How to Live the Life You Desire

Lately the issue of a person's circle of influence has been coming up in my conversations. A great example is taking business advice from people who have never run a business before. You know the old saying "success creates success." It's true for so many other areas as well. A lot of times we go searching for the answers to life's problems from people who have never walked the road we are traveling. That amazing thing is how often we hope to just fall into success, the right circumstances, or right people. I have found that in all areas of life success can only come through a process of careful planning, being strategic with your people, and being purpose-full. Here are some tidbits on each.

Careful Planning

Many of you I'm sure have heard the old saying, "fail to plan, plan to fail." I have seen example after example of this truth. Most people don't understand the amount of direction and momentum needed to get something off the ground and even more importantly how much energy is needed to change the direction of the ship. I have experienced this in my own life. Early in my business life I failed to carefully plan out the proper goals and expectations for my business. As a result my business and team rarely grew the way I wanted it do. It was only when I began to respect the planning process that I was able to change the direction of the ship.

Being Strategic

Most often when I mention being strategic I am referring to people. A lot of times we aren't very strategic about the people we allow into our life. I have always been a big stick about people. For a period of years I strayed away from this principle and paid pretty heavily for it. If you are hoping to be a disciplined, efficient person in your personal and/or professional life it's important to surround yourself with disciplined, efficient people. I have seen many people wonder why their relationships aren't better or stronger and are five minutes later having a pity party with people in the same circumstance.

Being Purpose-full

Yes it's a small play on words. Being Purpose-full means understanding your purpose and passions in life. Nothing sucks more than a job or relationship you don't like. Always look beneath the surface of your circumstances. Sometimes we end up doing things in life for the wrong reason. For example taking a high paying job that you hate so that you can live your life at a certain level, or having a relational association that doesn't fit your personality or beliefs. You might do this because of what they bring to the table when in fact it just isn't worth it.

Everything in life is about direction and passion. We are most creative and productive when we do things we enjoy. Stay focused on what you really want and watch things carefully turn around for you.

Source : Mikhail Hutton

Self-Confidence – Take Time To Help Yourself

One very important quality that a person must possess in order to achieve total happiness and contentment in their life is self-confidence. Self-confidence refers to people believing that they have to ability to do certain things. It could be anything, such as performing well at work, building a house, or simply interacting with their children. It is often easier for person to have more confidence in others than in themselves. This is not healthy, and a person will almost always fail at whatever they attempt to do in life without self-confidence. Self-confidence is what gives people the drive to work toward a certain goal. It makes people feel good about themselves. Those that are self-confident are happier and are able to achieve their goals more easily.

Self-confidence is a must-have in the corporate world. If a person lacks this extremely important quality then they are usually overlooked when it comes time for promotions, raises and special assignments. People without self-confidence are not very noticeable to supervisors; they merely sit quietly in the background, ignored. Employees with self-confidence are more articulate, motivated and ambitious, and work hard to achieve their work-related goals. They feel good about themselves and their ability to perform their job. They strive to transcend in ways that those who lack self-confidence only dream about. The corporate world is extremely competitive and does not wait around for the meek to gain self-esteem, which is why if a person wants to be successful, they must first work on improving their self-confidence.

There are several ways to boost one’s self-confidence. One sure-fire way is by working on one’s physical appearance. Exercising, eating properly and dressing well are excellent ways of doing this. If people feel good about the way they physically look then eventually they will begin to feel the same way inwardly, and self-confidence will blossom. Another way to boost self-confidence is by achieving small goals. Perhaps a person could work on small items that they have been procrastinating about, like a small home improvement project, for instance. By completing these projects, no matter how small, and seeing the quality of the final product, a person’s self-confidence will be boosted in no time.

Additionally, if a person’s self-esteem is low, there are other ways to help give it a boost. Helping others when they’re in need naturally makes everyone feel good. It boosts self-confidence for a person to see that someone is better off because of something that they did to help. It may be something small or something major; it doesn’t matter because even the little things count.

If a person continues to work diligently on boosting their self-confidence by using these techniques, they can transform themselves from an introvert who is afraid to speak up for him or herself, to a confident, expressive person that has no trouble voicing their opinions or telling others ‘no.’ Pretty soon after working on increasing their self-esteem to a healthy, normal level, they will start to see that they will be the person benefiting from all the promotions, raises and special assignments, and they will no longer be ignored and overlooked.

Source : Michael Jeffreys

Stress Reduction Through Gratitude

We are all aware of the stressful times we are surrounded with, and these situations can easily lead us to feeling overwhelmed. Learning to combat stress is a helpful skill we can learn so as to regain a maximized quality of life. There is a very effective way of doing this, through cognitive redirection, and focusing on the positive aspects of our lives instead of the negative ones. By taking the time to acknowledge good fortune in our lives, and not allowing setbacks or problems to become dominating factor in our outlook allows us to deal with stress on a more successful level.

Many times it’s just easier to be ungrateful about the things we do not have instead of being grateful for the positive things we have been dealt or what we have achieved. These positive parts of our lives are often overlooked and taken for granted until some sort of disaster hits. All too often we can forget about having a roof over our heads, a warm bed and even a hot shower. Once we can identify those things for which we have to be grateful for, we have the perfect exercise for positive thinking, and it could actually change our feelings towards stress as well as balancing out the related effects.

The factors causing stress are many, but it is defined as a state where an individual is not in equilibrium with their individual surroundings. It is known to us now that the distinction between both body and mind is of limited usefulness. Negative thoughts are able to have an affect on the body, just as trauma can affect the mind. Experiences of stress prompting negative emotions may have a direct affect when it comes to body chemistry. In response to any threat or stress, our bodies produce hormones and other chemicals, such as adrenalin and cortisol.

Fortunately this works both ways. A calming environment along with some positive thoughts can fight the mental and physical effects of stress. Allow yourself a bit of time every day simply to concentrate on the positive – even if it is as little as a few minutes – you will be able to remove yourself from the causes and effects of stress.

The need to recognize those bursts of good fortune can have a radical effect on our perspective. Problems have a tendency to cast a dark cloud so to speak over the parts of our lives that are going well and distorting our perspective on things. Let’s take for example that sense of panic we feel when tasks are uncompleted instead of giving ourselves some praise over what we did accomplish. When the period of stress is prolonged or extended, it is entirely possible for us to develop unhealthy patterns of jumping automatically to a negative conclusion. By focusing on those things that make us happy is a very powerful technique we can use to overcome that pattern of thinking negatively, thereby reducing stress as well as giving a boost to the immune system.

When you are stressed or tense, it may start out looking like quite a bit of hard work to identify those things you are grateful for. Practice and patience will provide you with the ability to take the time to smell the roses so to speak. At first it may be a case of hindsight being 20/20 but with time it will become automatic.

While training yourself to be able to recognize those many things to be grateful for, you will stop taking things for granted. Seeing those items that may seem trivial to some, such as the bud of a new leaf on a tree, or a new tulip in the garden, will trigger the recognition and with it the internal need for celebration. As it becomes integrated more easily into your daily routine you will be able to see just how the process can reinforce your ability to deal with stress while you practice positive thinking.

Source : Deanna Collins