STEVEN AITCHISON

CHANGEYOURTHOUGHTSVOLUME2

TheBestofChangeYourThoughts Volume2 |StevenAitchison

Introduction
Dear friend Thank you for downloading this eBook, I hope you will gain some useful insights from the many articles and the guest authors we have for you. As you know my name is Steven Aitchison and I am the author of Change Your Thoughts blog, the biggest Personal Development blog in the UK.

You Are a Failure A Letter To You

When you read the heading, how did it make you feel? did it make you feel anything? did you get angry? upset? Believe it or not thats how a lot of people feel, no matter what they achieve in life, they feel as if its never enough. They feel everything they have done ends in failure; their relationships, academia, work, fatherhood, motherhood etc they take it all and see it as a failure. I have dealt with clients so many times who have been able to rhyme off all their failures, and it seems to give them a sense of satisfaction at being able to list so many, thats because they have gone over it so much in their heads. I can empathize with the person who is suffering this, I have been there, weve all been there at some point, it might not have been as prolonged but weve still been there. The problem is when the person puts the blame on someone else, usually a failed marriage, a bad childhood, events that have happened in the past etc. If you are one of these people, I really do know where you are coming from, but:

NowIsTheTimeToTakeResponsibility
The time to start is now. Its time to say, yes shitty things have happened to me, yes I had a shit childhood, yes I was bullied as a child. Its great to own that, and say it happened to you, but its also time to let go. Give yourself a break from analyzing the past, stop living there. Come back to the present and show everybody who you are today, not who you were yesterday. You are so much more than what happened to you. The very fact that you are with us today and reading this, whether you feel angry or not, makes your life a success. Youve managed to come through the pain barrier, youve managed to stick two

fingers up to the people who hurt you and say Im still here, Im still fighting on and you know what! Im a success. Youve cried enough tears, youve felt the anger, the pain, the heart tugging so many times and youve almost given up on a few occasions, but you didnt, youre here, and here is a good place if you want it to be. You might be mad with me just now for saying all this, and tell me I dont understand what youve been through, believe me I do, but what I will never understand is how you feel about it, thats a personal thing and I dont want to feel your pain, thats yours to own and believe it or not is a gift which will help you in the future. I would love for you to say I have felt real pain, real anger, real emotions and real moments when my life was almost over, but I am still here

Choose to feel different

Maybe its not quite the right time, but you have the choice to feel different about life. Take responsibility and know that you own your feelings, nobody else.

When you know this, you will stop blaming others for feeling lousy. When you know this you can change the way you think. When you know this you can change your life.

Start the journey

How do you feel now? Angry? Mad? A sense of relief? Good, thats what living in the now feels like, welcome back, its good to have you here.

Real Change Should It Feel This Uncomfortable?

Author: Douglas Cartwright Douglas Cartwright is a personal breakthrough and effectiveness coach who helps people get unstuck and start taking more action. His speciality is untying psychological knots that impede thinking and doing! To read more, please visit the site at www.livingwords.net , read the articles, listen to the audio, and request a free explore your breakthrough session. For a powerful free technique on implementation, visit www.overcomingprocrastination.co.uk Tension and discomfort are necessary feelings in the process of achieving your goal. In fact, if you do not experience them then the goal is not important or not what you really want. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Avy Joseph (p114) Marines train their minds to over-ride the pain impulses of their bodies. They can survive under torture, and out in harsh terrain in ways that would kill the rest of us. People have willingly died for their beliefs and survived because of them. Victor Frankel got through a German concentration camp in horrific conditions because he believed there was something worth living for on the other side. He faced beatings, starvation and disease to extremes we can barely imagine. This means that pain can be experienced to an outrageous degree but the people involved managed to live, get through it, and do what they needed to do to achieve their mission, or make it to the end of their confinement.

We in the West live in a society where life is easy compared to most of the rest of the world. We medicate ourselves every time we feel a twinge, and dose ourselves with food, sex, drugs, and entertainment whenever we feel unhappy. We run away from discomfort and tell ourselves we cant stand the problems in our lives. See the examples above. As if we really know what problems are! As Avy Joseph says in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy: We all experience problems in many areas of our lives but dont always realise that our minds and bodies respond to how we rate them. Evaluating a difficulty as unbearable is not only flawed but it also triggers images and feeling that fight against goal achievement (p31) I think we think we shouldnt have to experience pain on the way to our success. Think again! If youve ever watched the violent and satirical sci-fi film Starship Troopers youll see the drill sergeant spear a recruits hand with a knife and then announce (as the recruit screams) : PAIN is in your mind. I think it probably felt quite real to the person with the knife through his hand! Nevertheless, the idea is that its not just the feeling but what you tell yourself about it that determines whether youll get through it. In other words, its the meanings we choose to give to our discomfort.

Why we dont stick with change

They tell themselves that they cant stand the feelings that come with it as if the feelings shouldnt be there. I know. I did this for years. Heres a revelation I had which is changing my life:

those feelings are completely normal. Yes, completely. They are as normal as hunger when you havent eaten, sadness when you loose something valuable to you, and breathing hard if youve run a lot. They are as part of you as sexual desire (although we dont usually enjoy them as much!) Theyre hot-wired into your mind-body system so theyre not going anywhere anytime soon. All this time you may have been rejecting the natural tensions that come along with changing the status quo. Isnt that kind of like hating yourself for breathing? This is partly why Susan Jeffers said :Feel the fear and do it Anyway because fear seems like a stop sign but is actually just neurological-kinaesthetic information reporting to you how your perceptions are measuring the gap between what you have, and what you want.

But the experts say we are engineered for change? So why do we feel tense and uncomfortable? Well, the simple explanation is this. Your mind is designed to reinforce what you already believe. It has too, or you could not live a life where you doubted every element of your existence. If you did, you could not function. Youd be too scared to step out of bed in the morning in case the floor ate you. Or the bed! So when you attempt to change your mind and body resists. It sends out waves of discomfort. It says Stop! The status quo is under threat. This, is completely natural. And maybe you have stopped. Too often? But now you KNOW those feelings are natural, theyre just part of the process of change where old beliefs fight for their existence, you have the first piece of what you need. I dont deny that this is a hard piece of truth. But it is true. If you believe that God made you, then you believe that every part of you that is made is good for purpose, even if we dont always use/feel it so. If you believe you just evolved, then these signals are simply that signals from a body and mind about itself and its environment. Theyre not instructions, and I genuinely dont think theyre an infallible guidance system as some personal develop writers suggest. If they are, mine must be broken! So if we are often going to feel uncomfortable with the process of change (and I acknowledge there are plenty of times when change is fun) then what will help us stick with it until the change is made?

A goal we want Healthy beliefs Healthy self-talk Reasons to persevere

Exercise
So what is the thing you want to change? What will the outcome be when you have got it? What difference is the change going to make in the real world that is worth fighting for? How will I know I am different when I have made the change? What will be the improvements in my attitude and performance. Grab a piece of paper write it down. Now ask yourself what you currently think about making that change. Write down all the worries, fears, griped and I cant statements.

The next thing to do is to create a healthy belief about these feelings. It helps to write out a paragraph of what you want to believe instead. Avy Joseph says a healthy belief = what you want + keeping it real (p98) unlike an unhealthy belief that usually demands the world must and should conform to its demands. Lets say that you were struggling to overcome your feelings. Lets say your goal is to experience the remote control of power within you. Why a remote control? Well, if you hold it no-one can push your buttons! You have some idea of what it will be like to see, hear and feel that. After writing your negative thoughts, you might come up with something like this for a healthy belief: Labelling emotions as unbearable, too difficult, cannot override them, feel helpless in the presence of them, is definitely going to fail because of them are all ways of giving commands to your nervous system to create goal avoidance and away from motivation. (1)Removing these labels and downgrading them to dont love but can stand, uncomfortable, I have the power to choose etc really helps me. I can totally refuse (2) to use those labels and instead replacing them with perhaps difficult but not unbearable or in a different category to the comfortable emotions or even all emotions are useful and usefully produce discomfort in their message or discomfortable messengers to prod me to alertness or to pay attention to something in my experience. What I have done here is given new meanings to the feelings I had (1) and used statements where I acknowledge my ownership and control of the meanings I use (2) Next, you will need to make a list of what youll get if you use the healthy belief as a reminder to push through the uncomfortable feelings until they change. Write out as many benefits as possible. Ill be more in control. Ill feel more empowered Ill be able to go on that date, ask that owner for referrals etc. Ill have more peace. Etc Now, you are armed and ready to go. You can repeat and affirm to yourself your new belief in the mirror. Claude Hopkins in the Magic of Believing recommends this. When you feel like you need reasons to go on, read your reasons to go on! 7

When youre self talk criticises you, take it down pro-wrestling style! Albert Ellis in his wonderful book: How to Stubbornly Refuse to make yourself Miserable about anything ever again yes anything! says you really need to passionately and aggressively dispute your inner talk. Really? According to WHO? You and whose army? Oh! So I have to feel helpless. Who decided that? Me. Well, I can decide OTHERWISE cant I? Think about a couple having a humdinger of an argument. Then have it with your self-talk. I like to think of changing the things that make us stuck as psychological knots. To undo a really gnarly knot my involve a lot of huffing, puffing, walking away in disgust and coming back again with a renewed determination. Changing your meanings and beliefs can sometimes be like this. But persevere and youll get there.

Ask The Coach 8 Overcoming Procrastination

Author: Steven Aitchison

Overcoming Procrastination
Question from bretthimself answered by coach Steven Aitchison

Question
Heres my question: Ive found that my biggest sticking point in all of this is acting quickly. I have always been a micromanager of decisions and deliberate before taking action. However, as I procrastinate and weigh the decisions of what to do next or when to do my project, my mind drifts off to different places (like dark corners of the Internet), resulting in exponentially more time lost. The only time I can seem to pull myself together and not procrastinate (especially when finishing one project and moving on to the next) is when theres a deadline to be met. But the pressure of the deadline seems to suck the life out of me and my work. The question is: how can I do the things I want to do without procrastinating or deliberating when there is not the stress of a deadline? Hi Brett 9

Thanks for your question on Ask The Coach I recognise what you are saying here and believe there is a lot of things you can do to help yourself with this. Is procrastination bad? I would first like to say that procrastination is not always a bad thing. That might sound counterintuitive, especially after everybody seems to tell us that procrastination is bad and all the self help gurus tell us exactly how to overcome it. For some, procrastination works and it can be a great motivator for getting things done, albeit at the last minute, like you describe above, when theres a deadline. This only works when there are a few deadlines throughout the year. In the real world, there are deadlines to be met every single day, so you cant run on the adrenaline of leaving everything to the last minute as you will quickly burn out. Know what type of procrastinator you are You will see from the following six descriptions what type of procrastinator you are. Its hard hitting, but it is good to know which type you are in order to overcome procrastination problems. According to Linda Sapadin (author of The 6 Styles of Procrastination and How Students Can Overcome Them (Penguin, 1999) with Jack Maguire) procrastinators fall into one of 6 styles:

The six types of procrastinators

Dreamers This type of procrastinator want to have an easy, laid back life and not have to worry about the real things in life. They have had many jobs and live in the world of the unconscious where everything is magical and assume they are special in some way. They make promises they cannot keep and love the pleasure of buying something new, but hate the pain of paying for it. Worriers This type has a very small comfort zone and doesnt like to stray too far out of the comfort zone. They love the security of their world and constantly fret when faced with fear or change. They suffer from what if syndrome and everything might have a negative consequence. They put off a lot of things in their life in case something bad happens to them and hate facing a task head on. Defiers This procrastinator hates authority and cannot stick to a task given by a manager or someone else higher in authority. They promise the world but deliver an island. They tend to withhold on tasks given to them and delay them stating how busy they are and how important their other tasks are. This strategy gives a feeling of power and can even spill over into relationships.

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Crisis Makers This usually starts at school when the crisis maker has one night to prepare for an exam and they are all traumatised as they havent prepared however they are secretly boosting that they can get the work it takes other s 3 months to do in one night. The pressure and adrenaline spurs them on. They carry this on to the real world, and quickly find that running on adrenaline every day doesnt work so they burn out quickly. Perfectionists It all or nothing for this type of procrastinator. It will take ages to get them going but once they do the job will be perfect, only trouble is, what should have taken 20 minutes takes 2 days. Their self esteem is on the line on every single task they do, because of this they avoid tasks they dont think they can do perfectly so they miss out. Again this spills over into their life as well. Overdoers The overdoers will take on the world and make your dinner at the same time. They constantly aim to please and pride themselves on being able to do lots of jobs at the one time. However they cannot deliver on all their promises simply because they have too much to do and cannot concentrate on one task long enough to do it well.

The 6 steps of overcoming procrastination

Write it down OMG not another person telling me to write it down. Yes, I am afraid so, ever wondered why so many people advise this? because it works. Write down your to do tasks for the day and realistically assign a time value to each one of them. Start at the top and work your way through them until all your tasks for the day are finished. Do not reward yourself with the Internet, reading, TV, or anything else until all tasks have been done. Pretty soon, if you practice this every day, you will develop a new habit and you will soon be known as the person who gets things done. Remember do not reward yourself at all until all tasks are completed. Stop making it a drama If you get into the mode of thinking this is terrible, its never going to work, I am going to look foolish, whats the point anyway STOP! literally stop your mind from chattering and focus on the positive outcomes of what the task will achieve. Do it now Brett, you said you tend to consider things before you start them which leads you to drift off to other things. Whenever you have a task do anything that will start the project off and I really do mean anything. As soon as you get a task to do, dont think just take the first thing in your mind that needs to be done and get going with it. Its easier to roll a snowball down a hill when you have already 11

made the snowball, its the starting of making the snowball thats the problem. So do anything at all to get going and pretty soon things will start to snowball and the task will be complete. Let go of the adrenaline rush People who do things at the last minute actually thrive on the adrenaline rush. However, you cannot expect to live like this every day of your life. Its good to recognise that you like this adrenaline rush and its quite exciting but its time to try another way. Get your adrenaline rush elsewhere. Go jump out of a plane at 10,000 feet (with a parachute of course!). Leave the adrenaline rush where it should be and start to work a different way to get your tasks complete. You can get smaller adrenaline rushes by assigning deadlines for yourself. For example when you have been given two weeks to do something, give yourself a week to do it and create your won deadline. This way you will get finished a week early. If you do this religiously with every task you will, again, develop, a new habit of completing things early. However, a note of caution here: if you are going to do this for a boss, make sure you finish the task within the week but hand it in to your boss 2 days before the deadline, this way the boss will not start to pile things on you as they see you are someone who can get things done quick. Stop trying to perfect the world You cannot be perfect, it is literally impossible. Your perception of perfect is someone elses perception of imperfect. If you are a perfectionist, you might be proud of it, but it stops you doing things in life, you might not try new things as you are not able to perfect them. To overcome being perfect try doing things the wrong way, try being late for an appointment, try dropping a cup onto the floor so it breaks get out of the mold of being perfect, your life will change forever. When you take on new tasks do so with an open mind, but take them on, dont think that you might not be able to make it perfect just take it on and start straight away. Its all about developing a new thinking pattern toward your tasks. Learn to say NO! Stop taking on too much work. You will learn in life that there are times when you have to hold up a hand and say NO! You cant do everything and to do something to a satisfactory level you have to be realistic about the amount of work you can take on. When you have taken on a certain number of tasks its time to stop any more work from being piled on you and gently remind the people who are trying to pile the work on you that youve got enough for now. 12

Saying No will also empower you and give you much more satisfaction and confidence in yourself. Well Brett, I know this was a bit long winded, I got an idea and went with it, but I hope it has helped you in some way. Let me know your thoughts on this.

