1. See the positive in people.
“If you look for the bad in people expecting to find it, you surely will.”
“The way for a young man to rise is to improve himself in every way he can, never suspecting that anybody wishes to hinder him.”
What you focus on you will find. In a situation, in a person. There is always plenty of good things and plenty of bad things to discover.
So you need to keep your focus steadily on what you want to find. Don’t let it waver just because you are in a “negative” situation or someone just said/did something “negative”. If your focus gets scattered, try to get it back into a more useful place as quickly as you can.
You can develop whatever view of the world and people that you like. You can go looking for the negative in people and feel a short burst of good emotions as find something negative about a person and feel like you are “right”.
Or you can develop a habit of looking for the positive. A habit where you can expect people to treat you in a positive way.
Because we do to a large extent teach people how we want to be treated. If we expect other people to help us and treat us well then they are more likely to do so than if we are negative and expect to be treated poorly.
This may sound a bit weird, but how we expect to be treated can have a big effect on how the world sees us.
2. Be honest.
“No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.”
This is a pretty practical thing. Being honest will for several reasons work better in the long run. Of course, you don’t have to go out of your way to be honest and hurt people though. You can just as well choose to be silent if you like. Here are just a few practical reasons to minimize or just stop lying altogether.
• Your words aren’t everything. Words are only a pretty small part of communication. The rest are body language and your voice tonality. And it’s through those channels that the real you will shine through. People will in some way sense that something is wrong, that you aren’t being honest and authentic if those other ways you communicate aren’t in alignment with your words. So lying is just a short term solution. Sooner or later people will pick up on it.
• Poor self-image and stress. Cultivating a self-image as someone who lies will make you feel worse about yourself. You’ll feel like a fake and your self-esteem plummets. And if you on the other hand are honest you don’t have to feel like someone that is trapped or on the high-wire all the time.
• People really appreciate authentic communication. What separates people is to a large extent the walls that they build up between themselves. When you put aside personas and lies you can build real connections between you and other people. If you remove these walls of insulation then the people or you are interacting with are likely to reciprocate. And so your relationships can improve and are less likely to be damaged by miscommunication.
3. Unite.
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
Ego excludes and divides. The ego loves to make someone “the other” to strengthen its own power. It want’s to feel “more” than someone else. More clever. Prettier. Cooler. Wiser. Or more like a victim.
And by making the other even more wrong in your mind the ego grows stronger. However, the ego boosts of good feelings are just temporary. You have to reinforce them continually, just like a caffeine habit.
Consciousness and intelligence includes and accepts. You don’t have to be seduced by your ego’s wish to make people other than you. You can look at the positive in them and at the things you agree about. And be accepting.
When your thoughts are buzzing around in your head and telling you to exclude or divide in some way then you most often are listening to your ego. It may tell you that paragraphs just above this one are cheesy and stupid. You may not want to take such thoughts too seriously. You don’t have to.
The most useful advice I’ve found so far to get a handle on the need to divide is to not identify so much with my thoughts or feelings. That doesn’t mean that I stop thinking or feeling. It just means that I realize – and remember in my everyday life – that the thoughts and emotions are just things flowing through me. And that I am the consciousness observing them.
When you realize and remember this it enables you to control the thoughts and feelings instead of the other way around. It enables you to not take your thoughts too seriously and actually laugh at them or ignore them when you feel that your ego is acting out.
When you are not being so identified these things you become more inclined to include things, thoughts and people instead of excluding them. This creates a lot of inner and outer freedom and stillness. Instead of fear, a need to divide your world and a search for conflicts.
4. Create a friend where there is none.
“The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend.”
“I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.”
This is similar to tip #1 and # 3. But slightly different, seen from a slightly different perspective. It is a helpful and a bit unusual way of looking at people who you might perceive as different or other than yourself.
Turning an enemy or someone we don’t like into a friend is difficult because first impressions can be powerful. Our concept of a person can remain intact if we don’t push further and question and explore. But if you get to know someone better you can often find out quite a few positive and interesting things about them. People are often more intriguing than your first impression of them.
Of course, since the ego needs to tell you that you are right and someone else is wrong then it can be hard to change your opinion of someone. That opinion of him/her is tied up in your ego and fuels your sense of being “right”. Again, the key and the way out here is to not take your thoughts or emotions too seriously.
This can allow you to open your mind to a change in the relationship.
Now, how can you make him/her your friend? One suggestion would be to follow tip # 1 and start looking for the positive in the person. Then to take the first step and give some kind of value – like help for instance – to that person. And then to take more steps if s/he is not convinced that you want to change the relationship.
5. Believe in and go after your own success.
“Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing.”
“Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.”
If you think you can succeed then you can. Your belief in your own ability to succeed is essential and does not only motivate you to keep going.
