We’ve all probably been in this situation before.

We didn’t think that we can do something but when told that it’s real easy, hey presto, we too can do it.

It can be something as simple as unscrewing the cap of a bottle. We all know how tight these things can be. Sometimes we will try to unscrew the thing to the point were we are red in the face but it just wouldn’t budge. But when we see that somebody else can easily do it (sometimes these people are not necessarily bigger or stronger than us), we find that we can do it too.

What’s the difference?

It’s because when we were handed the bottle the first time, we were usually told that the cap is tight or it’s stuck, so we too believe that it’s going to take a lot of effort to unscrew it and we just don’t have it in us. But when somebody else succeed where we failed, we immediately see that it is possible.

Whatever we do, if we believe that it can be done, we can accomplish anything and achieve success.

You’ll be amazed at what can happen when you believe in your abilities. An example is the man who lost his ability to walk after an accident. But if he believes that he will be able to walk again, it is possible. It might take time and many hours of physiological therapy, but as long as he believes in his ability, he will walk again.

Isn’t that what happens to our life most of the time?

There are people who want salary raise but don’t believe that they deserve it so they never got it.

There are people who want to start a business but don’t believe they have the capability so they failed.

There are people who want to win but don’t believe they could be the winner so they lost.

When you have the right belief system, you’ll succeed simply because you know it is POSSIBLE for you to be successful. Most of the time, the hardest part of becoming successful is to convince your own self of the possibility, not others. It is YOU who decide whether you want to achieve your goal or not and when you set your mind to it, nothing’s going to stop you.

Everything else is just background noise that can be tuned out.

Isn’t that interesting? All it takes is a shift in our believe system.

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Consistently believing in yourself is a habit and habits are learned. Go here to grab a book on building good habits and, while you’re there, sign up for their free Health and Happiness letter.

Along with determination and belief you must be enthusiastic about your goal. Everything that happens along the way is another joyous milestone, moving you another step closer to success. Enthusiasm adds to your positive perspective and affirms your personal motivation in the outcome.

Enthusiasm comes from inspiration. Inspiration comes from knowledge and enrichment of the mind, while ignorance fosters and intensifies fear. Inspiration also helps you to further define and detail your plan of action. There are many sources from which to get inspiration, the most obvious being education, whether it is motivational material to keep you on your path or gaining more specific knowledge to achieve your success. Education may be reading books, magazines, and journals, taking workshops and classes, listening to tapes/CDs, and watching videos that provides motivation tips in the area of your goal. You become what you study, so expose your mind to anything and everything that adds to the achievement of your success.

Also, include educational and motivational materials that will help you after your success is achieved. Currently, you are in “the process”. Once your goal is achieved, you should already have the knowledge and motivation to use the success in a positive manner and keep it moving forward.

The people that surround you influence your path, your attitude, your determination, your belief, your inspiration, and the outcome of your success. You should surround yourself with people who share your positive vision and desire to achieve your goal. Otherwise, you may be sabotaging your success through the power of negative association.

Donald Trump, as an example, associated with those people whom he wanted to emulate and who could assist his success. Now, whether or not you want that level of success, the point is that the associations you keep impact your goals. Here’s an example.

Darren used to be an alcoholic. After he hit bottom, he went into rehab and cleaned up his life. He joined Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and tried to convince his wife to join Al-Anon, an arm of AA that helps spouses of alcoholics to eliminate all of their “old habits” they developed over the years to cope with the alcoholism.

She refused any type of counseling and, at every opportunity, would “push Darren’s buttons.” Having difficulty retaining his sobriety under his wife’s subconscious attempts to return to her comfort zone (even though it was detrimental to her well-being, since Darren was physically abusive when drunk,) Darren eventually divorced his wife. He’s now been sober and happily remarried to a supporting spouse for many years.

One of the most supporting and inspirational tools to achieve success is to have a hero.
Oprah Winfrey, well known talk show host, once told Barbara Walters, renowned interviewer and newscaster, that, if it were not for Ms. Walters, she wouldn’t be where she is today. This is a wonderful example of using a hero to achieve. The great thing about emulating heroes is that they can be living, dead or even fictitious.