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100 Ways To Develop Your Mind

Author: Steven Aitchison This weeks Sunday Siesta has been postponed as I have been working all weekend on this article. Its my longest article ever at over 4500 words but I think it was worth the time and the effort. I have been resisting doing this post for a while now. However, it kept niggling away at the back of my mind and I kept getting more and more ideas to add to it so here it is. I was originally inspired to do this by Dragos Roua who wrote a great post 100 Ways to Live a Better Life and who was inspired by Mike King in this great post 100 Ways To Be A Better Leader who was inspired by Armen Shirvanian: 100 Ways to Show Boldness who was inspired by the maniac who started it all Luciano Passuello and his post Tackling Any Issue With A List Of 100

So here I am with 100 Ways to Develop Your Mind

1. Do the Thing You Fear the Most. If theres one thing that will change your thoughts quicker than anything else, its facing your fears. 2. Stand up For Yourself A lot of people have difficulty in standing up for themselves. The first time you do it can be very empowering and your thoughts about yourself will change forever. See Dealing With Confrontation

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3. Stop Talking Its great to be silent for just a little while. Our thoughts turn inward and we begin to appreciate ourselves just a little more. 4. Strengthen Your Strengths Sometimes we focus too much on trying to strengthen our weaknesses when we should be concentrating on strengthening our strengths. 5. Take A Walk Around an Art Gallery You might not appreciate art or participate in it but its great to see the thoughts of others on canvas. It can give us a tiny glimpse of what goes on in other peoples minds. 6. Blindfold Yourself for a Day Walk in the shoes of a blind person for 1 full day, it will forever change the way you think about life. 7. Stand on a Chair for 5 Minutes Per Day Building self discipline is a great way to take control of your mind and your thoughts. If you just get up and stand on a sturdy chair your mind will be wondering what the hells going on and try and force you to get off the chair. Disciplining your mind is a great way to start changing your life. See Self Discipline 8. Dance When Theres Nobody There Its a strange sensation to dance on your own, although when I have done this I look like a dog having a seizure, nonetheless its a great way to let go of your inhibitions. 9. Give Money to Someone Unexpectedly Whether it be on the internet, or in the street, just give a larger than normal donation to someone. This again is liberating and your thoughts about money will change for a few moments (thats all it takes to start the process of changing your life.)

10. Strengthen Your Thoughts About Yourself Reinforce your thoughts about your good points. If you are good at talking to people, tell yourself this often. If you are good at maths, tell yourself often. This has the benefit of reinforcing and strengthening your self image. 15

11. Take A Risk Life would be boring without ever having taken a risk in your life. Do something that you didnt want to do because you thought you wouldnt be any good at it. This totally smashes the boundaries of your comfort zone and your life could change forever. Read This Post by Robin Easton 12. Talk To A Stranger Again this is breaking our comfort zones, but just saying hi to stranger in the street or good morning can have an enormous impact on your day and the person you said hi to. 13. Walk Around The House Naked I can almost feel the shock at this. I dont mean when youve got guests in, I mean when everybody is out. Lock the door and totally liberate yourself and your thinking of whats right and whats wrong. I wouldnt advise doing it all the time, but from time to time, its a great feeling. 14. Read A Book By An Author You Most Avoid reading books by authors we avoid gives us a chance to take control of our minds and lets us see another side to our thinking. Weve got to ask why we avoid them in the first place, is it something within us that we are avoiding? 15. Write An Article About Yourself Imagine a newspaper has asked you to write an article of 1000 words or less about yourself and your life and they want to know what motivates you in life, now write the article. This helps put your life into some perspective and gets you thinking about your childhood and growing up. 16. Stop Contact With Your Down People If you have people in your life who constantly drag you down, or are negative all the time, drop them. Honestly drop them from your life, you are not serving them and they are not serving you and they are dragging your thoughts down. Read This Post by Dan And jennifer 17. Believe In Yourself A lot of people believe their life has been pre-destined and theres nothing we can do to change it absolute rubbish. YOU are the only person who controls the universe, yes I did mean universe. Your universe is different from mine so you control your own universe, think about that and start acting upon it.

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18. Meditate Every Day Another powerful thing that has the power to change your life and your thinking for good. Retreating into your mind for a few minutes every day will do you a power of good. Read How To Meditate 19. Ask For A Discount When you buy anything from a shop that is over $100, ask for a discount. Tell the salesman youd like a 10% discount on the item. Most people are so afraid of doing this but its a great way to empower yourself and let go of another inhibition, whats the worst that can happen? 20. Risk Embarrassment Imagine if you had seen the person of your dreams on a bus, or at the store and you didnt do anything about it how much would you kick yourself. If this happens to you, do something about it, dont keep it hidden. Just say to them you thought you would come over and say how attractive they looked and felt you had to tell them. You never know what will happen and how much your life could be changed. Obviously dont turn into a weirdo and do it with every good looking person on the street. 21. Work Toward, What You Think, Is An Impossible Goal If you work toward a goal without expectation you dont care about the outcome as much. When you dont care about the outcome, you dont have as much expectation. 22. Practice Gratitude We all know what we dont have in our lives because we spend a lot of time wishing we had them, but are we really thankful for what we have? Spend time every single day being thankful for the good things we do have in our lives. read The Post at ZenHabits on Gratitude 23. Do Something Nice And Dont Tell Anyone About It We tell others about our acts of kindness to let them know how nice we are and to seek approval. If you keep your act of kindness to yourself without ever telling anyone the feeling of positive energy lasts much longer. 24. Share Your Skills Everybody has a skill of some kind. When you share it you not only have the power to help others, but you enhance your own skill by owning it.

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25. Dont Talk Just Listen Enhance your listening skills by not talking when someone is speaking to you. Resist the urge to speak your views when someone is talking to you, just listen to them and ask them more open ended questions at the appropriate times. This has two benefits: a) You can really listen if you are not formulating the stories in your own head when someone is talking b) you will make the other person feel great as you are actively listening to them. 26. Write Your Future Life Story Start from the age you are just now and start writing your future life story as youd like it to be. Be as outrageous as you want and just write about your ideal life and how you interact with it. Words on paper are powerful and can help shape your goals. 27. Give Someone A Gift For No Reason We always assume someone buys us a gift for a reason whether it be a birthday, christmas or special occasion. Buy someone a gift just because you know they would like it. 28. Pass On Your Good Books If youve read a book and it changed your thinking or life in some way, pass it on to someone else who might benefit.; 29. Spend More Time With Your Kids Your kids will grow up very quickly, spend as much time as you can with them. 30. Forgive Behavior The way we behave doesnt necessarily reflect our true thoughts. Remember this when someone acts out of character and behaves in a way you dont approve of. 31. Allow Yourself To Be A Lazy Git We are so used to filling our time with useful things to do and being productive we have forgotten the art of laziness. Being lazy is good every ONCE IN A WHILE and it allows our mind to slow down and relax. 32. What Is Your Best Quality Today Every morning for 10 seconds just state, out loud if you can, what your best quality is. Try and change it every day. This reinforces your strengths and weakens your perceived weaknesses.

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33. Write A Comment If you visit a blog you like, leave a comment and join in the community of people. Or, if there is not much of a community, be part of starting it. 34. Tell Your Friends And Colleagues How Good They Are If a friend or colleague does something good, tell them how good they are at that particular task. This reinforces someone else strengths or strengthens their weaknesses and makes them feel good about themselves. 35. Make A Video Of Yourself And Post It To Youtube Why on earth would you do this? Just because you can! 36. List All Your Worries Make a list of every single worry you have at the moment. You will notice that you dont have as many worries as you thought. Worrying consumes our thinking and we think our whole life is one big worry. When you get it down on paper its extremely surprising that you dont have as many as youd thought. 37. Work On Each Worry In Turn Now that you have all your worries listed. Go through them and start acting on them in turn. If you find worries you cannot act upon it means there is nothing you can do to change the outcome of that worry, so forget it, why waste mind energy on something you cannot control at all? Read This Post for More Info 38. Read About Successful People If you want to change your thoughts and change your life read about people who have already done it and use them as guides. 39. Tweet Your Moods If you use twitter why not tweet your moods daily and see if there is some kind of pattern after a few months. 40. Stop Watching Soaps Soap operas actually have the power to alter your state of mind. People get so caught up in the emotions of the soap that they experience what the actors and actresses are doing. 41. Have A News Break What would happen if you never read a newspaper for a week? nothing at all, your life wouldnt change, you wouldnt run out of things to talk about, you 19

would still be as up on the world as everyone else. Newspapers sell because of their doom and gloom, read it and you are buying into it. 42. Do Something Spontaneous Jump on a bus without looking at the destination, book a holiday, take time off work, take your partner away, buy your kids a gift; do anything and make sure its out of character, (expand that boundary). 43. Write To An Author Authors are people just like you and I and they love getting feedback about their work. If a book touched you in some way or changed you, take time to write to the author and thank them. Dont look for a reply, just thank them. 44. Follow your instincts We dont trust ourselves nearly enough as we should. Follow your instincts more and pay attention to the signals your body is picking up and see where it takes you. You might find that your conscious brain gets in the way of your body signals a lot of the time. Read This Post for More Info 45. If You Find Some Money Give It To Charity If you find money in the street dont pocket it, give it to someone who is homeless or better yet buy them a meal with it. If its a suitcase full of money, thats obviously a different story. 46. Your Thoughts Really Do Have Power When you realize this, it will change your thinking in so many ways. I cant tell you that its true you have to experience it for yourself. 47. Always Admit It When You Have Made A Mistake Dont blame others or hide behind someone else. Hold your hands up and admit you made a mistake, no matter what the consequences are. You will be much more respected this way. However, dont take the blame for others. 48. Do Something Every Day To Improve Your Mind Learn a new word, do an anagram puzzle, sudoku your mind, read a book, read a stimulating blog post, anything that will help your mind just a little. Just a little turns into something huge. 49. Change Your Thinking Style If something is not working out, try and change your thinking style and come at it from another angle. This is true of everything in life. 20

50. What Do You Really Want To Do In Life You will find most people cannot answer this question simply because they are plodding along with life. When you know what you really want to do with your life then your life takes another path. read This Post by Dragos Roua 51. Pass On Your Knowledge Knowledge is for sharing, let others know what you know if its appropriate. 52. Ask For What You Want In Life If you dont ask you wont get. Asking for your wants puts it out there. I mean literally ask and metaphorically ask. When you want a big house or a mansion, ask out loud and send it out there. When you want the smaller things in life, ask for them from people who can give you them. Always pay it forward. 53. When Someone Does You A Good Turn Pay It Forward If you receive a compliment, thank the person and look for an opportunity to give someone else a compliment. If you receive a gift, give a gift to someone else at an opportune time. 54. Always Have A Good Breakfast We underestimate the power of food to keep our brains healthy and our minds alive with energy. If you dont eat that much, make sure you have a good breakfast to set you up for the day. Read this post on eating by Vin Miller 55. What Would People Say About You If You Died This is not a morbid thought, but I often think about what people would say about me at my funeral. The thing is the ones who might say something bad, I cant really not invite because Ill be dead. However, the important people are ones I would care about most and I would like to develop my lifes values based on what people would say about me at my funeral; he was a caring man, he was a family man, he always told the truth no matter how hard it might seem, he had integrity etc. 56. Sing Your Heart Out I love to sing, I hopeless at it, but I love it. We have a radio station over in the UK called gold http://www.mygoldmusic.co.uk/ and it plays music from the 60s, 70s and 80s and I sing at the top of my voice as there is always something on thats good. My sons are not very pleased about it though 57. Love The One Youre With Always let your partner know how much you love them by telling them and showing them. This way your mind is focused on them for at least part of the day. 21

58. Pacing Whilst Studying This has helped me a lot over the years. I paced my way through university. My theory is that the body and mind is being stimulated with the exercise you are doing whilst walking, this makes the blood flow. Blood flow to the brain help you to study and remember. 59. Make New friends Whether it be online or offline. Keeping yourself busy socially is stimulating for the mind and lets you see the world from others peoples perspective. 60. Make Love Regularly Releasing the feel good chemicals, endorphins, into your bloodstream is a great way to stimulate the mind. I have to admit to feeling much more creative after making love. 61. Listen To Music This stimulates the mind and can have tremendous benefits for your thoughts, therefore your life. I love listening to Baroque music whilst driving at night, I love rousing rock driving during the day and dance trance music at the weekend whist driving 62. Listen To A Book Instead Of The Radio Getting downloadable books from Amazon.com or Audible.com is a great way to spend long journeys and learn something at the same time. 63. Have A Sleep In I am not a big fan of sleeping longer than I have to, but sometimes its great to lie in bed for a few hours longer than normal. It helps the brain recuperate. 64. Turn Off The TV Theres nothing more brain numbing than having the TV on all day every day. Exercise your mind and read a book, or at least watch something educational. Read this post by Vin Miller 65. Look For Evidence Of Your Beliefs This will develop your mind and your critical thinking. If you look for evidence of your beliefs such as what is the evidence that sea water is blue or green, youll discover some great information on during your research.

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66. Take Micro Naps Taking a micro nap for 10 minutes a few times a day does wonders for your brain energy. read this post on Micro Naps 67. Travel Often Travel really does broaden your horizons especially if you really get into the local food and culture. 68. Tidy House Tidy Mind There really is nothing better than clearing your house or office space to clear your mind. When the house is not tidy there is always a niggling at the back of your mind. When the house, office and workspace is totally clean and tidy it frees your mind to concentrate on work or your family at home. read this post at DumbLittleMan 69. Exercise Your Mind Not Just Your Body We all know the benefits of exercising the body but exercising the mind by doing crosswords, maths puzzles, playing chess, reading, anagrams, sudoku etc, all help to increase the minds capacity for learning. 70. Read Philosophy the beauty of philosophy is that there is no right and wrong. However, reading different philosophers views about the world will stimulate your mind. Read this post by Tim Ferris 71. Ditch The Credit Card We have forgotten how to wait for the things we want in life, if we see something we like we want it now and using a credit card is too easy. Make the object of your desire more precious by saving up for it. This will discipline your mind as well as your money spending habits. 72. Watch A Motivational Video On Youtube First Thing In The Morning This is a great way to start the day. Just type in motivational into youtube search box, sort by view count and watch a few videos. 73. Keep Up To Date With New Theories Whatever field you are interested in keep up to date with new theories and discoveries. New theories in psychology are especially interesting albeit quite thin on the ground.

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74. Take One Action Toward Your Goals Every Day Your Self confidence, self esteem, and goals can only be reached by taking action. The more action you take the more your mind will help you to keep going. 75. Never Let Your Mind Go Out Of Fashion Keep up to date with the latest research on health, beauty and intelligence. Only those whose thoughts keep searching will stay intelligent for life. 76. Confronting Your Stressors Whatever you are stressed about the most tackle first. The less stress you have the less your mind has to cope with. Tackle the biggest stressors first and work your way down. Read this post by Jonathan Wells 77. Drink Coffee And Tea Despite evidence to the contrary coffee and tea have been shown to help the brain. Antioxidants and/or caffeine may help fight the onset of Alzheimers by 30-60% drinking 30 cups a day is obviously not good but 3-5 cups per day is okay. 78. Carry Yourself With Confidence People can tell by the way you walk if you are confident or not. Walk with purpose and have a purpose to walk. Read this post by Brandon Lindell 79. Make Up Your Own Mind When reading or listening to the news, do your own research and make up your own mind. The government and large corporations, whether deliberate or not, is a propaganda machine feeding you information to manipulate your thinking. 80. Take Up Yoga This is meant to be one of the best ways to relive stress and exercise both mind and body. watch this video to get you started 81. Change Your Hands Practice doing this with your less dominant hand. If you are right handed start doing things with your left hand and vice versa. If you are ambidextrous, start doing it with your feet 82. Eat Plenty Of Fish There is an abundance on new evidence that eating fish is great for our brains and keeping them healthy.