You may have heard that you have to believe that you can achieve something to do it and that the how you will do it will then present itself along the way. Well, that is true in my experience. Whatever you focus on persistently you will find in your world. So be careful what you focus on. Remind yourself to keep your focus on what you want to make solutions and people who can help you “pop up” out of all those things and pieces of information that is the background noise of your world.
And don’t wait for too long. Procrastination may just leave you with the crumbs or sometimes nothing really. Taking action is awesome. But taking action with little delay will increase the probability of you actually getting what you want before the window of opportunity closes.
So develop a Just do it! habit. Learn to do some planning but then to take action quickly despite what excuses or other negative things your thoughts and emotions may put up in your way. Know that they may just want to protect you from uncertainty and risks. But also know that you are in charge of them and not the other way around.
6. Persist.
“Hold on with a bulldog grip, and chew and choke as much as possible.”
Persistence might not exactly be the sexiest sounding quality. It might not sell a lot of products to people looking for the magic pill. But it is an immensely helpful quality to cultivate and put to use.
If you fail, what do you do? You dust yourself off and try again. If the success you are looking for won’t come that quickly – a pretty likely scenario – then you have to persist. Persistence may be one of the most useful qualities one can have. Not only because you will still be out there in a less competitive playing field as lot other people have given up and gone home. But also because developing patience and being persistent will enable you to get what you want. It may just take a little longer than had hoped for.
7. Sharpen your ax.
“If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend six hours sharpening my ax.”
Instead of just starting to chop with a blunt blade for hours on end it’s a whole lot smarter to first sharpen the blade and then take on the physically harder task of bringing the tree down. This goes for everything.
If you are prepared then it will often be a whole lot easier to get something done. Sometimes it can be the thing that separates people that either keeps chopping until they can’t take it anymore and give up and the people who could get the job done.
So success is not just about doing hard work. It’s also about sharpening your ax at regular intervals and learning new and better ways to take down the trees in your life. And it’s about remembering what trees you want to take down rather than just any tree. However, you don’t want to get stuck in this stage and never take action. As with all things, you have to find a balance by experimenting.
Four suggestions for sharpening your ax are:
• Educate yourself. Do some research into the whatever you want to achieve. Look for the most common mistakes and smart things people do. Read books and online. Talk to people who have already been where you want to go.
• Do. Fail. Learn. Do. Knowledge from external sources is great. But to really understand you have to do things. And learn from your own failures and successes. And then do again with your new understanding in your mind.
• Manage your energy levels. You don’t just have increase your knowledge and understanding of things. You also have to have the physical energy to get things done when you find your opportunity. Otherwise you may just fall into a procrastinating pattern or back down. So workout. Eat enough. Sleep enough. Basic stuff of course. But if you do it consistently then you’ll increase you chances of succeeding when it’s time to start chopping down your trees. With a high energy level it will be easier to persist until you are done.
• Remind yourself where you are going. A lot of not so important busy work can dull your ax. You need to regularly review your plans and remind yourself of your goals and what you really want. If you don’t keep your eyes on where you want to go you might wind up somewhere completely different.
8. Take a responsibility for your own life.
“You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.”
“You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.”
When we are kids people take care of us. They take responsibility. But to become an adult – and not just a kid in a grown up’s body – one has to take responsibility for oneself. There is no other way. Sure, letting someone else take the responsibility may be easier on you.
But without taking responsibility for yourself how can you be free?
How can you really live up you own potential and dreams?
It can be hard to break out of the comfort zone of having other people taking responsibility for us. But if you don’t then you will be trapped by other people’s standards, expectations and limitations. You have to set your own rules for your life. A bit scary. But also liberating.
9. Happiness is optional.
“Most folks are about as happy as they make their minds up to be.
One big upside of taking responsibility for yourself is that it lets you decide where the standards and limits are set. When you take responsibility for what you do you will also feel that you deserve to do what you feel is right for you, in your life.
And our control and responsibility not only goes for what you do out in the world. But also for your thoughts and emotions. You are to a large extent in charge here too.
When you realise this then you realise that you don’t have to play along with your old patterns of thinking and feeling anymore. You don’t have to play along with is “normal” or common thinking. You don’t have to take your thoughts so seriously. You can choose to not feel insulted when someone says something. You can choose to not to be angry whilst stuck in traffic. You can choose to see the positive in people. And you can choose how happy you will be.
Pain is inevitable in life. But how you choose to process or think about things – and if you let them get stuck in your mind or not – is up to you. Suffering is therefore to a large extent optional. And so is happiness.
10. Live your life fully.
“In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.”
This one is just beautiful. And I don’t really have much to add. But it might be useful to remind yourself of this saying regularly. Maybe when you feel like you are veering off track. Or when heading into things like small-mindedness, laziness or complacency. Perhaps you want to write it down and put it in a highly visible place so you don’t forget about

