Personal Learning Lifestyle

1. When you talk, listen to yourself for the “buts,” “could ofs” and “gonnas” in your own conversations and those of people around you. Zap those negatively charged words and phrases from your own vocabulary.

2. Create scenarios in which you may have reacted negatively in the past and envision yourself responding in the future with a positive charge.

For example: Your boss hands back a report saying it is unsatisfactory and telling you to redo it.

In the past you might have made excuses and blamed co-workers or conditions. Now you respond by thanking the boss for the opportunity to improve it.

3. Consider a problem or difficult situation in your life. Is it something that you can change? Or is it something you have no control of? Positively charged people learn to attack those problems that they can change and to live with those that they cannot - thereby robbing the problem of its power over them.

If you cannot change the problem, change the way you view it.

Example: “My employer is going to lay me off for three weeks.” Positive response: “I can spend the time seriously looking for a better, more secure job.”

When you’re off track in life and need to stabilize yourself, look at your success goals and change your strategy to take the course that is most advantageous for you.

Create a win for yourself by choosing constructive, congruent communication rather than destructive, incongruent communication and behavior.

An overall plan or vision of where you are headed will save you a lot of time and energy.

Commit yourself to long-term change and success by making your own decisions. Making your own decisions empowers you to raise your personal standards, becoming impeccable.

Believing in yourself means believing and trusting your intuition. True insight helps you to live each moment to the fullest. It is the seed that transforms your life while teaching you how to achieve optimal health.

Believe in all your senses. And when you’re at the crossroads, the decisions you make are going to take you where you need to be. Don’t be alarmed by the power and energy generated by your self-confidence.

Your growing “inner'’ confidence and self-esteem multiplies as your senses become charged for success. Awaken yourself to yourself. Awaken all your strengths and unique characteristics.

Passion for anything occurs at the moment you get a glimpse of the potential for the project, yourself, your mission, and so on.

How do you develop passion? The following steps take a look at how you develop passion:

1. Analyze what you want in life and come up with a plan for reaching those goals. Though passion can be brought on almost instantly by a life-changing event, it usually begins with a careful analysis of what you want in life. What is your direction? In short, what are your goals? After you clearly identify your goals, you develop a plan of action to reach those goals.

2. Take steps toward your goals. As your plans unfold, each step that you take toward your goals has a direct bearing on your excitement, enthusiasm, and confidence. As you enjoy little successes, your imagination explodes, and passion enters the picture. And when passion is full-blown, it’s unlikely that you will abandon your objectives.

3. Use your head to direct the passion that develops. Effective passion is a directed emotion that synergizes all your qualities to make a total you that is considerably greater than the sum of all those qualities. Some identify passion as “heart,” because people with passion accomplish things that go beyond their physical and mental abilities.

There are many techniques for motivating yourself. You may say to yourself, “I will not leave the office until everything is cleared off this desk tonight,” or, “Just twenty more pages, then I can take a coffee break.” One of the most effective methods is to ask someone to support you living your dream.

Following are some other ways people have chosen to build more motivators into their everyday lives:

1. Exercise daily.
2. Put up notes around the house to remind yourself to put first things (your dream) first.
3. Treat yourself to more walks on the beach.
4. Set aside time each day just for your personal thoughts.
5. Play motivational tapes while driving.
6. Meditate daily.
7. Buy yourself flowers.
8. Plan mini-vacations to reward small milestones.

Successful people do not spend a lot of time sitting around waiting for the phone to ring, for someone else to come and pump them up, or for the needed inspiration to carry on. Neither do they pretend they require no motivators and no support.

They take charge, in this area as in others, of anticipating and providing for their own needs.

Building motivators into your life is a powerful way of assuring that your dream will receive the ongoing nourishment it needs, especially when the going gets tough, or you are under pressure or stress.

When you develop your skills, improve your thinking capacity, or increase your knowledge of topics, thus making you more valuable to yourself, your family, and your employers, you are acquiring assets that you can utilize throughout your whole life.

Growth motivation has the additional benefit of making you feel good about yourself. That’s a benefit because the way you feel about yourself has a direct bearing on the way you perform.

As a child, you felt good when you did well on a test, were promoted to the next grade, got elected class president, or received special recognition because you accomplished some worthy objective.

You can get that same feeling as an adult by volunteering to head up a community project; by being the best salesperson, employee, spouse, or parent; or by coaching a team that your child participates on.

Personal growth requires commitment, goal-setting, and responsibility; you can’t just say “I’m going to grow” and expect it to happen. But when you work to, say, acquire new job skills and are promoted or given a pay raise as a result, your confidence grows, and your feelings of self-worth increase.