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83. Reduce Your Alcohol Intake I had to say this, I am an addiction worker. Dont cut it out just reduce it to the recommended safe level. 84. Quit The Smoking Yep it can be one of the hardest drugs to give up but it is worth it. I feel so much better for giving up smoking and have a lot more energy than normal and my mind can function a lot better. 85. Practice Deep Breathing Getting plenty of oxygen to your brain is key for a healthy mind, deep breathing can help with this. 86. Get A Dog/Cat If you live alone why not go to one of the pet rescue centres and get a dog or a cat. People who have pets are shown to be less lonely, more active, and show fewer signs of stress. read this article by elizabeth Scott 87. Break your Pattern If you are the one who always goes shopping swap the routine with your partner. Or if you always go to a particular store, change it and go to the same store in another area. Do anything to break the patterns you have in life. This way your mind is kept more active. 88. Try New Food We have trained our palettes over the years and have gotten used to eating certain foods day in and day out. Try new foods and train your palette to eat better foods. 89. Stimulate Your Brain By Going To A Concert Whether it be a rock concert or am orchestral concert, getting out and hearing music live and being with people who enjoy the same music stimulates your mind and your emotions. 90. Join An Internet Group Join an internet discussion group to further your education on topics of interest. Want to start a business? join a group and get ideas for best practice. Want to know more about tropical fish? join a group. This educates your mind, gives you ideas and lets you meet people who are interested in the same topics as you.

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91. Volunteer To Help Others Volunteering is a great way to give back to the community and help others learn the skills you have. Even if you dont think you have skills you can still help someone out in your community just by talking or doing their shopping for 1 hour per week. 92. Read The Tao Te Ching Has to be one of the best books, in my opinion, for developing your mind. read this blog byNaoto Matsumoto 93. Practice Patience Waiting in queues, traffic jams, on a telephone call can be very frustrating sometimes. If you use the time to develop your mind and focus on your goals your frustration will dissipate very quickly. Use free time like this constructively instead of getting angry and putting yourself in a bad mood. 94. Practice Divergent Thinking This is the practice of looking for multiple solutions to problems or issues that arise in your life, whether they be at home or at work. Dont judge your solutions just put them down on paper until you cant think of any other ways. get others involved in this as well. Read this article on divergent thinking 95. Put On A New Hat Edward De Bono wrote a book called Six Thinking Hats in which he proposed you to put on a different, mental, hat for each area of your life. For example you put on your parent hat when talking to your kids, you can also put on your child hat for playing around with your kids. mentally putting on different hats allows you to better go in and out of different roles in your life. 96. Stop trying To Multitask Multitasking cant be done except with unconscious processes such as walking and talking. If you try to consciously multitask like make the kids lunches, have a telephone conversation and try and get the kids ready for school it cant be done nearly as effectively as doing each task separately. Multitasking stresses out minds and helps to produce bad results. read this article by Dave Crenshaw 97. Write A Short Essay On The Books Your Read Doing this will keep your mind active and helps your to read in a different way as you are analyzing books instead of just reading. this way you retain more information and in a few years time you dont embarrass yourself by saying yeah, that was a great book but I cant remember what it was about.

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98. Allocate Time For Worrying If you are a recovering worrier and you need some help, allocate a certain time each day to worry about everything. Once youve done the time of worry, leave it until the next day. 99. Stop Faffing And Just Do It Faffing is the art of doing small things to avoid completing a bigger task. I am constantly getting on at my son and saying Stop faffing!. We spend too much time faffing instead on concentrating on the task at hand. Read this Article at Lifehack.org 100. Read The Dictionary Learning a new word every 2 -3 days will increase your vocabulary by 120 170 words per year. 101. Always Over deliver On Your Promises If you say your going to do something, dont just do it and get the job complete, make sure you over deliver on everything you do.

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Seeing the Beauty in Ugliness

Author: Steven Aitchison Look at the image above and imagine that the seesaw represents a scale of beauty from 1 10. On one end of the scale represents beauty and the other end of the scale represents ugliness. We look at people everyday and box them into lots of classifications, one of them being the box of beauty. Of course beauty is subjective and one person you might find attractive will not seem attractive to me. However, there are more or less universal beautiful people, crossing borders, and cultures. Weve all played the game at school what would you give them, out of ten, for looks?. Look at the image again, take away the labels of beautiful and ugly from the two figures, and what are you left with? You are left with two figures sitting on The scale of beauty however, since they have no labels we cannot call one more beautiful than the other or one more ugly than the other. they just.are!

Looking without labelling

Our lives revolve around the dualities of life: good and evil, white and black, beauty and ugliness, right and wrong, happy and sad and so on. What if we could look at life and just see whats in front of us, without putting a label on it. Try it. Walk down a busy street and just glance at people as they are walking past, youll notice you label people almost immediately: businessman, fat, skinny, gorgeous, camp, 28

fashionable, handicapped and so on. That is just some of the labels we give. Try walking down the street and just seeing a person, its extremely difficult at first but with practice you will get to do it and turn of the little labelling machine you have in your head. When the labeling machine is turned off you start to notice life in a different light and your life is a little more laid back. When you stop labeling others you will stop labeling yourself as well. You will become just you!

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Set Your Mind Alight and Find Your passion

Author: Steven Aitchison If you want to change, I mean really want to change, something about your life, Id like to share what I have learned over the last few months that has made a tremendous difference in my life and hopefully help you change. Lately I have been infused with a real passion and drive for what I am doing; writing and blogging. Its never really been that way before as I had my mind on so many other ventures. Now the other ventures are out of the way I have the drive and real motivation to get ahead with my blogging, and with my writing. I am not the worlds best writer, I know that, and am working on this every day. However, I love it. I love the thought of someone reading my writing and it sparking a light in their mind that sets them off down the road to the change they want. Theres no better feeling than that, and its even better when I get an email from someone to say how much an article has meant to them. I am jumping out my bed even earlier than normal and cant wait to start writing or interacting with readers. My mind is buzzing with ideas which have to be written down and saved in case I forget them. Admittedly not all the ideas mature into a fully written article but they are saved in case I can come at it from a different angle down the line somewhere. How I keep my mind alight The simple way for me is to literally immerse myself in what I want at the end of all this; to become a full time blogger and writer. I study what other bloggers have done before me and read their stories, I read their writing, I read writing in my field of interest which is personal development, I visit sites about writing, I visit job boards to get work as a freelance writer, I write, I write and I write. Its seems to have gone beyond passion and my mind is alight with 30

possibilities, with ideas, its like the duracell bunny on 10 cups of coffee, the only problem is slowing down. I am going with the flow just now as words are dripping off the page and I dont want to stop in case the muse disappears on me, but I have ways for dealing with that. I always had a goal to become a full time blogger, which is why I started the blog in the first place. However my mind wandered into affiliate marketing, internet marketing, making products that I was interested in, becoming a coach, so many things, and the blogging took a back seat. Now I can honestly see myself as a full time blogger, and its the very first time I have believed that I could actually do it. Its taken me three years to reach this stage but every single change I have gone through to get here has been worth it. I have managed to secure two long term writing positions with top blogs and am looking for more. This is in the space of a few months of focus and concentration, imagine what it will be like this time next year.

How to set YOUR mind alight to change your life

1. Know what youre aiming for The example above shows I didnt really know what I was aiming for with regards to my online goals. You really have to know what youre aiming for. Its like an archer firing at a target that he cannot see. Once youve got this clearly in your mind, find out if it sits right with you. You find this out by visualising yourself doing what youre aiming for, you feel yourself doing it, living it, breathing it. If it sits right with you and that gut feeling is saying Go for it, fire that arrow its time for the next step. 2. Deep immersion Totally immerse yourself in your chosen goal. If your goal is to become a football player, you have to watch football, play football, join clubs, read football, go to matches, dream football, always have a ball at your foot. Read about your heroes in your chosen field. David Beckhams old neighbours remarked that they never seen David without a football at his feet when he was younger. This is how we learn to become great, this is how we stand out from the crowd. Other people see your passion, your dedication, and are excited by working with you and helping you in your goals. This part may last for some time, it could be months it could be years before you start seeing results but you have to keep deeply immersing yourself and never lose the passion. 3. Planning from the middle outwards Once youve deeply and passionately immersed yourself you will be surrounded by a network of people who will help you to get where you want to go. Its now time for planning how you are going to get there. Some people get there in the deep immersion stage and everything naturally falls into place. However a lot of people will have to start planning after the immersion stage. 31

Your network of friends, family and new network friends are key to you reaching your goals. The way to get them to help you is to help them as much as you possibly can. If someone asks you for help with something, you are never too big to do it. Always help out when you can. Even with the outskirt people who ask for help, if they are genuine about their goal, then help them. Get a name as someone who is genuine and willing to help someone reach their goal. From the network you will see a path of people who will help you to reach your goal faster. This is not using people, you are simply using their influence and contact and they will be asking for your help in the future, so they see it as an investment and you see it as an investment; a win- win situation. 4. Maintain the passion Its easy at this stage to get sidetracked by other things. there are many people who have fallen from grace with the trappings of fame and fortune and forget the people who put them there. To maintain your passion, practice gratitude and remember all the people who have put you where you are today. This is true of everyday life as well. Keep you passion alive and see everything anew everyday. I read a great post the other night from Jonathan Wells which explains this better than I can, read it here 5. Know when to branch out There will come a time, like in a footballers career where their passion for playing will be turned to passion for teaching others. Once youve reached this stage it might be easy to think that you are over the hill and no longer have the skill you once had. This is not true at all , it simply means you direct your passion, your enthusiasm, your hunger into another part of the goal (no pun intended there). When a footballer plays, he plays for himself and the team, when a coach coaches they are carrying on the legacy they had as a player and reaching and touching the lives of so many more people. Conclusion Your thoughts and action determine your success. Keep your mind focused on your target, immerse yourself and help those around you and you will reach your goal.

How are you getting there?

What sets your mind alight? what are your passions? How did you get there? It would be great to hear your stories.

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The Heliotropium and Givers of Energy

Author: Steven Aitchison The Heliotrpium is a plant that turns itself toward the sun in order for photosynthesis to occur. why do sunflowers always appear to be reaching toward the sun? The technical answer is that the flowers orientation to the sun in due to differential growth of the stem. A plant-growth regulator builds up on the shaded side of the plant when unequal light conditions exist. Because of this, the darker side of the plant grows faster than the sunlit side, causing the stem to bend towards the sun. (from the site answers.google.com/) I think this is absolutely fascinating, and just shows how beautiful and intelligent nature really is. It also answered a lot of my questions on why we, as humans, gravitate toward people who seem to have a lot of positive energy and enthusiasm for life. Energy givers There are some people who are natural energy givers and a lot of people who are energy takers. The energy givers willingly give out positive energy in order to help the people around them just by being positive, enthusiastic and have a natural love of life. I can think of many people in my life who are like this and I believe I was attracted to them for this reason. My wife is a perfect example of an energy giver, she is positive, funny, intelligent, compassionate and enthusiastic about life. However she can spot an energy taker a mile off and runs in the other direction to avoid them as do I. We are two of a kind and together we give a lot out to our family and friends. Energy givers are attracted to each other by an invisible pull, just the the heliotropic plant, like the sunflower. You cannot see the suns rays but the sunflower can feel it and turns itself toward the sun to drink in its energy, in turn the sunflower gives out its energy through 33

vibrancy of colour and attracts bees and small animals who eat its stalk. We also use the sunflower for sunflower oil, sunflower seeds etc. So you see like attracts like just like an energy giver will be attracted to another energy giver. Energy takers Whilst a lot of us may not know a lot of energy givers most of us know energy takers. These are people who complain about everything, are negative, bitchy, condescending, and generally not nice people to be around. You just know an energy taker from the moment you talk to them. They might be funny, laugh a lot but it can be a someone elses expense a lot of the time. There are also energy takers who are just very quiet and dont contribute much to themselves and the people around them. They believe life owes them something and complain when they dont get what they want in life.

Turning from an energy taker to an energy giver

Give yourself a shake: Many energy takers cant be bothered to do much with their lives, and thats okay if you expect little in return. Even getting up and looking for another job instead of living on benefits is doing something positive. There are many people who need to live off benefits but the people who are able both mentally and physically are energy takers and one huge way to reverse this is do something about the situation instead of moaning how little the government gives you to live. Contribute to the people around you: Give positive energy to those around. If you are part of a group of friends make sure you join in your conversations with funny stories, with encouragement, with laughter etc. You dont have to be super confident just make an effort to join in and give some energy back to the group, instead of feeding off everyone elses energy. Stop complaining: Theres a time to complain and a way to do it, but if you complain all the time you will be Billy no mates in a very short space of time. Complainers can become very boring very quickly and suck the energy out from people as soon as they start complaining about something. Its okay every now and again, but not all the time. Grow yourself: We are all growing every single day; spiritually, mentally, physically and intellectually. I believe we are here to reach our true potential and to pass on our potential in order for others to reach their true potential. Life is a beautiful adventure, it truly is if only we could look at it that way. Grow you mind, grow you spirit, look after yourself physically and grow your intellect whenever you can. YOU truly are an amazing person, believe in yourself enough to make your journey amazing. Give to others: Help in any way you can and give something back to your community. This can be small things like smiling at someone in the street, volunteering a few hours a month, spend more time with your kids and family. When you give to others without expectation you receive abundance without owing anything.

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Are You Planning to Fail

Author: Mr Self Development This guest post was written by Mr. Self Development. Please support Mr. Self Development by subscribing to his blog at mrselfdevelopment.com; Mr. Self Development is a motivational author that offers a practical guide to success and wealth. Editors Note: This is a guest post from Mr Self Development from MrSelfDevelopment.com Do you have a written plan that details how you will succeed, step-by-step, month-by-month? If you dont, then you are planning to fail. I dont care if youre trying to lose 20lbs, become CEO, win a golf tournament, or start your own business; youll need a solid plan that you believe in, in order to succeed. Without a plan, you have very little direction, and it will be almost impossible to be consistent. Without consistency you will never make any long-term progress; you will never experience success. Develop a Good Plan Sometime ago when I was looking to start a weight-lifting regiment, I decided to put together a weight-lifting plan. I read several books on weight-lifting, I scanned the internet, and I talked with several individuals who were currently lifting weights. Based on my research, I developed a plan using the best advice from each of my sources and I placed that plan on the wall of my home gym.

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[A 'good plan' should always include your goals, as well as specific daily direction to ensure you meet your goals.] My plan included how long each workout would be, as well as what time I would begin my workouts. Work the Plan Of course, its not enough to just have a plan. In order for the plan to work, you have to work the plan. The plan works, when you work the plan. If youre trying to become a professional dancer, working the plan may mean practicing 10 hours a day, but the plan has to be worked. You must develop the habit of following the plan daily; consistency and habit will take you further than your desires ever will. Make Adjustments to the Plan Although I believe I put together a good weight-lifting plan initially, it wasnt a perfect plan. Three months into the plan, I realized that I needed to make some adjustments: I was overworking my pectoral muscles, so I decided to work them less frequently. I also made some additional changes in my diet. Your initial plan will almost always change; this is not a problem (just make sure to have your plan saved on your computer, so you can make quick updates and re-print as necessary). Tweak the plan, until its the perfect plan for you. Remain Faithful to the Plan This is the most critical of all the steps. If you dont faithfully work your plan everyday, how can you expect to succeed? A good plan will challenge you, it will stretch you, it will demand the very best from you. Are you willing to remain faithful to your plan when things get tough? Are you willing to stick to your plan, when someone is passing out free donuts? Are you willing to stick to your plan, when everyone else has gone home for the day? Are you willing to stick to your plan, after you reach your goal? The question really becomes, how bad do you want it. If you want it bad enough, you will remain faithful. In closing, if you dont have a plan, develop a plan this week. Start with your research; find the best ways to get the results you seek (study folks who have already succeeded). Then begin to work the plan daily; make adjustments as necessary, stay faithful to the plan (in the face of challenges), and you will succeed.

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12 Qualities Women Want in Their Men

Author: Steven Aitchison We all have good qualities and bad qualities, but are there universal qualities that women look for in their partners? Whilst I am not a woman I have worked with women most of my working life, in a big call centre office (the truth really comes out in an office!), I have two sisiters, my current place of work is predominantly women and I am married to a woman who knows what she wants. So I have done a lot of asking, a lot of research and have come up with 12 qualities a woman looks for in a man.

