Personal Growth and Development – Page 15

July 18, 2012July 18, 2012

How Committed Are You To Excellence? (PersonalGrowthCafe.com “Daily Personal Growth Walk”)

Excellence is a state of mind. It’s doing things with the best that you can and you’re going extra mile on all those things. Some people just give their bare minimum required of them.

Watch this video and get some ideas on how you could further improve yourself.

These are the links mentioned in the video:

Go to https://www.PersonalGrowthCafe.com and begin doing the “Crash Course on Creating Your Ideal Life with The First Covenant” there.

That’s my $197 video training – it’s yours as a gift to thank you for visiting the site.

You’ll also find dozens of other ways to “learn and grow and become a better person” there, as you’ll see when you visit the Personal Growth Cafe. (Go now…. thanks!)

Then go to http://www.PersonalGrowthCommunity.com so I can personally coach you and make sure you’re applying the insights from this video, specifically to what’s happening in your life.

Lastly, join the “Personal Growth Revolution” at http://www.PersonalGrowthRevolution.com and help us blow through our goal of improving the lives of 1 billion people within 1 year!

Joyfully,

Dan Klatt,
“Think And Grow Rich Guy”
Author of “the Daily Personal Success System”
President of the http://www.PersonalGrowthAuthorsAssociation.com

….Serving as Your WealthSensei!

PS. What was most insightful for you from this video?

Let me know in the Comments Section below.

PPS. Who do you know who would benefit from watching this video?

Share it with your Facebook Friends, Twitter followers, email contacts, etc.

July 18, 2012

You’re Important Too! Spring Cleaning Tips for the Mind

When you think of spring cleaning, you may have an image in your mind of family members gathering around with mops in their hands. That’s because spring is a good time to make your home and workspaces sparkling clean and clutter free.

However, there’s something else you should be paying attention to as well, and that’s keeping a clear and happy mindset.

If you find that you’re having trouble dealing with life’s stresses, and you need to sort out your thoughts, it will benefit you to use some of your spring cleaning time on yourself!

Try some of the following tips to reorganize your thoughts:

1. Get rid of anger. There are many negative emotions that you can eliminate during spring cleaning time, and anger is one of those emotions. You need to deal with it and then throw it away.

* Ensure you handle it effectively rather than hide it away. If you try to just push it away, it’ll just grow stronger and cause you more stress. Face your anger and make a plan to find solutions for your issues, or simply let go.

2. Focus on forgiveness. Focus on forgiveness if you’re holding onto negative emotions. You may not feel that the person you need to forgive deserves it, but you deserve to finally be at peace. Think of it as doing something for yourself instead of letting someone off the hook.

3. Make a list of your dreams and goals. Just as you make a list of your chores during cleaning, make a list of some of your short term and long term dreams and goals. When you list them out on paper, it gives you something concrete to look at throughout the day.

* Post your list where you’ll see it often, and cross things off as you accomplish them.

4. Be open to new ideas. When you open yourself to new situations and ideas, you’ll bring a new freshness and more opportunities into your life. It might feel safe to stay closed off, but eventually you’ll feel that things have become stale.

5. Don’t be afraid to have fun. Spring cleaning for your home or mind doesn’t have to be a chore. With the right attitude, it can be fun to bring change into your life. It’s like getting a fresh start and you can focus on your new beginning.

6. Stop to enjoy life and nature. Learn to see the beauty in things that you’ve taken for granted. Take a walk and get some fresh air, or get up early one day to watch the sunrise. These things will give you new perspectives on life.

7. Focus on organization. Just like you would organize your house when it becomes too cluttered, take this opportunity to learn to organize your mind when it becomes cluttered too. Avoid letting jumbled thoughts overpower your thinking process. Learn to use a calm approach and deal with one situation at a time.

* Take some time out of each day to clear your mind. You can accomplish this through meditation, prayer, or anything that relaxes you.

Remember, you’re very important, and more important than those other things you clean every spring. Use these tips to spring clean your mind, and enjoy your new beginning free from stresses and negativity.