Finding a hero (or heroine) to emulate gives you many achievement advantages. That person is already the success you seek. Learn all you can about them. If possible, take them to lunch and interview them. Find out what they purposefully did to achieve. What did they do to speed up the process to success? Put photos of this person all over your living space and on your desk at work. Keep a list of the person’s traits that you wish to emulate, and incorporate them and anything that helped your hero to achieve into your plan of action.

Look around you. There are many sources of inspiration for you to draw upon. The more inspired you get, the more likely you will strive towards achieving your goals in life.

This article was syndicated from SeoLinkVine

My home page for the internet is Louise Hay’s Affirmation page, so every time that I go online I have a nice affirmation there waiting for me. Today the affirmation was “I balance my life between work, rest and play. They all get equal time.” Hmmmm. How true is this statement in your life?

Do you balance work, rest, and play? I realised (somewhat to my horror!) that, in my case, playtime really comes in only if I’ve ‘booked’ time to play – like my day at the beach last week, or going to see Hamlet in Stratford tonight – or if I have time ‘left over’ to play after I’ve worked and rested! The end result is that playtime is getting about 20% of my time at most. RUBBISH!

Enough already! It’s time to bump playtime up the priority list! I admin I have gotten into bad habits lately. I’ve been busy and working quite a lot…and because I am good at self care, resting a lot too…but at the expense of playtime! Shocking.

And what’s worse, I know that I am better at this balance than most people I know. Many are very unbalanced (in terms of “work, rest and play” that is – not mentally unbalanced!), and the big missing ingredient is playtime. It’s heart-breaking to see, because playtime makes you come alive, playtime is fun, playtime is vital to you having a happy life – let’s face it, how much better do you feel when you’ve been on holiday? And why?
Because you’ve had uninterrupted playtime!

Holidays are all about recharging your batteries and devoting yourself to having some fun…and then we come home and forget to play for another 11 months and 2 weeks. It’s foolish to neglect your fun muscles – if they get flabby you’ll get miserable. I’m sure I don’t really need to extol the virtues of play – you know yourself that when you take part in activities that you enjoy, you feel better.

So when was the last time you deliberately took part in an activity you enjoy and made a conscious choice to savour that playtime? Why not start tonight? Instead of sitting numbly in front of the idiot box, make an effort to do something playful and fun (if that’s tv for you, ok…but as long as you’re actively enjoying it, not just wobbed out in front of it!). You see people, it’s time to take playtime seriously!

Something to play with

Part 1: What is the balance of work, rest and play in your life? 60/30/10? 40/40/20? Have a guess at the proportions – your best guess will be quite accurate! What can you do TODAY to start restoring the balance (especially the playtime bit!)?

Part 2: What do you do to play? Aim to get a list of 100 things (it might take time, but you can do it!).

Part 3: Do something off that list DAILY.

This is a syndicated article, courtesy of Syndicate Kahuna

More about…

• affirmations
• Goal setting

On the other hand, when we “do it right” how often to we give ourselves a pat on the back? We are our own worst critics, but the only value in that is the headache we get from constantly whacking ourselves. Other people will tell us “good job,” why can’t we tell ourselves that? Heck, we’ll tell THEM “good job,” but say that to ourselves? It just doesn’t feel right, right?

In the interest of starting down that path of “learning to think in a positive manner” here are ten steps to thinking positively.

1 – Focus on where you want to go, not where you’ve been. We’ve all made mistakes. Now it’s time to think about what we want to do to take the next step forward. Set small, positive goals, think about them, and accomplish them.

2 – Learn to forgive yourself and others. Most of us are wherever we are in life because we put ourselves there. We all make bad choices from time to time, and now it’s time to let that go. It’s called forgiveness and we really can forgive ourselves for bad choices. The next step is to move forward and consistently work to make better choices.

3 – If the glass is half full, then fill it. Optimists are right at least as often as pessimists and have a lot more fun. There’s nothing wrong with taking that half-full glass and filling it the rest of the way.

4 – Look for positive role models. We all need to find someone who inspires us. Maybe that person is someone who overcame a major handicap or maybe it’s just someone who put one foot in front of the other, year after year, and came out very nicely in the end. Or maybe it’s someone who just worked his or her pants off and won the big prize. Let that person be an inspiration.