12 Qualities a woman looks for in a man

(In no particular order) 1. Honesty This is high up on the list and is a must for guys. When I say honest I mean being honest about everything. If your partner asks you Do you like my hair a response could be I like it but I preferred it when it was longer. When you are honest about everything you will get a reputation for being honest and you will get more respect and gain trust a lot quicker. If you are found out with one lie then the trust will dissappear and it will be hard to gain back. 2. To be able to protect According to the women I have spoken with they want to know their partner will be able to protect them physically in times of danger or trouble. Thats not to say women are weak its a security thing and knowing that their partner is capable or willing to protect them at all costs gives women a little more peace of mind. 3. Get up and go Women dont like men who have no motivation to do anything with their lives. They want a man who has passion and has goals in life and has got the motivation to follow their dreams. 37

4. Belief Believe in your wife/girlfriend and support and encourage her in everything she does. 5. Sense of humour This one obviously depends on each couple as everybody has a different sense of humour but women like men who can make them laugh. Thats not to say you have to be like Robin Williams, just someone who has a sense of humour and exercises it often. 6. Reliability This is another one high up on the list. Youve got to be reliable if you want your partner to stick with you for the long term. If she has an evening meal planned for you and you promised youll be home by 7 and you come strolling in at 8, this is not being reliable. Yes, work is important but more important is the woman who loves you enough to prepare a meal and make an effort on a Friday night. 7. Commitment An absolute must for any long term relationship. If you are not committed then there will always be that little doubt in the back of her mind asking if you are really serious about the relationship. 8. Respect Theres no question of this, if you disrespect her you may as well throw the relationship out of the window right now. Its not only respect for her but its respect for yourself as well. If you let people walk all over you then you are not respecting yourself and this is a turn off for women. 9. Attuned to feelings For the old fashioned man out there one of the main things you were missing was the ability to stay in tune with your partners feelings. If you are attuned to your partners feelings then it shows respect, caring and love. That doesnt mean to say you let them walk all over you it just means you are in touch with her, and you know how to handle the emotions, upsets and excitement etc. 10. Attractiveness This is something you are born with and its also something that is very subjective. Everyone has an attractive feature about them and rest assured someone will be attracted to you because of it. However if you let yourself go and dont really care about yourself, youll be dropped like a hot potato. 11. Assertiveness Woman can stand up for themselves very well but they still like a man to be assertive as well. Women dont like weak men, so grow a pair and stand up for yourself and your wife. 12. Faithful Shouldnt even have to be said here, but so many men think they can get away with being unfaithful and it not affect them. You will never be respected once youve been unfaithful and there is absolutely no excuse for it.

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The Books on The Back Shelf of Your Mind

Author: Steven Aitchison We all have fears, worries, anxieties, and memories from our past that still haunt us. They are like books stored in a library on the back shelf of our mind. Just like a library our thoughts, and fears are stored in separate sections and we access the books in each of the sections everyday to help us deal with new experiences in our life. It might be time to rewrite the books that you have stored. Just like in a library there are books that are timeless and can be read again and again and never be outdated, I am thinking of a particular book that I love, rather cliched but I love it Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. It was written in the 1930s but most of the principles still apply today and it is one I often refer to and have several copies lying about the house. So it is with the books in our minds, some will never be outdated but a lot of them are outdated and hold irrelevant information about our fears, and our beliefs.

The book of memories

The book of memories is a large book in which all our memories are stored and retrieved whenever required. Sometimes the pages of the book become distorted over time and sometimes the pages get ripped out altogether. A lot of the time we keep this book on the very front shelf of our library and access it every single day when we re-live traumatic experiences. Reliving past experiences is debilitating and can literally stunt our mental growth. Painful memories that are still raw i.e. a few years old need to be talked about in an open way, preferably with a trained counselor. However talking about the event 10 years on is counterproductive and its time to stop reading the book. Mentally put the memory in your book and get it stored on the back shelf only to opened on rare occasions. This is in no way discounting the traumatic event you are simply saying to yourself Its time to move on, reliving your past everyday will only halt your mental growth and you will be stuck for as long as you keep reliving old events. 39

New, more happier, memories should be stored in the book as often as possible and I think its important to push yourself to get out, meet new people, puish beyond your comfort zone or get back in touch with family and good friends to start depositing happier memories in your book.

The book of beliefs

Beliefs shape our lives and make us the person we are today and its important to revisit our beliefs regularly and keep them up to date. How do we do this? As you walk along the path of life you will come across experiences that dont quite sit right with you and this can be a time to question and reposition your beliefs. For example when I was younger I used to go out with a group of friends every weekend (that was when the weekend started on a Thursday night) and our main goal was to have a good time, have a drink, and try and pick up a woman (Sorry, that was my mentality when I was younger). The experiences of the weekend were then spoken about with each other and I went along with the crowd at first and after a few times it didnt sit right with me. I questioned my belief about privacy and respect and made a new belief to respect myself and anybody I was involved with. From then on I always kept my experiences with the girls to myself as I didnt feel it was right to discuss intimate details with everyone, I always took a lot of heat for that but I stuck to my guns. To question your own beliefs its important to question others beliefs as well and then make your own decisions and find out where you stand on certain topics. Most people believe it is not right to kill another human being that is why we can live in relative peace and harmony. Yes, its true there are a lot of people out there who kill but they are few and far between and the media sensationalize the people who do, therefore leading us to believe the world is a bad place to live, but is it really a bad place to live? we have to question the medias motives for printing stories of people who murder others, simply because it sells just like the thousands of books about crime they are bestsellers. I believe the media can help to fuel a murderers motivation to kill, I honestly do and I have taken a lot of stick for this viewpoint. Question everything and look at your beliefs about everything. You start by asking the question: What are my beliefs about this subject? if you dont really have a belief and its not important then leave it, if its something important to you then form a belief around it but have reasons for it.

The Book of values and principles

This is the book that we access everyday and some people dont even have this book in their minds. This does not mean we dont have values and principles it simply means we may not know what they are and have never voiced them in any way. Having values and principles helps us to focus on the person we want to be and the person we would like to become. Over the last few years my wife and I have taught our youngest son the value and principle of honesty. At a young age he was prone to lying, about big things and silly little things. A lot of children go through this and they are basically pushing the boundaries to find out what they can get away with and thats part of growing up. However we know our son very well and always knew when he was lying. To teach him this value he would always be given a punishment for lying e.g. no TV, computer or xbox for the day. Over the last few years he has learned that lying does not help and that telling the truth, no matter the consequences, was 40

always the best way. We would also reward him for telling the truth and thanked him for his honesty, he may have still got into trouble but far less trouble than he would have if he had persisted with a lie. Pick the values you would like to have in your life and try and live by those values. To help you choose values you can look at the list below. Decide on a few values at a time, and some of them you will already be living you just might need to solidify them. You will find that living this way has a tremendous impact on your life.

The book of knowledge

This book stores everything you have learned over your lifetime and like the book of beliefs you use it everyday as a way of gaining more knowledge and learning from new experiences. The trouble sometimes some people have is that they stop learning after coming out of school or university, or rather they stop actively looking to learn new things and form a belief that once you get past a certain age your brain cant handle new information. This is not the case at all, the more we use our brains to learn the healthier it will become, once we stop seeking to learn new things our brains become, metaphorically, atrophied. This really is the information age we are living in and the human brain is literally evolving into being able to store more information and in a more efficient way. Imagine our parents having to learn everything we have learned in our lifetime it just wouldnt have happened however because our children are used to the amount of information they have to learn they dont know any different so they get on with learning and their belief is that they can learn new things simply because they have to. If you actively seek to learn new information whether it be on the computer or going back to college or university then do it if you can, it will keep your mind young, open and fresh to new ideas. The book of knowledge should be updated everyday.

The book of you

The book of you essentially contains everything that makes you YOU, everything I have written about above and all the little quirks and personality traits. It contains your sense of humour, your preferences about life, it contains the very soul of you. Spend a little time reading the book of you i.e. spend a little time alone to get back in touch with yourself and keep being you and keep being as authentic as possible.

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37 Ways to communicate better with your children

Author: Steven Aitchison How often have you asked your kids How was school today? and the reply was it was okay! and thats it. My youngest son just started high school today and my wife and I have been nervous and anxious for him, although weve been careful not to show him this. I took a day off work so I could spend a little longer with him when dropping him off for school and then to pick him up again. It was heartbreaking to watch him go into school, Hes all grown up. I thought with a little lump in my throat, Its like time is slipping by and before we know it hell be a grown man. Well, when I went to pick him up, I was all excited and asked: Well, how did it go? It was okay he said smiling, knowing I wanted to hear all about it. I eventually got some blood from the stone and he told me about it in dribs and drabs, however he seemed to enjoy it and has made a few friends already which is always good. My other son, who is in his 3rd year at high school is exactly the same and sometimes I cant even get blood from that stone. I advised them that we have spent weeks worrying and feeling anxious for them and all we ask in return is a little information about their day at school. So I advise them to give a little more and not have my wife beat the hell out of them just to get a little info. My wife duly comes home, practically running in to see how they got on at school and thankfully they were a little more open. I guess its just boys being boys, I remember being exactly the same and always wondered why my mum was so interested in my school activities. My niece, on the other hand, talks at 100 miles per hour and talks for hours. 42

heres a few tips I have learned over the years about communicating with children: 37 Ways to communicate better with your children 1. Always be interested in their day, even if they dont want to tell you anything. 2. Pay attention to them and make them feel as if they are the only person in the room when they speak to you. 3. Make time to sit down with them in a relaxed manner to allow them to open up more. 4. Sit down for family meals (One of the best decisions we made was to always make it a rule to all sit round the dinner table together). 5. Keep eye contact to show you are listening. 6. Dont dismiss the little things they tell you about. 7. Keep close to them when they are talking, dont have a conversation whilst you are in the kitchen and they are in their room. 8. Show them you love them and always tell them you love them. 9. Tell them you believe in them often. 10. Children are not your friends and letting them off with the small things could lead to bigger problems in the future. 11. Always listen to their side of the story if there are any arguments or rows going on. 12. Praise them with every single thing they do well. 13. Be as open and honest as possible with them about EVERYTHING. 14. If you have more than 1 child make time so you can spend time alone together, even if its driving to the shops.

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15. Read between the lines. Kids have a way of telling you something without directly telling you. 16. Dont interrupt children when they are trying to tell you something. 17. Ask their opinion on something thats important to you and them. 18. Tell them about your day and encourage discussion. 19. Give them a hug at least 200 times per day 20. Always say please and thank you when speaking to your kids, they will develop manners this way. 21. Encourage them to voice their opinion on the big family decisions, like buying a house, a car etc. 22. Tell them stories of when you were younger, kids always want to hear this. 23. Play games with them as much as possible. 24. Step into their world for a bit and get to learn what they like. 25. Become a child for a day and just have a toy fight, pillow fight, wrestle, and do the silly things that kids do. 26. Respect their privacy, always knock. 27. Give them unexpected presents. 28. Let let go up the down escalator 29. Let them have their own style and find it themselves.

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30. be proud of them ,even when they didnt quite make but tried their best. 31. Just hold them, that little bit longer than you normally would. 32. Let them find their own hobbies and encourage them in finding them. 33. Stand back to let them them make their own mistakes, theyll grow a lot quicker. 34.Take them to where you grew up and tell them about it. 35. Forgive them as they forgive you. 36. Dont make them wear a jacket if they dont want to even when its raining. 37. Just love them for the little individuals they are, just love them!

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9 Ways to debug your mind

Author: Steven Aitchison Just like your computer your mind gets cluttered up with unnecessary or outdated code which makes it run slower or even ruins a few pieces of software and eventually causes your computer to shut down. So it is with the mind, only there is no debugging manual for the mind. Here are a few suggestions to debug your mind of those little bugs that make your life less than perfect.

9 Ways to debug your mind

1. Know your own mind Know your operating system Not knowing your own mind is like not knowing what operating system your computer uses. Unless you know the operating system you cant buy software for your computer and if you do chances are it will malfunction or not work at all. Knowing your mind is knowing what values and principles you live by. You might now know all your values and principles but you certainly know some of them. For example would you ever steal from someone, more than likely you wouldnt, so that is one of the values you live by I shall not steal from someone else. What about honesty? what about being authentic? What about having compassion for others? What about working hard? These are all values and principles you live your life by. By looking at and developing each value and principle you can start to strengthen each one.

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2. Work on your beliefs Learn the software Are some of your beliefs outdated? Your beliefs about yourself and the world around you are constantly being updated but you can speed the process up and enjoy a fuller, richer life by knowing what your beliefs are and strengthening them to move you forward. Your beliefs are like the software you have on your computer, you know they are there but you might have not made the best use of them. For example I have photoshop on my computer but I really only use it for cropping, and touching up photos, when there is so much more I could do with photoshop if I only took the time to learn more about it. So it is with beliefs I believe I am a decent writer but I have never pushed myself to put my writing out there and work on it more and begin to polish it and find my own voice. There are also some beliefs that no longer serve me well so I should drop them. For example I am now quite a confident person but beliefs from my past try and muscle their way in to my current belief, its now time to let go of the old belief and live the new belief. 3. Dropping past memories Deleting old files Memories you have which can be harmful to your well being are best dropped altogether. Easy to say, harder to do. Some people spend a lifetime in therapy trying to understand why something happened from their childhood, why? Acknowledge that something bad has happened to you and whilst you might never be able to delete the memory you can choose when to access the memory. Its like having old files on your computer, that will never do you or the computer any good but you choose to go into the folder and open the files up every day. Its time for the delete button. If the memories are still raw, then that is a different story but if the memories are years old then its time to hit DELETE. 4. Take time for yourself Shutdown your emails, skype, and chat software Our lives have become so busy with 1001 things to do for our kids, our families, our partners, our work, and friends. Sometimes you just have to shut the world out for a bit and take time for yourself and do something you enjoy. Its like every time you go on the computer and there are people sending you emails, sending you tweets, wanting to googletalk or talk to you on skype. Shut everything down and take time for yourself. Take a day off work, dont tell anybody, send the kids to school and spend the day reading, browsing shops, walking, in an art gallery, anything just to be yourself. The time we spend alone is time recharging our batteries. 5. Learn new habits Upgrade your software Our habits can also become outdated and if we do the same as we have always done we will always get the same results. Just like your computer if you use the same software without upgrading it you will be missing out on the true potential of the software. Your habits need to be constantly upgraded and new ones introduced over time. If your habit is to exercise only after you have noticed you are piling on the pounds and then stop exercising, then its time to look at this habit and rework it so it suits you better and saves you the anguish and pain of piling on the pounds.

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6. Keep your mind active Learn new software Our minds can become dull with the drudgery of life and going over the same things day in day out. We become bored and settle for a less than perfect life. If we constantly learn new things about our world and the people in it the world and life will not seem dull. Imagine if you were to keep using the Wordpress software which came out all those years ago, your blogs or websites wouldnt be all that exciting, now there is so much more Wordpress can do and the current version on 2.8.4 is so much more powerful. Our minds need to keep active and constantly learning new information in order to keep on working in later life. 7. Dropping the deadwood Delete user permissions As hard as it sounds there are some people in our lives who do not belong in our lives anymore, youve moved on perhaps they have to, but you still keep in touch for some reason, it could be pity, it could be guilt or misplaced loyalty. Whatever it is, if there are people in your life who drag you down, are negative, are not as committed as you, its time to say goodbye to them. Change the user permissions on the computer and lock them out. They will move on and you will move on, its called life and you will both feel better for it. 8. Recharge your mind Putting your computer on sleep mode We are living in an age of information overload and as we learn to adapt and evolve to this we have to find a way to recharge our minds. One of the best ways of doings this, I find, is some form of meditation. 20 40 minutes per day will do wonders for your energy, productivity and creativity. When I have mentioned this in the past some people object stating that they cannot get 40 minutes to spend on meditating. The 40 minutes spent on meditating will free up at least 1 hour of your time during the day by recharging your mind and being able to think more clearer, more more productive and have more energy. So if you look at it from the point of view that you are saving at least 20 minutes per day instead of losing 40 minutes per day this might change your mind about meditation. 9. Developing thinking skills What language is your computer using? Your computer software is only as good as the language it is written in. Imagine if all software was still written in an old computer language how far would computing have evolved not very far at all. As computer languages have evolved programmers have written software with the ability to predict what may happen and if something happens what to do about it. Our thinking skills are vital to be able to communicate with each other to get our thoughts across to someone else. whilst we were not taught thinking skills formally, we have developed thinking strategies over the course of our lives. Its important to look at thinking as a skill in order to develop it. Using cognitive brain enhancing programs are one way to develop thinking skills as is reading more on the topic, which is way to big to go into in a post this size. Another thing I would recommend is reading about philosophical issues, I think this is a great exercise to develop thinking skills and can lead you to places in your mind you didnt know existed.

