Category: Goal Setting

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Goal Setting

There Are No Secrets To Success

As you strive toward accomplishing your goals and dreams you need to know that there are no secrets to success! Webster’s Dictionary defines a secret as something kept from public knowledge; something mysterious that is beyond general knowledge or understanding. If that were true then it would  mean success is only possible for those few who have access to these great mysterious secrets.

Nonsense!

You Are What You Believe! Today Is YOUR Day!

Today is the day you can decide to change your life. Change the way you think about things and begin to make a difference in your life.

Decide to believe your life is going to be an exciting adventure. Decide to believe you will be a success. Decide to believe today is going to be better than yesterday. Decide to make a difference for someone else and you will make a difference for yourself as well.

Decide and it will be TRUE FOR YOU!

There are no secrets to success — because they are available to everyone. You have to WANT to know them. You have to LOOK for them. You have to DO something with them once you know them. By applying the four truths I’ve shared with you today, your life will change dramatically – success will be within your grasp and you will make a difference.

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Goal Setting

Secrets Of A Positive Attitude

Greetings self help reader, are you constantly bombarded by thoughts of negativity? Plagued by feelings of insecurity? Do you see everything in a negative manner? The reason for this lies deep within your heart. You are what you mentally and spiritually eat. If a person drinks alchohol on a daily basis, odds are their body will be affected in some way. They may have liver issues, develop cancer or incur some other type of health problem directly related to the amount of alcohol they have consumed. In the same way, a person who constantly feeds themselves negative thoughts will simply turn into a negative person.

This is the time to go on a diet. A diet of positive attitude food. You have to literally stop feeding your mind negative things. Ask yourself is this thought negative or positive or negative? What do negative thoughts look like? Well, they start with can’t rather than can, no as opposed to yes, will and not won’t. The Bible which is the greatest self help book ever written, speaks about taking every thought captive. The problem in our society has become that our thoughts have taken us captive. We have begun to let our thoughts control us.

A great way to know what we are negative about is to ask those people who are closest to us. You can ask your spouse or another person in your life who really knows you how they would rate your attitude on a scale of 1 to 10. 10 being super positive and 1 super negative. Ask this person to be totally honest with you. You will benefit from their honesty even if it causes  you pain. Ask this person what it is that you specifically say that they perceive as negative. Write down what they say and look at the actual words. Now is the time to be honest with yourself. Those words are a reflection of what is inside you. They are who you are. The great thing is that you can change. It is as simple as making a choice to do so. You must decide to replace the thoughts of negativity with thoughts of positivity. Decide what words you will change the negative words on your paper to. Once you have done this, make an effort to insert these new positive thoughts in your mind. You will begin to notice a positive change taking place in your life. Your family, friends and co-workers will all notice it as well. They may not know what is different about you. But they will know that you are not the same person that you were.

The items which are causing negativity in your life could very well be the news, movies, constantly replaying tragedy in your mind and the list could go on. These things should be eliminated if you want your new mental health regimen to be a success. The news is very negative and does not help someone who is trying to rid their mind of such thoughts. When you are feeding yourself thoughts of death from a war or gunshot or car accident visually the outcome will be negative. I do believe there is a time to grieve over the death of a loved one. However, if a person constantly replays this negative event in their minds it can lead to depression. The person who has passed away is not coming back and we must close that chapter in our lives and move on to the next chapter. This is a difficult task which can only be done by making a decision to proceed with our own life, no matter how hard this may be.

You can do it. You can and will have a positive attitude, if you simply take the steps outlined above. You do not have to be what you were in the past. You can be different in the future. The choice is yours. I know you will make a positive one.

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Goal Setting

Build Your Self Esteem – A Starter Guide To Self Improvement

Imagine yourself as a Dart Board. Everything and everyone else around you may become Dart Pins, at one point or another. These dart pins will destroy your self esteem and pull you down in ways you won’t even remember. Don’t let them destroy you, or get the best of you. So which dart pins should you avoid?

