We all hit tough times every now and again and sometimes it might seem like there’s no hope of escape. This hopeless feeling puts you into an extremely negative vibration which is not only unpleasant to experience, but also causes the law of attraction to bring more unpleasant experiences into your life. Thankfully, there are several things you can do to help deal with these difficult times and even start lifting yourself out of them.

Six Tips On How To Handle Tough Times

Whether you’re struggling financially, emotionally, with relationships, or with your health, these tips are sure to help.

Give them a try. The more you use them, the better your results will be.

1. Look For The Good In Your Life

When things go wrong in your life, it’s easy to keep your thoughts focused on those problems. Focusing on your difficulties will tend to leave you feeling both drained and depressed.

No matter what is going wrong, I promise you that there is still a lot of beautiful and amazing things in your life. You just need to take some time to look for them. Are you currently enjoying good health, great relationships, a good financial situation, a great spiritual connection, a beautiful home, a loving family, great friends? Take some time to really appreciate any or all of these things if you are.

Another great place to look for things to appreciate is nature. Take some time to go out in nature and really focus your attention on the fresh air, the sunshine, the beauty of the plants and animals. This is one of my favorite things to do when negative thoughts start overwhelming me. Within minutes of going outside and really focusing on everything around me I start to feel truly grateful that I have the opportunity to live on this planet and experience the beauty of it with all of my senses.

Looking for things to appreciate will redirect your thoughts away from what’s wrong, and you will quickly notice yourself starting to feel better. As you begin to feel better your vibration will shift from a negative one to a positive one and you will begin to attract more positive experiences into your life.

2. Focus On Solutions, Not Your Problems

I mentioned earlier that it’s easy to get caught up in focusing on what’s wrong in your life. You can feel angry, depressed, victimized, or worse. You can talk to your friends and family about how horrible your life is, and they might even give you some pity or tell you how much their lives suck too. However, none of these things is going to help you move past your difficulties. In fact, all of these activities are just going to make you feel worse and putting all of your energy into the problem itself is just going to attract more problems into your life.

Instead of focusing on the problem itself, start looking for ways to solve it. Instead of asking “why me?”, start asking “How can I solve this?”.

As you begin focusing on solutions, several things will begin to happen:

• First, you will begin feeling better and more hopeful.
• Second, your subconscious brain will begin to work on coming up with a solution for you.
• Third, your point of attraction will shift and you will begin to attract solutions into your life instead of more problems.

3. Learn Your Lessons

Problems and difficulties offer a wonderful opportunity to learn, grow, and become a better person.

• Health problems offer lessons on how we should be taking care of our bodies.
• Financial difficulties can force us to find new and better ways to make money (or force you out of a job you hate, giving you the opportunity to pursue doing something you love doing instead).
• Relationship difficulties offer you the opportunity to improve how you relate to and treat others. They also offer you the opportunity to better determine what qualities are important in the people you enter into relationships with.

Whenever you encounter a problem or difficulty, look for the lesson in it and do your best to learn it well. When we learn the lessons that our problems are trying to teach us, we grow as an individual and put ourselves into a position to enjoy a better life experience as we go forward.

4. Take Action

We can learn a lot from basic physics – nothing happens until something moves.

It’s not often that your problems will just go away on their own. Start brainstorming and researching ways that you can solve your problem, then get your butt in gear and go do it. You might just succeed! On top of that, you will start feeling hopeful instead of hopeless!

5. Keep Your Vibration Up

Since the law of attraction brings you experiences based on how you’re feeling, if you’re feeling depressed, angry, sad, lonely, or hopeless, you are attracting more negative experiences into your life.

If you want to attract better life experiences, you must do whatever you can to make yourself feel better.

Here’s a few ideas to get you started:

• Spend some fun time with a pet, friends, or loved ones.
• Get out into nature
• Visualize what you want instead of dwelling on the unpleasant stuff that you’ve got
• Exercise vigorously. This will release endorphins that make you feel good.
• Spend some time doing your favorite hobby.
• Watch a funny movie, or read a funny book.