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6 Obstacles Threatening Your Progress.

Author: Ayo Olaniyan

Ayo Olaniyan is a certified Unitive Life Coach and Counsellor. He is a member of the European Mentoring and Coaching Council, an accredited professional counsellor with the Counselling Society and the author of Expanding Your Horizons. If you would like to enquire about personal and professional one-to-one coaching sessions, please visit www.discoveringpurpose.co.uk or send an email to ayo@discoveringpurpose.co.uk. Remember, it's about creating a purpose driven life through personal development. Editors Note: This is a guest post from Ayo Olaniyan from Discovering Purpose I am starting a series this month titled 6 obstacles, 6 things and 6 reasons. Several bloggers have written on various topics such as 10 reasons why you should blog, quit your job, fall in love I am hoping to target areas such as 6 obstacles threatening your progress, 6 reasons why you should get a life, 6 things you should know about yourself, 6 reasons why you should be happy and 6 reasons why you should go to the toilet (laugh). According to the elook online dictionary progress means the gradual improvement, growth or development in a positive way. Its also the act of moving forward toward a desired goal, while obstacles are things standing in our way that must be removed, circumvented or surmounted. We often want to make progress in our jobs, personal development, finances, behaviour, business, eating habits, exercising, with families.. the list is endless. Its wonderful to have great ideas, pictures of the future, think positively e.t.c but we must realise that there are subtle obstacles that stand in the way of our progress.

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What are these obstacles? The Claim to Know Everything: This relates to people who think they know it all and refuse to accept advice or information that would enhance their productivity, from anyone. If you want to increase your chances of being successful or making a change for the better, you should be open to suggestions before disregarding any which may not be suitable for you. Those who claim to know everything make statements such as I knew that already, I was going to do that, I agree with you but I am sure theres another way. Their minds, hearts, level of reasoning are completely closed to new ideas or suggestions BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT READY OR WILLING TO BE TAUGHT. Of course we need to strike a balance before everyone starts listening to time wasters offering random suggestions; the focus here is to be open to constructive contributions. The Fear of Change: This is a topic in its own right, but I would do my best to summarize it. In a positive context, change is the process or result of becoming different. Its a transformation or transition from one level of development to another. We desire to experience or make changes in various aspects of our lives but it requires drive, motivation and commitment. We are afraid to make changes for the following reasons:

We dont want to be pushed out of our comfort zone into the unknown We lack the desire to experience change. We associate change with anxiety and nervousness. Weve become conditioned due to an emotional/physical trauma weve experienced in the past. We feel we may lose our rights as individuals and possibly get exploited.

When we get to a crossroad and we sincerely want to make a change, it might be useful to think on the following tips:

Think on the positive impacts that would be achieved from experiencing change Picture someone else in your shoes knowing if they handled change positively, you can. Think of the worst case scenarios which could occur and find alternative solutions to them.

Inconsistency: In order to attain the desired level of progress we have pictured, imagined or is striving towards, we need constant practice. Developing the qualities we desire, attaining a high level of personal growth/development requires a constant repetition of successful behaviours, skills, programs etc weve implemented to see such results. We get better and excel in certain projects by being consistent in our actions, methods and character. Footballers go through rigorous amounts of training before any game and a player found unfit on the training field or during the game is sidelined to the bench. In order to develop good habits, its compulsory we build them on a daily basis. The Blame Game: Theres a tendency to always trade blames on anything and everyone, wishing you never went down certain routes, made certain judgements, made decisions etc. Sometimes our egos have a way of interfering with us taking responsibilities for certain actions and our only way out, is to blame others. Its common to hear statements such as, I 50

would have succeeded if only my .. supported me, I would have passed my exams if you didnt.., I would have been rich if I didnt get married to you(laugh, Ive actually heard that). The list grows!!!! STOP IT TODAY!!!! REALISE OUR LIVES ARE OUR RESPONSIBILITIES. Failing to take action: In the last 5-6years I have fallen in love with Nikes slogan, Just Do It. For us to be effective and yield results in our daily lives, we must make an effort to follow certain procedures. If we want to excel in any phase of our lives we need to be willing TO DO things differently. We mustnt be comfortable in acquiring knowledge only but also take that step to practice what weve learnt. We are afraid to take actions for the following reasons:

We lack self confidence. We are afraid of failing. We dont want to get embarrassed. We are filled with negative thoughts, believing those steps may not turn out to be successful.

I have got three words for you: JUST DO IT Negative Thinking: We would always experience tough challenges in life and the easiest obstacle that confronts us is getting drowned in negative thoughts and pessimism. Theres a tendency to make bad decisions or judgements based on negative information fed into your mind. Dealing with negative thoughts when faced with stiff opposition requires perseverance, constant positive thoughts looking at alternative solutions/suggestions to dealing with the present situation. As you make progress there would come a time where the mind is unsettled and uncertain of the future. To stay on top of your game; youve GOT TO SHOW SOME OPTIMISM. On a final note, do not expect everything to take a turn for progress overnight. These obstacles will be crossed as long as you remain diligent, hardworking and persistent in your quest for attaining progress. **Remember DOING NOTHING, IS NOT DOING ANYTHING.

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5 Ways to inject some passion into your goals

Author: Steven Aitchison Recently I wrote an article describing my goal to reach 10,000 subscribers by the end of the year. Its a very tall order but one I feel I will reach. I honestly dont know how I can do this I just feel it. That was around 15 days ago and I still dont know how I am going to reach that figure. When I see that I have only added around 100 subscribers in two weeks I was starting to think I think I might have made a bit of a fool of myself by stating my goal of 10,000 subscribers. As soon as I started thinking that my passion for the blog and writing diminished a little. Now that I have caught that thought I put even more effort in. I have written a guest post for Lifehack.org, Zenhabits and DumbLittleMan (2 have not been published yet). I have added new features to this blog, which may or may not work, I have banished the Google ads and have just bought the Thesis theme to make the blog more simple in style (dont know when that will be ready as I am still working on it). My thoughts are now firmly on writing and over the last two weeks I have written over 10,000 words in posts, produced two videos, tweeted my little beak off, set up a facebook profile, a youtube channel, sent off an article as a freelancer, and joined a forum for AListBloggers. My thoughts are all on writing just now and reaching that goal, its a hunger from the minute I wake up, even when I am at work I am thinking oh, that would be a great post and I get it down on paper before I forget it.

What has given me the drive?

There are 3 things that are driving this passion right now 1. A big hairy measurable goal 52

2. A passion for writing 3. The avoidance of pain (being made to look stupid if I dont reach my goal of 10,000 subscribers)

5 ways to inject some passion into your goals

Have a goal in mind You cant have passion in your life if you dont have a goal or goals. Try and make your goal measurable so youll know that youve reached your goal at the end of all your hard work. Reach out Reach out to other people who can help you reach your goals even your competition. If you see someone you are competing with and they are doing well, look at what they are doing, break it down into little pieces and emulate each piece. There are always people who are willing to help you if they feel your passion and hunger so ask other people to help you, if they say no, then move on to someone else who can help but always make it a win-win so you both gain out of the partnership. Small changes 100 incremental changes can make a huge difference on your goal whereas 1 big change might not make that much of a difference. You find out what works for you, throw away the bits that dont and keep improving bit by bit. Obsess about it I cant believe how obsessed I have become about writing over the last two weeks. At first i thought Ill write a few guest posts, get some guest writers for CYT and write a little more for the blog Its nothing like that. Its like I want to write the best post ever, every single time, I want to write it now and I want to find a way to write in my sleep. Think about your goal often and every single day. Have a picture in your mind of you reaching your goal and the rewards it will bring. Do this especially when you are feeling a bit down and things arent going quite the way you planned. Its a hunger, a drive you need to reach that goal no matter what. Speak about it I have spoken to my wife about my goals for the next five months and she has asked some great questions one of them being What are you going to get out of it? honestly I dont know I just know I have to do it. So if you have friends and family who are willing to listen speak about your goals or join a forum who have people with similar goals to yours. Small goals can be a one man show, big goals need an audience. What are your goals? What are your goals right now and how are you injecting passion into them? Why not share your thoughts with the readers and help them out. 53

5 Ways To Achieve Personal Excellence

Author: Celestine Chua Celestine Chua chose her passion when she left her high paying Fortune 100 career in 2008 to help others grow. Today, she writes at her popular The Personal Excellence Blog and gives coaching to others who are passionate about achieving personal excellence. Some of her most popular articles to date: 50 Ways to Boost Your Productivity, 101 Most Inspiring Quotes of All Time and Cultivate Good Habits in 21 Days. Editors Note: This is a guest post from Celestine Chua of The Personal Excellence Blog Excellence noun. the state of excelling; superiority; eminence: Are you someone who strives for excellence? If you are reading this post, chances are you are . Personally, I firmly believe that all of us are here to achieve greatness; to be the best that we can be and to shake and move the world. There is nothing more satisfying than overcoming a challenge that was previously deemed insurmountable; nothing more satisfying than looking back at who you are now and realizing that you have grown much more than you thought you could. To be human is to live to our highest potential. Like you, Im someone who endlessly strives for excellence. Excellence is one of my top values in life and is something which I hold myself towards ever since I was a kid. When I was in school, I was constantly striving for the best; I graduated from my business school as the top student in my major (I was in marketing). In my career, I secured placement in the best company in the world for marketers, after being pit against hundreds of applicants and evaluated in multiple rounds of tests and interviews. Even as I ultimately chose to quit my corporate job last year, it was a decision made to wholly pursue my passion in personal development and helping others to achieve personal excellence. In my years of pursuit of personal excellence, I have found 5 timeless steps in ensuing my own growth which Id love to share with you here and I hope will be useful to you: 54

1) Believe in Yourself
Self belief is the utmost important step. If you dont believe in yourself, how do you expect anyone else to believe in you? If you want to achieve greatness, you have to first believe that you are capable of doing it. Know that there is no one else but you who can attain what you want to do. As Napoleon Hill puts it, What the mind can conceive, it can achieve. One of my favorite stories is Sylvester Stallones real-life rags to riches story. Before he was propelled to stardom with the Rocky series, he was living out what others would deem as a paltry existence as a wannabe actor. Because of his birth complication where he was born with a side of his face paralyzed and a slurred speech, he was rejected by countless casting agents in his quest for his dreams. At some point, he became poor as a pauper, and even his wife left him. But he never gave up. He firmly believed that he would be able to make it as an actor not just an actor, but a movie star. And he finally did today, he is an internationally acclaimed movie star, film director, producer and screenwriter. This would never have happened if he gave up his self-belief.

2) Keep Building Your Skills

The path to excellence is a continual one which requires constant upgrading and skills development. Its said that it takes someone 10,000 hours of practice to reach the top in his/her discipline. Have you invested your 10,000 hours to develop your skills? If you havent, when can you start investing the time? If you have, how can you invest another 10,000 hours? No matter how much time and effort we have already spent in developing ourselves, there will always be opportunity to improve and be better. Think about the skills which you possess at the moment as well as skills which you would like to have, but have yet to acquire. For example, some of the skills which I target to build for the upcoming few months are (1) Writing (2) Public Speaking (3) Productivity (4) Discipline (5) Organizational Skills (6) Badminton. How about yours?

3) Get Out of Your Comfort Zone

When you are out of your comfort zone, you are already growing by default. Comfort zones are called comfort zones because its where you feel safe and comfortable. When you stay in an area of comfort, you subject yourself to things you have become accustomed to which leads to little or no growth. On the other hand, if you move beyond that area of comfort, even by a little bit, you start facing things which you are not exposed to before. This new context and new stimuli triggers off a reprocessing process in your mind as you adapt to handle them. This means growth. What are your comfort zones when it comes to your work? Environment? Diet? Daily routines? Places you go to? Clothes you wear? People you hang out with? Your goals? How can you change them around just to experience something different? How can you push yourself to an uncomfortable zone so you can grow? The more uncomfortable you feel about something, the more it means you are growing.

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4) Be Around the Best.

I love this quote from Jim Rohn, which I feel sums this up You are the average of the five people you are around. Who you are with has a role in affecting who you become. If you hang around people who are committed to excellence, sets themselves up to achieve nothing but the best, you are going to emerge a different person compared to if you hang around people who are jaded and are constantly lamenting about life. Cut yourself loose from people who dont support you and increase your contact with the people who do. Above all, connect yourself with the best the cream of the crop. If you have a goal to be a chef with your very own restaurant, start linking up with the top chefs of your country, or even possibly the world as you move forward on your endeavors. Even if its not possible to be personal friends, you can be connected with them by virtue of exposing yourself to outputs of their work books, shows, interviews, etc. You will find yourself improving by leaps and bounds just from framing yourself together with them.

5) Set Huge Goals.

Emphasis on the word huge. Not the normal, standard goals which you know you will definitely be achieving with a certain amount of work and effort. Were talking about the humongous goals which make you feel somewhat nervous and uncomfortable on whether its possible to even attain them. These are the goals which will really make you stretch yourself, soar, and then beam with an incredible lot of satisfaction when you do achieve them. Even if you dont eventually get to nail them in the bag, the most important thing to realize is you have grown a lot more than if you set puny goals and achieved them. Be focused on the amount of growth you get and dont be attached to the specific outcomes, because the outcomes dont define who you are Who you are define who you are.

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Wear your red socks

Author: Steven Aitchison Might seem a strange title for a blog post. I wanted to talk about how little things can change your mindset and how you can learn to change something, seemingly, insignificant to change the way you feel. Last year it was time to get a few new pairs of socks as the trusty old black ones were fast becoming grey. So when we were out shopping for some things for the house, I noticed a 7 pair pack of socks and picked them up. It was the socks that had different colours on the toes and heals but these ones also had the day of the week on the arch. Now, in our house we never had a matching pair of socks, it seemed the sock devil would come in the night and discard a few socks which meant we never got to wear matching socks and it was messing with my mind. You see in our house I have my own sock drawer but apparantly my wife and two boys seemed to think it was a communal sock drawer and they were forever stealing my socks. After a few hey, theyre my socks! moments and me chasing my sons around the house to get my socks off (inevitably they would hide and then pounce on me when I found them and beat the living socks out of me!), I gave up and now we all share the same socks. However chasing my wife around the house was a differnt story. So, when I bought the new ones with the days of the week, my thoughts were it will be difficult to lose socks that had matching colours and days of the week on them so there should be no problem finding a matching pair after they had been washed.

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Family quirkiness
Heres what happened; my wife didnt wear them as she didnt really like them, my youngest son thought it would be quite quirky to wear unmatching ones, me eldest son was experimenting on the hypothesis that socks may actually be able to start walking themselves if he wore them long enough. I was trying hard to keep it together and match them all up as soon as they came out the washing. I would wear my Monday ones on Monday, my tuesday ones on tuesday etc. When Saturday came around it was a great feeling just rolling my Saturday socks on, it was the weekend and I felt great. After a few months of this and a few more sock packs I started wearing my Saturday ones on a tTursday and when I felt really adventurous I wore them on a Wednesday. I noticed that I felt better after slipping on those red Saturday socks no matter what day of the week it was because I had associated them with the weekend, free time and time with my family. It then became a little family joke, whenever we felt a little down or stressed just Put the red socks on.

