Create Change in your life

Overcoming negative beliefs - Useful questions to ask yourself about your negative belief:

• Who says this?
• Do you realize this is just a map (your map) about the world at large? It doesn’t mean that it is true.
• When did you (or somebody else create this idea), what was the context?
• Do you really think that this belief applies to everybody?
• Did somebody teach you to think like this?

As an example take the limiting belief of - ‘My business won’t make any money’.

Where does this belief come from, is it yours or somebody else’s?

Of course not everybody would believe this. There are individuals and companies that make a lot of money. Have you always believed this or has this belief arisen out of something you have recently done?

Does everyone who starts a business think this way? Do you realize that this is just a map about the territory, and that it doesn’t make it true (or even real).

admin Random Beliefs, change your life

What are your plans for this week, this month? What about today? Do you have any plans for today? Plans are fundamental to success in life, without a plan you have no road map for your journey, consequently you have very little chance of arriving anywhere let alone at the place where you want to be.

For great things to happen in your life, you need to make plans on a frequent basis, not just once every few months but every week. It is probably fair to say that really successful people would set goals and make plans every 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 was to get up at 7am, get the bus to work, do your job, leave at 6pm, arrive home and do whatever else you have to do. Maybe you don’t even have time to make plans let alone carry them out.

But imagine if you work for yourself. Imagine you have set yourself a goal of starting your own business. Making plans then becomes even more important.

Plans will set you up to achieve certain things at particular points in the future. Tasks will then get completed by deadlines which you set for yourself. If you don’t important tasks will not get completed and your chance of success will be greatly reduced.

If you want to start achieving more, you have to start doing more, and that all starts with making plans on a regular basis, working towards them and reviewing then constantly so you know where you are and what you need to do to make progress.

admin Changing direction Changing direction

Negative and self limiting beliefs can and very often do hold us back in life. These beliefs can stop us from achieving what we most want and need in our lives. Our limiting beliefs more often than not have been learned as we have gone through life and very often we have bought them with us from childhood. While they don’t serve us well, they are still very personal to each of us. Many people form strong identities from their beliefs, limiting or not and so any negative beliefs can become a deeply ingrained part of their personality one that they carry around with them for years.

Beliefs are personal; they are important and have the ability to define our entire lives. Our beliefs have governed how we have lived in the past, they govern how we are living now and they will govern how we will live our life in the future.

Examples of some negative and limiting beliefs:

• I’m useless, I always have been

• I am an idiot

• I’ll never be a success

• Everyone hates me at work

• I won’t become rich

• My Business will fail

• I’m not clever enough

• I’ll never be able to learn Japanese

• I’ll never get promoted at work

• I’m too fat

These negative and limiting beliefs ultimately serve no real purpose apart from to stop us from having what we want in our lives. They become so entrenched in our minds that we just accept them as normal, never really believing we can do anything about them.

Just one negative belief about yourself, your situation or anything else related to your life can dictate to you the action you take, the behavior you exhibit and the environment where you find yourself.

A negative belief can really make it difficult if you are looking to make a change in your life or accomplish some goal. It becomes your own personal roadblock that stops you dead in your tracks. You accept it and it becomes the way your life is.

Of course everyone is entitled to believe what they want. We have a choice, and we can choose to not accept our limiting beliefs any time we wish. Do you really want to continue creating mind made barriers for yourself?

You may want certain things in your life, you may want more for yourself, your family and even for the world around you, but yet your limiting beliefs never seem to go away, they have always been there and they will always be there in the future. They will remain a fundamental part of who you are unless you do something about it.

Remember that beliefs can be changed, and this is great news when we know we have beliefs that limit us. You probably used to believe in Santa Claus but I bet you don’t anymore. Rest assured that if you want to really change a negative belief you have, it can be done.

One useful strategy to use is to step forward into the future and envisage what will transpire (or not) as a result of the belief you hold.

When we do this we can see just exactly where our negative belief will lead us.

