Wanna feel great about yourself? Would you like to see all that you wish for come to be? Do you want to find the right balance? There’s a secret weapon that will make it all happen-and it’s You. The way you think about yourself will be your true ally in living an inspired and balanced life. Your ability to think positively and believe in yourself will form the cornerstone of your success. Here are five strategies to help you become your own champion.
1. Appreciate you
One way to develop a strong sense of self-contentment is to give yourself the gift of self-appreciation. Offer yourself the same respect and kindness you give to those you care deeply about. Treat yourself to favorite pastimes – great music, happy people, laughter.
2. Watch for negative self-talk
I’ve noticed that women, in particular, have a tendency to pick out, and pick on, the parts of themselves they like least. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard women speak disparagingly about themselves: At the gym, a woman complains that she has a “jiggle butt.” At a fundraiser for my son’s school one woman tells another, “I am such a bad mom. I bought a cake for the cake walk (a fundraising initiative) instead of making it myself.”
Whether said as a joke or not, these self-deprecating words can be damaging when the negativity stems from a deeper sense of dissatisfaction with oneself. Oftentimes negative comments tossed off in jest can come from a much more disapproving inner dialogue than might be revealed at the gym or the school.
You may immediately relate to these examples and recognize this kind of behavior as your own, or you might not even know that you have negative conversations with yourself. Take the mirror test to find out: The next time you see your reflection in a mirror, notice whether or not your first thought is a complimentary or a critical one. If it’s critical (and for many of us it will be), it’s time to stop running yourself down. Focus, instead, on what you like about yourself.
3. Focus on your attributes
Being happy in your own skin means getting comfortable with who you are, the way you look and what you want out of life. Instead of focusing on what you don’t like about yourself, do your best to honor and appreciate what makes you unique. Your smile. Your sense of humor. Do you have wonderful hair or fabulous cheekbones? Now go further. What qualities define you as a person? What do you absolutely love about yourself? Is it your attitude? Resist the temptation to criticize yourself. This is a learned behavior and it can be unlearned with intentional action.
4. Don’t apologize for your achievements
We have all achieved things in our lives, both big and small, personally and professionally. Often, though, negative self-talk will stop us from basking in the glow of our successes. You might find yourself saying, “Hey, that wasn’t so great” or “I could have done it better” or “I didn’t really deserve that.” You have the power to shut down this negative self-talk by honoring and celebrating your achievements. When you give yourself permission to feel positive about your accomplishments and refuse to listen to that negative inner dialogue, you will feel pleased. Proudly share your wins, rather than apologize for them. You might even amaze yourself when triumphal words such as “I’m great at my job,” “I am the best mother ever” or “I rock” roll off your tongue with hardly a thought. Watch how your confidence builds as you praise your wins.
5. Do the best you can
Your best is going to be different from situation to situation. It will change depending on how rested you feel, who is involved and where you might be. No matter what the circumstances, the most you can ask from yourself is to do your best… and then remember to acknowledge that what you’ve done is just that. Through this self-acknowledgment that you can be released from angst and regret, and possibly see the humorous side of things. This one action will contribute greatly to your sense of well-being
Self improvement/happiness
Patience Is One Of The Critical Attitudes Of Happy People
So, you want it now, all of it… Not willing to wait patiently at the gate of happiness and success you struggle, pursue, push, pull, fret, and stew over why life doesn’t give you what you want when you want it.
Welcome to a life filled with stress, disappointment, anxiety and wasted days and months. Life is not about what will come into your life in the future, it is about what is in your life now. Whether it is – failure or success, happiness or unhappiness, wealth or poverty, giving or getting, being alone or with others. Life is a perfect example of the ebb and flow of the sea. Some days are filled with joy, others with sadness and disappointment. Some are filled with rewards while others are filled with paying the price not knowing whether the rewards will ever be there.
Once you accept anything – the struggle is over. Once you turn over your frustrations, desires, dreams, hopes and life to life you will be amazed at how quickly what you need (not necessarily what you want) will appear. Yes, everyone seems to get different rewards for their effort. Why does one author sell millions of books while another struggles to sell hundreds? Don’t know folks. I just know that’s just the way life is.
Why does one person find their true love in this life while others wait patiently for their love to appear? Why do some people have a great deal while others scrape by day after day? I don’t have a clue. I have been to the mountaintop of success and I have spent time in the valley of despair. I know the frustration of waiting and the joy of effort. I know the anxiety of false hope and I have experienced the thrill of unexpected success. Why?
I can only tell you once I released and learned to live with patience, whatever was due me in relationship to my effort, desires and dreams came to me. It didn’t always look like I pictured it, but nonetheless what I earned, deserved or needed came into my life. The skill I had to develop was that of acceptance not manipulation.
