Got Goals?

This is probably a good time to go back over setting goals. I say that because I’ve gotten a bit of feedback and it seems that many people find it a challenge to come up with fifty goals to put on their list.

When you tell people to write down their tip fifty goals they often think that it will be easy to come up with all fifty but when you actually start writing, somewhere around twenty or so it becomes more of a challenge.

More of a challenge until you realize the list isn’t just about the stuff you want to have or the places you want to visit, you know, the material things in life. It’s also about who you want to be, skills you want to hone or acquire (like learning another language), goals for exercise and health, goals for character, integrity and discipline. Goals that define you and build self-esteem.

Once you add those goals, its easy to go over fifty goals, and that’s okay too. But it’s also okay not to have fifty goals. The important thing to understand is that studies show that people with well-defined, written goals achieve their goals much more often than those without written goals. And you are never too old, too unhealthy or too anything to have goals-as long as you are alive.

One last thing about goals; you should be clear that every goal you have is ultimately designed to help you find true prosperity. What is true prosperity? It is having good health, being someone you like to be around, having enough money in your pocket to do or have want you want and bliss (being happy just to be).

So I guess you need to get writing.

Daniel Boone Was a Man……

I have heard that some people have initially embraced the concept that we create our own lives and then, when their dreams and goals don’t materialize overnight or when they face adversity, they decide it’s poppycock. Why is that?

Well, they are introduced to the idea of creating their dream life when they see movies like The Secret or read self growth books, get excited by the possibilities and then get shut down for a hundred reasons. Okay, not a hundred but for different reasons; some take no action to make their goal a reality, some decide the way the desired result will happen and ignore nudges from the universe (often with disastrous results), some have so little love for themselves that they don’t feel worthy or have so little belief that it is possible for them. For others they have no problem believing but for themselves, they just can’t see it. And some give up because it was harder than they thought it would be and at the first big challenge, they quit. This is another reason why it is best to do some personal development every day for at least twenty or thirty minutes and why it is not limited to reading books like say, Think and Grow Rich (Napoleon Hill). Biography’s are also a great source of inspiration for anyone.

Yesterday I happened to come across the bio of Daniel Boone on Wikipedia and I recommend it to anyone facing adversity. It’s relatively short but one thing is consistent; Daniel Boone faced many ups and downs in his life but he never gave up, he never stopped trying and he never tried to insist that there was only one way to make his way in life. He started over several times, always believing that the universe would provide, and it did. I believe that if he were here today he would say that he would do it all over, exactly as he did and with no regrets, and that he had lived a blessed life, in spite of his challenges. 

So take a page from Boone’s book, don’t let life's challenges stop you, if something doesn’t work then try something else and care as much about yourself as much as you care about others.

What Are You Doing for Personal Development?

I often ask people what they are doing for personal development and the answer is often that they are doing nothing. At least they think they are doing no personal development but the reality is that personal development is like momentum; always in motion.

Your personal development is either deliberate self growth or it is by default. Every day of your life you have been a receiver for messages; messages of positive data and of negative data. You hear or watch  the news, you listen to the radio, I daresay you hear gossip-even when its disguised as ‘status updates’. Sadly, the input you receive from these sorts of sources is usually negative and the result is that you may develop a negative view of people, opportunities and possibilities.

Your brain is no different that your body; what you feed it determines it’s well-being. And the good thing is that you get to choose every day what you will ‘feed’ yourself. You can choose to read stories about people that overcame adversity, that succeeded and inspired. You can watch movies that promote character and integrity. You can listen to music that elevates you. This sort of information makes you understand that people can do anything they set their minds to. That people can do great things, that life is good, and anything is possible.

It’s not that you don’t acknowledge that negative things happen in the world, it’s that you choose to put yourself in a position that if something negative happens you can respond rather than reacting. The former is done by deliberation the latter by emotion and I’ll bet you can guess which one usually works out best.

So take a minute and think about what sort of a ‘diet’ you have your mind on, maybe it’s time to limit your ‘junk food’ and increase healthier choices.