6. Ask for Help

Don’t be shy about asking other people for help and advice. Most people like helping others and will be glad to help you in some way, shape, or form. Besides, even if they don’t help you, you really aren’t any worse of than before you asked. You’ve really got nothing to lose by asking.

What About You?

Do you have any tips you’d like to share on how to handle tough times?

Technorati Tags: tough times, how to handle tough times, success, law of attraction, visualization

This book was literally years in the making. Don’t get me wrong, it didn’t take years to write it, but it did require years of research and practical application testing before I could develop a sure fire formula for creating anything you want in life.

How to Live the Life of Your Dreams outlines a ten step process that includes teaching you how to determine what you really want in life, and then shows you step-by-step how to go about making it a reality.

Here are just a few of the things you’ll learn:

• How and why you ended up where you are now.
• How to quickly discover what you really want, and how to get it.
• The ten steps to making what you want a reality.
• Simple action items for each step that make it easy to implement the process.
• The perfect way to formulate your goals.
• How to get your subconscious mind to help you succeed.
• Simple techniques that will activate the law of attraction to bring your dreams to you.
• The right way to visualize for maximum effectiveness.
• How to use the power of your mind to put your success on virtual autopilot.
• How to discover and easily clear your mental blocks to success.
• How to easily tap into your intuition to learn exactly what steps will make your dream a reality in the quickest, and easiest, way possible.
• How to expect success, and get it.
• How to utilize the little known “law of vacuum” to literally pull your dreams into reality.
• How to allow your dreams to easily unfold in your life.
• How to stay motivated and increase your confidence in your own creative abilities.
• How to have fun doing the whole process.

You really can create the life you want. Stop struggling and learn the ten steps you need to take to make your dreams come true.

This e-book is guaranteed to help you. If it doesn’t, you can ask me for a full refund (within 60 days) and I’ll give it to you, no questions asked. Plus, you can keep the e-book and bonuses as my gift to you.

Click here to learn more about “How to Live the Life of Your Dreams” and the bonus gifts I’ve included.

READERS OF MY BLOG CAN SAVE 50% FOR A LIMITED TIME

As a special gift to my blog readers, you can USE THIS SPECIAL LINK TO GET IT FOR 50% OFF! (sorry – the sale is over – link removed). You won’t find this special savings link anywhere else. Act quickly though, I will be removing this link in a few days.

Technorati Tags: success, law of attraction, goals, dreams, law of vacuum

“Quit now, you’ll never make it. If you disregard this advice, you’ll be halfway there.” – David Zucker

We’ve all seen somebody cover their ears and start singing “La-la-la-la-la, I’m not listening!”. If not, I hope you at least know what I’m talking about. At any rate, I’m here to tell you that this is a completely acceptable way to handle things when somebody tells you to give up pursuing your dreams.

If you’ve been pursuing your dreams, or even talking about it, you’ve probably also had the unpleasant experience of someone telling you to give up or not even bother trying. When someone tells you to give up, it can be tempting to take their advice. After all, giving up is easy and painless right? It might especially seem that way when things don’t seem to be working out for us.

The problem is that giving up on your goals and dreams isn’t painless. Sure, you could learn to be content with the way things are, but I can promise you that your dreams will continue to gnaw away at you for your entire life. You’ll never be completely happy, something will always feel like it’s missing or incomplete, until finally one day you’re on your deathbed, full of regret, and wondering what your life could have been had you not given up.

Okay, so maybe that’s a pretty bleak picture to paint, but in many ways it’s true. Close your eyes for a moment and get your imagination going. Fast forward your life and imagine you’re in your final years on this planet. Do you think you will be glad that you spent your life playing it safe and taking the easy route? Do you think you’ll be glad you stayed in career you hated instead of pursuing your dreams? Do you think you’ll be glad you decided to take the easy way out and watched television every night instead of taking some small daily actions to make your dream a reality?

Giving up on your goals and dreams is not painless, and it won’t make your life any easier or better in the long run. But if that’s true, why would people tell you to give up?

The Two Types of Naysayers and How To Handle Them

Why in the world would somebody tell you to give up on your goals and dreams? There are two main reasons why someone might give you this flawed piece of advice.

