Create Change in your life

The biggest roadblock to achieving something in your life, making the change, getting what you want, living the life you most want will not be a lack of ideas because we all have them, it won’t be a lack of money, although some will disagree, (I urge you instead to work extra hours, get another job, save, make sacrifices, get a loan or whatever), it will not be for lack of intelligence, or a lack of knowledge, it will also not be a lack of potential, while they might all appear legitimate reasons, or excuses they will not stop you and nor should they ever stop you from having what you want in your life.

I am here to tell you that the biggest roadblock will always be you. You will be the one who stops taking action, not because you physically can’t but because you lose faith in yourself, or your idea, or whatever it is that you are currently working on. And once you do, your mind will open the doors to all manner of excuses, while you might have once before seen yourself living a better life, if you stop believing it to be possible and that you are indeed capable of making it happen, then like a house of cards everything will come falling down.

So if you have an idea or are currently working on a goal, or a vision for a better future for yourself, one which you have previously perceived yourself as capable of living, then for goodness sake, keep going.

If you are already on your journey of creating the changes you want in your life, then sometimes it pays to take a step back and see where you were not that long ago, and where you are now, and then to congratulate yourself on getting to where you are and knowing that you will go much further, remember where you are is always where you are meant to be. It will always be as a result of the action you have taken or maybe lack of action.

Don’t let self doubt have the final word, stay on track, it is you vs you, nobody else is involved.

Keep going, stay focused on where you want to go and what you want to happen.

Disease and injury aside, you have more potential then you could ever realise. Your mind can be the greatest tool for getting what you want, however for most people who fall short on their plans or goals, it is their mind or rather their self doubt, lack of belief and continual negativity that is the reason they don’t get what they want.

We are all capable of so much. Learn to rise above the mind and to always continually take action until you have what you want.

Look at the reasons your life isn’t as you would like it to be right now, (if indeed this is the case) now be honest and ask yourself why is this? Is it because you are just starting out on creating your ideal life, is it because what you want to happen is unlikely to appear overnight, if it is then this is OK, this is the stage you are at right now, you will move on and be further along when you continue to take action. Now on the other hand, is the reason you are where you are right now down to a limiting belief, or negativity, or mind made self doubt? If it is then you are being your own roadblock, you are making up delays on getting to where you most want to be. Stop this now. You can have what you want in life, but do yourself a big favour first, remove the roadblocks, or rather don’t put them there in the first place, only then you will fly….

admin Mind change your life, The mind

It doesn’t take any more effort to think about how you could earn $10,000 in a year than $1,000,000. If you go away and ask yourself how you could come up with an extra 10,000 your mind would then go away and come up with an answer maybe not right away, but it would certainly still find one eventually or at least come up with some ideas. The same is true of 1,000,000 it would take no more effort to think about how it would be possible, it may take longer (or maybe it wouldn’t) but you would have to run the same programs in your mind, ‘how could I earn this much money’, the figures will only direct your thoughts to find an appropriate strategy, you are not guaranteed of either and at this initial stage of thought you are simply using your imagination to come up with possibilities.

Yet most people wouldn’t even bother to start with such high figures, instead there would be a barrier in their mind that said it would be impossible.

Everybody is equally apt at coming up with ways to make money, however the figure you place on it will ultimately determine the kind of results you will get. Because to make more money will require you to think in grander terms, for example more people buying what you have to sell or whatever.

The point being that at this early stage of thought there should be no barriers, to what you perceive to be possible for yourself, none at all.

admin Mind change your life, The mind

A powerful tool

Your mind is a powerful tool and it is something that needs to be working for you at all times, never against you. You control your own mind and your own thoughts, every single one of them.

Most people would probably say their minds controlled them, it doesn’t, our mind is a tool to be used as effectively as possible. Your brain can take you to wherever you want to go in life, it is equally capable and happy to take you to places where you don’t want to be. The highest highs and also the lowest lows, you decide.