It’s Kind of a Long Story

I’d like to share a story with you.  You may have heard it before; I, myself have heard two different versions of it but it is a good story and worth repeating. A man and his wife walk into an antiques store. The man looked up on a shelf and smiled & pointed something out to his wife. Then she looked up & saw what he was pointing at. She said “Isn’t that the most beautiful teacup you ever saw!” The teacup replied “I was not always so pretty, once upon a time I was a lump of clay, living happily in a field of clay. One day a man came along and dug me up. He took me home and put me on a table. Then he started pounding and kneading, & pulling on me and it hurt very much! I told him to stop because he was hurting me but he said “not yet” and just kept doing it. Finally he smiled and I thought he was done torturing me but then he started squishing me and pulling me until he had twisted me into a cup shape! I was really uncomfortable but he put me up on a shelf so I was happy to be left alone. Well that didn’t last very long! A few days later he took me off the shelf and put me in an oven! Oh it was sooo hot! I cried and cried and when I saw him looking in the little window I begged him to take me out because I just couldn’t take it anymore he said ‘not yet’ and left me to burn. It seemed like forever before he turned off the oven and I got to cool off. I thought I certainly must be done with this terrible ordeal but soon he took me back to his table and started painting me with some very stinky paint! If that wasn’t bad enough, he put me back in the oven! Once again I begged him over and over to let me out but all he said was ‘not yet’ Finally when I thought I could stand no more, he turned off the oven and let me cool off. Then he took me out and looked over every square inch of me. Finally satisfied, he held up a mirror so I could see what I had become. I knew I felt differently, after what he had put me through who would be the same, but I was as you see me today and I realized that I who thought myself to be happy laying in a field of clay was only now truly happy because I had been transformed from something that was basically nothing to something that was very special. Today I am proud of what I have become.”

The teacup’s story is one way of explaining the process of self-growth and manifesting your dreams, a way of telling you what personal development does for you and that you can expect some growing pains but those growing pains will make you stronger not kill you. Many times along the journey you might feel like quitting but if you stay in belief & keep working toward your goal, you will succeed.

Do This Instead

There is a series of articles on the internet with the subject of don’t eat this, do eat this and the articles compare calories and fat of different foods. It’s often quite an eye opener to find  many dishes that are so high in fat, sodium and calories but I suspect that lots of folks still eat them. These articles inspired me to write today's post as a don’t do that, do this instead.

1. Don’t affirm what you don’t want. And by that I mean do not say things like; I am fat, I am sick or I am broke even if any of those things are true. DO affirm what you want; I look great, I feel great, my supply is unlimited. Yes, you might need to lose weight, you might not be healthy or you might not be rich but we never forget that words create.

2. Don’t worry, DO trust and believe because you cannot believe and worry at the same time.

3. Don’t hold onto anger, DO forgive. Yeah, I know you don’t want to, they did you wrong, it’s just not right, it hurts like hell but holding onto anger makes it hurt a lot more and for longer. Find something bigger than your anger, get busy with whatever project you can think of; reinvent yourself, go back to school, volunteer somewhere, play some game like Frontierville, exercise, read, just get busy and get over it because that is how you leave it behind.

4. Don’t feed your mind crap (you know information that is negative, opinions about how bad everything & everyone is, that sort of thing), DO feed your mind good materials that help you grow (you can go back to previous posts to find some recommended materials) and spend at least 20-30 minutes a day (yes, every day) with that good material.

5. Don’t drift though life, DO have dreams & goals & visualize for a few minutes everyday. See yourself happy, (get a picture of yourself laughing and happy if that's what it takes) and enjoying life.

I am sure I could make this list a top ten but these will do for starters.

 

 

It is not really different when you tell people

How Can I?

Today I was trying to do something but I wasn’t having much luck with it. In the old days, I would have gotten frustrated and short-tempered. Today I laughed about it with a friend and one minute later the whole thing worked out just the way I wanted it to.

Now, I’m not saying that every time I have an obstacle to overcome, I now make a joke and jump right over it and I did wrestle with this challenge for over an hour before it worked out. What I am saying is that I changed and I learned to to do two things; I never forgot that I could succeed and I trusted the universe to do its part.

I didn’t just sit there waiting for the universe though, I did what I could and kept asking myself ‘how can I? ‘ then I would try, try again, not the same thing over & over hoping for a different result, but trying different approaches to the same challenge. You might say, well everyone does that, but no they don’t. Some people quit, some people get very cranky or have a tantrum. (Truth be told I have been known to break things that frustrated me too much-bet lots of you have too-lol-but that was a long time ago) It’s the attitude that makes the difference that I am speaking of, the trust that what I wanted was going to show up as long as I kept believing it would and doing my part to make it happen.

I have to say that while it was great that what I wanted finally happened, what I really noticed was how I could make a joke about it instead of cussing about it. And I realized that so many things in life would go so much better if we could all just leave the negative emotions behind when faced with a challenging situation because all those negative emotions do is get in the way and steal your joy.

