Success Tip: Get To Know Yourself!

How does a person obtain the strength and qualities they need in order to become successful in life? The key to building the confidence and self-esteem you’ll need to lead your life lies in developing a strong relationship with yourself. To do this you must defy society’s pull toward preoccupation with what’s happening “out there” by turning your vision inward.

We live in a world that constantly pulls us outside of ourselves. There are the sensational news stories, larger than life film characters, nonstop advertisements on television, radio, the Internet, and in the mail. And there are the individual distractions as well - earning a living, raising the kids, company politics, keeping up with the Joneses - you get the picture. (more…)

Self Approval: Clearing The Path For Success

You can’t and be perky, successful, and at peace unless you have a sincere t look at yourself first. You should take note of all of the blockages so that you can get to work on your life.

Observe the 4 ways in which to start:

1. Get to know what other people like about you. Ask someone close to you to tell you honestly how he or she views you. Have that person rate you and your specific traits on a scale of one to five. Do people describe you as your own worst enemy? If they do, you need to work on your self-knowledge to understand (more…)

Meditation, the art of tuning in, is the perfect metaphor for shutting out your external world. When we close our eyes we flip a switch that connects us to what’s going on inside. Almost instantly we become aware of what we’re thinking and how we feel.

Try it right now. Close your eyes and take three slow, deep breaths. Notice this shift in energy in your body and your mind. See what I mean? When you close your eyes, you shut out the world. From this perspective you begin to notice how you feel and what you think in a way that most of us never acknowledge because of our busy lives. For example, you might notice bodily sensations like the shallowness of your breath or the beating of your heart. You notice sounds that you were oblivious to before, like the hum of your computer or the noise of passing traffic. You notice your thoughts and the busyness of your mind as it worries, plans, or overanalyzes. When you learn to connect with your breath on a regular basis by closing your eyes and breathing deeply, you calm your nervous system. Then, as your mind settles, you learn to enter into a state of thoughtlessness so you can become an objective witness to the present moment. (more…)

Do you allow others to set goals that overwhelm you and leave you with feelings of doubt and fear, especially when you fail to reach them? When someone else continually sets goals for you, your sense of self-esteem is diminished. You increase your probability of following through on a task when you set the goal yourself.

When you set a goal do not allow others to restrict you by telling you that your goal is unrealistic. You have a choice. You can let their limited vision persuade you by telling yourself that they’re right or, you can persuade yourself by using positive self-talk that will help you concentrate on fulfilling your goal. Utilizing positive self-talk will prepare you for taking the necessary steps to make your goals a reality.

Changing your self-talk to clearly define and crystallize your goals and desires is the first step toward attaining them. Then, breaking up your goals and desires into manageable parts helps you to see what additional steps need to be taken to get the results you need. Initially, setting your sights to achieve a moderate amount of success is the best way to reach your goals. To reach your goal, move forward and develop a realistic plan to achieve immediate success. This will help you overcome overwhelming feelings of doubt and fear. As you complete each objective celebrate your success along the way. (more…)

Basically we all know what to do when it comes to our environment, and if the world were perfect we wouldn’t have to give it a second thought. The reality is that the world we live in isn’t perfect and we are only human, prey to our emotions; even though at times we know what we may be doing isn’t the best thing for us, especially when it comes to matters of the heart. And since there is so much that can pull us down and because we are constantly bombarded by negativity, all we are trying to suggest is for you to lessen your exposure to a negative environment.

Have you noticed at work that the smallest amount of negativity can erode or even paralyze someone’s home or business? Personality conflicts, political agendas, or feelings of revenge become the main focus. The negativity takes your mind off your objective, your everyday activities, your studies, or your work, and you become caught up in something that doesn’t really matter. On the personal side, I’m sure we all know someone who hates the idea of family reunions or being with friends of friends who are so strange that they must be from another planet. At work, have you ever seen or heard those at the “water cooler club”? A small band of whiners, conspirators, gossipers, whose work output is marginal at best, who know who’s been doing what to whom and for how long. (more…)

There is nothing greater that comes in the way of success then fear does. It literally can paralyze people from making those decisions to live a greater existence. We all know what fear feels like. It is probably the most common limiting emotion and, for many people, the most common emotion, period. Not only do we fear new things, we also feel fear in addition to other negative emotions. We feel guilt, and we’re afraid to feel the guilt. We feel pain, and we’re afraid to feel the pain. Even when we feel fear, we’re often afraid to feel the fear. That’s known as “worrying about your worries,” “an anxiety attack.” (more…)

Your self-concept is wrapped up in a set of descriptions and images - of good success scenes or bad failure scenes that you’ve experienced. It is also carried in a set of personality trait labels you use to tell yourself and others what you are really like. Your self-evaluations are important because they influence most areas of your behavior, defining the limits of what you will attempt. You avoid an activity if your self-concept predicts you will perform so badly as to humiliate yourself. For instance, if your self-concept includes the belief that you would be a poor ice skater, you might never try it, and will indeed remain a poor ice skater. Often people excuse themselves with “That’s just the way I am.” By using this excuse, they deny themselves opportunities for personal growth.