Dart Pin #1 : Negative Work Environment

Beware of “dog eat dog” theory where everyone else is fighting just to get ahead. This is where non-appreciative people usually thrive. No one will appreciate your contributions even if you miss lunch and dinner, and stay up late. Most of the time you get to work too much without getting help from people concerned. Stay out of this, it will ruin your self esteem. Competition is at stake anywhere. Be healthy enough to compete, but in a healthy competition that is.

Dart Pin #2: Other People’s Behavior

Bulldozers, brown nosers, gossipmongers, whiners, backstabbers, snipers, people walking wounded, controllers, naggers, complainers, exploders, patronizers, sluffers, all these kinds of people will pose bad vibes for your self esteem, as well as to your self improvement scheme.

Dart Pin #3: Changing Environment

You can’t be a green bug on a brown field. Changes challenge our paradigms. It tests our flexibility, adaptability and alters the way we think. Changes will make life difficult for awhile, it may cause stress but it will help us find ways to improve our selves. Change will be there forever, we must be susceptible to it.

Dart Pin #4: Past Experience

It’s okay to cry and say “Ouch!” when we experience pain. But don’t let pain transform itself into fear. It might grab you by the tail and swing you around. Treat each failure and mistake as a lesson.

Dart Pin #5: Negative World View

Look at what you’re looking at. Don’t wrap yourself up with all the negativities of the world. In building self esteem, we must learn how to make the best out of worst situations.

Dart Pin #6: Determination Theory

The way you are and your behavioral traits is said to be a mixed end product of your inherited traits (genetics), your upbringing (psychic), and your environmental surroundings such as your spouse, the company, the economy or your circle of friends. You have your own identity. If your father is a failure, it doesn’t mean you have to be a failure too. Learn from other people’s experience, so you’ll never have to encounter the same mistakes.

Sometimes, you may want to wonder if some people are born leaders or positive thinkers. NO. Being positive, and staying positive is a choice. Building self esteem and drawing lines for self improvement is a choice, not a rule or a talent. God wouldn’t come down from heaven and tell you “George, you may now have the permission to build self esteem and improve your self.”

In life, its hard to stay tough specially when things and people around you keep pulling you down. When we get to the battle field, we should choose the right luggage to bring and armors to use, and pick those that are bullet proof. Life’s options give us arrays of more options. Along the battle, we will get hit and bruised. And wearing a bullet proof armor ideally means “self change”. The kind of change which comes from within. Voluntarily. Armor or Self Change changes 3 things: our attitude, our behavior and our way of thinking.

Building self esteem will eventually lead to self improvement if we start to become responsible for who we are, what we have and what we do. Its like a flame that should gradually spread like a brush fire from inside and out. When we develop self esteem, we take control of our mission, values and discipline. Self esteem brings about self improvement, true assessment, and determination. So how do you start putting up the building blocks of self esteem? Be positive. Be contented and happy. Be appreciative. Never miss an opportunity to compliment. A positive way of living will help you build self esteem, your starter guide to self improvement.

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Goal Setting

Achieving Your Goals

You may or may not have a set of written goals. If you do not, then I strongly urge you to make a written set of goals and clarify what you want to achieve. Whatever the case, you may be struggling with achieving your goals in life. In this article, you will learn some techniques for achieving your goals.

Think of a time in your life when you achieved something you really wanted. Did you doubt it would happen and believe that you could not achieve it? Or did you have a solid sense of knowing that it would happen and doubt never entered into your mind?

It was the second wasn’t it?

When Richard Branson set up Virgin Airways, did he sit in his office and wonder if it would ever work? Did Bill Gates sit in his office wondering if anyone would want to buy his Windows product? They may have done for a little while, but they did not let these doubts rule them. They knew their plans would work and that they would be successful.

When working to achieve your goals, you need that unerring sense of confidence and lack of doubt in yourself. You must Know it is going to happen and that you will succeed. We are not talking about thinking you will succeed, believing you will succeed or knowing you will achieve your goal. They are all intellectual forms of Knowing, Knowing with a capital K; that solid feeling in the pit of your stomach that you will make happen and you cannot fail. Expect it to happen and know there is no other way. It will happen. This Knowing gives you drive and commitment to see you through to the success of your goal.

But how do you get this feeling? One of the best and most effective techniques is visualisation.

