Be an expert in your chosen field. Make it your number one business to know your business. If you are a
horticulturist, make your mission in life to know everything about it.
Study, research and do all you can to gather as much information about
it as humanly possible. Whatever is that you might be doing, be the
expert in it. This will boost your self confidence as you will be assured
of your own knowledge and capabilities.
Finish what you started.
This is one attitude that will make you stand out from the crowd.
Cultivate the habit of finishing what you started. If you started a
fitness program that involves running 5 miles every morning for a year,
do it. No matter what, drag your body from the bed and hit the road. The
ability to finish what you started builds character. You will develop a
healthy self respect and tremendous amount of self confidence. And you
will build an awesome reputation.
Act as if impossible to fail.
Visualize that you have achieved your target.
This will trigger a mechanism in your mind that will make you act as if you
cannot fail. If you have aimed to sell 1000 shaving sticks this week,
keep repeating to yourself that you will do it. Psyche yourself up. Keep
success at the uppermost of your mind. But don’t be blind to obstacle,
just don’t let it get the better of you. Act as if you will not fail and
you won’t. And your self confidence will keep on soaring.
Here are 10 simple things you can do to feel good.
1. Smile. Look across the room you are sitting and smile at the those who are looking at you. More often than not, people will smile back
2. Look around. Really open your and see and feel grateful for being alive
3. Listen to music and songs that uplifts you
4. Read motivational quotes
5. Read biographies of great men.
6. Strike-up a conversation with a stranger.
7. Instant meditation. Close your eyes for a minute and concentrate on your breathing. This helps to clear your mind.
8. Clear clutter from your surroundings
9. Learn something new.
10. Write. Write down all the things that makes you happy.
Russel Simmons grew up in a neighbourhood where the only entrepreneurs are drug pushers and "number guys". He is now worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The founder Def Jam records is also a bestselling author. He is also the CEO of Rush Communications
Here are his rules for getting to the top.
1 Give Your Talents Until They Can’t Live Without It
2 Relentlessly Pursue Your Goals Without Appearing Needy
Socrates once said: There is but one philosophy; fortitude, self mastery.
It is often said, before you can master the world around you, the self is the first. Without self mastery, you cannot reach any of your set goals. Self mastery requires you to have a strong will power.Frank Tibolt, the author of A Touch of Greatness states over and over again in his book, “The will is the man. Will makes men giants.”
Will power is the resolve to overcome the inertia, laziness and procrastination. It is the ability to decide on something and see it through. It is the perseverance to overcome physical and mental fatigue and finish what has been started. Will power is the cornerstone of success, be it spiritual or material.
Having knowledge alone without the will power to take action will get us nowhere. Francis Bacon said, “Too many develop every talent except the most vital of all, the talent to use their talents . . . will power.”
There is no substitute for will power. Knowledge, money, good looks and status cannot take its place. It is a trait that you must develop within and here is the one method that will help you to achieve it:
Make yourself do one useful thing every day for no other reason than that you don’t fee like doing it. By applying the method above, you will build character, initiative, courage, persistence and most importantly will power. William James, the famous American psychologist of the 19th century said, “Do something every day for no other reason than you rather not do it or don’t feel like doing it.”
Let us be honest with ourselves. The main reason most of us have not made more of ourselves is that we haven’t been tough enough with ourselves. We have been procrastinating, dawdling, pampering and giving excuses instead of getting down to business. It is time to act and stop dodging responsibility, being soft to ourselves and wasting our time on trifles and pleasures.
Here are things that you can do to develop will power in 6 weeks.
Week 1: Find a praiseworthy trait in a different person every day for a full week and praise him or her for it.
Week 2: Completely cut-off TV for a whole week. For some this will be easy and for others this will be tough, but no matter what, stick with this. And enjoy the extra hours you gain by doing something useful.
Week 3: If you are overweight, cut down on your desserts for the whole week. Do not eat between meals.
Week 4: Keep detail daily expenditures and cut down on unnecessary spending. If you feel like going for a movie, don’t do it. Do not purchase anything that you already have.
Week 5: Read biography of great men and women. Try to read at least one, but if you can do more than that, then do it.
Week 6: List down all that you need to improve personally and professionally. Spend at least 15 minutes on this everyday and another 15 minutes on thinking of ways you can achieve this.
After you have you completed this 6 exercises, go on and design your own exercises for the next 6 weeks. And after that another 6 and after that another cycle until becomes second nature.
Your will like your body and mind needs to exercise daily and that for the rest of your life. So get tough, get rough and force yourself to do one useful thing every day for no other reason than you don’t like doing it.