Say the word ‘beach’ and what do you think about? Picture an apple tree and what do you see? You control everything that happens in your own mind. There is great power in this, the power comes from the life you will lead as a result of what happens in your mind first.

You can direct your brain at all times, you can tell it where you want to go. If you don’t control your brain then who does? And if you don’t learn to manipulate your own mind to get what you want then what will the consequences of this be?

The meaning makers

The meaning you give to anything is whatever you decide to hold in your mind. Reality is whatever meaning you decide to place on the events that happen in your life. It is from the eyes of your mind that your future life will be created, reality isn’t necessarily what happens to you right now, reality is what you decide to feel about what happens right now, the perception you attribute to the thoughts you think and the world you see is what makes it real to you.

When you manipulate things in your mind, ideas, concepts, thoughts, you change the outer aspects of your world. A mind made concept is something that has no existence in the real world it is formed in the mind only, you can’t make a movie of a belief you have, you can only make a movie of the actions of that belief.

We all decide what meanings we give to the events we have in our life, and also the thoughts we think, and we are able to change this meaning at any time, the meanings we give to things that have happened in the past do not have to be the meanings we attribute to these things in the future.

Meanings and the perceptions of the events and even the ideas you have are all mind made concepts.

“Meaning is to hold in mind.”
“Meaning in an invented reality”

So it is all choice, we might not believe it at first, but our lives are indeed based on the choices we have made and will continue to make in the future. So in order to create a better life for ourselves and indeed others, it is in our best interests to first decide to form empowering beliefs about ourselves, and what we can do and create in our life.

Saying we can’t do this or that, looking at our life as it is today and not believing it will be different in the future are not the most useful things we can or should be doing with our mind. What you want to be doing with your mind is reminding yourself of how great your future will be, how you have got what it takes to get you there and what exactly you will do to make it happen. There are essentially two roads your mind can take you, the road which leads to where you want to be, and the road which leads to the place you don’t want to be. You want to be focusing on where you want to be going at all times.

Your mind is a tool to be used here and now, and you decide exactly where it will take you at all times, always remember this.

admin Featured, Mind change your life, The mind

Mindless Chatter, Slow it down! - Whenever you hear your internal voice start to chatter, make a conscious effort to slow the voice down to half speed, keep doing this for as long as the voice is bugging you, really slow it down until it becomes too difficult to even listen to the voice. Keep doing this until the voice stops altogether.

Internal Voice (Shut it up?)

Every time your internal voice starts getting negative and dominating your thoughts start to count to 100, once you have done this do it again until it becomes tiresome and you no longer can be bothered anymore, if the internal voice starts again, begin counting once more.

Instructive not critical

When you talk to yourself instead of criticizing what you have or haven’t done, instead provide yourself with useful instructions about what to do next based on what you have learnt from experiencing what you have or haven’t already done.

At night

If when trying to get to sleep at night you have lots of images and chatter going on in your head, then you will more than likely find it difficult to fall asleep. If as you lie in bed you have internal dialogue, slow down the tempo and turn the volume down so that the voice whispers, if you are also making images darken them like when the lights go out in the theatre.

Give these techniques a go and see how you get on.

admin Mind Positive Thinking, The mind

One of the great ways you can come up with ideas is to make connections. Many new ideas have been born from this concept.

How do you make connections?

Well there are a variety of ways you can make connections but one way is simply to do it when you are out and about every day.

Take a look around you, what do you see? A tree, a car, a poster, some writing on the wall, a bird, a bright color, the clouds in the sky, people, shop Windows, signs.

Once you have identified different objects or whatever, make a connection between them.

When you do this have a problem in mind you want to solve.

For example

• A name for your new business
• A new idea for a business

You never know just what sort of idea may come of an exercise like this. Give it a go and see how you get on.

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

What if I told you that in two years your life could be dramatically different to what it is now, what would your initial reaction be? I doubt it, but I’ll never stop dreaming or, yes it will and I know exactly how it will happen. The first answer doesn’t inspire confidence, yet for some it is the more common. The second answer shows the wheels are clearly in motion and that there is already a strong belief that it will happen.