5 – Change your atmosphere. Instead of listening to the news all the time put on a CD with a good motivational speaker or uplifting music. Most of the news is repeated many times a day and it’s not intended to make us feel good.

6 – Headlines (including news stories) are designed to surprise, shock, and otherwise yank you into a story, Disaster and scandal sell, or so the publishers think. Read something uplifting instead. Visit your bookstore or library and make note of all the motivational type books they have available. Get one that feels right and read it.

7 – Read something positive everyday, preferably when you get up and right before you go to bed. Then think about it, in a positive way. Grab that book you picked up in step 6 and read it for 15 minutes morning and evening for 30 days.

8 – Visualize good things happening. It’s too easy to visualize bad things happening. Bills, what the other person will say, “what if this happens…” and so on. Visualize the good thing happening. Visualize the project going well (whether it’s homework or that next presentation) and people telling you that it was “good stuff!”

9 – Mistakes are something to learn from, not a bat to whack ourselves with. We all make mistakes, it’s how we use them to move on that makes us better. So what if we “blew it” on the last effort, there is always a next time and we can always learn from what happened and do things differently the next time. That’s how we improve.

10 – Dreamboarding is the practice of placing images of “what you want out of life” on a piece of posterboard and placing it where you can see it. As a reminder of where you want to take yourself and what you want to have. Some people have found dreamboarding to be very powerful.

Thinking in a positive manner is as much a habit as is thinking in a negative manner. The reason negative thinking is so easy is because we’ve had so much practice with it. Practice the positive thinking tips to overcome the bad habits and replace them with new ones.

Everyone, from you and me to those awesome Olympic athletes, has a set of habits and these habits either move us forward or hold us back. If we can learn the habits of the successful people, and practice them, then we also will move forward.

Wow. What a show, from just about any way that you want to look at it.

The Chinese are reported to have spend 50 billion dollars on the event, with all the new construction, festival, support services, coordinating upwards of a million volunteers, training, consumes, infinite tiny little details, etc.

And the athletes. Wow. Forget for a minute the issues about a few of them being under-aged, or on drugs, or flopping, or even the what China is like being the scenes.

The athletes are the show. The pageantry is awesome, but it’s not the show. The show is all about the years of training, work, and sacrifice that it takes just to be considered for the Olympic team, much less hit the gold. Imagine the habits that have to be formed and the attitude that these people need to develop.

Nerves? Part of the training they work on is getting past the nerves and the fear. Hard enough doing a talk in front of your group at work, now imagine doing a routine on the balance beam in front of 4 billion people.

How many times does a sprinter work on the launch? How about that little bend over they do when crossing the finish line?

Most of the actions these people do they’ve done to the point where they become habit, and how many times does one have to practice a Vault for that habit to happen?

Getting the Focus

They’re way beyond the “Ok, now I have to do this thing this way and I have to look for this point and I hope I don’t…” With the rare exception where concentration cracks a bit they’ve developed the habit (yeah, I say it’s a habit) of focusing exactly what they want to do and on shutting out all distractions.

I’d even say that most of them aren’t even aware of the audience when they’re doing whatever their event or routine happens to be, especially for the short events. Obviously in a team sport, such as Soccer, the teams are aware of the audience and their cheers and jeers. Still, the habits and the focus are where they have to be.

Now I’m the last person anyone would ever think of as Olympic material, but I did some Martial Arts for awhile. At times the going was easy and at times it was just hard. They easy parts were when I had the training habit down and a routine established, which made the concentration easy.

It’s way too easy to lose that habit.

Even the little habits, much less what it takes to Pole Vault in front of a billion or two people, can drop out of whack with surprisingly little effort.

But if we can find a way to lock in the actions and thoughts which create good habits then we’re on the road to where we want to be. Obviously all those marvelous Olympians, even the one who weren’t competitive, had those habits.

Nothing’s stopping us from developing ours, but the “how” part can be hard, and a little help is nice. The Athletes have their coaches, mentors, support, etc. and there’s not reason that we can’t have the same.

There’s a book which will help you on this path: the Habit guide.

It’s a great way to start building the right habits that are needed to hit your goals, even if they aren’t balance beam routines.