As you create your success goals and put that personal blueprint into action, you will come to be aware of the great difference between efficiency and effectiveness.

* Efficiency is the process of staying busy all the time, with idle moments.
 
* Effectiveness is the process of producing the maximum results in the minimum time, with the minimum effort.

Most people spend their lives attempting to become more efficient. Yet efficiency is not the key to getting more done. How many times have you thought to yourself at the end of a day: “I was so busy today I just couldn’t seem to catch my breath, but I still didn’t get much done.”

That feeling is the trademark of efficiency - lots of action, but lack of results.

Your dreams, goals, and action plans are all about results. They have little to do with the process of staying busy. In fact, there is some conflict.

Look again at the definition of effectiveness and you will notice that the objective is to produce results with minimum time and effort, not maximum “busyness” and hard work.

An affirmation is a statement of truth you make firm by repetition.

Affirmations always take place in the present, hence the wording is always present tense. “I am a successful orchestral conductor, making $100,000 per year,” is how to state an affirmation, not, “I’m going to be…” or “I really want to be….” or “If it’s not too much trouble, I’d really like to be….”

Make an affirmation for:

* Your purpose
* Your Big Dream
* Each of the goals along the path to the Big Dream.
 
Read each affirmation out loud at least 1,000 times. (An hour each for your Purpose and Big Dream; 30 minutes each for your other goals.)

When you affirm, all that is between you and fulfilling that dream surfaces - in other words, the drawbacks of your “comfort zone.” Expect fear, guilt, unworthiness, hurt feelings, anger and discouragement to do what they do to get you to stop. Keep going.      
                                         
To bring up the limitations faster, look at yourself in the mirror while repeating your affirmation out loud. You can record your affirmations on an endless-loop cassette (the kind used for outgoing messages in answering machines) and play it softly in the background no matter what else is going on.

You can get an earphone and play your tape on a portable stereo wherever you go. Talk about your portable paradise. You can put your affirmations on the walls of your sanctuary so that you see them every time you come in.

To qualify as a goal, whatever you want to achieve must be written down.

Non-written goals, therefore, are not goals at all.

Don’t catch yourself saying, “I have goals and I know what they are, so I don’t need to write them down.” Non-written goals are unclear and nonspecific, with details that tend to change each time you think about them.

Putting each goal in writing crystallizes it into a set of fixed details. The clearer the goal, the more easily it can be achieved.

In a notebook, create a page and have it labeled “Goals List” and write down each of your goals, one on each line.

Also, create a separate page and label it your “Dream List”. Refer back to the Dreams List you have already made to see if the achievement of each of your goals will help you realize your dreams. If so, you are heading in the right direction.

Also review your Dreams List to see if any of your dreams qualify for immediate inclusion on your Goals List. Keep your blueprint someplace handy where you can update your Goals List and refer to it often.

When you have accomplished each goal, cross it off the list. Remember, each goal you accomplish takes you one step closer to the life of your dreams.

To qualify as a goal, whatever you want to achieve must be written down.

Non-written goals, therefore, are not goals at all.

Don’t catch yourself saying, “I have goals and I know what they are, so I don’t need to write them down.” Non-written goals are unclear and nonspecific, with details that tend to change each time you think about them.

Putting each goal in writing crystallizes it into a set of fixed details. The clearer the goal, the more easily it can be achieved.

In a notebook, create a page and have it labeled “Goals List” and write down each of your goals, one on each line.

Also, create a separate page and label it your “Dream List”. Refer back to the Dreams List you have already made to see if the achievement of each of your goals will help you realize your dreams. If so, you are heading in the right direction.

Also review your Dreams List to see if any of your dreams qualify for immediate inclusion on your Goals List. Keep your blueprint someplace handy where you can update your Goals List and refer to it often.

When you have accomplished each goal, cross it off the list. Remember, each goal you accomplish takes you one step closer to the life of your dreams.

I have been sharing quite a fair bits of Self Development ideas in this blog, hopefully they have been useful to you.

I personally believe that whatever we do, whether study, business, sport, a positive mindset is the most important weapon to success.

So reading book on Self Development is a MUST.

But, most of us have very little time to even realx or pick up a hobby, not talk about reading. Hey, good news to you, audio books are getting more and more popular.

Why, it saves time. One can listen to his/her favorite book while doing something else, like driving, vacuuming the floor, etc.

Besides getting these audio books at the bookshop like Borders, we can also get them at the online store like one here http://www.odiomall.com

So, do not give an excuse that you have no time to read.

Oh yes, have you gotten the free audio book “A Complete Guide To Self-Confidence & Self-Esteem” I am giving away to my subscribers?

If not, click on the image on the right column.

Happy reading and listening.