I had to learn to accept with dignity, gratitude and love rather than whine, complain and moan about why what came did not match my desires. Life is like this. Everyone gets what they get in life for many reasons. I no longer question the motives of God, the lessons of life and the outcomes I get. This does not mean to imply that I sit in my office waiting for the phone to ring and fed ex to deliver good news and checks.
It just means that I have to do my part and then let go of what the picture will look like when it is finished.
How to achieve happiness
We are living in world amidst so much of unlucky people, poverty, violence, stress, competition, and all sorts of sadness inducing environment you can think of. So it is only natural that a part of our mind always tends to carry a tinge of sadness or lean towards this negative emotion. This is something happening so natural that one may have to fight his/her way out of this influence in order to develop a happy frame of mind. This article throws light over 5 easy or top ways to happiness or to be happy. After going through the text below, it is for the reader to decide how effective it is going to be in your own life. So, here we go!
• First of all, the attitude is important. That is, you must be mentally ready to strive for happiness as much as possible, irrespective of what is happening in your life daily. So, before going to bed today, take few minutes to reach a resolution that you are going to be happy to the best extent possible from tomorrow onwards and repeat the vow daily. Once it becomes a habit, your mind automatically tunes itself to tread the happier line.
• A hearty smile is the best symptom of a happy mind. It not only makes you feel better but also sets the tone for the rest of the day, as others also will feel welcomed to come and talk to you. So, learn to smile at will.
• An idle mind is devil’s workshop. Hence, always make it a point to be in the company of your friends or involve yourself in some activities that keeps you engaged. Don’t let your mind wander idle.
• Be happy at what you are, even if you are ambitious. Ambition must be the drive to achieve something, and not a handle for disappointment, especially in case if you are not reaching your targets quickly. Misses and losses can happen in anybody’s life. In such moments when you might be feeling low, take few minutes to write down the things you have or you are proud of and not many others have the luck to own. Once you do that, things will start to calm down and you will start to feel better.
• Always look for the silver lining at the moment of despair. Make it a habit to view the positives over negatives and hope for the best. Heard of the adage ‘hope sees the invisible, feels the intangible and achieves the impossible’?
Finding purpose
Generally speaking there are two approaches to finding purpose. There is the approach to finding the purpose of ‘my life’ and there is the approach to finding ‘life’s purpose.’ The purpose of ‘my life’ will tend, for the most part, to be focused in the outer world. The purpose of ‘my life’ tends to be focused in time and in creating a life situation that is relatively comfortable. It usually includes the doing of satisfying work, being in a loving relationship, doing no harm to others and being successful within the terms defined by the culture within which we live.
A life purpose, which is ‘my life’ focused will tend for the most part to be future orientated. It will tend to be predetermined and defined largely in language. Usually, although not explicitly, it will be defined in terms of good and bad or success and failure. My life purpose will tend to be linear in that it moves from point A to point B along a time line. In this sense ‘my life purpose’ is seen to be going somewhere.
Your life purpose will become an aspect of your identity. You will tend to judge yourself and be judged by others as having arrived or not arrived depending on circumstances. Your life purpose will be satisfying or not satisfying depending on what you consider you have achieved or not. There will be a sense of your getting somewhere, and maybe if you feel disappointment, getting nowhere. More often than not here will be a sense of never quite having arrived. In fact our collective conditioning promotes this non-arrival, which leaves you wanting for more.
Of course there will be times when you will feel you have made it. For a time you may feel successful in your job or career. For a time you may enjoy a healthy and loving relationship. You may for a long time be healthy and be relatively satisfied with ‘your life.’
The other essential ingredient of ‘my life’ purpose is that you agree that you are having a separate existence from all other forms of life. You agree that you live between a beginning called birth, for an unknown period in time, and then you die. You hope however, that when you die you will still exist in some form. You hope you go somewhere else which you are told depends largely on how you have behaved along this time line called ‘my life. Mostly you rely on the authority of others to tell you how it will be beyond your life in form.
Focusing on the purpose of ‘my life’ will at best give you some satisfaction. If you are really successful, as defined by the times you live in, you may experience great satisfaction. There will be times when you get exactly what you want but the desire and the wanting will come again and that desire will drag you into the future. It will drag you into the future life that you are intent on making meaningful in a pre-determined way. Rarely will you be present to the life that is in this moment going nowhere but with the potential to be everywhere and everything.
This life purpose as directed by ‘little me’ has its highest aspiration in living a life of relative ease and comfort. Along the way we hope to love and be loved by family and others who are relatively speaking of like mind. Of course death is always the end result but collectively we agree that this is something we can choose to ignore and do ignore until it comes knocking on our door.