So next time you are faced with an obstacle and your first attempt to overcome it doesn’t work, ask yourself ‘how can I’ do this? and then notice how many answers you give yourself because if you listen you will find that you will give yourself more than one possibility. Then try, try again.

A Rerun

I decided to take a look back today and I started to review old posts  and the first one I opened was this one;

A Heavy Sigh is what I caught myself doing when I sat down to write this post today. Why is that you say? Because I am kind of tired of writing about the same old same old. But I know that I must do this in a thousand different ways until everyone gets it so here goes;

Your thoughts create the things and occurrences of your life, period. Okay maybe its exclamation point, I don’t know but what I do know is that what you think about, what you believe in your heart of hearts is what you create and then you attract more of that to you and in turn are attracted to more of it. So if you think thoughts of inferiority, you are attracted to those who hold low opinions of themselves and vice versa. If you worry all the time, you find plenty to be worried about. If you think thoughts of negativity or complaint you attract things to complain about and people to share complaints with and vice versa. And yeah, by vice versa I mean if you have a good opinion of yourself you end up surrounded by like minded individuals and a positive attitude brings, surprise, like minded individuals around.

That's it in a nutshell, you simply decide who you want to be and you control what you allow yourself to think and in time-and I say in time because you have to give yourself time to create a new habit and the universe time to rearrange things-you can create the things that you say that you want. The choice is entirely yours and nobody (or nothing) else's.

When I reread that post, I thought, ‘that was pretty good’ so I decided to share it again and just add this; “Change your thoughts and you change your world.” Norman Vincent Peale

Don’t Say That!

One of my favorite creations of the past several years has to be Facebook. I love so many things about the site that I could write about it for an hour. But the one thing that makes me really cringe is when I see people post negative comments-mostly about themselves!!!!

Words create, and negative words create negative things so when I see a post of a person calling himself or herself a loser, posts from angry people (especially when they are using all caps or profanity) or endless videos of anger or hate, that is distressing to me because I know that person is not only not in a good place but they are building a future of more of the same thing.

I want to reach out and slap these people (but not really) and what I usually do is send them a positive message or recommend some book or something that could help. I know that they think they are just ‘blowing off steam’ but they just don’t seem to get what they are saying to the universe is drawing more of whatever has them going off to begin with. It becomes their focus and that focus has strong emotion behind and we all know that emotion drives the law of attraction.

I think that I have shared this before but I think its great and its what I think of whenever I see a negative post (and btw, I don’t see that many since I learned about self growth- law of association and all that you know) and a refresher is always good;

“True abundance has nothing to do with anything that I am having, & everything to do with what I am being, And when I share my abundance of beingness abundantly with all those whose live I touch, everything i sought to have came to me automatically, without my even trying to have them.” Neale Donald Walsh

A Change For the Better

Ever notice that lots of people have dreams and goals, especially when they are young but then they seem to ‘settle’ for something else, something less than what they really want?

Today I share two quotes;

You pay the price of discipline or you pay the price of regret but either way you gotta pay. Jim Rohn

No matter what we want of life we have to give up something in order to get it. Raymond Holliwell

Now, logically we can all understand & agree with these statements but emotionally? Not necessarily because we let ‘life’ get in our way. We get caught up in the small picture and let go of the big picture because we have our feelings in the moment. But at the heart of every dream, of every goal, of every wish, is the desire to be happy and we think we know how we can find that happiness but if that doesn’t work out the way we planned we tend to still try to hang onto it, long past when we should move on. The universe has a way of letting us know when we need to make some changes & sometimes we don’t even see it coming & we might resist it when it happens.

So how does a person let go of something, that might not be right for us, that might not make us happy anymore, that might not be right for us anymore? By finding something bigger than what we want (or maybe need) to leave behind.

If you had a job, a good job that you enjoyed doing but he company wasn’t great or a great company doing a job you maybe didn’t love or a similar scenario at work and for whatever reason you needed to find a different job; you would have to leave the security or familiarity of that old job in order to find a better job. You would have to let go of what was ‘comfortable’ to move onto what was better. At first, it wouldn’t be very comfortable but if you wanted something better from your career, that would be the price you paid for getting something better. And once you got busy with that new job you would give very little thought to the old job so the new job became bigger than the old.

It’s the same for relationships, for habits or for anything really; you have to let go of the lesser to move to the better.