Create your Destiny

Have you ever experienced a time when it was difficult to visualize success?  A time when it seemed that hope was distant on the horizon and your immediate path was frustratingly unclear?  At that point you may have known what it was you wanted to achieve and yet had little idea about how to make it happen. When this occurs it’s very easy to lose your motivation and cease to make progress because you feel as though your efforts aren’t producing much anyhow, so why bother…?  Unchecked, negativity creeps in and all of a sudden you are not only confused but also discouraged. It can happen to the best of us, and when it does here are some ideas to help you regain your motivation and re-energize yourself:

Understand the importance of Perception

Everything in your world simply is and awaits your reaction. You are the one who provides the meaning. For example, imagine a couple sitting at a sidewalk cafe on a Saturday afternoon. They both see the same trees, the same grass, the same street and sidewalk, the same people sitting or walking nearby, are both breathing the same air, etc. They have been together for several years and share a common history. Should their emotions differ it is probably to the extent that they have different patterns of interpreting the world around them. If one has a way of filtering information through the lenses of what went wrong before or what may go wrong in the near future it will color their emotions accordingly. Conversely, if the other thinks hopefully about the future they will most likely experience an entirely different emotional state. Nothing about their present situation is any different except for their respective interpretations of it. Take charge of your emotions by realizing that circumstances have no power over you except that which you give them by the thoughts that you create to interpret them. Choose the ones that are most helpful to you and will bring you closest to achieving your goals.

Narrow Your Focus

If you’re like me it can be very easy to become distracted while multi-tasking. When I get bogged down, I find it much easier to focus my concentration on only one thing until I begin to have an effect on achieving what it is I desire. Making progress however small is gratifying when you are trying to pull yourself out of an emotional slump. Concentrate on one thing at a time and begin to see how you are indeed making a difference.

Stick With It

If the purpose you are striving towards is important enough to you, giving up just because the going is tough isn’t going to make you any happier. Sometimes it helps to project your thoughts forward a few years and ask yourself this question: “If I quit now, will I likely find myself at a similar junction again having to overcome this same obstacle again somewhere down the road?”  If so, decide to do whatever it takes to clear that hurdle now so that you won’t have to face it again.

Pace Yourself Emotionally

When you first embark on a new project or goal staying motivated is easy. You believe that you can do it, you are fired up, and nothing is going to slow you down. Until something does. Then something else does.
All of a sudden you’re off track and behind schedule and staying motivated isn’t as easy
as it was at the beginning. Going in with a more realistic expectation that there will be ups and downs, challenges and setbacks, and emotional peaks and valleys will help you to weather the course.

Understand there is order in chaos

If you have a plan to achieve something
and are dedicated to making it happen, there is a order in the chaos and that order is you.  Plans will change, the path you charted out at the beginning may prove next to worthless, yet if you stay focused upon the outcome and give consistent effort, solutions will appear that you could not have possibly conceived that will help transport you to your ultimate destination.

Eliminate Negative Self Talk

Negative self talk only serves to make you feel bad and rob you of your energy. If you catch yourself slipping, change gears and focus on appreciating all it is that you already have
and the things you have achieved.

Reclaim Your Sense of Humor

Not much seems funny when you lose your motivation and can’t seem to find your way. The best way to change this is by simply deciding to do so. Look for the humor in things large and small, even in taking yourself so seriously to begin with. With a little change of perspective, the world can seem like a whole lot nicer place and that goal of yours not quite so out of reach.

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Popularity: 74% [?]

Have you ever experienced a time when you felt down and out, a victim of life, and wondered how you were going to make it through another yet another hopeless day?  What if, in one of your deepest personal valleys, you were called upon to not only to immediately snap out of it but to utilize your personal power to help your company out of its biggest jam ever and the failure to do so might cost you your job?  Oh, and did I mention that all the while you were scared to death about the results of some important tests regarding your health?