July 18, 2012

Calming Your Mind and Lowering Your Stress Levels

More often than not, we tend to focus on too many things every day, leading to confusion, anxiety, and annoyance. This stress can be hard on the mind and body, but the good news is that you can lower your stress levels and calm your mind, helping yourself to feel better each day.

In fact, you can overcome these issues with a few simple techniques!

First, acknowledge that you must take time for yourself. Being all things to all people isn’t realistic, and neither is doing everything and solving all problems or concerns in one day. No one should expect that of you! If they do, you must recognize that it’s not healthy, and you must do what’s right and best for you. Your health and happiness could depend on it.

Ways to Calm Your Mind

Meditation and prayer are two of the biggest ways to calm a restless mind, but they aren’t the only things you can do. There are many other choices to help you feel better and live a stress-free life. You might also consider:

* Volunteering or focusing on helping others
* Exercising
* Listening to music
* Using your mind for joyous pursuits that interest you
* Playing with children or pets

Everyone has different things they enjoy in life, and you should find yours and practice them when you start to feel stressed or your thoughts try to run away from you. Avoid letting your thoughts talk you out of your dreams. Your dreams are yours; embrace them!

Being busy is not the problem when it comes to your mind. Being busy with things that aggravate you and make you feel down is the problem. Instead of dwelling on things that upset you, deal with them, let them go, and move on to things that you enjoy. You can do this with your thoughts, just like you would with a physical task in the workplace or at home.

Lower Your Stress Levels Each Day

Stress begins in your mind as thoughts, but it can manifest itself physically. You may feel tense, anxious, uneasy, angry, or have aches and pains you can’t really find a cause for. If stress continues all the time and becomes chronic, your health could be compromised.

You can let stress go and feel good every day.

Try these strategies to lower your stress:

1. Focus on what matters to you. What’s important in your life? Be proactive about your goals and priorities. When you’re working toward something that you want, it makes you feel good about yourself and your future.

2. Find both physical and mental ways to release your stress. Releasing your stress every day keeps it from building up inside you. Make the conscious choice to start each day fresh, without the stress from the day before.

* What relaxes you? Music? Hobbies? Spending time with your family? Enjoy a healthy dose of relaxation every day.

* Get as much exercise as possible. Exercise refreshes your body with a surge of oxygen and releases endorphins, the “feel good” hormone. Even if there’s no time for an exercise session, take the stairs instead of the elevator, park far away from the building so you can walk, and play with your kids or pets.

3. Practice these strategies consistently. Work on releasing your stress every day, even on days when you don’t feel as much stress, so it won’t be a struggle when you really need it. When you’re feeling good, it’s natural to forget about letting stress go, but it’s important to avoid getting complacent.

* Keep practicing and improving, even when you feel great!

Whichever techniques you choose to calm your mind and lower your levels of stress, ensure it’s the right fit for you and your lifestyle. Only you know what you really need and what makes you feel safe and at peace.

If you practice this peacefulness each day, it won’t be long before you start to feel calmer, even in situations where you would have previously been over the edge. Your thoughts will be clearer, instead of jumbled and racing. Physically, you’ll feel stronger, too, because your body will be free from the affliction of stress and anxiety.

July 18, 2012

Positive Strategies to Conquer Any Challenge

Life has many challenges, but do you think you can get past them? Of course you can!

Avoid letting other people – or your own thoughts – tell you that you can’t do whatever you have in mind. A challenge isn’t a problem, it’s an opportunity to excel and move forward. But you must see your challenge in a positive light or it may not offer you the forward movement you’re really looking for.

Do you tackle challenges by getting stressed out and aggravated? If so, it’s time to learn how to avoid that conflict and deal with stress effectively. Anyone can learn to do it, but the mindset is very important. Most of the struggles you face come from not looking at things through an optimist’s eye.

Seeing your challenges as opportunities will help you make it through with flying colors.

The way a challenge is presented to you might be uncomfortable, but you can take that and turn it around to your advantage. Then, things that try to take you down can actually build you up and be used for your good, instead. You may even begin to look forward to your challenges to move ahead in life and accomplish even more.

