Create Change in your life

Taking action is be one of the biggest factors that separates success from failure, action is the difference between living the life you want and not living the life you want. From having what you want to going without.

Whether action is reading a book, writing a book, creating a website, helping others, selling your house, self development, quitting a bad habit, learning a language, taking up an evening class to learn a new hobby or skill, re-writing your CV, contacting friends you haven’t seen for a while, improving yourself in some way or forcing yourself out of your comfort zone, action has an undeniable quality about it, it can’t be ignored and is an absolute must when creating change in your life.

Let’s say you want to start your own business, you have thought about it for a long time, read numerous books on the subject, spoken to people about your plans, they are all for it! But you still don’t do it! Why?

We all have ideas for products that could be very successful but how many people talk about it and how many people actually decide to do something about it?

We all know of people who talk about what they want to do in the future, but how many of these same people are actually doing it months later?

You have a real chance of success when you take action, you immediately start to make progress against the goals you have set for yourself, you start learning about what works and what doesn’t. However little your initial steps maybe, by taking these steps you are saying ‘This is what I want and this is what I am going to do about it’. Rather than just sit there and think about taking action. I know if there was a medal for thinking about taking action then I would surely win it, but there isn’t and rightly so.

However here’s another way to look at it, if you don’t take action towards whatever it is you want in your life, you are absolutely 100% guaranteed not to get it. By not taking action you are sealing your fate before you have even attempted to start.

Nothing comes from nothing right? I firmly believe that if you take action towards your goals or whatever you want to change in your life, then you are already doing more than a lot of people out there.

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a step ..”
-Lao Tzu

What stops people taking action?

There is simply far too much to gain from taking action then not taking it when you are on a course of self development. You know something has to change, and yet you still don’t take action, why is this? I am guilty of this myself.

Laziness
Motivation
Money
Time
Fear

Maybe you think your goal is too big, and that whatever you do today will have no impact so you don’t bother doing anything, this is a classic mistake to make, believing that what you do today has no impact on the overall goal. But doing something is always better than doing nothing, little by little great things can be achieved, it’s the simply little changes in your daily life that over time can make the biggest impact. It is by making a commitment to yourself each day to do something towards improving your life, however small, that over time will affect your life greatly. Before you know it, real big changes have been made. Businesses are created, relationships formed, languages learned and lasting changes made.

Break the problem down into smaller chunks, instead of looking at the overall outcome.

What is it that you are going to do today that will make a difference in your life tomorrow?

Let’s say you have a characteristic about yourself you want to improve, for example to be more socially confident, from where you are now (shy, timid and nervous), this may seem like a long way off, but if each day you make a commitment to do something about it and then take action to achieve it, you are already on your way to overcoming the problem and becoming more socially confident. The commitment you make to yourself each day to take action will always be what separates you from everybody else.

The ability to act is what separates people. Action moves mountains! If you want to go anywhere in life, if you want your life to change in any way shape or form you are going to have to sit up and take action. Make a plan of what you need to do and then take the necessary steps every day. Even if it is 10 minutes a day, it will always be better than doing nothing.

“You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.”
-Joe Sabah

In 6 months time how on earth do you expect your life to be different if you aren’t doing anything about it right now? ~Here’s a newsflash, if you aren’t taking action today, tomorrow or the next day to work towards your goals then guess what? You and your life will be exactly the same in 6 months time as it is now!

You will never have any chance of success (whatever that means to you) if you don’t take action. Taking action is no 100% guarantee of success; just because you are taking an acting class doesn’t mean you will one day win an Oscar. But not doing anything about your life will guarantee nothing improves.

“There are three kinds of people; those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who wonder what happened.”
-Nicholas Butler Murray

Remember that your future is created not by what you do tomorrow but by what you do today.

admin Featured, Inspirational Inspirational, inspire

If you could design your ideal life, what would you do? Where would you be? Who would be with you? How would you spend your day? Have you ever wondered what your life could be like? How different it could be to what it is now? What would it be like if you were told to sit down for a few moments and design the rest of your life? Forget the past, it will be no indication of what is to come. Your future can be totally different.

Imagine you have a blank canvas, a great big piece of paper with nothing on it, all that is required is that you be prepared to imagine a life with no limitations, no thoughts of what you have or haven’t done in the past, just visions of what you would like for yourself and others in the future.