Author Jon Gordon’s newest book, “The No Complaining Rule” is a fictional account of one woman’s response to this unique call to action. Her name is “Hope”, and though at first she appears to have lost most of it, through the process that Jon demonstrates she is able to overcome being a chronic complainer in time to heal both her company and herself.

In the book, Jon demonstrates the negative effects of mindless complaining and provides a solution to change the mindset of chronic complainers both in the home and in the workplace. One of my favorite quotes from the book is when Hope comes to realize personally and then share professionally that “the measure of our success will not be determined by how we act during the great times in our life but rather how we think and respond to the challenges of our most difficult moments”.

For anyone living or working with chronic complainers, and also for those who suspect that they themselves may be guilty of a little too much complaining , this book offers practical advice on how to overcome this negative, and as Jon shows, costly habit.  The “No Complaining Rule” will teach you how to spend less time and energy focusing on problems and provide you with practical tools to seek out solutions.

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Popularity: 52% [?]

Having enough energy to get through the day is something that millions of people worldwide are desperately seeking. A Google search for the phrase “increase your energy” yields over 250,000 matches that cover a plethora of approaches as varied as the people who think them up. There are many people who lack sufficient energy to get through the day, as well as a great deal of well intentioned yet conflicting information on how to overcome this. Over the years, I have personally tried such things as:

deep breathing, adopting a vegetarian diet, eliminating caffeine, drinking more caffeine, eating small but frequent portions, eating a big breakfast, eating a small breakfast, taking natural vitamin supplements, taking afternoon naps, working with weights, bicycle riding, doing yoga, getting up early, getting up late, meditating, and many others.

No Magic Diet, No Specific Exercise Routine

The problem was that none of these activities nor any combination thereof gave me the type of energy boost I was looking for. Sure enough, over time I could see how some approaches worked better for me than others, but nothing proved to be the panacea I was looking for. Could so many people be wrong with all of the great ideas they were promoting to increase the amount of personal energy? Was there something I was missing? How come I still didn’t seem to have enough energy?

One day without searching for it, the solution hit me like a bolt of lightning. I realized that there was no magic remedy for a life filled with vibrant energy, or at least nothing that any vitamin pill or specific diet or exercise routine could provide.
The reason had nothing to do with physiology and everything to do with psychology.
It all boiled down to one word: Attitude.

Attitude is Key

If your attitude is positive and you have the general outlook of appreciating the things that occur in your life, you will usually have more than enough energy to get through the day. Yet if you have a negative outlook that focuses upon problems and what’s wrong with your life, you will typically find yourself dragging through the day without enough energy to get everything done. In fact, I’d venture to say that the person who goes about his day appreciating what he encounters and the people he meets can eat bon bons, smoke cigarettes, and have ½ a pig for lunch with fries and a coke and still have more energy than someone who is negative and worrisome and yet is otherwise healthy and a good steward of their body. The first person will probably die sooner due to a heart attack or some other health related malady, but they’ll probably enjoy their journey on this planet a lot more than the one who tries to do everything “right” and still chooses to walk around with a negative focus.

Appreciation Kills Stress

Why is this so?  It has to do with stress. Stress is the product of worry and frustration and robs us of significant amounts of energy. When we allow ourselves to “stress out” we burn up most of our energy on the tasks of feeling bad and worrying.

Appreciation is the opposite of stress, and the beauty of this solution is that it is practically impossible to feel appreciative and stressed at the same time. Try it. Think about something that would normally stress you out. Got it?  Good. Now think about someone or something that you are genuinely appreciative for and focus on that feeling for a moment. What happened to all that stress you were just holding onto?  If you are like most people it probably just disappeared!

In each moment we get to choose our thoughts, and the implications go far beyond the metaphysical notion that “thoughts become things”. Over time they do, but even more immediate is fact that our mental focus has the ability to either energize us or rob us of the energy required to create the types of lives that we desire. The best of intentions matter little when you’re plopped on the couch wishing you could somehow find the energy you need to push on.