Mostly, however, ‘my life’ as determined by ‘little me’ is absent of wonder, absent of joy and the absent of Love. There may be glimpses of these states of being but very quickly these tend to be forgotten or are retained only as a fond memory. These perfumes of Being labelled wonder, joy and Love are not the experience of the time-based identity called ‘me’ or ‘mine.’ These perfumes of Being are not something that you do or achieve.
In the experience of wonder you are not. In the experience of joy there is joy but there is no one having a joy filled experience. In the experience of Love it is not ‘my love’ that is but the flow of Love arising moment-to-moment moving from the formless into and through form. This is compassion, which is the movement of Love in Action.
The real purpose of life in human form is to realise that you are a Being. Even to say you are a Being suggests something that there is something that is separate. It is closer to say you are Being in each and every moment. Only to realise this is not something that you do. This realisation is not about achievement, not about going anywhere called success or failure but simply abiding within the deep stillness of this moment. Out of this stillness arises love beyond the tyranny of the thinking about ‘my life’ mind.
We have forgotten what it is to trust life to be as it is. In this trusting of life the doing and the doer are one. This is Love in Action. This is right action, which does not have an opposite. Right action and wrong action are there when judgement is there and when there is a sense of someone doing the action. This is action from ego and not action from the feeling of at-one-ment with the source.
Most people are not prepared to put their faith in allowing life to arise as it is and allow creation to be creative from this state. They are caught within the idea of time and are focused on doing my life and my life purpose. Within this focus more and more needs to be done to maintain what is called ‘my standard of living.’ This standard of living is usually measured in terms of money, status, success etc. With the doing of ‘my life’ and my life purpose there is the creation of a separate identity, which must be protected. When things change as they always will there is a sense of loss.
We have forgotten the power of wonder, joy and Love to move mountains including mountains of dissatisfaction. We have forgotten the power of life to create life and life more abundantly. This does not mean we create more things although it may mean that in any given moment. It means that the life of abundance is not about more but about now and allowing the feeling of the wonder of now. It is allowing life, which is the dance of creation to be the dance. Joy, wonder and Love are the movement of this allowing.
This movement of the dance of life, which is forever becoming is not something predetermined. It is arising and falling within each moment. It is not within time and not conditional. A sense of wonder is felt within that which is being created anew. Wonder is never predetermined which is always of the ‘little me’ mind. Wonder does not arise from the experience of ‘little me.’ It arises out of a sense of absence of ‘little me’ who lets go of all the attachments to what they think they are and surrenders to the glory of no thing ness.
For the majority of people living life within the ‘little me’ focus, identified with time, space and a body this invitation to no thing ness is no invitation at all. Better, they think, that we do our lives and forget about going to this crazy place of nowhere. Better to forget any sense of wonder, forget about joy and forget about Love.
So we enter a state of forgetting who we are. We then lose our birthright. We think, “Let it be enough that we might find some ‘little me’ love and hope that it lasts.” So we go back to sleep and refuse the beautiful invitation to be all that we are as a fully realised human being. This is the knowing of who we are in the oneness of all there is forever and ever. To know this is to know that the blessing is already here and you are it.
Success starts with a state of mind
Christopher Columbus knew it. Thomas Edison lived it. Bill Gates believed it. And Marcus Aurelius said it, “Our life is what our thoughts make of it… A man’s true greatness lies in the consciousness of an honest purpose in life, founded on a just estimate of himself…” You may ask why this is so. The formula for this is quite simple.
1. What you believe, you act on. Action begins with, and is instigated by, belief. You can not act on something that you do not, at some level, believe in, whether you are in favor of, or in opposition to, a particular idea or ideal, that position is held firm by your belief.
2. What you act on, you manifest. Any action you take results in some consequence. Every action in the universe is met with and equal reaction. Whether you are starting a conversation with a stranger, trying to learn new things, or simply looking at the food in your pantry, any action you take regarding these things WILL RESULT in a tangible “re-action. Perhaps it will be a new friendship. Perhaps it will be deeper knowledge achieved through your research. Perhaps it will simply be dinner!
3. What you manifest creates your reality. This is your personal paradigm.
The only variable in this process is the strength and duration of your belief. If your belief is not strong, if it weak or vacillating, then you are not likely to act on it. If you do not act on it, then you can not manifest it and it can not become part of your reality; your personal paradigm.
This is quite difficult for most people to comprehend, and even more difficult to implement. We have a tendency to repeat old mistakes and resist change, although we know deep down inside that change is inevitable. Nothing stays the same forever. There is an old saying that defines insanity as the expectation that acting in the same way will produce different results.
People who are successful and happy are people who have mastered the art of change. They are not afraid to revisit their prior actions and approach their goal differently, so that they are NOT acting in the same way while expecting different results. They are not afraid to move out of their comfort zones. Rather, they understand that in order for growth to occur, they must have the courage to live outside their comfort zones. Page 220 of Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life states this truth eloquently and he writes, “There is no growth without change; no change without fear or loss; no loss without pain.” Successful people know this, and do not let fear, the occasional set back (i.e. interim failure), or doubt alter their vision or deter them from their goal.