Types of question to ask yourself when taking the negative belief into the future include:

• What will happen later on in the future if you persist with this belief?

• What consequences will occur as a result of this belief?

• What results will or could arise from the initial set of results?

For example:

I’ll never be able to learn Portuguese.

With a belief like this, where will you be in 2 years time? Imagine instead if you start learning Portuguese now, how much of it would you be able to speak in 2 years time?

Do you realize the more you believe this the more this will prevent you from actually learning Portuguese. So eventually over time you will not be able to learn any new languages with a belief like this.

So I guess you can forget about conversing with any Brazilians in their own language when you visit Brazil then?

You could carry on asking similar questions based on what you will be able or not be able to do as a result. Try it with your own negative beliefs and see if your perspective changes.

admin Positive Thinking Beliefs, change your life, Positive Thinking

If you continually run through again and again all the things that are missing in your life and how bad it is, you will be miserable no question about it. You will become annoyed and impatient with yourself including everybody around you. Constantly reliving or inventing new bad experiences will eventually cause you to stop taking action altogether towards making anything happen in your life. Any goals you once had set for yourself become utterly pointless, they are ignored replaced instead by indolence, it becomes preferable to do less and less, you begin to watch countless hours of television anything to distract you. The time you used to spend on constructive activities becomes too much like hard work and so the activities are forgotten altogether, along with all the other plans you may have made for yourself, eventually depression sets in.

You create a system for your brain to follow, every day the program runs itself, just like getting dressed in the morning and having breakfast, you also manage to forget all the things you should be doing and focus your attention on feeling miserable instead. It then starts to become regular behavior, which you start to accept as normal. It becomes easier to ignore the ‘goals’ and the ‘plans’. All of a sudden life becomes hard, a drag and to make matters worse you also beat yourself up for feeling lousy.

When you are in this cycle of doom nothing much ever gets accomplished. If it continues one day you will wake up and realize your life has passed you by and you have not moved forward one little bit.

Are we to blame?

Is it all our own doing?

Well in a word ‘yes’

Occasionally people feel down because of problems outside of their control, but a lot of the time people are the architect of their own blues. Life is ultimately a series of choices and we shouldn’t actively choose to feel bad by creating unhappy internal thoughts. It is always easier to cast the blame onto somebody or something else outside of our control, the reality is we are choosing to feel low and this is something we can choose not to do anytime we feel like it. We are all responsible for how we feel. If we feel depressed it will always be up to us to do something about it not anybody else.

The first step out of depression or any low miserable state of mind is to fully accept that it is your responsibility to get out of it and change how you feel, whatever that may involve. It could be eating an ice-cream, a big bag of sweets, feeding the ducks, cooking your favorite meal, or something else, but it is important to remember that it will always be down to you to break out of it. You can’t expect anyone else to come along and say ‘there, there, everything will be ok’, because it won’t unless you do something about it.

Once of the best things you can do to break out of a bad mood or depressive state is to take action, do something, a brisk walk, watch birds in the sky, you could even put your feelings down on paper so you can read them at a later date, some dark poetry perhaps?

A lot of the time depressive states pass within a few days, and are only temporary, however sometimes people can be their own worst enemies by feeding their low moods with more negative based thinking, and somber thoughts, this is the time when action is needed.

Exercise is always good, something that gets you out of breath and changes your state.

Just do something, don’t just sit there and ponder the injustices of life.

Become active and force a smile on your face.

admin Happiness change your life, Happiness, Positive Thinking

Imagine if you were to just let your future happen, imagine if you took a reactive stance to life. What do you think would happen, or perhaps a better question would be – what would not happen? Are you about to let your life just happen to you? Are you being dictated to by others, your boss, family, so called friends? Or are you in complete control of everything that happens in your life? Do you want something more than what you currently have? Is there someone you aspire to become; is there something you wish to have in your life?