You currently use the power of visualisation, probably without even realising it. Have you ever run through what you are going to say to someone before you have the conversation? Or seen yourself in your mind giving a presentation before you give it?

That is the power of visualisation, and it is very potent. You can use it not only for your goals, but for any aspect of your life. Visualisation is something most people are unused to directing. You will find initially that your attention will wander, but you have to pull it back to the task at hand. It is similar to building a muscle up through exercise – it takes time to strengthen it.

The exercise for visualising your goals is very simple, and is as follows…

1) Select the goal that you wish to work with

2) Picture an image of this goal in your mind

3) Visualise yourself attaining your goal. Use all of your senses – touch, hearing, sight, smell, and taste. Really feel your success with every fibre of your being and Know that your goal is as good as achieved.

4) Hold this image in your mind for a minimum of 10 minutes – remain focus and positive. Challenge any doubts that rise and replace them with positive words and images of success. If you get distracted or your mind wanders, bring your focus back to your goal.

You can also hold this successful image in your mind as you go about your day to day business. Keep the image there and focus on your success. You get what you focus on – and if you focus on achieving your goal, then you will get it. Visualisation is a method of programming the subconscious mind for success.

With some goals you may want to keep them private. If you are trying to get fit and your friends know you have been less than energetic in the past when you tell them your goal, they will laugh and joke and not believe you. This doubt and disbelief can affect your belief in yourself and in your goal, which in turn can lead to failure to achieve the goal.

It is hard enough to overcome our own doubts and worries without having to also overcome those of the people around you. Keep any goals where you may be influenced by others to yourself and let the people around you see the successful end result.

Affirming Success

Another method for achieving your goals is to use affirmations, which means you repeat your goal again and again to yourself. This is another method of programming your subconscious mind, which is the source of all action.

An affirmation is a sentence or two that is written in a positive language with definite targets and timescales. A bad affirmation would be “I want to lose some weight.” Your subconscious looks at this and since there is no timescale it will not leap into action. There is also no definite target so your subconscious does not know what to aim for. How is “some weight” defined? It is 10 pounds, but also 1 pound and also just 1 ounce.

A good affirmation is “I want to lose 10 pounds by the end of this year.” This sends the right messages to your subconscious. It knows that you exactly how much you have to lose (10 pounds) and when this must be done by (the end of this year). You know precisely what you have to do and when it has to be done by.

If the goal is to lose 10 pounds by the end of the year, we need an action plan to get us to this goal and to make it happen. In this case the action plan may be to reduce our chocolate intake and increase the amount of fruits and vegetables we consume. The action plan is made up of a series of milestones. For example, if there are 5 months until the end of the year then our milestones would be to lose 2 pounds each month.

Little Steps

You may have a big goal such as “To have an income in excess of £100,000 a year by the time I am 35” (notice the goal is specific in both the timescale and the amount and does not put an upper limit on your earning potential.)

This goal can be very daunting to look at, perhaps even enough for you to give up and not strive to achieve it. To overcome this, you break your goal down into a number of smaller, more manageable steps.

Any large goal can be broken down into a number of sub-goals, which can then be broken down even further if necessary. Each of the sub-goals has an associated action plan with it. Using our income goal from above, sub-goals could be to understand taxation, to understand investment, to start your own company, and so on.

Smaller goals are easier for you to handle, and help you to stay on course to your main goal. You also get the satisfaction of regularly having successes and achieving goals, which does wonders for your belief in yourself.

All of your major goals and their associated sub-goals and action plans need to be regularly reviewed – ideally daily. This ensures you remain focussed on your goals and instantly know if you start to drift away from your target. It allows you to adjust your goals and action plan according to whether things are working quicker or slower than planned. It also prevents you from repeating actions and carrying out tasks that are not necessary. It keeps the goals in the forefront of your mind, and does not allow you to forget about them.

Achieving our goals is something we all want to do, but it involves work. Rarely will they be given to us on a silver platter by a servant on bended knee. Achievement requires Knowing, drive and commitment, combined with careful and meticulous planning and a firm belief in ourselves. With unwavering belief and commitment there is nothing that you cannot achieve. Everything and anything is within your grasp – if you are willing to make the commitment to achieving it.