If you were to place a bet on which person would succeed where would you place your money?

The fact of the matter is your life could be dramatically different to what it is now. It is possible, and the first thing you need to understand is this:

“You will never be able to change your life in the first instance unless you really believe it is possible, whatever that may be, either something about yourself or something external.”

Before you can take your life in any new direction you have to believe the final outcome is achievable. It doesn’t matter how grand your aspirations are (and at this stage the bigger the better), but what does matter is that you believe deep down that it can be done.

This fundamental belief will start a chain reaction that won’t stop until you are living out the life you have envisaged.

Once you know even if it is in imagination only that you can reach a new height or climb a bigger mountain, your mind can never really go back and settle for what you currently have, it becomes unacceptable. And it may be a little known fact but once you catch a glimpse of yourself in another time and place living a more successful life completely different to what you have now, you just may never be really happy until you experience and live it for real.

“A mind once stretched never goes back to its original dimensions.”

Such is the nature of things, once we realize we are destined for greater things in the future, it doesn’t become a question of ‘if’ but ‘when’ it will happen. Of course once you believe this the next big question to ask yourself is, are you ready to step up and accept the responsibility to do what is required?

When we realize we can have the future we dream about, we need to take stock of where we are right now, and what we need to spend our time doing in the immediate future to get us closer to our goal.

Don’t get too caught up with thinking about where you are right now, it may seem like a million miles from where you want to be or from what you want to have. The important thing to remember is that you believe that it will happen, almost to the point of expectation, and that you have clearly defined steps that you are currently working towards.

So how far are your thoughts allowing you to go? Do you believe that you are destined for a certain level and that is it, or do you believe your potential is unlimited and that your only limit is your imagination?

Some people will only go so far in life and never any further. They will reach a plateau and go no higher, some will be happy with their lot, others won’t.

How big or small are your thoughts? The thoughts you have now, where exactly will they take you in the future? And is that going to be good enough for you?

Thinking big, grand thoughts can sometimes provide just the necessary motivation to go out and start taking action; whereas thinking small can do the exact opposite.

admin Mind The mind

Affirmations can be very useful when you need to give yourself a pep talk occasionally, it doesn’t hurt to remind yourself from time to time what you can do or are capable of by way of some positive self talk. However don’t fall into the trap of contradicting yourself (saying something and then never carrying out the appropriate action). For example saying you feel great then immediately saying you feel terrible. Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Use statements that serve you in the present moment, for example to focus on a current goal or to increase your self-belief.

• Use words that mean something to you.

• Read your statements as often as you need to.

• Use your self talk when you are working on stopping negative thoughts, you can use them to replace any negative internal dialogue.

• Sometimes it may be necessary to first interrupt your current thought pattern, do this by changing state; either physically (going for a walk, exercise) or mentally (change what you are thinking about).

Examples:

• I am a very good singer

• Every day I am becoming more confident

• Today I feel great

admin Positive Thinking Beliefs, Positive Thinking, The mind

Continued from part 1

• Magnification or minimization: You exaggerate the importance of things (such as your mistake or someone else’s achievement), or you inappropriately shrink things until they appear tiny (your own desirable qualities or the other person’s imperfections). This is also called the ‘binocular trick’.

• Emotional reasoning: You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: ‘I feel it, therefore it must be true.’

• ‘Should’ statements: You try to motivate yourself with ’should’s’ and ’shouldn’ts’, as if you had to be whipped and punished before you could be expected to do anything. ‘Musts’ and ‘oughts’ are also offenders. The emotional consequences are guilt. When you direct ’should’ statements towards others, you feel anger, frustration, and resentment.

• Labeling and Mislabeling: This is an extreme form of over generalization. Instead of describing your error, you attach a negative label to yourself. ‘I’m a loser’. When someone else’s behavior rubs you the wrong way, you attach a negative label onto him. ‘He’s a stupid idiot.’ Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly colored and emotionally loaded.