The Size of the Challenge Is Irrelevant

Whether the challenge is a serious health issue, a job loss, or something else entirely, you can remain positive about it. No matter what happens in life, there is always joy and beauty that can be found, as well. If you look for the good things, you’re going to find them; they’re hiding in plain sight, just waiting to be discovered!

It can be more of a challenge to stay positive when big things come against you, but step back and give yourself permission to grieve for a little while. Once that’s done, set it aside and move on to something else. Avoid looking backward, because you can’t possibly move forward if you’re fixated on what’s behind you.

See yourself as healthy, employed, happy, and whatever it is you need. There are baby-steps you can take to move in the direction of having what you want. It may seem like it’s taking a long time, but it’ll take even longer if you don’t get started. Make a plan for your challenge, even if you start out slow, and avoid letting setbacks get you down. Everyone has them.

The Critical Key to Conquering Your Challenges

Just as you can get through any size challenge, you can also get through any type of challenge. That’s the key that successful people use to unlock their goals and dreams. They avoid looking at how big or difficult their challenge is. Instead, they look at how big their faith is, and that can be faith in God, or simply faith in themselves and their abilities.

If you look at what you can do, instead of what’s coming against you, you can accomplish great things with what you have available. Take a look at what’s challenging you today. There may be more than one thing, but you only need to work on conquering one of them at a time.

Make a list of your challenges. Choose the challenge that appears to be the easiest, the one you feel best about, or the one you most need to address. Whichever one you choose is fine. The point is that you can get started and be successful, no matter what you’re facing, if you come up with a plan and stick with it. Then use your plan to conquer those challenges one at a time.

Challenges are something you’ll face all your life, just like everyone else. Whether they get you down or build you up will be determined by how you see them. You can’t choose your challenges, in most cases, but you can always choose how you react to them, and that can make all the difference in the world.

July 18, 2012July 18, 2012

Letting Go of Conflict from Your Past

You can learn to let go of the conflict in your life. Everyone has things from their past they aren’t proud of. Perhaps you keep thinking about a situation and wonder how things might have been different. The reality is, wishing things were different isn’t doing you any good! Avoid letting past conflict hold you back.

Instead, release your concerns and focus on the present. Today is what matters and you can use today to make better days ahead. There are many techniques you can use to help you leave the past behind, and it’s good to experiment with different strategies until you find the one that’s right for you.

Release Your Negative Thoughts

Thinking negatively about yourself or past events isn’t productive. Even if you’ve made mistakes, you should see them as learning experiences that brought you to where you are today. They’re teaching moments, where you make a choice and learn from what happens next.

Avoid dwelling on your mistakes. It’s important to take the information you learned and put it to good use. When you find yourself thinking negatively about your past, try a tactic that makes you focus on the present.

Some ways to help you focus on the present include:

* Exercising to raise your endorphin level
* Helping someone else by volunteering or getting involved in the community
* Meditating, praying, or visualizing
* Using affirmations to realize what positive things you currently have in your life

Conquer Your Conflict

Thoughts have power, so make them work for you, not against you. When you look at your experiences in a positive light, you open the door for more positive energy and experiences to come your way. Maybe something happened that you didn’t like, but what did you learn from it? What good things came from it?

There is always good if you look for it.

Most people forget to look for the good that comes in all experiences, so make it a priority to seek joy in the things you’re doing today. You aren’t required to forget about the past, but you can move away from it. Living in memories is no longer necessary. Live in the present, and look toward the future. It’s much easier to see where you’re going that way!

Make corrections on your journey if you need to, but avoid going backwards. Moving forward, into a bright future and away from conflict, should be your focus. When disconcerting thoughts of the past appear, gently urge them away with thoughts of the future. Avoid letting that negative voice get to you, because it isn’t what’s true and real.

You know what’s really important, even if your thoughts sometimes try to tell you otherwise. By focusing on what matters to you in the here-and-now, and seeing how you can extend that into your fabulous future, it becomes easier to shed the conflict that comes from spending too much time in the past.

It’s not possible to change your past, but it is possible to live for today.