• What would your house look like?
• Where would you live?
• How would you spend your day?
• Where would you work?
• What lifestyle would you live?
• What car would you drive?
• What possessions would you own?
• What would your lifestyle be like?
• Who would your friends be?
• How would you look?
• What clothes would you be wearing?
• Would you work for an organization or would you work for yourself?
• What qualities would you have as a person?
• What characteristics would you have?
• Would food would you eat?

Really use your imagination with this exercise. Have fun with it!

Isn’t it great to know that your past does not have anything to do with how your future will be, and that from this day onwards your life can be a distant relative to how it used to be. It doesn’t have to be like this, it can be different and it is entirely down to you how different it can be.

But like anything you won’t just drift into your ideal life, it has to be created first. And then it has to be worked on, one piece at a time.

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Set yourself free from anything that might hinder you in becoming the person you want to be. Free yourself from the uncertainties about your abilities or the worth of your dreams, from the fears that you may not be able to achieve them or that they won’t be what you wanted. Set yourself free from the past. The good things from yesterday are still yours in memory; the things you want to forget you will, for tomorrow is only a sunrise away. Free yourself from regret or guilt, and promise to live this day as fully as you can.

Set yourself free from the expectations of others, and never feel guilty or embarrassed if you do not live up to their standards. You are most important to yourself; live by what you feel is best and right for you. Others will come to respect your integrity and honesty.

Set yourself free to simply be yourself, and you will soar higher than you’ve ever dreamed.

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What are your plans for this week, this month? Do you know what you have to do today? Plans are fundamental to success in life, without a plan you have no roadmap for your journey, consequently you have very little chance of arriving at the place you want to get to. I think for big goals in life, you need to make plans on a frequent basis, not just once every few months but every week. In fact really successful people would probably set goals and make plans each day. Writing out their plans for the week ahead perhaps on Sunday night and reviewing them each day, ticking off what has been done.

When you work for somebody else, plans are easily forgotten about. You just go in, do your job for 8 hours and come back home. That’s it, your plan which was all in your head was to get up at 7am, get the bus to work, do your job, leave at 6pm, get home and do wh

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Do you spend time being negative? Looking at things in your life in a negative way? Do you think negative thoughts about your life and your future life? Do you sometimes feel like just giving up, or giving up on yourself? When I think negatively I don’t think about my goals in a very positive way at all. Negativity causes me to cloud my thoughts in a bad way and think too much about what won’t happen or hasn’t happened in my life. Not a very useful to state to be in, I’m sure you’ll agree.

I mean what’s the point to this?

It is pointless and stupid to do this, all you are doing when you do this is allowing your mind to focus on negative things which of course it will do. The mind will focus on whatever you want it to focus on.

Instead of thinking of all the plans I have and dreams for the future, when I think negatively I immediately lower my sights of what I think is possible for me. Instead I dwell on my limitations, think of my past in a bad way and think that my future will turn out like my past or maybe even worse.

Negative thinking will crush you, it will take your life to exactly the place you don’t want it to go.

Of course it’s easy to talk about negativity but what do we do to get rid of it? After all we all feel down sometimes don’t we? Certain events can trigger off a string of bad thoughts about ourselves. We are human, sometimes we find ourselves at the mercy of our thoughts. But we shouldn’t, we shouldn’t let this happen, we shouldn’t let our thoughts control us like this, it’s useful to remember that when you are on a path of self development, the mind is there for you to use anyway you want. Your mind is capable of taking you to the highest highs; it is also equally capable of taking you to the lowest lows.

Make sure yours doesn’t take you to the latter.

Negative thoughts taken to the extreme can be seriously bad for your health ie suicidal thoughts. What is really happening here? It is you thinking such hopeless thoughts for the future that you don’t perceive that there is anything worth living for. Perhaps you harbor a belief somewhere that you don’t actually deserve to succeed, that you are only worth a miserable existence and that is all you will ever have. Hey! We are all worth more than we already have and everybody deserves a shot at something better. Stop hating yourself and thinking this way.

If this is something you can identify with, what do you do to break out of it?

Negativity is like a poison that can ruin the human spirit and suck the life right out of you. Negativity comes from living in your mind far too much, either in the past or the future and feeling powerless to do anything about it.