• Personalization: You see yourself as the cause of some negative external event for which in fact you were not primarily responsible.

• Maladaptive thought: Any thoughts that are not useful to you in a given situation and do not help reach your goal.

admin Mind The mind

When you come up with negative beliefs as to why you can’t do something a lot of the time it is your mind distorting reality to such an extent that the belief seems totally real. The following are some cognitive distortions you may recognize:

• All or nothing thinking: You see things in black and white categories. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure.

• Over generalization: You see a single negative event as a never ending pattern.

• Mental filter: You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively, so that your version of all reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that discolors the entire beaker of water.

• Disqualifying the positive: You reject positive experiences by insisting they ‘don’t count’ for some reason or another. In this way you can maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences.

• Jumping to conclusions: You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusion.

1. Mind reading. You arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you, and you don’t bother to check this out.
2. The fortune-teller error. You anticipate that things will turn out badly, and you feel convinced that your prediction is an already established fact.

See part 2 here.

admin Confidence, Mind The mind

Poverty consciousness is related to motivation, we are either moving away from something, moving towards something or sometimes both. When people are motivated by moving away from things, (things they don’t want, distress, discomfort or pain) they don’t always pay too much attention to where they are going to end up. When people pay too much attention on their problems and not on solutions it can be a bit like ‘out of the frying pan and into the fire’, their attention is on what they don’t want, and not on what they do want. To put it another way, they won’t see where they are going, because they keep looking at where they’ve been, this is what is known as ‘poverty consciousness’.

Successful achievers generally don’t wait until something gets bad before they do something about it, they take action before pain or discomfort forces them to.

Are you a worrier, do you get anxious a lot? You are probably somebody who is motivated by moving away from things as opposed to moving towards things. Once you move away from something and the problem gets further away, you may well start to lose your motivation, as the problem no longer exists. When motivating yourself it is important to understand if you are moving towards something or away.

The boss that drives you crazy, the work colleagues that annoy you can provide you with plenty of reasons to find another job, the ‘move away’ from motivational strategies can be a very powerful force. However if you predominately keep moving away from things where will this take you?

A low salary can spur you onto learn new skills so your earning potential increases. A car that keeps breaking down can motivate you to save money to buy a new one. A cold wet winter can motivate you to book a holiday.

But when you are constantly moving away from things the question surely becomes what are you heading for exactly, where is all this taking you? It is good to be motivated, either towards something or away from something, but if you find yourself always moving away from something and not actually towards anything then maybe a balance needs to be found.

It is when too much attention is put on what you don’t want at the expense of looking towards and making plans for what you do want in the future.

I am guilty of this, I know what I don’t want but this just means I know what I want to avoid, however it doesn’t help me focus on what I do want.

The way your mind operates is such that when you say you don’t want something, it still has to focus on what you don’t want, your mind doesn’t understand negation.

I don’t want to lose money (last thing you mind thinks is ‘LOSE MONEY’)
I don’t want to work in an office (mind thinks about working in an office)
I don’t want to etc……

It can be hard to create a compelling future for yourself if all you are doing is imaging all the things you don’t want. Always looking at how bad it has been, how bad it is, all the things you have never had, all the places you have never been, all the unhappy times you have had, all the miserable jobs you have had. This is ‘poverty consciousness’ in action.

‘That job didn’t work out because ….’
‘I remember working there it was so ….’
‘I’ve never had any real money, life has always been ….’

What are you moving towards right now? Take a list of all the things you don’t want and change it into a list of things you do want.

Avoid ‘poverty consciousness’ and start looking at where you are headed and what you are going to have in the future.

If you have a lot of ‘move away’ from strategies then change them into ‘move towards’ instead to get a more balanced motivation strategy. For example change ‘I don’t want to work for my boss’ into ‘I want to work for myself’.

Don’t fall into the trap of always being motivated to move away from something and towards nothing.

admin Goal Setting / Motivation motivational, The mind