1. They genuinely care about you and don’t want to see you suffer failure.
2. They aren’t currently pursuing their dreams, and the fact that you are is making them feel threatened by you.

1. The People Who Genuinely Care About You

If someone that genuinely cares about you tells you to give up on your goals, it’s probably because they don’t want to see you end up being hurt or disappointed. They worry that things won’t work out for you, and it can be hard for loved ones to watch us go through difficult times.

The way to handle this type of situation is to gently thank these people for caring enough to try to protect you from suffering. But you also need to let them know that you will also suffer pain and regret if you don’t try to succeed, and that you would appreciate it if they could try to encourage and support you instead. If they really do care about you, they will respect your wishes.

2. The People That Are Threatened By You

The other type of person that will try to discourage you are the ones that feels threatened by your ambitions. They might feel threatened for a couple of reasons, and both of them are very selfish ones!

1. When they see you going after their dreams, it reminds them of how they have given up and settled in life. This reminder can be painful. So instead of being inspired by you and following your example, they instead try to get you to give up so that they don’t have to suffer being reminded anymore. To deal with these types of people, feel entirely free to use the hand over your ears method and ignore them.
2. The second type of threatened person is worried that you’re going to leave them behind. They worry that as you move on, you’ll forget about them, or won’t have time for them anymore. To deal with situations like this, gently remind the person that they are being selfish and that if your relationship with them is truly important, you will both make time for each other no matter how much your life changes.

Conclusion

Stay strong, don’t give up, stay true to yourself and your dreams. Listen to the wise advice of David Zucker…

“Quit now, you’ll never make it. If you disregard this advice, you’ll be halfway there.”

And feel free to throw in a quick cover of your ears and a “La-la-la-la-la, I’m not listening!” just for fun.

Technorati Tags: self-help, success, personal-development, goals, dreams, advice

This is a tribute to my dear grandmother who passed away last Thursday, February 4th, at the age of 91. She was an amazing woman who made this world a better place during her time here.

My grandmother never verbally gave me any advice on life, but instead she provided a living example through the way she lived her own life. I’d like to share with you what I learned from her.

1. Speak Your Mind

My grandmother was never shy about speaking her mind. She would be quick to let you know if she was tired, hungry, thirsty, bored, or if she didn’t like something. I really appreciated that about her. I think that to many people waste time by being afraid to say what they’re thinking.

Just imagine if we all spoke our minds.

• No more trying to guess what’s wrong when someone is visibly upset. We could get straight to trying to solve the problem instead.
• We could get to know people for who they really are instead of the false fronts that so many people put on.
• We would know that the people who love us, love us for who we really are.

I think this would be a huge time and energy saver for everyone.

2. Exercise Every Day

Up until about the age of 89, my grandmother exercised every day. When she was younger she would be working on the farm that she lived on, and after she retired, she started walking 5 or more kilometers every day.

It didn’t matter if it was hot, cold, raining, or snowing, nothing stopped my grandmother from getting out for her daily exercise. For her, exercising wasn’t a should do, but a must do.

Regular exercise kept my grandmother strong and healthy. She was rarely ever sick, and she was never hospitalized for anything (except for a hip operation) until she was in the final year of her life.

3. Family is Important

What really matters the most at the end of your life is the relationships you’ve had. I’ve seen many interviews where successful people are asked what they would do differently if they got a chance to do it all over again. Almost every single one of them reply that they would spend more time with their families. They all seemed to realize that while success and accumlating money and things might be nice, it should never be done at the expense of your relationships with family and friends.

I think my grandmother understood this. Hardly a day went by that she didn’t spend at least some time with family. Sometimes her frequent requests for a visit seemed a bit frustrating, but now that she’s gone, I think our whole family really appreciates all the time that we got to spend with her.

4. Cook Everything From Scratch

My grandmother was a great cook. She made some of the best meals and pies I’ve ever tasted. And none of it ever came out of a box.