Well, it is the time of the year that we set our New Year resolution again. Here are 9 tips you can use for goal setting ( which one of it will be you new Year resolution)
Put it in writing
Break down your goal into small chunks
Focus on the progress everyday
Constantly think of your goals
Set a time to achieve your goals
Deal with obstacles
Work smarter
Review your progress
Review your goals
Put it in writing Break down your goal into small chunks Focus on the progress everyday Constantly think of your goals Set a time to achieve your goals Deal with obstacles Work smarter Review your progress Review your goals
Are you going to war everyday? Are you fighting hard everyday? Is everything a matter of life and death to you? Do you treat everything with the same seriousness? Is every e-mail, memo, letter, comment, is of the same importance to you?
If you answered yes to any of the above, then you are going to be a spent force sooner rather than later.
Working hard on everything everyday is tiring and consumes our resources in more ways we can see. To enjoy life and work, we must be able to sieve what is important from what is not.
Each of us have different priorities and everyday brings different challenges. Some will be more important than others and demands more from you. Others have lesser importance and a few will be of no value to you. Know the difference and eliminate those things that have no consequences to you. Forget it and focus your energy on the things that will affect you.
Life is about making choices. From the moment you get up in the morning till you go to bed at night, you would have hundreds of choices.
From the choice of breakfast, to the attire you are going to wear for the day, till you reach your desk in the office, you would have made several important choices already. Any of these choices can go bad. And you are several more to make during the course of the day. None is 100% guaranteed to be the right one.
If you start thinking long and hard about all the choices you must make, you are going to be immobilized. Fear will creep in. Imagine spending time pondering about breakfast, and you would have spent considerable mental energy going through all the ifs and whats.
So you and I don't usually spend too much time choosing the routine stuff but we cannot go through life making choices as simple as choosing our morning meals.
There are things that you must consider thoroughly. The choice of your career for instance needs more thinking than choosing to have coffee or green tea in the morning. The time you take to choose your place of dwelling definitely requires more thought than choosing to wear a yellow or red shirt to the office.
Certain things in your life needs careful thought, analysis and sometimes even soul searching. But not all.
We live in a finite world and our time here is fixed. So do not waste too much time on things that are routine. Save your energy for the big ones.
Science Daily recently reported on a research by University of Illinois Professor Dolores Albarracin and Visiting Assistant Professor Ibrahim Senay, along with Kenji Noguchi, Assistant Professor at Southern Mississippi University, about self talk.
The research shows that those who ask themselves whether they will perform a task generally do better than those who tell themselves that they will.
"The popular idea is that self-affirmations enhance people's ability to meet their goals," Professor Albarracin said. "It seems, however, that when it comes to performing a specific behavior, asking questions is a more promising way of achieving your objectives."
Of course you are not made of glass, in fact we are made of star dust. That is what theoretical physics tells us. Read up on the Big Bang when you have the time. It is fascinating.
Mr Gracian was telling us to be strong. Not to break easily. Life is not going to be a bed of roses. There are going to be hard times every now and then, such is life, but you don't have to crack. Easier said than done you say,but what is really hard is being fragile. To survive and thrive you need to be strong.
You cannot become strong in a single day. Character is not made like that. It is built everyday, one moment at a time. You need to build up your confidence and you must have courage. This will take time and you must persevere. You must not take yourself too seriously. You must learn to laugh at yourself and you must know when to walk away.
The atoms that diamond is made of is the same with that of graphite, carbon. The difference was the the pressure.The atoms that withstood pressure for longer period of time turned to diamond and that which didn't turned to graphite. I am sure you know which is the more valuable of the two.
The single most important person you will ever talk to is yourself. Not your boss or his wife, not the President, not anyone else, but yourself. Whether we notice it or not, we are engaged in self-talk most of the time. The little conversation we have with ourselves inside our heads has the power to shape our destiny.
Since we spent so much time talking to ourselves, why not make it a good one. We can ask the right questions to ourselves. We can evaluate ourselves . We can use positive words.
We hear so many different voices telling so many different things everyday and without positive and uplifting self-talk it will all be too easy to get lost in the daily errands of life and lose the sight of the big picture.
Lose this day loitering, 'twill be the same story,tomorrow, and the next more dilatory, For indecision brings its own delay and days are lost lamenting o'er lost days, Are you in earnest, seize this very minute, what you can do, or think you can, begin it. Starting has genius, power and magic in it. Take one step and the mind grows heated; begin it and the task will be completed. Since the hardest part is always the start, a task begun is more than half done.
Be aware of your mental state. Failing to do so can cause anguish. Failing to do will make you a victim. Failing to do so can lead you to a life you did not choose.
