stressed out, but they have accomplished very little. They fail to ask themselves, “Why am I on the payroll?”

2. Develop the habit of asking, “What are my highest value activities?” Whatare the most important things that you do each day in your work? If you were to take a list of all of your activities, tasks and potential results to your boss, and ask your boss to select the three most important things you do, what would he tell you? If you are your own boss, remember that there are usually three tasks or activities that account for 90% or more of the value that you contribute to your work or business. Almost everything else you do is a support activity for those three tasks. Most of your activities are tasks you think you need to do, in order to do the things for which you are actually paid, and which have the highest value. What are the three most valuable things you do in your work?

3. Develop the habit of asking the question, “What can I, and only I do, that if done well, will make a real difference?” The answer to this question is something that you and only you can do. If you don’t do it, it will not be done by someone else. But if you do it, and you do it well, it can make the greatest single contribution to your work and to your company at that moment. What is it?
4. Develop the habit of asking this question, “If I could only do one thing all day long, what one thing do I do that contributes the greatest value to my company?” If you were to list everything that you do on a piece of paper, you would find that there is one task that, if you did it consistently well, repeatedly, over and over, all day long, this one task would contribute more value than any of your other tasks, or all of your other tasks put together.
What one task or activity, which is the highest use of your talents and abilities, if you could do it all day long, would contribute the very most to your work and your life? How could you organize your time and your work so that you are focusing more and more on this single task? One of the most important keys to personal effectiveness is for you to develop the habit of spending more time, and becoming more skilled, at those few activities
that contribute the greatest value to your work. Everything else you do is usually of lower value than these essential tasks.

5. Perhaps the most important habit you can develop in personal management is the habit of asking, “What is the most valuable use of my time, right now?” There is always an answer to this question, for every minute and every hour. Your ability to accurately ask and answer this question is the key to high performance, maximum productivity, personal effectiveness and great success. In its simplest terms, people succeed because they develop the habit of consistently working on the one thing that can give them the highest rate of return on energy, and life, out of all the things they could possibly be doing at the moment. People fail because they are unable or unwilling to determine their true priorities, or they are not then disciplined enough to work on their key tasks exclusively until they are complete.

How to develop self discipline. There is a prevalent erroneous idea that self-discipline are difficult to develop and require practicing various kinds of very tough and pain inflicting activities. This is incorrect. The truth is that the whole process of developing them can be turned into a pleasurable and fun experience. It is a gradual process that consists of simple exercises you can practice wherever you might happen to be and at any time. Many of these exercises relate to common, everyday activities. Let me give you an example before we proceed:

You are thirsty and wish to drink something. You might wish to drink beer, juice, soda water or any other kind of beverage, but instead, you intentionally drink just plain water, in spite of your desire to drink something else.
This simple exercise will cause you some subconscious resistance. By resisting the temptation and desire to drink your favorite drink, you strengthen your willpower and self-discipline. It is like lifting barbells to strengthen your muscles, only that here you strengthen the muscles of your willpower and self discipline.  Actually, the body is thirsty and needs water to quench its thirst, but the mind automatically suggests something else, according to its. Your decision, and your abidance by your decision to drink plain water, exercises your power of choice and the power of your will.  As you see, it was not hard at all. You didn’t need to do anything extraordinary or spend some special time practicing this simple exercise.  After practicing the exercises several times, and being able to abide by your decision to drink water, you can revert to drinking you favorite beverage when thirsty. You have proved to yourself that you can overcome your instinctive desire and use willpower and self-discipline. Such exercises strengthen your inner powers, and make it easier to use them when you need them for anything else, not just for drinking water.

Here is another example how you can develop self discipline;

·  If you have an appointment at a certain hour, you are there on time.
·  If you make a promise to finish some work at a certain hour or date, you finish it by that time.
·  If you promise yourself to start a self-improvement program, study, exercises or meditation, you keep this promise.
·  If you decide to slim or eat only healthy food, you abide by your decision, even if you have to give up your favorite tidbits and snacks or change your eating habits.
·  A self-disciplined person does not produce excuses, but keeps and fulfills the promises he makes to himself and to others.

Acting contrary to a habit, even if this is unpleasant and uncomfortable, strengthens one’s power of will, self-discipline and endurance. Just to set your mind at rest, after mastering any exercise, you may, if you wish, return to your old habit, if it is not harmful and you still like it.  Training your willpower and self-discipline  is similar to training your muscles by lifting heavy weights at the gym. You make some effort in order to gain inner strength. You “sacrifice” some pleasure for the sake of gaining something better.  I wish to share with you some experiences, which I went through at the beginning of my training. I started reading a very thick book, with many pages, but after reading a few pages I put it aside, finding it too boring. At that very moment I remembered that one of the ways to strengthen willpower and self discipline  was by practicing actions that bring up inner resistance and completing them. At that very moment I decided to read the whole book, no matter how boring it was. I stuck with my decision, and went through each page to the last one.  Though it was a small accomplishment, it was a great victory for me, since I was able to overcome the opposition of my mind. This incident filled me with strength, and the faith that I can overcome any inner resistance I might encounter. I felt that if I could read a boring book, I would be able to do greater things that need more inner effort and strength.  Later, I have noticed that this exercise, and similar ones, developed my ability to go through and finish whatever I started to do, not just reading
books. I hope you will do the same,and you won’t stop until you achieve whatever you desire to accomplish.

Have a great day!