The power of association

This is the power of association in action and shows we can give power to anything to make us feel better. I know a lot of women in particular wear certain clothes depending on the way they feel. And guys, remember the times when you used to go out scouting for girls saying I feel lucky tonight Ive got my lucky boxer shorts on or my lucky shirt on.

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The power of Focus

Author: Steven Aitchison For the last few years I have been writing for CYT and building a small business creating binaural beats and working on lots of other little projects. I have come to realize, only recently, that I am still un-focused when it comes to my internet life. Once I get an idea in my head I chase it, implement the idea and then work on it now and again. I realize I have been doing this with my blog. I have been writing for 3 years in August and have managed to get 3500 subscribers to CYT, roughly 100 subscribers per month. Now, some people might think that is good but its really quite bad. I look at my contemporaries like Leo Babauta, he started blogging in 2007 and now has 120,000 subscribers 2 successful ebooks, a publishing deal and writes for numerous blogs and I ask myself whats the difference between me and Leo?; FOCUS. I remember a conversation Leo and I had a few years ago whilst part of a personal development network. I asked how I could improve my blog and make it better. I received numerous replies but Leo wrote back with a few home truths and basically said I need to write more guest posts, write more for the blog and a few other things. At the time ZenHabits has a few hundred subscribers and I had about 1200, boy I wished I had listened.

Focus on your main tasks

It all comes down to focusing on the things we really want. I want to give up my full time job to do my internet work at home, but I have been saying this for 2 years now and bringing in an extra $1500 per month is not enough for me to give up my full time job. Admittedly when 59

I first started I wasnt bringing in anything and an extra $1500 per month is great but its not enough. I have a plethora of ideas buzzing around my head at any one time and all of them would help me reach my goal of working full time from home, however I have not focused long enough on any of the ideas to reach my goal.

Decision time
For the past few weeks I have been looking at my internet life and getting rid of all the projects I have started and cut them down to three main projects. They are; My Blog, Binaural-Mind site and my Lucid Dreaming project. I actually had 17 small projects on the go (and I wonder why I was buzzing all the time). This is a great achievement for me. A few years ago I would have all these ideas and do nothing about them except for analyse them and give reasons why it wouldnt work. A few months ago I implemented the ideas and just did it. Now, I have cut all the ideas down to 3 projects and focus solely on them. So, you can sort of see the evolution of my focus here and now its getting down to the nitty gritty of focusing.

A bold statement By December 31st 2009 I will have 10,000 subscribers

Thats not a pie in the sky statement and dream I have this is a goal I will achieve by the end of the year. And I know I will do this by focusing my attention more on the blog. Thats 6,500 subscribers in 5 months, so instead of getting 100 subscribers per month I need to get 1300 subscribers per month, a 1200% increase on my current monthly subscriber rate. How will I achieve this? By writing quality content every day for the blog, a new post will be posted every single day by either myself or a guest poster and new features will be added to the blog such as;

Ask the coach A joint project with Ayo Olaniyan 5 minute fix A video section of the blog offering 5 minute personal development tips. Book review section This will review books by personal development bloggers out there and there are some great ones on the way Sunday Siesta This has already started and is a great feature on this blog.

I have also started using a tool called DarkRoom. This is a tool for writers is basically its a black screen and all you can do is write as there are no distractions, no icons at the bottom of the screen its just you, a black screen and green text and I have to say its amazing for keeping my concentration focused on my writing. I will also start guest posting for other bigger blogs out there to get my name known again.

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How you can help me out

Well, Im always looking for guest authors and I have a few lined up already which is great. You could tweet, stumble and delicious my posts. In return I will always give you quality advice and help when I can. Look out 10k here I come

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If success was easy everyone would do it

Author: Francesca Kotomski Driven with my desire to do and see all that the world has to offer. Visit Francescas online biz here WebSimpleMoney.com as well as her blog GrowAbundantLife.com. If Success was Easy, Everyone Would do it Success is a favorable or desirable outcome, the attainment of wealth or favor, as defined Websters Dictionary. Success is different for everyone, but it is definitely not an easy thing to accomplish, otherwise, everyone would do what it takes for success. Success is a feeling and can be created and recreated again and again. Here are some tips to create success in your life: Tip #1: Enjoy and celebrate each moment on the way to success. Success doesnt have to be associated with wealth attainment. In fact, most people have achieved a level of success in some part of their lives, achieving a desirable outcome. Reminisce the feeling associated with your success achievement. You must have been very happy, inspired to achieve more, and desired to repeat your success. You may have thought that it wasnt really that difficult to achieve success or maybe it was the hardest thing you did, enjoying in the feeling of accomplishment. As you reach for your next goal, focus on progress only, rewarding yourself every small step of the way. Each daily accomplishment is a small success story on the way to the bigger success story. Tip #2: Keep the end in mind, always. If you have been striving for success in an area of your life, wealth or other, and are not reaching success, you might have lost sight of the end goal. You might have given up because it was too hard, too much work, or maybe you think that you dont deserve your goal in the first place. Maybe someone convinced you that you cant do what you set out to do and you folded and listened to them. You may think that you dont know enough to be successful. If you focus on the end result as you defined success, you will keep striving for it and no one, not even you, will convince you otherwise. Tip #3: Create, evaluate, and recreate. Life is about recreating yourself. If something doesnt work, rather than fold, find a way to recreate. Troubleshoot or recreating is very similar. You create, evaluate and then refine. Keep up this pattern, with rewards for each step of the way on your path to success. Tip #4: Success can be for anyone. Get out of your head that the successful are gifted or that they were handed their success on a silver platter. If that were the case, they really havent achieved success. Success takes work, perseverance, and determination. It doesnt matter your education, height, knowledge or other factors. It can be for anyone that wants it bad enough. Tip #5: Success is all about mindset. Know that you can, and you will achieve your goal. Visualize your goal, and you will be even closer. You will remain on the path and you will achieve your success. Be positive and remain on the path to success! 62

When you see If Success was Easy, Everyone Would do it, you may think that its too hard to achieve and you might just give up. Follow every tip given here, focus on your end result and you will enjoy success!

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One lesson and six billion teachers

Author: Steven Aitchison Recently I have been looking at the way I interact with people, my clients, my work colleagues, my mentors, my wife and my children. I am a great listener and that comes across when someone is speaking to me and I suppose thats a good thing if you are doing counselling of any kind. However I have noticed that I am also quite impatient with certain types of people, particularly anybody who is energy draining, you know the type of people who think everything is a hassle and the whole world is against them and nothing ever goes right for them ,it infuriates me to be around people like this and usually I avoid them like the plague. However, recently I thought about what people like this have to teach me. I recently had a chance to talk to someone like this in depth and had to hold it together long enough to ask myself what is this person teaching me about myself? and the next question is What am I teaching them about themselves?. The answers were quite surprising to me. What is this person teaching me about myself? I am intolerant of negative people wow!, what a revelation (sarcastic tone there) , how is this relevant? Well, I do counselling work for a living and being intolerant of certain types of people is not a good thing and that will come across to the person who is talking to me. What am I teaching them about themselves? If someone who has a dark outlook on life is talking to me and I am giving them vibes that I dont like talking to them this is going to re-enforce their belief about themselves that nobody likes them, the world is a dark place etc etc.

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What I did to change I looked at the person in a different light. That person was there to teach me patience, to teach me tolerance and I had to remind myself of that. I was there to ask him a simple question Why is your world so dark? This is exactly the question I asked him and he was taken aback when I asked that. He didnt really think he had a dark outlook on life and it was a bit of a revelation to him as well. We spoke about it for a while and by asking that simple question he was able to change almost instantly as his perception of his world had changed. The next few sessions revealed that he had changed the way he looked at life and constantly asked himself what he would do if he was a positive person, obviously there were still dark moments but he was much more able to cope with them. Everyone is a teacher This was a great lesson for me and its one of those moments that changed a certain aspect of me for a lifetime. Its those moments that make us grow as people and we cant change overnight but we can have lots of a-ha moments which help to shape our lives. What is someone trying to teach you?

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The energy of money and how to make more of it

Author: Steven Aitchison The pursuit of making more money has an energy to it. If you are focused and have clear goals in mind and you concentrate on them every day and take action you can and will create more abundance in your life. Is money the root of all evil? We have been programmed to believe that the pursuit of money is bad and its not good for the soul. This is without doubt one of the biggest lies we have been told as children, that and Santa Claus (I was gutted when I was told that Santa was a lie and I was 23 imagine how children feel!) Youve more than likely heard these sayings in your life:

Money doesnt grow on trees you know We cant afford it Money cant buy you happiness The rich get richer and the poor get poorer To make more money you have to work harder Money is the root of all evil

Until you rid yourself of the guilt of trying to better yourself financially you cant begin to create more money into your life. Well speak about four steps to creating more money in your life a bit later but for now Id like to speak about the difference between greed and making more money. Greed and money Thinking of some of my heroes I used to think why would they try and make more money when they obviously dont need it. I am thinking of people like Richard Branson, James Dyson, Warren Buffet and Tony Robbins to name but a few. However when reading their biographies, watching and listening to them on interviews it is clear their goal is not to make more money but to feel alive by building on their brand and their customer loyalty, with the possible exception of Warren Buffet who is an investment genius. So their goal is not to make more money it is a by-product of their goal of achieving more in their life. They are also philanthropists and they give back a hell of a lot to the world in the form of donations, settings up schools, giving knowledge and time to the younger generation. This is not greed its a desire to reach their potential, which is what Abraham Maslow speaks about in his hierarchy of needs theory. Greed is a different animal altogether. Greed is defined in the New Oxford English Dictionary as: Intense and selfish desire for something, especially wealth, power or food. If your goal is to create more money into your life simply for your own selfish needs then life 66

will be empty after a while. Giving back something to the world in the form of money, knowledge, education, and time is something everyone should strive for, I believe.

Four steps to creating more money in your life

I have learned these lessons the hard way and it has taken me over twenty years to finally be able to understand them, from the beginnings of selling sweets in the playground to where I am now. I still want to make more money and be financially able to do whatever I want but I am closer to my goal than when I first started out. Step one Blasting through your limiting beliefs As I said in the beginning of this post we have been programmed to believe the pursuit of money and wealth is not good. Get rid of this thought as quickly as you can for it will hinder you from making progress in your lifes goal to create more money in your life. Money is the pathway to freedom for yourself and for others in your life. You will have the ability to help more people by being wealthy than you will be by being poor. Think of this for a moment: More money in your life will mean you will buy more, when you buy more it means small and large businesses can stay in business, when they stay in business it means the banks can lend more money to them to expand therefore keeping the banks in business, when the banks are healthy financially it means they can lend more to people for loans and mortgages, when mortgages are purchased it means house builders are thriving, when house builders thrive it means more choice for house buyers and more social housing stock, when there is more social housing stock it means people getting out of poverty and bad housing conditions.this could go on and on. Look at the situation just now and what has happened to the whole economy because the banks have made poor decisions. However we as a nation are perpetuating the situation by not spending the way we used to and if we are really honest our situation has not really changed we still earn the same monthly income, the price of food is the same, the price of clothes has gone down, the price of cars has gone down so we should be spending the same to keep the economy afloat. However because a global financial crisis is great news for newspapers they print their horror stories and suddenly people have stopped spending, small businesses are going bust, house builders have stopped building and banks have stopped lending. Do you think if the Global Crisis was never reported on TV, on the internet or in newspapers we would be in this situation right now, I definitely believe we wouldnt. Yes this is an overly simplistic view of how the economy works but believe me when I say there are people out there making millions because the herd have listened to the media. You were born to reach your full potential and that certainly does not mean living in poverty and scrimping and saving to get by in life. There is enough money in the world for everyone to thrive and that includes you. Its time to open up your mind to the possibilities of making more money. Step 2 Creating your future You cant row your own boat until you know your destination. You can certainly row someone elses boat and that is what most of us do in life. We go to school, leave and then go to university, leave and then row someone elses boat by working for them, then we jump 67

off the boat after 45 years service and retire when its almost too late to really enjoy life. Thats not a life its an existence. Rowing your own boat means controlling your own life. yes it also means taking more risks and failing more but you will learn a hell of a lot about the world works and how you work and how to better yourself. To do this you have to know what you want to do with your life, you need dreams to follow, you need a vision to hold and passion to drive you. Start small, think big and build yourself up from there. What do you want in life? Now you know what you want you need to know how you get it. Step 3 Help someone create their dream Yours dreams are undoubtedly different from mine however the key to making more money in your life is to help people realise their dreams. What I mean by this is create something or pass on knowledge which will help someone else realise their dream. Now, the dream the other person has might not be huge but if you help them and they are willing to pay for it then you have helped yourself and someone else at the same time. When one person has a dream there are some others who have the same dream. A fantastic example of this is someone who is selling an ebook right now, you can check it out on Google, called How to build your own chicken coop. You might think this is a crazy idea, but the owner of the ebook thought If I wanted to know how to build a chicken coup, there must be others too. And now there are hundreds of happy people who had a tiny dream to build their own chicken coop and found someone willing to impart their knowledge for a small fee. This book is doing great and making the owner a lot of money. So you see, people have all different kinds of dreams big and small and if you can help people realise their dreams, big or small you can help yourself create more money in your life and help people around the world. Step 4 Once youve made it its time to share it I am nowhere near this stage yet but it is my ultimate goal that when I have become wealthy enough to have anything I want in life I will share my successes and teach people how they can emulate my success. And I will do this freely to people who have not made it yet and charge for it to businesses who are in the latter stages of step 3. This way the knowledge is always going round and being shared and I cannot think of a better way to enrich the world than by sharing knowledge on how to better create more money in peoples lives.

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29 Ways to increase your feeling of self worth

Author: Steven Aitchison Self worth comes from within, you wont find it by having more money, having more friends, having a fancy car or a big house. It is something intrinsic and something we cant gain extrinsically, meaning we wont find self worth from external factors. Here are some things you can do to increase your feeling of self worth.

29 Ways to increase your feeling of self worth

1. Write down 7 minor goals for the week and tick one off each day as you achieve it. 2. Read a book a month. Reading a book is actually an achievement in this technology and media driven world and reading a full book is a great way to achieve a sense of accomplishment. 3. At the end of each day before falling asleep write down something you feel proud about, either on the day or in the past. 4. Tell someone else how much you appreciate them, being able to be open and honest is great for self worth. 5. Say no! Learn the skill of saying no without offending the person asking. 6. Everything you do, do to the best of your ability even if it cleaning the toilets or something equally as mundane, develop a reputation as someone who takes pride in their work. 7. Walk tall and proud. walk as if youve got somewhere to go and you need to be there now, never run just walk tall and quickly. 8. Dress as smart as you can for each occasion, whether it be work, meeting a friend, or going for an interview. Take pride in your appearance. 9. Do something for yourself every day. 10. Learn a new skill or take up something youve always wanted to and stick with it. 69

11. Speak up for yourself in every area of your life, this might be hard to do at first but the first time you do it will be immense and if you carry on your self esteem and feelings of self worth will soar. 12. Sing at the top of your voice, not outside but in the house and really give it loads (I love singing Free Fallin by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers at the top of my voice, ah! such a good feeling.) 13. Forgive yourself! (You know what I mean) 14. Get rid of the people who are dragging you down (I dont mean kill them, I mean just stop having them in your life.) 15. Work on your strengths. A lot of people focus on building up their weaknesses, instead get better at what you are good at. 16. Take a walk in the rain..Why?..because you have the power to decide! 17. Listen to other people and what they are saying. 18. Reward your successes. As soon as you achieve something reward yourself. 19. Never let anyone force you to break your core values. 20. Stop the gossiping! 21. Dont read a newspaper for a week and gauge how you feel about yourself and the world around you. 22. Help other people who need it. 23. Always, Always, Always be honest with yourself and others. There is no need for lies and the energy it takes to continue a lie is unbelievable. 24. Take a chance and take a risk or two. You dont have long to live so just get up and do it. 25. Listen to your self talk and slap the little person criticising you, I mean it, imagine there are two people one on each shoulder, the one who criticises you give them a slap or a punch in the mouth and start to pay attention to the one who is praising you. 26. Dont be afraid to accept help from other people, it means they respect you enough to help you with something. 27. Start changing your thinking to be more optimistic about yourself, instead of I cant do that. say ..Ive never tried it, but Ill give it a go 28. Face your fears. Nothing will send your self esteem soaring more so than facing your fears and eventually conquering them. 29. Always leave comments on a blog you like

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How to be assertive
Author: Steven Aitchison Thousands of people every day are suffering in difficult situations through lack of assertiveness. Most commonly the assertiveness problems tend to arise at work and with friends. However, assertiveness issues creep up everywhere whether it be with friends, family, or work colleagues. Its okay saying to someone stand up for yourself or you should just say this to them.., but to someone who suffers from lack of assertiveness its not an easy thing to do and can fill people with dread at the thought of confronting someone with an issue they may have. Bullies, whether at work or at home, prey on people who lack assertiveness and can traumatise the person they subject their bullying tactics on. The bully is of course cowardly and lack the backbone to pick on people who they know will stand up to them. Dealing with people who intimidate you or belittle you is empowering and can literally change your life, but how do you do it? This guide will hopefully give you some tools to think about and implement when you feel you need to be assertive in situations. What is assertiveness? Assertiveness is the ability to stand up for yourself and to express how you feel when you feel it is necessary. It includes:

Being able to express your opinions and views without feeling self conscious Being able to say no to people without feeling guilty about it. Being able to ask for what you want. Choosing how you live your life, without feeling guilty about it. Having the ability to take risks when you feel you want and need to.