Get your copy of this very helpful book, here.

More Resources for Creating Good Habits:

Millionaire Mindset to Achieve Financial Freedom – Repeated action leads to good habit. Good habits lead to positive character. Positive character and attitude lead to phenomenal result and destiny. Begin to take action and make our dreams become real. Inspiring Journey To Financial …

Good Habits Are Hard to Break – You can train yourself to create mostly positive outcomes on a daily basis in your life by developing good habits. How often have you walked away from some sort of minor catastrophe, disaster or accident, in the kitchen or otherwise, …

Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival: Good Habits Edition – I can’t think of a better way to keep motivated in our endeavors to create good habits than the experiences she shares in this entry. She shows how putting down a new “habit rail” brings more freedom to your life. …

Habits: how to create good ones – 2. I want to relinquish myself from my need from sugar. 3. I want to feel accomplished. HOW DO I CREATE GOOD HABITS? I googled: How to create healthy habits and came across this great blog. Creating Healthy Habits …

Back To School – 17 Good Habits For A Successful Life – It is an indicator of whether you mean what you say and can be trusted. Do not introduce doubt about this into people’s minds by showing up later than expected. Create the habit of being punctual now and you won’t have to worry. …

The Habit guide – The Habit Guide shows you how to live a happy, healthy lifestyle for good. Perfect for newbies and seasoned health seekers alike, Mike Kinnaird reveals every step-by-step detail you must know to finally lose weight, get healthy and set yourself free…”

Now, if I asked you to name 3 things you could do to live a healthier lifestyle, I bet you’d say something like…

– eat more (organic) fruit and veggies
– drink more water
– get more exercise

Most of us have a pretty clear idea about WHAT to do, to be healthier.

So why aren’t we doing it?

Why does no-one ever tell us HOW to change, from where we are now, to a healhier way of life?

Sound too simple? Way back when I was studying Martial Arts (Bok Fu) a real live Major League baseball player signed up to take lessons. Really. This guy had won a couple of batting championships, so obviously knew his game.

He made an interesting remark at one point, along the lines of, “Everyone tells you TO concentrate, but no one tell you HOW to concentrate.” That HOW part was one of the reasons he was studying Martial Arts.

The good news is that once you’re aware of the HOW part, it’s actually quite simple to master personal change. THEN that permanently healthy lifestyle is well within your grasp.

That force for change (or staying where we are) is HABIT.

If you’ve ever tried to maintain a healthier lifestyle, you know just how hard it is to stop yourself slipping back. The problem is, how do you break unhealthy habits that have been with you for years, even decades?

Some people say it’s practically impossible. It can certainly be tough, especially with all the distractions from other people, events, and our own thinking. The good news it’s NOT impossible. You simply need to understand “habit” properly so you can make it work for you, instead of against you.

There’s a guy named Mike Kinnaird who suffered chronic illness for 13 years. The doctors and specialists had basically given up on him, but he poured any energy he had into discovering how to make permanent healthy
changes to his life, and he overcame his illness completely on his own…

He agreed to take on clients and found nearly everyone suffering with the same problem — “how to change.”

How do you get from where you are now to a permanently happy, healthy, energy-filled lifestyle?

Mike dreamed for YEARS about putting it all together and, until recently, it was still just a dream. But Mike’s eBook is now available and he says it’s probably the ONLY book he’ll ever write…

It’s called “The Habit Guide: How to be Happy and Healthy.”

Habit Guide contains 2 sections:

The Change section arms you with a powerful system for transforming habits and the Lifestyle section is Mike’s recommendation of what to aim for.

Yes, it really is that simple. Mike is a “keep is simple, keep it real” kind of guy because he’s seen firsthand WHAT WORKS. Habit Guide is the result of over 20 years passionate research, experience and coaching.

And if all that’s not enough, Mike is currently celebrating the birthday of his health business and has kindly agreed to offer readers of this blog and the Gems4friends newsletter a 33% discount on the Habit Guide, making it only about $18.

But please be warned, it’s a short-term offer only, lasting for just 3 days.

To take advantage of the sale all you have to do is order between 2pm Eastern, Tuesday 26 Aug and the same time on Friday 29 Aug.

Click here if you want to check it out ahead of the sale.