That’s something to remind yourself of each day. Why live with regret and conflict when there’s joy and beauty to be found? Live in the light of peace and joy each day, and focus your energies on what you can do to make things better for yourself and the world around you.

You’ll find that you have more happiness and that you also bring more happiness to others. When you’re looking into the past, it’s hard to see the great things on display in the future. By letting go of your past, you’re able to change your focus and outlook onto much brighter things!

July 18, 2012July 18, 2012

Clearing the Mind – Easy Meditation Tips

Meditation is a great way to clear your mind of the worries and stresses of the day. If you’re not familiar with this method of relaxation, you may think it’s difficult, however with practice, you’ll find that it’s not hard at all.

Starting a Meditative Practice
Want to know what the hardest part of meditation is? Here’s a hint: It has nothing to do with meditation at all!

The hardest part is simply making the time to meditate. Once you believe in its power and see its results, you won’t let anything get in the way of you and your peaceful practice. It might be tough in the beginning, but stay with it! It’ll be well worth the effort.

Make a goal for yourself and evaluate your progress as you go. Commit to at least weekly meditations for four weeks. After this time, evaluate whether the meditation has made a positive difference your life.

These meditation tips will help you in your quest for obtaining inner peace:

1. Choose a time to meditate. Find a good time for you to meditate. You can start with shorter sessions in the beginning, but generally you should shoot for between 30 minutes to an hour during each session. Right when you get up or before you go to bed are good times to practice.

* Make meditation a priority for yourself just like you would for everything else that’s important in your life.

2. Keep an elevated posture. If you slouch, you won’t be in a good position for meditation and you’re more likely to feel like falling asleep. Elevate your posture and you’ll feel more open to the world. Relax in a crossed legged or other comfortable sitting position and rest your hands in your lap.

3. Focus on your breath. Your main goal is to keep your attention on your breath as you breathe in and breathe out. It may help to say a mantra and visualize breathing in good energy and letting out the bad energy with each cycle.

* Breathe at a pace that’s comfortable for you. Work toward deep, long breaths.

4. Acknowledge your thoughts. You want to remain fully present while you’re meditating, and there’s no doubt that thoughts are going to enter your mind while you’re trying to concentrate.

* Don’t be frustrated by these thoughts, but at the same time don’t let thoughts take your attention completely away. Acknowledge your thoughts and then bring your focus back to your breath.

5. Fight the urge to sleep. Many people complain of the urge to sleep during meditation sessions, mainly because it’s relaxing and you’re meditating during early morning or late evening hours. Try to remain awake with focus and good posture.

6. Maintain your practice. After you discover the many benefits of meditating, it will most likely become a part of you forever. You may not have time to do this every day, but it’s important to keep up with regular meditation sessions.

Meditation will help you keep a peaceful perspective on life and can tell you a lot of things about your true self. You can use it to relax, motivate, or energize you, depending on your purpose for each session. As you get more experienced with meditation, a more joyful and peaceful life will be yours!

July 18, 2012

How Well Your Environment Reflects Your Goal (PersonalGrowthCafe.com “Daily Personal Growth Walk”)

How well the environment support and serve you in living the fulfillment of your goals, desires, and dreams? You should be aware of what you’re focusing on.

This video will help you to get some ideas on where you should focus your attention.

These are the links mentioned in the video:

Go to https://www.PersonalGrowthCafe.com and begin doing the “Crash Course on Creating Your Ideal Life with The First Covenant” there.

That’s my $197 video training – it’s yours as a gift to thank you for visiting the site.

You’ll also find dozens of other ways to “learn and grow and become a better person” there, as you’ll see when you visit the Personal Growth Cafe. (Go now…. thanks!)

Then go to http://www.PersonalGrowthCommunity.com so I can personally coach you and make sure you’re applying the insights from this video, specifically to what’s happening in your life.

Lastly, join the “Personal Growth Revolution” at http://www.PersonalGrowthRevolution.com and help us blow through our goal of improving the lives of 1 billion people within 1 year!

Joyfully,

Dan Klatt,
“Think And Grow Rich Guy”
Author of “the Daily Personal Success System”
President of the http://www.PersonalGrowthAuthorsAssociation.com

….Serving as Your WealthSensei!