If you could listen in, you would hear non-assertive people saying all kinds of negative sentences to themselves. They selectively remember some criticism of themselves, exaggerate it to monstrous proportions, and repeat it over and over like a chant. The man battling his bulging waistline might be saying, “I am ugly, fat, and disgusting. No one can stand to look at me. I am a fat worm. I’ve got no will power.” The shy, retiring boy at a dance might be saying, “Those girls are whispering about me. My pimples are horrible. If I talk to that girl, she’ll insult and ridicule me. I never know what to say to girls. I’ll die if she cuts me down.”

The fact is that people are often their own worst downers. They say to themselves, “I am irrational, emotional, stupid, dull, ugly, shy, cold, submissive, fat, ineffectual, overbearing, bitchy, childish, a bully, a miserable father (mother), a lousy speaker, a failure, and over-the-hill.” We all have our own lists. People can be terribly brutal with themselves. Out of the whole animal kingdom, only humans are endowed with this capacity to make themselves miserable. Can you imagine your pet cat or dog moping around, saying such brutal things to himself?

Worse yet, in many cases our negative view of ourselves may be communicated to new acquaintances before they have time to form an independent impression of us. If we tell people we are inadequate, they may do us the disservice of believing us. A woman in one of Sharon’s assertiveness classes repeatedly advertised herself poorly by prefacing each remark with, “I doubt if my idea is worth anything, but…” Without realizing it, the class did indeed pay less and less attention to her ideas - at least until they stopped to examine the subtle message her remark conveyed.

The toll of a negative self-concept is that it limits what we are willing to try, forestalling opportunities for growth and enjoyment. Doomsday prophesies about our social failures tend to be self-fulfilling. The shy woman who retreats from friendly overtures is indeed judged to be cold, aloof, disdainful, and the man who was turned down for approaching her is even less likely to make another overture to her (or vice versa!) The student with anxiety about taking a test “goes blank” to such an extent that he does indeed fail just as miserably as he had feared.

Imagine this: Think about entering a new situation. To meet that situation, imagine that you received an extra burst of energy, your senses sharpened, and there was a tingling - an excitement - in your body, and you became more sensitive and aware.

Doesn’t that sound great? The very thing we need to do our best in a new situation! Well, it’s precisely what does happen each time we enter a new situation. Most of the time, however, we call it “fear” and we don’t like it.

Contrary to popular belief, our parents didn’t teach us to feel fear. Our parents did teach us to use fear as a reason not to do something and they did this from love. A child cannot logically determine if its physical well being was or was not endangered when attempting each new activity. (more…)

And that’s Plan.

We almost always get to our goal through means other than the ones we put on our schedule. So why plan? Because people who don’t make long-range plans seldom get to where they want to be. In short, a plan will get you to your goal, but not in the way that’s on the plan.

So, plan. And, be prepared not just to change horses in midstream, but to change to a boat in midstream. Keep your goal, your dream. Stay firm and fixed on that. Be prepared, however, for whatever methods come along to get you there. Especially methods not on your plan. Plan on it.

How do you plan? Simple. Take a segment of time, take a goal, and divide up the latter into the former. Keep dividing it up until you have your next action step - something you can do right now to move toward your goal. Let’s say you want to produce a play within the next year. Get some kind of calendar that divides a year into units with which we’re all familiar - months, weeks, days, etc. Twelve months from now, write, “Play opens.” You have the goal (the play), and you have the time twelve months). Now, chop up the goal. (more…)

When you commit to a goal, the methods to achieve that goal will appear. When the methods do appear, they may not be (and seldom are) dressed in familiar garb. Many people are in the habit of saying “no” to all new experiences. Part of this, of course, is the comfort zone: “It’s new, so don’t do it.”

Alas, saying no to something before we know what we’re saying no to has a rather nasty name - one that no one likes to hear applied to themselves. That word is prejudice. It means, of course, to prejudge something. Human beings do it all the time. How many opinions do you have of people you have never even met?

By watching TV, we all have had the chance to meet a number of famous people who we initially “knew” only through the media. Many of them lived up to (or down to) their reputations. Others did not. Some people who had “bad reps” in the press were, in fact, delightful. Others, who are known to be magnificent individuals, were, in fact, monsters. (more…)