There are some people in this world who are not living the life they want, and who do absolutely nothing about changing it, or making it better than it currently is. To these people everybody else’s life is the main attraction and they are a part of the audience taking it all in. They are mere watchers, dreamers, the observers of life.

If you met these people at any time in their life and saw what they had and what they did, if in ten years you were to go back and revisit them, they would have exactly the same life as when you first visited them, with probably exactly the same views on life, how it is all so unfair and how only a select few get to live they life they want.

These people watch life evolve around them but they themselves don’t bother to evolve with it, choosing instead to carry on with the way things are and have always been.

Ask yourself the following questions:

• Are you just along for the ride?

• Are you just an observer?

• Are you happy to be on sidelines watching other people?

• Have you given up on your life?

• Does it matter what you do while you are alive?

Your future will just happen if you let it, life will push you around if don’t stand up and take steps to do what is required to create the life you most want to live. Life is to be lived, every moment of it, especially while you have a healthy body and mind, both of which you should be using in ways that make your life the most fun and interesting it possibly can be.

admin Random change your life, Changing direction

Everybody happily makes a ‘to do’ list for all the things they have to do that day or week, either for work or for chores that need to be done around the house, but how many people make ‘to enjoy’ lists? A list for all the things they want to enjoy that day or week, or even month. If you are someone who has never done this before, then why not for a change when you have a free 5 minutes, spend time writing out your own ‘to enjoy’ list and see what interesting activities it brings.

admin Random fun, Happiness

If you ever feel sad through the day, ask yourself these questions and remind yourself of what you need to do to make yourself happy. What would bring me the most happiness? What would bring me joy? Then listen for the answers.

admin Random change your life, Happiness, inspire

“We are formed and molded by our thoughts. Those whose minds are shaped by selfless thoughts give joy when they speak or act. Joy follows them like a shadow that never leaves them.” - The Buddha

“Inner darkness, which we call ignorance, is the root of all suffering. The more inner light that comes, the more darkness will diminish. This is the only way to achieve salvation or nirvana.” - The 14th Dalai Lama

admin Random Inspirational, inspire

Some thoughts for the day!

• You can only go as far as your thoughts will take you.

• Actions speak louder than words.

• Don’t let the past hold you back, it’s over and no longer exists except in your mind.

• Life’s short. If you don’t look around once in a while, you could miss it.

• If you think that the world means nothing, think about how you might mean something to the world!

• If it is painful to look back, and if you worry about the future, then just concentrate on making everything fine today.

• Don’t frown. you look so much better with a smile.

• The horizon leans forward offering you space to place new steps of change.

admin Random change your life, inspire, motivate

OK so you have your idea and you are confident that it is a good one, so you decide to share it with others, however much to your disappointment they aren’t as enthusiastic as you, in fact they criticize it, so how do you handle that?

Well here are some tips:

Think about who is criticizing your idea.

Is it someone whose opinion you value, if it isn’t then don’t be too concerned as they are probably jealous that they didn’t come up with the idea themselves.
If it is from someone whose opinion might be worthwhile then think about how the criticism can help you. Maybe even ask the person to give you more information.

Is the criticism fair?

Don’t feel too offended or defensive when you if you get criticized. Instead take some time to think it through calmly and fairly and consider what if anything you can learn from it.

How should you react?

The most useful and gracious reaction to criticism is to listen and thank the person for it. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to accept it, or follow it up, but it gives the criticizer the benefit of the doubt – the criticism may have been well meant.

If the person who is criticizing you is somebody who is always critical of things and never sees the whole picture then don’t worry too much. Most people never come up with new ideas and so when they see somebody else do it they instantly dismiss it as worthless just to satisfy their own egos.

Have you seen the whole picture?

Something may be given a reason for rejection or given criticism but there is another unspoken agenda that you may not be aware of. You might need to dig a bit deeper to get to the true reason why your idea was rejected.

admin New Ideas (creative thinking) creative thinking, New ideas