To assist you in getting started towards
your journey of self-improvement I have compiled ten qualities which when
developed and while being developed project you on your path to whatever it is
you want to attain. Under each quality to attain I have listed several
principles aligned to them.
1. Build
Confidence
(a) Realise that your principal goal in life is to be
happy and confidence is a state of happiness. Practise being happy and begin
with smiling.
(b) Use your imagination to enthusiastically visualise
that you are a positive person.
(c) Each time you initiate action always remember your
past successful experiences. When you evoke these feelings, you will feel
successful and act with confidence. Each time say: 'I am confident' and this in
turn will evoke feelings of confidence instantly.
(d) Accept all your negative feelings as a challenge.
Confidence is merely the ability to rise
above negative feelings, failure and mistakes.
(e) Believe in yourself actively not passively.
Confidence comes from belief.
2. Overcome
Frustration
(a) Begin
everything with enthusiasm. Always stop when you are enjoying what you are
doing just before it becomes frustration. Return to it with renewed enthusiasm
as you will look forward to it beca you left it as a positive point.
(b) Become
involved in a new ~oal. By thinking of a n worthwhile goal you can reach, your
frustration disappear.
(c) Concentrate
on one thought at a time, one ach.o~ a time, one goal at a time: the more you
concentra the less time you will have for frustration. Eddiso perhaps the
greatest inventor who has ever lived, an who patented over 1000 commercial
items includin the light bulb and
phonograph, would concentr solely on what he was doing at that particular ti
and not do lots of other things at the same time.
3. Develop Compassion, Forgiveness and Understanding
(a) Forgive
yourself and others. Don't be judgemental.
(b) Be
agreeable with others. Don't argue, try to under stand.
(c) Compliment
others. Be interested in them. Expres don't impress. Express builds a bridge,
impress buil a gulf.
(d) Make others
feel important. Don't engage in constructive criticism.
(e) Love your
neighbour as yourself.
Always remember that the majority of what you
accomplish will be as a direct result of how you get 0 with other people.
4. Develop Communication and Rapport Skills
(a) Seek first
to understand before you make yourself understood. Your experiences may not be
appropriate for their problem. Try to understand their situation before you
advise. Remember the propensity to give advice is as great as the propensity to
ignore it is.
(b) Your
listeners won't care what you say until they know that you care.
(c) Practise
internal enthusiastic self-praise continually. Understand that how you think
and feel determines how you communicate with others.
(d) Always
remember that the way you perceive and see your world is not through the same
lens that other people will view their world.
5. Develop a Major Absorbing Obsession
(a) Anything in
life worth having is worth working for. It's not the amount that counts its the
philosophy of your plan. If you are totally absorbed with what you really want
to achieve the
world will make a path for you.
(b) Always seek
to learn from your adversity as this is often the doorway to where you want to
go. How else can Nature direct you to the path for you? It is one way that she
can make you pay attention.
6. Develop
Persistence
(a) The more
you can persist in the face of all your obstacles the more the belief and
confidence in you grows.
(b) Only
through persistence will you become what you want. Affirm to yourself: 'there
is always a way - my persistence will find it'.
(c) Take
Winston Churchill's success motto for your own: 'Never give up, never, never
give up'. The difference between the ordinary and the extraordinary is that
little bit extra. Always keep going.
7. Develop an
Expectant Winning Attitude
(a) I know someone who always says: 'Expect the worst
and hope for the best'. What an absolutely ridiculous statement to affirm. Our
expectations almost always become our reality. Always affirm: I expect the best
and I always get it.
(b) Always look to create a win:win situation with
others. Don't accept that if one wins another one has to lose. With an attitude
of positive expectancy you will find that you and all around you enjoy winning
results. Project yourself as a winner who creates other winners too.
(c) Project a positive self-image of you being an
enthusiastic person. Enthusiasm is incredibly contagious and will affect almost
anyone it touches.
8. Accept 100
per cent Responsibility for You
(a) Always remember that you are the person
responsible for how you feel. It's not the circumstances or conditions that is
the problem, it's how you react to the circumstances or conditions of the
problem that's the real problem.