I think that part of her “secret” to having such a long and healthy life is that she avoided processed foods. Processed foods are usually devoid of any nutritional value and are often full of fat, sugar, and salt. My grandmother regularly fed herself and her family fresh, wholesome foods that provided them with plenty of vitamins and minerals.

5. Keep a Clean Home

My grandmother took pride in keeping a clean home. I never once saw any sort of mess, dirt, or dust in her home. She always honored both herself and her guests by having a clean home.

Just imagine for a minute that you got a call today saying that somebody of importance (the queen, the president, or the primeminister) was going to come over to your home for dinner tomorrow night. Would you end up going on a mad cleaning spree to get your home prepared for this person’s visit? You would want to honor this person and give them a good impression by having a clean home right?

Well, why not honor yourself by keeping your home just as clean for yourself? You matter just as much as they do. Not only that, a fresh, clean home makes you feel good, and if it’s well organized, you even tend to think more clearly.

6. Enjoy Life

Grandma ate a lot of nutritious food and she exercised regularly, but she also enjoyed life.

She didn’t deny herself the things she enjoyed, she just enjoyed them in moderation. Every day she would have one cigarette with her morning coffee. She enjoyed eating a little bit of something sweet everyday, and she would also enjoy the occasional drink.

When my grandmother did these things she wasn’t thinking of how bad they were for her, or how they were going to make her sick, or fat. She just simply enjoyed them. Being stress-free and enjoying life can go a long way to helping you to live a long and happy life.

My grandmother also had a lot of fun. She could often be seen cracking a subtle joke with a twinkle in her eye and a sly smile on her face. We even have many photos of her doing funny poses in front of landmarks, or laughing while wearing crazy looking green sunglasses.

Laughing and having fun helps to reduce stress. Stress can take a major toll on your health, so make sure you take some time to laugh and play everyday.

7. If You Love Someone, Tell Them Frequently

I never doubted that my grandmother loved me because she told me every time I saw her.

Feeling loved makes us feel good. Who doesn’t feel a bit better about ourselves and our day when somebody tells us they love us?

Don’t just leave it as an unspoken assumption. Tell your loved ones that you love them. It will make their day, and you’ll feel better for it to!

8. Work Hard

When my grandmother got married, she and her husband had nothing to their name. No home, no money, no car and their families had no money to help them out.

Since my grandmother never had anything handed to her. She always took the initiative to work hard to get what she wanted. It payed off. By the time she and her husband retired, they had a successful farm and a well funded retirement plan.

It’s always nice to receive a helping hand or a timely gift, but you should never expect it. If you want something, roll up your sleeves, get to work, and make it happen for yourself.

9. Get up Early

You’ve probably heard the saying “The early bird gets the worm”. I’m not totally convinced that it’s true, I see birds eating all day long. But there might just be something to it since many successful people seem to share the habit of getting up early.

My grandmother was one of them. She would always be up around 5am and by the time the rest of the world was rolling out of bed, she had already walked 5 kilometers or more and eaten her breakfast. Just imagine how much more you could get done in a day if you got out of bed an hour earlier.

I have also read in several health related books that going to bed early and getting up early is better for your health. Seeing as my grandmother lived to be 91, there might just be something to this.

10. Trust in a Higher Power

My grandmother always believed that God would take care of her. This belief provided her with a sense of security, and it also became her reality. It always seemed like things worked out well for her.

Almost all major religions, and more recently, quantum physics, teach us that our thoughts and beliefs create our physical reality. So if you believe that you will always be taken care of and that things will work out for the best, it actually will.

Just imagine how much less stress you would feel if you believed that there was a greater power out there looking out for you and taking care of you.

Technorati Tags: self help, personal development, success, grandmother

Did you know that you can improve any area of your life by changing one little word in your vocabulary? This is a word that almost all of us use many times throughout the day, and it’s related to the rules we create for ourselves.

We all have our own self-made rules. Here’s a few common examples:

• I should exercise every day.
• I should put more effort in at work.
• I should spend more time with my family.
• I should not eat junk food.

But how consistently do you follow them? If you’re like most folks, you probably don’t follow your own rules very often.

Would your results in life improve if you consistently followed your own rules? Absolutely!