If you feel any of the above are missing from your life then you may have difficulty asserting yourself and expressing yourself. Some common beliefs about being assertive A lot of the time you may fear being assertive by believing something will happen if you are assertive in situations. Have you had any of these thoughts? I cant say no, theyll think I am being selfish I dont have the right to say how I feel 71

I am their parent I have to do this for them. I dont want to cause a scene at work. I dont want the other person to be upset or angry with me. If I stand up for myself people wont like me because of it. Do you recognise any of these thoughts? Read the article 7 Irrational thoughts. Which might help you deal with these types of thoughts. Let me ask you something at this point. Think of someone you admire, someone who can be assertive, not aggressive but assertive..take a moment to really think about them. How do people react to them? I can almost guarantee you that you think they are admired by everyone and everyone seems to like them and get on well with them and they seem to have more people relate to them better than anyone else.but, before you jump on the thought but they are better (fill in the blank here) than me, its nothing to do with looks, intelligence, higher position, funnier or anything else, its to do with their ability to stand up for themselves at the right time and to know when to apologise and take responsibility at the right time. They may not necessarily stand out in the crowd but they are admired and respected for their opinions. Now think of someone who is aggressive, someone who others say oh you dont want to mess with them or they are too in your face. These people are respected by some people and hated by others, the ones who respect them are more than likely aggressive themselves. Those who hate them or dislike them tend to stay out of their way and relate to them very poorly. Now think of someone who is sheepish and says yes to everything, and doesnt really speak up for themselves or lacks self confidence. They tend to blend into the background and are often thought of as less significant than others. This of course is a fault we humans have but it is sadly true that a lot of people think this way. However this is not to say it is a bad thing to blend into the background if that is your choice but you can be assertive and still blend into the background. Who would you most like to be like; the Aggressive one, the Assertive one or the Sheepish one? Look at your problem areas To change anything in your life you first have to recognise where the problem lies, I know Ive said this a million times but its worth re-iterating. Look at the times when you feel you really wanted to stand up for yourself but feel you couldnt, or when you really wanted to say no but said yes, or didnt say anything when the idiot at work made you look like a fool. Where does it occur most often? Are there certain people you have the most problems with? 72

Is it when you are in a crowd? Is it harder giving compliments or critiscisms or are both difficult? Answering all these questions will help you understand when and with whom the problems of assertiveness arise. It could be that you dont like talking to the opposite sex or feel intimidated, it could be you feel intimidated by people in authority. Answering the questions above will help you see exactly where the problem lies. After you have done the exercise above think about what you think might happen if you did assert yourself in the situations and with the people you thought about. Rehearsal My wife once told me she plans for almost all eventualities when she meets someone or feels a difficult situation arising, meaning she rehearses what would happen in certain situations and she thinks about her response to it before it has happened. She has gotten so good at this over the years that it is second nature to her, I admire her enormously for her quick wit and assertiveness and seeing how people respond to her, it amazes me sometimes. However I have practiced what I am teaching here and I practice everything in advance if I think a difficult situation might arise. For example I was at a seminar a few days ago with around 70 people, all of whom were qualisfied doctors, academics, senior practitioners etc. I was dying to ask the speaker a question about the topic and to clarify something but felt it might be a silly question. I thought about it for a moment and thought if I am thinking of the question and I think it is important then I am going to ask. I rehearsed within a few minutes exactly what I was going to say and my tone and hand gestures, waited for the right moment and asked my question and as silly as it sounds it felt very empowering. If I hadnt asked the question I would have berated myself all day for not doing so. This is being assertive, not being aggressive, a smart alec or whatever else its about knowing you have the right to ask a question or to stand up for yourself. So practice different scenarios in your head about being assertive. If you have not done this before it might take you some time but believe me when you practice it all the time it becomes second nature and you will find you just do it when you need to. However, initially to get you going just practice in your head. Here are some tips once you have practiced them in your head and time to put them into practice:

Keep it straight to the point and dont over complicate it. Be polite but firm with the person. Take everything the other person says and let it wash over you and remain calm. Look at the other person in the eye, but dont stare at them, (a tip I use is to look at the left eye, then the right and then the mouth) Dont apologise if its not necessary

You may feel nervous going into a situation whereby you know you are going to have to assert yourself, this is natural and everybody goes through this and I mean everybody. Pointing out someones behaviour 73

Something I use which is quite effective is stating what the other person is doing which is making me upset for whatever reason, for example: Why are you raising your voice and pointing in my face. The question stops them in their track for a moment and makes them lose their train of thought and to think about their actions, as some people genuinely dont realise how aggressive they are being. Pointing it out to them is a good way for you to take control of the situation. Using I statements Instead of getting angry at someone for their behaviour and keeping it inside use the I statement to let them know what you are thinking, for example: I feel you are being very aggressive toward me. I get upset when you start shouting at me. This tells the other person your thoughts on the situation rather than let them take control without any feedback which can often fuel their disruptive behaviour. Repeating your thoughts on the subject You might not use this very often but it is still a good way to be assertive and get your point across, for example: You: These jeans are torn, I would like my money back please. Assistant: Its only a small tear, I can give you a discount You: No thanks, I would like my money back please. Assistant: Well I could replace them for you? You: No thanks, I would like my money back please. Assistant: Okay, Ill just refund the money for you. Asserting yourself appropriately I have seen a lot of people being very shy and demure and blossom into assertive people which is great however just because you have found this new power to be assertive doesnt mean to say you have to use it at every opportunity. Know when to pick your battles and know when to let it wash over you. I hope you have found this useful and it would be great to hear your thoughts on it.

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7 Irrational thoughts that disrupt your life

Author: Steven Aitchison A lot of us suffer from irrational thinking which can affect our lives in a dramatic way. It can seperate the successful people in life from the unsuccessful ones, it can mean the difference between loving someone and hating someone, it can be the difference between peace and war. All wars, Yes I mean ALL, are caused by irrational thinking. In this post I will look at seven common irrational thoughts and hopefully if you suffer from irrational thinking it will help you to change. 1. If someone criticises me there must be something wrong with me There are many reasons why people criticise each other but it does not mean there is something wrong with you if they do criticise you. It means they have a differing opinion to you which is fantastic as without differing opinions in the world it would be a terrible place to live. 2. I must always seek approval in order to feel good about myself Many people have thought this at one time or another in their lives, however it becomes damaging when it is an entrenched belief. There is no way you can please everybody all the time so there is no point in even trying. Seek approval from yourself and if youre happy and feel good thats all that matters. Yes its nice to have other peoples opinions but dont go out of the way to please other people. 3. I wont try anything new unless I know I will be good at it Many people suffer from these types of thoughts. Trying new things in your life is a way for you to grow and learn more about yourself. You dont have to be good at everything in your life but it doesnt mean you cant enjoy new experiences even if you are not good at them.

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4. Its not my fault my life didnt go the way I wanted I have news for you; it is your fault. This doesnt make you bad and it doesnt mean you are a failure. You have control over your thoughts and therefore your actions. You thoughts and actions will determine your life. If you constantly blame others for the way your life has turned out you have given all your power away to other people. Take the control back and take responsibility for your thoughts and actions. 5. I am inferior to everyone else Thats just the way you feel, which doesnt make it true. You have qualities that nobody else can touch and other people have qualities that you cant touch. Recognising your strengths will build your self confidence recognising others strengths will build their self confidence but dont put yourself down when recognising that somebody else is better than you at something. 6. I was rejected which means there is something wrong with me This is over generalising like the person who was rejected in a relationship, they think it always happens to them and they must somehow be unworthy of love. People reject others due to differing ideals, just like you do, but it doesnt mean you are in any way unworthy it just means your ideals dont match someone elses ideals. 7. If I feel happy about life something will go wrong Another common irrational thought. You deserve all the happiness you make for yourself; your past is your past, if there are still issues lurking from your past that is blocking you to feel happy about today speak to someone about it. Do not tinge your present and future thoughts with bad memories or else your present and future thoughts will get infected and your life will always stay the same. How to stop your irrational thoughts Simple! Just catch yourself every time you have an irrational thought or self defeating thought and replace the wording of your internal thought. For example: You are driving on a beautiful day and a bird decides to shit on your car. You might think: that always happens to me, why do they always shit on my car To Its about time I got the car washed. Look for the keywords in there always, this is an untruth. If birds always shit on his car his car would be floating in the stuff. So catch yourself with untrue statements such as: always e.g. I always get caught in the rain (If that were true youd be a fish)

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I never e.g. I can never get a parking space. (If that were true you wouldnt be able to go anywhere in your car without stopping). I couldnt e.g. I couldnt walk a mile (have you tried?). Im hopeless ate.g. Oh, I am hopeless at talking in a group. (usually said whilst talking to a group of friends). Its terrible e,g. Isnt it terrible that its raining? (Eh! No, its not terrible). There are a lot more irrational thoughts out there and you have to be conscious to catch yourself thinking them. I hope this article helps you to catch your irrational thoughts and brings your life into perspective.

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5 Eye exercises to improve your vision

Author: Steven Aitchison Over the last 10 15 years there has been a marked increase in the number of people who wear glasses and contact lenses. This can be put down to drastically increased computer useage both at home and at work, and increased television watching. Good news for opticians around the world bad news for us, but it neednt be! Our eyes need regular exercise in order to keep them healthy, just like any other muscle in the body. The thing is, we take it for granted that our eyes will eventually give up on us and we will eventually need glasses or contact lenses. This doesnt have to be the case if you regularly exercise your eyes. Also, if you start wearing glasses or contact lenses your eyesight will only get worse over time rather than get better as your eyes will get used to the new lense and need even stronger lenses to function properly. Everybody who wears glasses and contacts will tell you their eyes have gradually got worse over time but they have put it down to their eyesight getting worse which is not necessarily the case. This may sound quite controversial to some people and a lot of people are opposed to this advice when I have given it. Opticians are people of some authority so why would someone listen to me rather than someone who has had years of training and years of experience and have big fancy machines to test your eyes. Simple answer is that 90% of opticians would not be required if everybody done some sort eye exercise on a daily basis. Of course there are exceptions and a lot of people might need glasses or contacts due to congenital problems or some kind of trauma 78

however I believe most people who wear glasses do not need them or did not need them in the first place. I use the computer at home and at work for an average of 9 hours per day and do not need glasses. This is only because I have resisted listening to opticians who advised I need them. Instead I have exercised my eyes and after a few weeks of exercising my eyes, they have returned back to normal vision. I know I will get a lot of abuse for this post but I stand by what I am saying and advise you, if you are a glasses wearer or contact lenses wearer to try the exercises for a few weeks and let me know how you get on. What have you got to lose? The exercises I use are pretty standard and have been in the public domain for years but they work for me and hopefully they will work for you. I have to give credit here to Marc Grossman after finding his articles on eye exercises a few years ago. 5 Exercises to strengthen your eye muscles and improve your vision 1.Blinking Blinking is an often overlooked yet simple way to keep your eyes fresh and being able to focus longer. Computer users and television watchers tend to blink less, especially when they are intently focused on something. Try it just now as a simple exercise. For the next two minutes blink every 3 4 seconds. After you have done this for two minutes, mentally take note of how your eyes feel, are they strained, relaxed, tired. Now try and not blink for 30 seconds at a time for two minutes. Do you feel any difference? Whenever you blink your eyes are going into a brief period of darkness which helps to keep your eyes fresh and discharges previous information ready for new information, this helps to reduce eye strain. Your blink rate can also help with your communication skills. Think about someone who looked at you intently and you possibly felt threatened by them. What you may have missed is the fact that they had stopped blinking. When someone stops blinking and stares at you when you are talking its a sign of aggression. However whenever you are talking to someone and they are blinking at a 3 -4 second interval its a sign of a relaxed and friendly listener. Check out peoples blink rates the next time you are talking. Check out this article for more info Dramatically improve your eye contact skills 2.Palming This is done to relieve stress around the eyes and as a way to relax your eyes whilst taking a computer break. Instructions for palming 1. Take a few deep breathes before you begin. 2. Make yourself comfortable whilst leaning forward on a desk or with your elbows resting on your knees. Close your eyes. 79

3. Place your two hands over your eyes with the cup of your palm covering your eyes, your fingers on your forehead and the heel of your hand will rest on your cheekbone. Make sure you can blink freely and you are not putting too much pressure on your eyes. Thats it. Palming gives you the opportunity to rest your mind and your eyes for a few minutes at a time. It may not sound much of an exercise but it can make a big difference in your working day if you stop for a few minutes and do this exercise. 3.Figure of eight This is to exercise your eye muscles and increase their flexibility. This is quite a simple exercise but a good one. Imagine a giant figure of eight in front of you about 10 feet in front of you. Now turn the 8 on its side. Now trace the figure of eight with your eyes, slowly. Do it one way for a few minutes and then do it the other way for a few minutes. It may seem very alien at first but its worth persevering with it. 4.Near and far focussing This is one of my favourite exercises as you can do it almost anywhere, I say almost as I couldnt imagine doing it on the underground without getting strange looks from those around me. Instructions for Near and far focussing. 1. 2. 3. 4. Sit in a comfortable position, or stand, this will only take 2-3 minutes at a time. Put your thumb about 10 inches in front of you and focus on it. Now focus on something else about 10 20 feet in front of you. On each deep breath switch between focussing on your thumb and the 10-20 feet object in front of you.

This will strengthen the muscles in your eyes over time and improve your vision overall. 5.Zooming This is another one of my favourites as it is very easy and quick to do. Instructions for zooming Sit in a comfortable position Stretch out your arm with your thumb in the hitchhike position Focus on your thumb as your arm is outstretched. Now bring your thumb closer to you, focussing all the time, until your thumb is about 3 inches in front of your face. 5. Now move your thumb away again until your arm is fully outstretched. 6. Do this for a few minutes at a time throughout the day. This exercise will strengthen your focussing skills and your eye muscles in general. 80 1. 2. 3. 4.

I hope this post has stimulated your interest in natural vision exercises and it leads you to research this subject more. I am by no means an expert on this subject so please do your own research. I can only tell you what works for me.