(b) Don't look to blame someone or something for
whatever has happened or happening, look to find the solution. There are some
individuals who spend more time ensuring there is someone to blame in case what
they undertake goes wrong than spending time doing what they actually
undertake. Blame looks backward and responsibility looks forward.
(c) Your self-responsibility will become stronger in
direct relation to eliminating your negative feelings and emotions. Each time
one of your negative emotions rises up discard it by saying: 'I am responsible
for the way I feel'.
(d) Immediately you stop making excuses you will be on
the way to the top as you have taken complete responsibility for yourself.
9. Develop the
Courage to Do What It Takes
(a) Responsibility and courage go hand in hand.
Whatever you fear address the situation that causes it.
Aristotle said:
Fear is pain arising from anticipation.
So seldom do we do the thing we fear that we never
discover if our anticipation was accurate. Fear breeds lack of experience, lack
of experience breeds ignorance and ignorance breeds more fear. It is a vicious
circle summed up so well in the acronym: False Evidence Appearing Real. I
remember walking along the Copacobana in Rio de Janeiro when out of the corner
of my eye I saw a snake moving furiously towards me. I jumped the highest jump
I had ever jumped and kept jumping until I realised it was a rubber snake on a
piece of wire. Now my inbuilt alarm system had gone off appropriately causing
the adrenalin to fuel my jump. That false evidence however spawned the
beginning of a real fear of snakes. Having experienced this FEAR on various
occasions I decided to address it. I read a book on snakes and even went to a
place where I could handle them. My fear of them vanished. I understand them, I
understand to take care where snakes could be, but I am no longer scared of
them. Each time in business when I needed the courage to do something, I found
the best way was to do it anyway. Only by doing what it takes will you develop
the courage required. It is not the other way around. Courage comes from
experiencing the thing that worries you. Courage is not the absence of fear, it
is the wisdom to act in spite of fear. The best way to build up courage is to
encourage yourself with: 'you can do it!' 'En' is a prefix meaning 'to be at
one with'. So don't listen to people who discourage you. Always remember that
courage is doing what you are afraid to do and there can be no courage unless
you are scared.
(b) The willingness to do creates the courage to do.
Just by simply starting to do what you have planned, will create an ability to
do which will increase your confidence and courage. So, whatever it is, begin
it, make a start. Be willing especially to follow your dream. My favourite
training shoes I bought because when I was contemplating which ones to buy and
if I would use them, the advertisement above them was: 'just do it'. There is
no better advice to develop the courage to do something or make a decision.
10. Develop a
Happiness State of Mind
(a) Many people believe that happiness is dependent on
things and people external to themselves, yet when we look for happiness
outside ourselves we make an unhappy mistake. We feel powerless to attain
happiness and devote our lives to the pursuit of things that we know won't
necessarily bring happiness. Happiness involves having the courage to live the
life you choose for yourself. Becoming what you really want to become and doing
what you really want to do is available through your freedom of choice. So
choose what you want, begin it and your state of mind will be a happy state of
mind.
(b) Your capacity for happiness can be increased
simply by sharing it with others. Giving to others can be the most rewarding
experience of your life, even if you start with giving your smile freely.
Practise smiling in front of the mirror every day for at least 30 seconds.
After the initial embarrassed feeling you'll feel great about yourself.
(c) Don't save
up for happiness like so many do. They live under the misconception that you
have to earn it. How and when? You are happiness. Happiness is like
opportunity, it's always there if you look for it. Seize it in the same way.
Being happy means now, making yourself laugh more often, not a chuckle or a
grin but a really big belly laugh.
(d) Remember
that unhappiness is the result of old patterns of thinking and feeling. With
your new programming and affirmation: 'I feel happy' you will find a new
impetus to make you the better you that you can be. The message that all the
above give you is plain and simple. Work harder on yourself than you do on
anything else and your everything else will follow. Get your internal world how
you want it and your external world will be as you want. In other words your
outer world is a mirror which reflects what is going on in your inner world.
This is the basis of perhaps one of the greatest universal laws. The Great
Psychologist in the Bible said: 'As within, so without'. Remember, work on
yourself and everything else will fall in place.
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