Rules, Actions, & Results

Your rules determine your actions. And your actions have a big part in determining your results.

• If you consistently exercised every day, do you think your health would improve?
• If you consistently gave your best effort at work, or in your business, do you think you would get more opportunities for raises and promotions?
• If you consistently avoided junk food, and ate healthy food instead, do you think your health and weight would improve?
• If you consistently gave your family attention and love every day, do you think your relationships with your family members would improve?

I think we can safely agree that the answer to all of these questions is “yes”.

But if you already have rules relating to these things, how come you can’t, or don’t, follow them consistently?

How To Consistently Follow Your Own Rules To Get Better Results

If you want to consistently follow your own rules and enjoy better results in your life, you need to change one word.

If you look at all the example rules I gave you earlier, they all contained the word “should”. “Should” is not a very powerful word. If we ignore a rule that uses the word should, it doesn’t cause us much mental discomfort. And if there isn’t much discomfort associated with breaking a rule, then we aren’t very compelled to follow it religiously.

So, how can you make your rules more compelling? Change that “should” word to “must”!

Compare the following rules:

Rules that use the word “must” feel a lot more powerful and compelling.

Try It For Yourself

What are the rules you have for yourself? If they contain the word “should” change it to “must” and commit yourself to following your “must” rules.

A quick word of advice before you do though…

Don’t create to many new “must” rules at once. You could find it overwhelming and end up giving up or failing, which might end up being a blow to your self-esteem.

Since success breeds more success, start with something easy that you’re confident you can succeed at. Stick with that one new rule until you’re confident that you’ve mastered it.

Every time you master a new rule, your self-confidence will grow. As your confidence grows, you’ll be able to take on more “must” rules. And the more “must” rules you have in your life, the greater your results will be.

Technorati Tags: success, results, personal development, self-help

Changing your life can seem like a daunting task. Luckily, one of my favorite approaches to doing just about anything, also works great for tackling seemingly big tasks like trying to change your life.

The concept is simple. Take anything you want to accomplish and chunk it down into little bite sized steps that seem a lot more manageable.

If you wanted to apply this approach to making positive changes in your life, you could work on developing one new success habit every three months. Within a year, you will have developed four new positive habits.

Just imagine what your life would be like in one year’s time if you developed four new success habits like these:

• Spending several hours reading success related or educational books every week.
• Taking action toward your goals every day.
• Exercising three to five times a week.
• Eating less processed food and more nutritious food instead.

After just one year:

• You would be regularly filling your mind with useful information to help you improve your life.
• You would be steadily moving toward your goals and dreams.
• Your body will start becoming more healthy and energetic which will in turn give you more energy to devote to other areas of your life.

If you made these kinds of changes year after year, your life will be dramatically different in very short amount of time. All because you developed one new success habit every three months.

Why Three Months?

1. You’ve probably heard before that it takes about thirty days to develop a new habit. By allowing yourself a full three months of working with a new success habit, you can be sure that the habit will become deeply ingrained in your subconscious mind. This way you can be sure that you will continue your new habit even after the three month period is up.
2. Working on just one new habit every three months seems less intimidating than a new habit every month. Four new habits a year feels a lot more achievable than twelve. The more achievable something seems, the more likely you are to do it.

What Changes Do You Want To Create?

Where you want your life to go is ultimately up to you. By implementing one new success habit in your life every three months, you will constantly be growing, improving, and empowering yourself which will allow you to enjoy a life that just keeps getting better and better.

Technorati Tags: change your life, habits, success

This is the third post in a series on how to change your life. If you want to start at the beginning of the series, head on over to: How To Change Your Life: Part 1 – Become Clear.

If you followed the instructions in the last post in this series, you have your thoughts and feelings aligned with the goals you clarified in step one. Now you’re ready for the next step…

Learn what you need to know – the skills, knowledge, and experience you need in order to achieve your goals.

Why Learning Is Important

Taking action is important to reach your goals, but sometimes you don’t have the knowledge, skills, or experience you need to take smart action.

Taking smart action means doing things effectively and efficiently. In order to do that you need to know the best ways of getting things done.