There is only now and that’s all there ever will be. If you find yourself thinking negatively take a look around, breathe deeply and realize that none of your negative thinking is real. It only exists in your head. Like beliefs it’s all in your mind.

Too much thinking in itself is not a very good thing to be doing. It is certainly a factor where negativity is concerned; this is certainly something I have found.

Be positive about the path you are on, it may not be easy, however it doesn’t take much to change your life around and one way to help yourself is to stop negative thinking, treat it like a bad habit that you need to quit.

admin Random Beliefs, change your life, Positive Thinking

Do you have enough confidence? To succeed in anything you do in life you are going to need confidence. Confidence in your abilities to do whatever it is you need to do to get where you want to go. Sometimes we could all do with being more confident in certain areas of our lives, I know I certainly could. But what exactly is confidence? Confidence is often thought of as something you have or don’t have, for example ‘I have confidence’, ’she doesn’t have much confidence’. But confidence is not something you have or don’t have, it is a state of mind.

When people say they aren’t very confident, what exactly do they mean Confident in what respect, I bet the same person who says they aren’t confident could go down to the local supermarket, buy groceries and fill up their car with petrol with confidence.

Confidence is a state, it is a feeling and thoughts which come from a particular combination of chemical reactions in your brain. It is a series of pathways which connect to give you a feeling of confidence. People can change their states very quickly, ie from non confident to confident, from happy to sad etc.

So is confidence all situational? In some situations we feel it and in others we don’t? In some situations we are in a state of confidence and in others we aren’t in a state of confidence.

Did you know that it is our right to feel confident in any situation we find ourselves in?

Yet there are many times when it seems to elude us, when we need it most. Everybody is confident about something at sometime in their lives. And because you are confident at some things in your life, you already know how to feel confident. It’s like anything in life, the more you do something the easier it gets. If you don’t feel confident doing something, just keep doing it and soon your mind will become accustomed to the act which will cause you to develop a certain level of confidence.

So how do we gain confidence? Isn’t confidence just self-belief in yourself and your abilities to do something? Well yes, self confidence is related to self-belief. But believing you can do something and actually doing it can be quite different.

Are some people born with more confidence than others? No, nobody is born with confidence. People can change from being unconfident to very confident. Normally as people get older they become more confident through the life experience they have gained. But people can also develop their confidence at any time in their life by working on themselves and making a commitment to make themselves more confident.

For example, if you feel nervous when speaking in groups you can go on a public speaking course. When the course finishes you will almost certainly feel more confident when speaking in front of others, likewise there are other things you can do to improve your confidence, for example:

Stepping outside of your comfort zone. (Feeling shy? Go on an acting course)

Real world experience of something new.

Hypnosis.

I’ve been listening to hypnosis CD’s lately to help with my confidence. I have been listening to them at night before I go to sleep. Hopefully they are having some influence over my unconscious. Why not give them a try if you feel you could with some more confidence?

I used to be envious of people who were confident, I used to look at them and say ‘they have confidence’. Why wasn’t I confident, well I guess it was because I chose not to be? Listen you are entitled to feel confident just as much as the next person, it’s your world as well.

Who decides how confident you feel? Are you going to let people take away your confidence? Only you can do that. Other people are moving through the world with confidence why aren’t you one of them?

Feeling confident is all about how you feel about yourself. It’s not about anyone else or the environment you are in. It’s all about how much you believe in yourself. The more you believe in yourself the more confident you will be. Remember confidence is a state you can decide to be confident whenever you want.

So when don’t you have confidence? Is it social confidence you need, I know I could do with more of this, so what’s the best way to do it, well no surprises here ‘ Get out more!’. Go out a lot, the more you go out and interact with people the more natural it will feel, you will stop feeling so nervous and realize there is nothing to be worried about, in fact you might even start to enjoy it.

What about confidence in your abilities to do something? There was once upon a time when we couldn’t do all that much. Now just look what you can do. With enough time and commitment you can accomplish whatever you want, there is literally nothing you won’t be able to do if you spend time working on yourself or whatever area it is you want to see improvement in.

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Are you afraid of being successful? What stops you going out there and taking control of your life? Making a million (if that’s what you want). What stops you becoming everything you know you can be? Is it fear? Fear of losing what you have already, fear of the unknown, fear of putting yourself out there? Fear of change itself? Do you believe that you will not get what you want from life? If you do, stop that, and instead believe that it can happen and that it will happen. This one change in thinking can have a dramatic effect on your life.