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How to get by on 5 hours of sleep a night

Author: Steven Aitchison For a few years know I have been getting by on 4 -5 hours of sleep and I didnt realise how unusual that was until a few weeks ago when I was having a conversation with some of my work colleagues. A lot of them said something like Oh I need my 8 hours of sleep every night. It got me to thinking where this myth of needing at least 8 hours of sleep per night came from. So I done some research and found it comes down to science. Its the scientists that say we need at least 7 9 hours of sleep per night depending on age, gender and working patterns. So why do I need only 4 -5 hours and other people, like my wife, need about 8 hours of sleep per night? I decide to try a little experiment. For the last few weeks I have been trying my hardest to sleep for 8 hours per night. My results were strange. The first few days I kept on waking up at 4.30 5.00am. I forced myself to stay in bed and try to fall back asleep, I dosed on and off. By the 5th day I was able to sleep for about 7 hours before waking up. The thing is I felt kind of groggy when I was getting up and the rest of the day felt rushed and I was trying to catch up with myself. The last week I actually got into it and I was starting to get used to sleeping longer, on average about 7 7.5 hours per night. I felt less groggy and got into the swing of the day a lot quicker. A few days ago I went back to normal and got up at 5am after turning out the lights at about midnight. I felt groggy again as my sleep pattern had been upset again however this morning I feel fine after getting my 5 hours of sleep. 82

What this has shown me is that we get by on what we are used to and our sleeping patterns will take care of itself once we have developed a sleep habit. My habit is 5 hours of sleep and I believe my sleep cycle will work itself into my habit of 5 hours of sleep. Of course our body needs to rest and we need sleep and our sleeping cycle, REM time, delta sleep, theta sleep and alpha sleep etc all play a role in replenishing our minds and bodys. However, I believe the sleeping cycle will work itself into our own sleeping habit. Here is how to get by on 5 hours of sleeper night 1. Know your sleeping pattern just now. You will already know what time, roughly, you go to bed each night and when you wake up. Work out how much sleep you get per night. 2. Decide on the pattern you would like E.G. if you would like to get by on 5 hours per night or 6 hours. 3. Break the new routine into a four week block. For example if you currently get 8 hours per night just now and your goal is to get 5 hours per night. Your pattern should be Week 1 Get 7 hours 15 minutes of sleep per night Week 2 Get 6 hours and 30 minutes of sleep per night Week 3 Get 5 hours 45 minutes of sleeper night Week 4 Get 5 hours of sleeper night 1. Breaking it up this way will not shock your body and make you feel as groggy throughout the day. Now the only thing youve got to worry about is what to do with the extra 15 25 hours per week. I occasionally have the odd dose in front of the TV for 15 minutes but its one of those micronaps when I feel totally refreshed after it. I know have a lot more time to fit everything I do online into my schedule and feel much more productive throughout the day.

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5 Ways to triple your business profits-Part 1

Author: Steven Aitchison Most people will have heard of the 4 Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferris, about how we can work less and get paid more by working smarter. I have applied such thinking to my own online business and listened to other great internet marketers such as Rich Schefren, Howie Schwartz, Brian McCelroy, Dennis Becker and Rachel Rofe. I want to give you 5 ways that I have found to work which has doubled my business sales, tripled the bottom line and halved my advertising budget. When I first started writing this article I expected it to be around 1200 words for the whole 5 ways of doubling your business sales, but when I got started I soon realised I had a lot more to say than 1200 words. So I have written about 1500 words for each part. For regular readers you will know I own www.binaural-mind.com where I sell binaural beats to the public for better health and relaxation, I also do affiliate marketing which I wont talk so much about as I dont want to give away my niche. Anyways, when I first started out I thought if I sell the downloads of the binaural beats cheap I will get loads of vistors to the site and loads of sales through word of mouth. Well the first month of going live, and it was a soft beginning, which meant I didnt really shout at all about the opening of the site, I made 6 sales at $29 for each download. I then received a message from someone else who was selling downloadable binaural beats basically saying that I should not under price my product as there were others out there selling binaural beats for up to $1000 per set. I thought about this for a bit and obviously I knew that my competition would not want me selling cheap for obvious reasons but I thought about the psychology of it, if a product seems to cheap then it cant be any good which means a lot of people wouldnt buy it purely for the fact that it seemed to cheap. I then braced myself and doubled the price of my product and waited to see what would happen. After two days, absolutely nothing, on the third day a few questions from prospective buyers, on the fourth day 2 sales at $69 each. Id raised my prices by $40 and I was still getting sales. I kept it at the new price and I am still getting sales and with over 90 sales I have only had 1 return which is not bad going for a clickbank product. As you know I have been affiliate marketing for a few years and I have also started up an internet marketing arm of the business offering advice to offline businesses. I was speaking with one of my clients a few days ago about a making them a website and do internet marketing for a fixed fee and monthly fee thereafter. We sat down and discussed her business which was a service she offered to the public. I gave her five pieces of advice for free which will bring in an extra $10,000 $30,000 per year. This womans business was run on word of mouth alone and she had a great reputation for what she did which was to make custom made curtains and pelmets for clients. She had made our curtains and pelmets for a great price. After the job was done we had a word about her business and I asked a whole load of questions about her business and her marketing and she said she didnt do any marketing, it was all word of mouth. I asked if she would like more business and how much she could handle; the answer? Of course she would and could handle a lot more. 84

We sat down and went into more detail about her business and looked at her competition to find out what they were charging for their service. It turns out she was one of the cheapest on the market in her area. I gave her 5 pieces of advice which I know will increase her sales, triple her profits and half her workload. 5 Ways to double your sales and half your workload Part 1 1. Increase your price You might have guessed it already, the first piece of advice I would give to businesses offering a service of some kind would be to increase their price by at least 50%. I can almost hear the screams of abuse at this piece of advice; were in a recession for goodness sake why on earth would I raise my prices? but hear me out, (and by the way were only in a recession because the media say we are). If you are offering a service to people and you have taken the time to get qualifications in your area of expertise and are considered a professional then increasing your price should be a natural way to build your business but most business owners dont think like this. They start out in business offering a service cheaper than most to build the business and get a reputation. However, once the business has been established and the reputation gained they keep the prices the same as before, why? They dont want to rock the boat, they are fearful that if they put the prices up the buyers will leave. This is not true. If you have a great reputation and people trust you, they will happily pay you the extra 50%. Yes, you will get customers who leave you but you will also gain new customers with smart marketing. If you are a business owner who sells products you obviously cant sell your products with a 50% increase? You can, depending on what you are selling. One of my clients, a computer shop owner, put a new type of motherboard in his custom built computers which greatly increased the performance of the computer. His new motherboard was 50% more expensive to buy. After talking about it we marketed the benefits of the new motherboard and he increased the price of that computer model with the new motherboard by 50% and it is now the bestselling computer in his shop. Lets look at the numbers for the computer shop owner. Price Old Computer New Computer Increase $800 $1200 50% Sales per month 25 25 Cost to build $530 $630 19% Profit Total Profit for month $270 $6750 $570 $15250 111% 111%

As you can see from the table above the main points are, The cost to build the computer was 19% more as the motherboard had gone up in price by 50% but the rest of the components of the computer stayed the same price. So although it was more expensive to build we still increased the overall price of the computer by 50% and gained 111% increase in profit, amazing! Okay you might think we were being a bit greedy here. So lets just say you increase the price by 25% which is just over the amount it costs extra to build the computer. 85

Price Old Computer New Computer Increase $800 $1000 25%

Sales per month 25 25 -

Cost to build $530 $630 19%

Profit Total Profit for month $270 $6750 $370 $9250 37% 37%

You still increase your profit by 37%. The above tables do not take into consideration the increased amount in sales for the new computer as they were marketed as having the latest new motherboard and we marketed all the benefits of the new motherboard, not to mention the increased business through word of mouth. So by adding an extra high end component we have increased the sales and increased the total profit by 111%. Work out your numbers on your business and see if adding an extra 20-50% would make a difference. I think youll be surprised at the numbers it throws out. A lot of people who own a service-business are afraid to raise their prices for fear of losing customers. You are always going to lose a few customers along the way no matter what you do so why not increase your price, increase your customer service and lose a few old customers and gain a few new ones.

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Planting thought seeds for a better life

Author: Steven Aitchison Many people dont allow themselves the luxury of thinking big. I think this may be due to the fact that they dont believe in themselves enough to allow themselves to think big. In this article I wanted to give you a technique to start the process of thinking big and I wanted to tell you why it is important to think big. Planting a thought seed Planting a thought seed is a fantastic way for you to begin thinking about the life you want and getting it. Simply put a thought seed is a tiny thought that lets you momentarily dream about what your life could be like if you could have anything. Thought seeds start like: What if I were rich, what would it belike and you allow yourself to daydream about what it would be like being rich. What would I feel like if I had the job I really wanted? and allow yourself to daydream about having the job you really want and what it would feel like and how you would change as a person because of it. what if I could start my own business? and so on Lots of what if statements are examples of thought seeds. Probably the biggest thought seed a lot of people have is what if I won the lottery?. Weve actually had conversations at work on this very topic. 87

Why plant a thought seed Planting thought seeds are your key to gaining a better life. Everything you do begins with a thought seed. That includes having a shower in the morning to get ready for work, having your breakfast, starting a business, starting a relationship etc. The kind of thought seeds I am talking about are life changing thought seeds not your run of the mill ones which most people have an act on. Here are some famous thought seeds throughout history: I wonder what it would be like if we had a black president.. What if it were possible to connect every computer in the world to share information. I wonder if it would be possible to build a computer that we could use in our homes. What if we could explore space and put a machine on the moon. wouldnt it be great if we could communicate with anyone using a wire and a handset. Would it be possible to make light with the flick of a switch. Wouldnt it be great to fly like a bird in the skies There are literally millions of examples of life changing events that start with a thought seed, a tiny little what if statement is usually all it takes. However most people dont act on these thought seeds and dismiss them for various reasons, mainly because we think we could never do it. Well I think its time we started acting on these thought seeds and nurturing them to grow and be fully realised. Growing your thought seeds Not everyone is going to have world changing ideas and thats okay, but we can affect the world in a small way by changing our own lives for the better. To change your life you first have to know what you want and what you would love to change about your life. So the first thing to think about is what would you change about your life if you could. No need for writing this down just have the thought, think of something right now that you would love to change about your life. When you have thought about something you would love to change, imagine what it would be like if you had already changed that aspect of your life. Go into detail here, think about how you would act, think about how your friends and family would act toward you, dream about how it would feel, try and imagine every aspect of the change as if it had already happened. You can do this for several days or several weeks before going onto the next step. The next step is to ask yourself what kind of things you would need to do to allow this change to happen. Start with the very basics. For example if you wished you could have a better job you could think the first thing you would have to do is where you could get some training to better your chances of getting your ideal job, or you could think about looking at internet job sites to get an idea of what the employers are looking for. Think about every aspect of the process it would take to make the change you desire. Again take as much time 88

as you want to do this, several weeks if necessary but make sure you think about it often and every day. This way your mind will keep on working for you and help you spot opportunities to make the change you desire. Let your thought seeds flourish The only thing you have to do here is keep thinking about your desires and thinking about the kinds of things you would have to o to make your desires a reality. There is absolutely no pressure on yourself to do anything or take any action other than thinking about your desires often. Why do all of this? A lot of people dont take the time to think about the things they really want in life. When you have the initial thought of your desire that may be as far as it goes, but now you have gone a step further and actually thought about the steps that you would have to take to make it happen. When you do this your brain goes into overdrive and starts noticing things in your life that could bring your desire closer to you. You will start to see strange coincidences in your life that relates to your desire and a lot of people will take action on these coincidences. So, just by thinking about your desires with no pressure on your part you may be a step closer to gaining the life you want. Taking action Of course there is a need, eventually, to take action, as you will never get anything in life unless you take action. However, as this process of planting thought seeds brings the action closer to you it is much easier to realise your desires.

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Life is shit

Author: Steven Aitchison Life is shit! I have spoken to so many people who complain about life and how shit is. In every single case the person who has been complaining has done absolutely nothing to change their life to make it less shit. Here are the most common life is shit.. phrases and how to over come them. Life is shit because I dont have the money to do the things I want! There are literally hundreds of ways to make extra money, but ONLY if you are willing to work for it. I dont mean work hard all day and all night I mean work smart and automate as much as possible so you are making money whilst you sleep. Some things you can do are: 1. Affiliate marketing Sell other peoples products online. A simple website, a few keywords, a google adwords campaign and you are more or less up and running. The easiest place to start is selling stuff from Clickbank. 2. Sell your knowledge Do you have a skill that could be taught either via seminars or via an ebook? Truth is, everybody has. You can turn your knowledge into a saleable commodity. I have learnt a bit about internet marketing over the last few years and am now selling that knowledge to local businesses, via an ebook to anybody who wants to know. You can learn the skills of internet marketing in a few weeks of dedicated learning. If you do this you will have more knowledge than most businesses will know in their lifetime. Think outside the box with this one. I know someone who makes a killing just installing wordpress blogs for people and setting it up for them. It takes her two hours of work and she charges $100 a time. Thats only two examples of making extra money. There are hundreds more you just need to put your thinking cap on. Dennis Becker advocates trying to earn an extra 5 Bucks per day and then take it from there. How hard would it be to earn an extra $5 per day. If you can earn an extra $5 you can then double that. Each time you double the amount to make in a day 90

your money limit will go higher and you will become more confident and in turn your own mind will keep working for you and you will begin to see new ideas in everything. Life is shit because I dont have my ideal partner! When you are thinking like this you are giving all of your power away to an unknown entity, namely the person you think you should be with. The thing to do here is concentrate on being happy with yourself before giving up part of the power to someone else. When you are totally content within your skin you are ready to meet your ideal partner. Work on yourself in every single way possible. Thinks of all the things you want to be and work on each part in turn. Another piece of advice would be to concentrate on your strengths. Dont waste time on minor weaknesses, concentrate on building up the things you are already good at. Life is shit because I dont have the job I want! Tell me, what have you done to find the job you really want? Most people who say this dont really know what they want so how are you going to find your ideal job when you dont know what it is. You first need to figure out what you want to do and then figure out how to get it. For example if you want to get a job as a web designer. You start small and learn the basics by building your own sites, one site at a time. Then when you get more confident you can go to college for a certificate of some kind and then build up your knowledge and certification from there. If you dont have the time to go to college then learn at home and build your own websites then ask someone if they would like a website built for free. This way you will gain experience of working with clients and the kind of questions and difficulties they will have. Do one a month, then two a month and then three a month and pretty soon you will have a website business, always building your knowledge as the world of the internet is always changing. I remember having a conversation with my older sister a few years ago and she was saying how she wanted another job. She was babysitting for a few people and doing a few part time jobs cleaning and working in a shop. When she sat down and thought about what she loved she became a registered child minder and set up business for herself. Her business is now booming and she is doing great for herself. Everybody is always looking for reliable, registered child minders. This applies to any type of work you want to do. Life is shit because I dont have a job! Unless you have some sort of disability there is absolutely no need to be out of work. I would do anything, anything at all to bring money into the family home and for my self respect. There is no need in this day and age not to have a job, if you cant find an employer create a job for yourself. Im sorry if that sounds harsh, but its the truth. We are so engrained into thinking that somebody has to give us a job that we dont think outside the box. Why do we have to go through the job hunting, the letter writing, the research, the 91

interviews, to help someone else make money? There is no need at all, create a job for yourself, be your own boss. If you are a hard worker there is virtually nothing you cannot do, however if you are a lazy so and so then put up or shut up, there is no point in complaining about something if you are not prepared to do anything about it. Life is shit because nobody likes me! You might be right, everybody might not like you and for one reason You dont like yourself. There is no possible way people will like you until you truly like yourself and if youre at this stage you have a lot of work to do on yourself. Small steps Every single journey you take in your life will begin with a small step and this is the same for changing your life. At this stage dont think about the bigger picture, think about the small changes you want to make and work on them continuously and build up your repertoire until you are happy with yourself. I have to say if you are happy feeling like shit then there is obviously no need to make any changes. Life is shit because I have lost a loved one! There is nothing at all I can say that will change your mind and rightly so. The grieving process needs to be realised fully before you can move on and this, I know its clichd, will take time. I cannot begin to imagine being in your shoes and I would not dare insult you by offering advice. There are a million other different Life is shit because.. phrases and 99.9 % of them can be overcome if you are willing to put in the effort. I am probably not going to be liked for this article but I had to say it.

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