The more knowledge you have about how to achieve your goals, the faster, and easier it will be to achieve them.

So how can you acquire the knowledge, skills, and experience you need? Read on…

The Different Ways You Can Learn

Use Jobs For Experience

If you’re looking to start your own business, a great way to learn what you need to know is to work for another business in the same industry. I’ve heard of many people who successfully used this approach.

So if you want to open a bake shop, work for a baker. If you want to open a restaurant, work for another restaurant… You get the idea.

While you’re working, you can learn how things are done, what suppliers and products are available, what prices to charge, and how the business is run. It’s an excellent way to prepare yourself for opening your own business.

A Mentor

Another excellent way to aquire the knowledge you need to succeed is to find someone else who has either already achieved what you would like to achieve. Or their are at least well on their way to doing it.

These people can offer excellent advice and guidance to help you do the same. Often they are more than happy to offer advice to people just starting out. All you need to do is ask. Otherwise, it’ might be a good idea to offer to help them out in whatever way you can in exchange for their help in return. That way, both parties benefit.

If you don’t already know someone who would make a good mentor, try looking for them wherever you think they might be hanging out. Industry conferences and business meet-up groups are a great place to start.

Reading

Books, magazines, and the internet are also fantastic resources to learn what you need to know. If you can’t afford to buy your own books, your local library can be an invaluable resource.

School and Courses

Consider taking a course, or getting a diploma or degree in your desired field. Many local colleges offer correspondence or night classes if you can’t go to school full-time.

Learn From Your Mistakes and Problems

Don’t let the learning phase of changing your life hold you back from taking action. You can actually learn a lot as you go along.

When you take action toward your goals, and things don’t turn out as planned, there’s always a lesson to be learned.

Start analyzing why things didn’t work out. What happened? Why did it happen?

Once you know the cause of the problem, start brainstorming ways that you can prevent it from happening again.

Don’t Wait Until You Know Everything

Learning is important, but you shouldn’t let it stop you from taking action right now using what you already know. If you know just enough to take even one small step toward your goal, go ahead and get started. You don’t need to wait to start changing your life. You can continue to learn while you take action.

Are you ready for the next stage of learning how to change your life? Excellent! Join me in my next post where I’ll be discussing more about taking action toward your goals.

Other Posts In The Series: How To Change Your Life

How To Change Your Life: Part 1 – Become Clear

How To Change Your Life: Part 2 – Align Your Thoughts And Feelings

How To Change Your Life: Part 4 – Taking Action

How To Change Your Life: Part 5 – Putting it all Together

This is the first post in a series on how to change your life.

If you want to change your life, there are several steps you need to take. Think of it as a formula for success.

The first thing you need to do is to become clear about what you want to create in your life.

What does it mean to become clear about what you want?

It simply means that you know exactly what you want in life. It’s not a vague concept, or just wanting your life to generally be better. You know the precise details of what you want.

Why You Need To Be Clear About What You Want

When you are clear about what you want, the Universe, or (insert the higher power you believe in) will help you create it. It will start sending the people, ideas, opportunities, and supplies you need to make it happen. All you need to do is take action when these things come your way.

So what happens when you’re not clear about what you want? Here’s an example to illustrate what can go wrong…

Imagine that I’m the Universe. You come to me and tell me that you want a new house, but you aren’t sure what kind of house. Excitedly, I reply that I will provide all the materials you need to build the house and I will even send a few people your way to help you build it.

Exciting, right?

You bet, but there’s two problems with this scenario…

First, if you don’t know what kind of house you want, you could end up putting something together that you either hate, or that falls apart, or worse.

Second, since I also have no idea what kind of house you want, I could end up sending you the supplies and assistance to build a wooden hut with dirt floors.

If your goals are vague, it’s like having a blueprint that’s all smudged and faded. It’s difficult to know what’s needed to make that blueprint become reality.

How To Become Clear About What You Want

If you already have a vague idea of what you want

If you already have an idea of what you want, you can help yourself gain some more clarity by asking yourself questions.