Having a definitive, crystalline goal is the first step in forming your personal paradigm. You MUST be able to visualize the final end product or outcome of your goal or the end-product. It must be a singular achievement that you are passionate about.
Christopher Columbus KNEW that he could sail west and not fall off a flat planet. He hoped to find India. He happened to stumble into America, but nonetheless, he sailed west and lived to tell about it!
Thomas Edison KNEW he could create a practical incandescent lightbulb. He tested over 3000 filaments before he found one that worked, but he did it; and he revolutionized the world!
Michael Dell KNEW that he could overtake the computer behemoth IBM; and look at him now. Bill Gates KNOWS that eventually “every home will have a personal computer.” He is well on his way to achieving that vision.
Goals, such as these, are not achieved overnight. All worthwhile achievements take time. So you must be patient, consistent, and persistent in your effort. You must have the faith to BELIEVE in your goals to maintain your desire to succeed.
By knowing this truth, you can begin to shape and mold your reality by taking steps, every day, to create a crystalline vision of what your want your reality to be. Be prepared, however, because this is not easy. It takes work. It takes courage. And, most of all, it takes the fortitude of persistence so that you put aside all thoughts of and encounters with failure, and you view failure as an opportunity or an obstacle to overcome, but not an end in and of itself.
However, once you have formed your vision; once you have set your crystalline goal as a fixture into your thoughts, you WILL begin to take action toward your goal. It is inevitable. All action is instigated by your belief. Further, what you act on, you manifest. Therefore, you will soon find yourself attracting opportunities, ideas, solutions, and people who can and will propel you toward achieving your goals.
Success is no secret that is available only to an elite few. It is available to everyone, all the time. It is the certainty of the power that you possess – the power of your own beliefs to create and manifest your own personal paradigm; you success paradigm.
So I ask you, what is your paradigm? What Do You Believe?
What a gift life is. Another day. Wow!
Think about it. You are the sum total of ALL your days up until now. Every day has gone into creating you. When you’re 70, 80, 90 what a horrible shame it would be if you were to look back and think, “I didn’t do so many things I wanted to do. I was mad or scared half the time.” Use today to get where you want to go. Maybe you’re behind your pre-determined schedule. Perhaps you wanted to do more by now than you have. That’s not a problem. You’ve got today. How lucky you are…
Don’t even think about putting it off ’til tomorrow. Even if there’s no PLACE to go or big goal you can work on today, you can do something else. Look around. Things may be bustling, pushing, moving at cyber speed. But you can be alone in your thoughts and see whatever you want.
-That mountain is there just for you. Awesome!
-Your mother’s voice. Beautiful! You may never hear it again.
-Your kids. Precious!
-Your friends. They love you! Enjoy it.
Is there crap? Huge difficult challenges? Sure, but you can learn from it. That’s good, right? Just notice the good stuff right now. What could possibly make today great? A bunch of stuff. And don’t think that playing or lounging is the only way to celebrate YOUR day. What can you do?
–Do your best at work – Make today your crowning achievement.
–Recognize someone else – Put a smile on some faces.
–Find out about someone else – Someone on your “team.” Be genuine.
–Take some time off if you need to – There might be roses that need smelling.
–Call someone you haven’t talked to in a while. Or pay ’em a visit.
–Meditate – With no goal in mind. Just notice your thoughts.
–Look in the mirror – You’re a pretty cool person. Recognize it. It’s true.
–Read a chapter – learning is your ticket to where ever you want to go.
–Look at your victory log – And do something today to add to it.
–Laugh – at yourself, others, cartoons, TV shows, commercials. Just laugh.
And I’m sure that you can think of more stuff. The important point is…
Today IS a beautiful day.
But if your perspective is screwed up, you won’t see it. Review the list above and add to it if you like. Review it regularly and your view will change. Guaranteed. Don’t make feeling good so hard. It’s not. You don’t have to be at Disney World to have a good day. Today is God’s gift to you. Appreciate the gift no matter what it is that you find yourself involved in.
It was given in love. Accept it with love.
Winning beliefs:
— I’m making today my crowning achievement
— Today is my day to excel
— I am enjoying myself immensely right now
— I love being me
— Enjoyment and I are one
— I appreciate this gift of a new day
Empowering quote:
“It’s a beautiful day. Don’t let it get away.” -Bono
What if you had the same minute-by-minute thoughts as the super successful? Mike Brescia has developed the ultimate mental conditioning programs that can help anyone wipe out intense fears and enjoy huge successes in all areas of life.