Start believing you can make a million dollars, start believing you can live in the place you want to live in, start thinking about all the details, what it will look like, where it will be. If you start thinking that certain things will happen in your life your mind will start to look at ways to make them happen. Likewise if you think things won’t happen in your life your mind will look at ways to confirm this.

Do you really want to create change in your life or do you just want to be one of the herd, one of the many who bury their head in the sand to what is possible for them and their life? Do you want to be one of many or one of a few, the few who create unrivalled wealth and happiness for themselves?

“The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that our aim is too low and we reach it.”

Is it really so frightening taking charge of your life, as opposed to letting someone else or a company control and dictate it for you? Surely taking charge is something to look forward to and embrace.

It takes real guts to change your life. It’s easy to keep things as they are, or is it? Not many people stick their head out from the crowd and really create the life they want for themselves, after all safety in numbers right? Better to just go along with it like everyone else.

Fear will prevent you from doing so much in your life. Turn fear into confidence, instead of being afraid of what might not happen, be confident of the things that will happen in your life. Set your sights high, dare to dream big. Don’t put limitations on what you think you can achieve in life.

As an exercise; Picture if you will for a few minutes yourself as an old man/woman looking back on your life. How does it look? Are you happy with what you see? …….. You reached your potential. You never let anything get in the way of your happiness? Always living each day like it was your last. You were never afraid of anything. Nothing ever stopped you achieving everything you wanted and knew you could achieve? You were never your own roadblock to your success and happiness? And as you now look back, knowing that you are coming to the end of your life you can feel satisfied, happy and safe in knowledge that when you decided to take control of your life, you made a decision that caused great things to happen. You know now as back then that you were one of the lucky ones.

“There is nothing with which everyman is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming.”

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Are you enjoying your life? I mean really enjoying it? Are you living with passion? Is enjoying your life simply just a choice? Are people happy because they choose to be happy or are people happy because of something that has happened to them, circumstances or perhaps something else? Should we all just be happy no matter what we do, where we live, how much money we make, single or married?

Is happiness just a decision or are external factors involved?

Do you spend time thinking about all the things that aren’t right in your life, all the bad things, all the things you haven’t got? I do sometimes and it certainly doesn’t make me happy.

If you do think about things that aren’t right in your life it should at least provide motivation to do something about it.

I want to change careers because I am not happy with what I am doing, in fact a want to go on a search for happiness. I haven’t been really happy in a while, when this happens, real changes can happen. But wait! Maybe I should just learn to be happy no matter what I do?

What makes people happy?

Life is short, none of us are getting any younger, life is no fun if you are not happy. I want to smile more. It is the main reason why I am going on a journey of creating change in my life.

Everybody needs to find out what it is that will bring them happiness. I am not sure I can subscribe to the philosophy of being happy no matter happens in our life. If you are not happy, isn’t it a sign that something needs to change? Surely just smiling when your life is not taking you where you want to go is merely papering over the cracks of something deeper that needs to be resolved?

There is a new branch of Psychology out there called ‘Positive Psychology’ designed to find out what it takes to lead happy lives. I don’t know much about it but it could be worthwhile finding out more about it.

If you are not having fun, then I recommend that you do whatever it takes to start having fun. Plenty of people are why aren’t you one of them?

Why sit there and let life get you down? You have to be the one who initiates your own happiness nobody else will do it for you.

Do you know how long you have to live? No you don’t nobody does, yet some people act like they have all the time in the world and that one day in the future everything will work out and fall into place.

Let me tell you, that is not how it works. Did you think 5 years ago that your life would be different to what it is now, have you just stumbled your way to where you are now?

You need to stand up today and take action to move your life in the direction you want it to go. YOU YOU YOU, nobody else, you have to do something about it! Not someday in the future, you have to do it right now!

admin Happiness fun, Happiness

For some people shyness can really hold them back in life, if this is applicable in your life, then you should want to do something about it. Shyness can really affect your life in a negative way, either at work or your social life. It can make it very hard to form any kind of relationship with anyone. Sometimes it can even be hard to have fun when you are shy.

Anyway how do I propose to d

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