If you want more money, how much? What exactly do you want to do with the money? Exactly how much income would you need to do those things?

If you want to lose weight, exactly how much would you need to weigh to look and feel your best?

If you want a new partner in your life, what exactly should this person look and be like?

If you have no idea what you want

If you’re having difficulty deciding on what you want to create, try this writing exercise. Spend twenty minutes writing out a list of everything that you think you might like in your life. Don’t do any editing while you write this list, just put down everything that comes to mind.

Once you have your list, go through and compare the first item on your list to the second item. Decide which one would you like more, then put a line through the other item.

Now, compare the item you choose to the next item on your list and again cross out the one you would like less. Keep going down your list in this fashion until you’ve crossed out every item on your list but one. That remaining item is the one thing that you want to create most in your life right now.

Write It Down

Now that you’re clear on what you want to create, write it down. You might want to use one index card for each thing you want to create. Keep the cards handy and review them every day. That way you can keep yourself clear and focused on exactly what you want to create.

A goal in your head is just an idea. A goal on paper is more apt to become reality.

Be sure to check out the next post in this series when we will be discussing the next step of how to change your life.

Other Posts In The Series: How To Change Your Life

How To Change Your Life: Part 2 – Align Your Thoughts And Feelings

How To Change Your Life: Part 3 – Learn What You Need to Know

How To Change Your Life: Part 4 – Taking Action

How To Change Your Life: Part 5 – Putting it all Together

If your current results in life aren’t as good as you would like, you need to put yourself on a mental diet.

Brain Input = Physical Output

Most of us are aware of how important it is to eat healthy foods if we want to have a healthy body. There is similar relationship between what you feed your mind and the results you have in your life.

The majority of modern folks tend to have a mental diet that consists of news, television, modern music, gossip, mindless online entertainment, video games, and magazines.

While all of these things have the potential to give your mind a positive message, the sad truth is that most of them do not.

• Video games are often violent.
• The news is often negative and full of fear.
• Many popular magazines offer mindless entertainment and gossip.
• A lot of music contains either mindless or negative messages.
• The vast majority of television, movies, and online media is also mindless, negative, or violent.
• Many social circles are focused around gossip, complaining, or activities that don’t serve to improve your life.

Take a look around you. How successful and happy are the majority of people out there? Debt, stress, mental illness, suicide, and relationship problems are becoming more and more prevalent every year.

If you want your results to be better than average, you need to stop feeding your mind the same things that everyone else does. f you want to have different results than everyone else, you need to do things differently than everyone else.

Focus On A Mental Diet That Will Benefit You

What do you think would happen if you started taking some time every day to read or listen to something that was educational, uplifting, or inspiring? What would learning a new skill or talent do for your career or business? Everything that you invest in your mind today will benefit you as you move forward through life.

• If you regularly feed your mind books and articles on time management, you will tend to become very good at managing your time.
• If you regularly feed your mind books on spirituality, you will tend to become a more spiritual and loving person.
• If you regularly feed your mind with stories and techniques related to success, you will start becoming more successful yourself.
• If you learn a new skill, you become more valuable to your employer or your customers.
• If you hang out with other people who more positive and successful than you currently are, you will start to become more like them over time.

Whatever it is that you want to change in your life, decide what it is that you want instead, then start immersing yourself in it.

• Read books on the subject.
• Hang out with others who have already achieved what you want.
• Take a course on the subject.

Conclusion

By feeding your mind the right mental diet, your life will automatically begin to be influenced by ideas of greatness and excellence.

I think Mark Twain hit the nail on the head when he said:

The man who does not read great books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.

Put yourself on a healthy mental diet today and watch the results in your life start to change almost automatically.

You’ve probably heard the saying; “Nothing ventured, nothing lost”. It’s true. If you never do anything risky, there’s little chance that you’ll fail or get hurt.

The problem is, the opposite is also true; “Nothing ventured, nothing gained”. If you never dare to take any risks in life, you aren’t going to achieve much either.

Human beings are both very resilient, and very resourceful creatures. We are very adept at recovering from tragedy and failure. Take advantage of this and start taking more risks in life. If you never dare to fail, you will never have the opportunity to succeed, learn, and grow as a human being either.