Test for Yourself

If you desire to radically change the energy levels in your life, I encourage you to adopt the idea that changing your attitude tops the list. Try it out for yourself for one week and then come back and tell me if I’m wrong. If so, I’ll refund every penny you paid to read this wonderful article.

If you truly focus upon being appreciative and looking for the good in all situations, I believe that over the course of a week you will find that you have much more energy available and experience a significant reduction in stress. If not, email me and I’ll offer to sell you some magnetic bracelets specially blessed by my Cousin Louie, or maybe some special healing crystals recovered from the magical waters of the Fountain of Youth.

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Popularity: 75% [?]

Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing
in life is to keep your mind young.

Henry Ford

There is no better way to stay fit than to exercise, and “use it or lose it” is a reality that refers equally to body and mind. If you desire to think sharper, react quicker, and make better decisions you will have to keep exercising your mind to maintain it in good working order. Overall, this means spending less time engaged in passive activities and more time spent doing things that will stimulate the brain.

Some of the biggest time gobbling passive mind activities are pretty well known, such as spending too much time in front of the television, waiting for that guy in Nigeria with $8 million to bequeath to send you another email, or hoping your significant other will hang the roll of toilet paper the right way this time. Other more innocuous mind wasters include reflecting negatively upon your past, aimlessly surfing the net, and listening to political speeches in an election year. Actually that last one isn’t as bad as what usually follows, which is 3 or more talking heads explaining to us what the candidate who just spoke had to say. Have we really dumbed down that much as a society that we need to be told what the man in the suit just said; or are we simply too lazy to make the effort to interpret the obvious all by ourselves?

In keeping with Mr. Ford’s admonition, I’ve made a list of some of the tangible benefits of putting your mind to work on learning new things:

You may find something new to become passionate about.  Passion is a key to life, and discovering additional ways to uncork it can serve to juice up other, less inspired areas of your life.

Learning new things can make you more interesting.   Think the girls at the party still want to hear about your Dungeons and Dragons exploits; or that speaking in Klingon is somehow considered sexy? If you’re repertoire is old and stale, learning new things can help make your more social and enhance your appeal to others.

Learning keeps you alert.  You can’t run on autopilot when trying to master a new skill or venturing off into the unfamiliar. Breaking with routine to undertake new tasks instantly wakes up dormant areas of the brain that can be useful far beyond the task at hand.

Use it or lose it.  Your brain is a muscle like any other. It will atrophy without use.

So, if I’ve convinced you of the benefits of lifelong learning, you may be wondering what are some examples of the types of activities you should seek to incorporate. To get your mind jump started I have included a few rather simple ideas you may want to consider. The key is to pick out activities that you are not currently doing so that you can stimulate your mind in unfamiliar ways.   For example, you can:

1. Study a new language
2. Read a book
3. Take up a musical instrument
4. Start a blog
5. Play word games or puzzles
6. Play Sudoku
7. Choose to become more observant of the world around you
8. Write poetry
9. Take up dancing lessons
10. Travel to new places
12. Do things with your non-dominant hand
13. Try adopting the opposite point of view you normally take in arguments
14. Study martial arts
15. Paint, sculpt, or draw
16. Take a road trip
17. Go hiking in nature
18. Start a journal
19. Try a yoga class
20. Attend a live sporting event that you don’t know anything about.

There is really no end to a list like this. By simply making a commitment to exercise your mind and continuing to expose yourself to new ideas and concepts, you may be able to delay or even ward off the effects of the aging process on your brain. Your mental reaction time will improve, your focus will be sharper, you will become more interesting, life will begin to seem more vibrant, and you may even give up the urge to watch old Star Trek reruns or to hang the toilet paper roll backwards.

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Popularity: 90% [?]

One thing that fascinates me is the process we go about of translating our experiences from the events that take place to the words we use to express them linguistically and store them in our minds. OK, I know that sounds really boring but it’s not. Trust me. In the same way that… well I couldn’t come up with a good enough analogy so maybe it is boring to most people and maybe I am kinda geeky that way, but understanding and decoding the words we use to describe our lives and the events that take place is an extremely useful process that as a coach helps me to assist people in living happier and more fulfilling lives.