PS. What was most insightful for you from this video?

Let me know in the Comments Section below.

PPS. Who do you know who would benefit from watching this video?

Share it with your Facebook Friends, Twitter followers, email contacts, etc.

July 18, 2012

Life Mapping: A Vision of Success

Success is more than economic gains, titles, and degrees. Planning for success is about mapping out all the aspects of your life. Similar to a map, you need to define the following details: origin, destination, vehicle, backpack, landmarks, and route.

Origin: Who you are

A map has a starting point. Your origin is who you are right now. Most people when asked to introduce themselves would say, “Hi, I’m Jean and I am a 17-year old, senior highschool student.” It does not tell you about who Jean is; it only tells you her present preoccupation. To gain insights about yourself, you need to look closely at your beliefs, values, and principles aside from your economic, professional, cultural, and civil status. Moreover, you can also reflect on your experiences to give you insights on your good and not-so-good traits, skills, knowledge, strengths, and weaknesses. Upon introspection, Jean realized that she was highly motivated, generous, service-oriented, but impatient. Her inclination was in the biological-medical field. Furthermore, she believed that life must serve a purpose, and that wars were destructive to human dignity.

Destination: A vision of who you want to be

“Who do want to be?” this is your vision. Now it is important that you know yourself so that you would have a clearer idea of who you want to be; and the things you want to change whether they are attitudes, habits, or points of view. If you hardly know yourself, then your vision and targets for the future would also be unclear. Your destination should cover all the aspects of your being: the physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual. Continuing Jean’s story, after she defined her beliefs, values, and principles in life, she decided that she wanted to have a life dedicated in serving her fellowmen.

Vehicle: Your Mission

A vehicle is the means by which you can reach your destination. It can be analogized to your mission or vocation in life. To a great extent, your mission would depend on what you know about yourself. Bases on Jean’s self-assessment, she decided that she was suited to become a doctor, and that she wanted to become one. Her chosen vocation was a medical doctor. Describing her vision-mission fully: it was to live a life dedicated to serving her fellowmen as a doctor in conflict-areas.

Travel Bag: Your knowledge, skills, and attitude

Food, drinks, medicines, and other travelling necessities are contained in a bag. Applying this concept to your life map, you also bring with you certain knowledge, skills, and attitudes. These determine your competence and help you in attaining your vision. Given such, there is a need for you to assess what knowledge, skills, and attitudes you have at present and what you need to gain along the way. This two-fold assessment will give you insights on your landmarks or measures of success. Jean realized that she needed to gain professional knowledge and skills on medicine so that she could become a doctor. She knew that she was a bit impatient with people so she realized that this was something she wanted to change.

Landmarks and Route: S.M.A.R.T. objectives

Landmarks confirm if you are on the right track while the route determines the travel time. Thus, in planning out your life, you also need to have landmarks and a route. These landmarks are your measures of success. These measures must be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time bound. Thus you cannot set two major landmarks such as earning a master’s degree and a doctorate degree within a period of three years, since the minimum number of years to complete a master’s degree is two years. Going back to Jean as an example, she identified the following landmarks in her life map: completing a bachelor’s degree in biology by the age of 21; completing medicine by the age of 27; earning her specialization in infectious diseases by the age of 30; getting deployed in local public hospitals of their town by the age of 32; and serving as doctor in war-torn areas by the age of 35.

Anticipate Turns, Detours, and Potholes

The purpose of your life map is to minimize hasty and spur-of-the-moment decisions that can make you lose your way. But oftentimes our plans are modified along the way due to some inconveniences, delays, and other situations beyond our control. Like in any path, there are turns, detours, and potholes thus; we must anticipate them and adjust accordingly.

July 18, 2012

“Have One Week, Will Relax” Your 7 days program to Stress management

They say there’s more than one way to skin a cat. The same goes when you start tearing your hair out with all the frustration, grief, anxiety, and yes, stress. It’s a state of mental conditioning that is like taking that bitter pill down your throat, causing you to lose your sense of self, and worse your sanity. Just thinking about it can drive anyone off the edge.