Here are few things to consider when you’re facing a fear of failure:

1. Staying In Your Comfort Zone Can Be Painful

When you hold yourself back from taking full advantage of everything that life has to offer, you are staying within your comfort zone. This might seem like the best way to minimize the amount of pain in your life, but there is a dark side to playing life safe.

The dark side of staying in your comfort zone is that you are also giving up on your goals and dreams. This can be a painful experience, both now and in the future. When you’re on your deathbed, do you think you’ll be glad that you played life safe, or will you regret that you didn’t live your life to the fullest?

2. There’s No Shame In Trying

Most people aren’t going to judge you negatively for trying to achieve something in your life. If they do, they really aren’t the kind of people you want in your life anyways.

I personally have a lot of respect for people who are willing to put themselves out there and go after what they want. It really doesn’t matter if they’ve succeeded yet or not. The fact that they’re trying shows that they have character traits worth admiring.

3. There Is An Opportunity Cost To Not Taking Action

If the fear of failure is causing you to pass up on great opportunities, how much is it costing you? The stories of history are made up of men and women who took risks, big risks. If you want to leave your mark on the world, start taking some risks of your own.

If you fail to act on your goals and dreams. If you fail to take advantage of the opportunities that life puts in front you. You are doomed to a life of mediocrity.

4. Face Your Fear Head On

Remember the first time you tried doing something new? It was probably scary at first because you don’t know what you were doing. There was also a likely chance that you could get hurt if you screwed up. But the more often you did it, the better you became at doing it. After a while, it was no longer scary.

A good example of this is learning to ride a bike. When you first looked at that bike, it seemed really intimidating. If you didn’t get it right, you could get hurt. But after you got on that bike and rode it a few times, your confidence went up and it got easier and easier to do. Maybe you even fell and got hurt a few times, but those wounds healed, and as long as you had the courage to get on that bike again, you kept getting better and better at it. Eventually you were riding your bike with ease and enjoying all the benefits that your new found skill offered.

Face your fear of failure and just start moving toward what you desire. You might fall and get hurt a few times, but as long as you dust yourself of, and keep moving, the wounds will heal and you will get better and better. Eventually you’ll be a pro, and as you look back, you’ll see that you really had nothing to be scared of.

5. What’s The Worst That Could Happen?

If you’re wondering whether or not you should take a risk, try to determine what is the worst possible thing that could happen if you proceed. The first thing you’ll notice is that it usually isn’t nearly as bad as you first thought.

After you’ve figured this out, see if you can come up with a contingency plan to help deal with this problem should it arise. Having a good plan to deal with a potential problem will make you feel much more secure when you decide to take action.

If you can’t come up with a contingency plan, try to determine how long it would take you to recover from this “worst case scenario”. In most cases you could probably recover in a few days to a few months. If failure isn’t permanent, why not give it a try? You might just end up succeeding if you do.

6. Failure Is A Learning Opportunity

Failure is not a negative if you understand that it is one of the most valuable teachers you could ever have.

Failure can teach you what doesn’t work, as long as you are willing to learn the lesson. When you fail, take some time to step back and evaluate what might have caused the failure. Once you understand why your last attempt didn’t work, apply that lesson to your next attempt.

Each time you fail, you have the opportunity to become better. When you are able to look at failure as a teacher instead of something unpleasant, it loses its’ ability to cause you fear.

Thomas Edison, one of the greatest inventors in history, understood this concept very well when he said:

“I never failed once. It just happened to be a 2000-step process.”

7. Failure Is Nothing Personal

Failure is about results and nothing more. It isn’t a personality trait.

If you tried something and you failed, it doesn’t mean that you are failure. All it means is that the approach you tried failed.

Don’t take failure personally. Instead, use it as a measuring tool to determine how effective your last attempt was. As long as you don’t give up, you haven’t failed, you are simply learning and growing.

Get Moving

Don’t let the fear of failure hold you back any longer. Start using these tips today and start enjoying a life lived to your fullest potential.