One of the things I like best about coaching is being able to help people go from internal states of frustration or feeling “stuck” to helping them decode their representations of experiences so that they perceive a greater array of choices and therefore a greater ability to make an impact on their world and live the types of lives that they desire.

Ways we Filter our Experiences

When something happens we filter the experience through our 5 senses. The data we process is necessarily incomplete, but the process works well when we select data that is optimal for the task at hand. Remember the last time you had a conversation in a crowded room? Your ears were able to perceive a variety of sounds, yet the ones you chose to focus on and record in memory were probably those of the person you were most interested in listening to. A primary step in filtering reality is the decision we make of what we choose to record through our senses. Actually this is the second step, since we only perceive through our senses a very narrow band of what actually takes place in our environment. Don’t believe me? Consider a dog whistle or radio waves. Dogs can hear the whistle but you can’t, and your radio can pick up signals broadcast over the airwaves that you can’t perceive but are most definitely out there. Oh, and there’s also gamma rays, ultraviolet rays, the Cubs winning the World Series, and all those dust mites living on your pillow…(yecch, I’ll stop now)

Anyhow, buy the time information reaches our brains, our neurology has filtered it to the extent that we are able to perceive it. We then we filter that information through our past experiences and our opinions in order to make quick and efficient decisions. We then attach meaning to new events through the language we choose to describe them, both to ourselves and to others.

Labeling Limits Choice

If we are afraid of snakes and one happens to slither up next to us in the yard, we may label the experience as “I saw this really big, ugly snake”. That sentence may not have been the reality of what happened but rather the label we chose to apply to it. If the experience was emotional enough we then may go on to formulate an opinion that “my backyard is dangerous!”, and depending on the intensity of the experience we might even come to the assumption that “all backyards are dangerous!” In doing so, we have gone from the reality of there being a snake in our yard to the assumption that all backyards are dangerous.

As we begin to believe statements like these, our choice of available options become limited (we can’t go out in our backyard) and our representation of reality becomes skewed from how it actually is. The snake may have been harmful or not - more information was needed before deciding never to venture out into the backyard again. Yet the language we used to code the experience results in self limiting the amount of choices we have and can reduce the amount of enjoyment we get out of life (no more backyard barbecues).

When people limit their choices due to how they represent experience (consciously or otherwise), they can experience frustration in living the type of life they desire or in achieving the types of goals they would like to achieve. Some other choice limiting statements that I’ve heard are:

People don’t like me.
I regret my decision
I don’t know how to impress people
Conflict is painful
She never listens
Changing is difficult

Decoding the Process

A very interesting part of what I get to do is that I help people step backwards through this process from labels of experience to the actual experiences themselves. Often, as people begin to decode how they’ve labeled their experiences they begin to see other options and choices available - choices that they had missed because their labels of experience had taken them away. New choices are perceived, and from these new choices spring fresh opportunities for clients to live the types of lives that they desire.

When Coaching can Help

If you reach a point in life where you find yourself unable to achieve an important goal, nurture your relationships or overcome self limiting beliefs, you may want to consider working with a professional coach who has a background in linguistics. There are a number of competent coaches, myself included, who are trained in NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) and who possess the knowledge and tools required to assist you. The key part is selecting a coach with whom you can relate well and who has the skills required to help you get where you want to go in life. If you ever find yourself in such a situation, you can check out my coaching programs for ideas regarding how I may be able to help.

Words are indeed powerful, and if the Cubs ever do win a Word Series I’m probably going to hear a few choice ones from the fans of those “lovable losers”. Its the 4th of July holiday here in the states, so I’m heading out to my backyard (to hell with the snakes), to enjoy a wonderful barbecue and then downtown for some fireworks. Happy 4th everyone!

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Popularity: 92% [?]