And they say that the proactive ones are already living off the edge.

As one stressed-out person to another, I know how it feels, and believe me there are many variants when it comes to stress. Coping with life, and carrying the problems that may or may not belong to you can scratch away the little joy and happiness that you can carry once you head out that door. You can’t blame them for being like that; they have their own reasons, so much like we have our reasons to allow stress to weigh us down. They say that stress is all in the mind, well, what’s bugging you anyway?

There are several ways to manage stress, and eventually remove it out of your life one of these days. So I’ll try to divide it into a seven-day course for you and I promise it’s not going to be too taxing on the body, as well as on the mind.

1. Acknowledge stress is good
Make stress your friend! Based on the body’s natural “fight or flight” response, that burst of energy will enhance your performance at the right moment. I’ve yet to see a top sportsman totally relaxed before a big competition. Use stress wisely to push yourself that little bit harder when it counts most.

2. Avoid stress sneezers
Stressed people sneeze stress germs indiscriminately and before you know it, you are infected too!

Protect yourself by recognizing stress in others and limiting your contact with them. Or if you’ve got the inclination, play stress doctor and teach them how to better manage themselves.

3. Learn from the best
When people around are losing their head, who keeps calm? What are they doing differently? What is their attitude? What language do they use? Are they trained and experienced?
Figure it out from afar or sit them down for a chat. Learn from the best stress managers and copy what they do.

4. Practice socially acceptable heavy breathing
This is something I’ve learned from a gym instructor: You can trick your body into relaxing by using heavy breathing. Breathe in slowly for a count of 7 then breathe out for a count of 11. Repeat the 7-11 breathing until your heart rate slows down, your sweaty palms dry off and things start to feel more normal.

5. Give stressy thoughts the red light
It is possible to tangle yourself up in a stress knot all by yourself. “If this happens, then that might happen and then we’re all up the creek!” Most of these things never happen, so why waste all that energy worrying needlessly?

Give stress thought-trains the red light and stop them in their tracks. Okay so it might go wrong – how likely is that, and what can you do to prevent it?

6. Know your trigger points and hot spots
Presentations, interviews, meetings, giving difficult feedback, tight deadlines…. My heart rate is cranking up just writing these down!

Make your own list of stress trigger points or hot spots. Be specific. Is it only presentations to a certain audience that get you worked up? Does one project cause more stress than another? Did you drink too much coffee?

Knowing what causes you stress is powerful information, as you can take action to make it less stressful. Do you need to learn some new skills? Do you need extra resources? Do you need to switch to decaf?

7. Burn the candle at one end
Lack of sleep, poor diet and no exercise wreaks havoc on our body and mind. Kind of obvious, but worth mentioning as it’s often ignored as a stress management technique. Listen to your mother and don’t burn the candle at both ends!

So having stress can be a total drag, but that should not hinder us to find the inner peace of mind that we have wanted for a long time. In any case, one could always go to the Bahamas and bask under the summer sun.

July 18, 2012

What Are You A Vortex For? (PersonalGrowthCafe.com “Daily Personal Growth Walk”)

You are at the center of a vortex. You think of your life and your mind specifically as being like the eye of the hurricane.

You can watch this video and get some insights.

These are the links mentioned in the video:

Go to https://www.PersonalGrowthCafe.com and begin doing the “Crash Course on Creating Your Ideal Life with The First Covenant” there.

That’s my $197 video training – it’s yours as a gift to thank you for visiting the site.

You’ll also find dozens of other ways to “learn and grow and become a better person” there, as you’ll see when you visit the Personal Growth Cafe. (Go now…. thanks!)

Then go to http://www.PersonalGrowthCommunity.com so I can personally coach you and make sure you’re applying the insights from this video, specifically to what’s happening in your life.

Lastly, join the “Personal Growth Revolution” at http://www.PersonalGrowthRevolution.com and help us blow through our goal of improving the lives of 1 billion people within 1 year!

Joyfully,

Dan Klatt,
“Think And Grow Rich Guy”
Author of “the Daily Personal Success System”
President of the http://www.PersonalGrowthAuthorsAssociation.com