When you are about to act on something, be aware the state of your mind. Do you really need that dress or is the feel good factor you really desire? When you about to give someone an advice-like what I am doing here- is it because you really care or are you just feeding your ego?
Be aware of the state of mind you are in and you save yourself from many pitfalls. Are you angry at the moment? Then, do not decide on anything now. The same applies when you are euphoric.
And don't react without being aware what is going through your mind. Yes, you need to decide fast but that is what you do. You decide.
Yes, that's right. Why must you let someone tell you how far you can go life? Don't ever let anyone tell you that you cannot do this, you cannot do that. Don't get me wrong, I am preaching careless abandon. But making the right choices about your life. And that responsibility is yours.
You decide what you want in your life. You decide what you must today to achieve all your dreams. Don't let your friends, your teachers, your bosses or even your parents run your life. One life, one time- that is what you got. Do it your way.
When the mood during your interaction with others starts to show strain, check yourself. Pause and take a break. Don't let your anger get in the way to whatever you are trying to achieve. If the other person keep going on in an aggressive manner, say something completely different from the matter being discussed to disarm him. Break his line of thought. Keep you peace of mind.
Never get caught in the heat of the moment. Keep telling yourself to be cool. Remember, a moment of madness may lead to lifetime of misery.
That is all what we have. One Life. Either we make it good or we waste it, we are only given one life. It seems a bit unfair at times right. I mean, we all do mistakes. Wrong turnings every now and then. But unlike playing a video game, we cannot save any particular event in our life and then go back and make it better after being all the wiser going through it the first time. Why worry then? Let us put trust in ourselves and say that, "I make this right, I will give my best and make the best out of this moment. There is no return."
So, if there are things you want to do. Do it now. There is no point in wasting time and contemplating too much. If it meant to be that it will be and if it didn't, it never was. So as we go through life, let us seize the day, everyday. After all we have but One Life.
Michael is the kind of guy you love to hate. He is always in a good mood and always has something positive to say. When someone would ask him how he was doing, would reply, "If I were any better, I would be twins!" He was a natural motivator. If an employee was having a bad day, Michael was there telling the employee how to look on the positive side of the situation. Seeing this style really made me curious, so one day I went up to Michael and asked him,"I don't get it! You can't be a positive person all of the time. How do you do it?"
Michael replied, "Each morning I wake up and say to myself, you have two choices today. You can choose to be in a good mood or ... you can choose to be in a bad mood. I choose to be in a good mood. Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be a victim or ... I can choose to learn from it. I choose to learn from it. Every time someone comes to me complaining, I can choose to accept their complaining or... I can point out the positive side of life. I Choose the positive side of life." "Yeah, right, it's not that easy," I protested.
"Yes, it is," Michael said. "Life is all about choices. When you cut away all the junk, every situation is a choice. You choose how you react to situations. You choose how people affect your mood. You choose to be in a good mood or bad mood. The bottom line: It's your choice how you live your life."
I reflected on what Michael said. Soon thereafter, I left the Tower Industry to start my own business. We lost touch, but I often thought about him when I made a choice about life instead of reacting to it. Several years later, I heard that Michael was involved in a serious accident, falling some 60 feet from a communications tower. After 18 hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, Michael was released from the hospital with rods placed in his back. I saw Michael about six months after the accident. When I asked him how he was, he replied.
"If I were anybetter, I'd be twins. Wanna see my scars?"
I declined to see his wounds, but I did ask him what had gone through his mind as the accident took place. "The first thing that went through my mind was the well-being of my soon-to-be-born daughter," Michael replied. "Then, as I lay on the ground, I remembered that I had two choices: I could choose to live or ... I could choose to die. I chose to live."
"Weren't you scared? Did you lose consciousness?" I asked. Michael continued,
"...the paramedics were great. They kept telling me I was going to be fine. But when they wheeled me into the ER and I saw the expressions on the faces of the doctors and nurses, I got really scared. In their eyes, I read "he's a dead man. I knew I needed to take action."
"What did you do?" I asked.
"Well, there was a big burly nurse shouting questions at me," said Michael. "She asked if I was allergic to anything. 'Yes', I replied. The doctors and nurses stopped working as they waited for my reply. I took a deep breath and yelled, 'Gravity.' "
Over their laughter, he said
"I am choosing to live. Operate on me as if I am alive, not dead."
Michael lived, thanks to the skill of his doctors, but also because of his amazing attitude. I learned from him that every day we have the choice to live fully. Attitude, after all, is everything.
"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each
day has enough trouble of its own." After all today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.