How loud does your body language speak.......

I have just finished a very interesting book on body language called Brilliant Body Language by Max A Eggert.

The clue is in the title as to what the book is about.......Body Language. It certainly made me thik about what my body language is saying and giving away about me and what I am verbally saying and whether or not I am backing that up with my body.

For anybody in any work, social, relationship or friendship situation it is very important to make sure that your body mimics what the brain is saying.....

For example if you are proclaiming that a point you are verbally making is correct, but you are not making eye contact,you are blinking more rapidly than normal and are sweating, your body is saying the opposite.......an awareness of these simple habits that are indoctrinated in us allows you to add significant impact to your words.

In the line of work I am in where you have to be confident, assertive, determined, driven and focussed it is essential that I am aware that my body language is displying these traits.......hence the reason why the book was really insightful. I have discovered certain aspects of my body language that I wasn't projecting....this then has an impact on how my subconscious mind perceives the vision I have of me and these are then projected in my body language....

For example, I may well be saying that I am confident and determined, but the way I hold myself betrays my words.

Its simply about saying, behaving and acting like the person you are going to be and already are in the vision in your mind.

So, don't let your body language betray the words you are saying.......start acting and moving in a way that befits the person that you are.........start believing your own hype and the rest will follow.......

Quotes for the day..........

“The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place and I don't care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard ya hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done!” Rocky Balboa

Not sure if I agree with his description of the world, but a great quote all the same……I also love the one below……


“On this team we tear ourselves and everyone else around us to pieces for that inch. We claw with our fingernails for that inch. Because we know when add up all those inches, that's gonna make the fucking difference between winning and losing! Between living and dying! I'll tell you this, in any fight it's the guy whose willing to die whose gonna win that inch. And I know, if I'm gonna have any life anymore it's because I'm still willing to fight and die for that inch, because that's what living is, the six inches in front of your face. Now I can't make you do it. You've got to look at the guy next to you, look into his eyes. Now I think ya going to see a guy who will go that inch with you. Your gonna see a guy who will sacrifice himself for this team, because he knows when it comes down to it your gonna do the same for him. That's a team, gentlemen, and either, we heal, now, as a team, or we will die as individuals. That's football guys, that's all it is. Now, what are you gonna do?” Tony Damato, Any Given Sunday

For those of you that don’t know about American Football, every inch is critical in the game…….by the inch is a sinch, by the yard is hard…….

Thought of the day.......

From The Secret Daily Teachings
Do not worry at all about negative thoughts, and do not try to control them. All you have to do is begin to think good thoughts each day. Plant as many good thoughts as you can in each day. As you begin to think good thoughts you will attract more and more good thoughts, and eventually the good thoughts will wipe out the negative thoughts altogether.
May the joy be with you,

Rhonda Byrne
The Secret and The Power... bringing joy to billions

Quote of the day........

CHALLENGES

English proverb:

"A smooth sea never made a skilled mariner."

If you are looking for a reason for your troubles, for a purpose in pain, suffering and challenges, this is it. We are not moulded by the days we spend idling around the pool. Our character is built when we have to make tough choices and when we suffer.

None of us wants tough times; but there is a good reason for them.

Excellent stuff.........

“May you live all the days of your life.”

Jonathan Swift was a writer that lived a couple of centuries ago (1667-1745).
He is perhaps most known for classics like “Gulliver’s Travels” and “A Modest Propsal”. The latter being the ironic and shocking essay where he suggested that impoverished Irish people should sell their babies as food to rich people. Such works has earned Swift a reputation as one of the finest satirists of all time.
Since Swift was a writer there is a ton of things to quote. Here are seven of my favourite words of wisdom.

1. Don’t fear to be wrong.

“A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying… that he is wiser today than yesterday.”
So much of what we learn in society is about how you should not fail and not make mistakes. In school we are taught to get good grades and play by the rules. And so always taking a safe route and not taking risks can become an ingrained behaviour as we learn to associate failure with shame and pain.
But one should really not be afraid of making mistakes. Or admitting that he or she has been wrong. By recognizing that you can release the negative emotions that may dwell within and move on to the next thing. Admitting that you have been wrong also makes it easier to clearly analyze what you did and what you can learn from the experience.

2. Money is useful. Love of it is hazardous.

“A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.”
Money is very useful. But if you let it take the wrong place in your life it can wreck havoc.

It can create greed and much negativity in your life. And if you love the money, you’ll probably just want more and more. No matter how much you get. And it may not fill you up and finally make you happy as you may have hoped.
The drive to always want more can become like filling a bucket with a hole in it. And as you slowly realize that this won’t work as you had hoped bitterness and negativity can start to feste.

Now, it’s important to not let this reasoning lead you to believe that money is evil. Money is a tool. It can help you to achieve many positive things.

3. Dig where you stand.

“Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of.”
It’s very easy to fall into an addictive pattern of criticizing yourself and others. But what are the positive things in you and the people around you?
If you just look for things to criticize then that is what you will see. If you look for things to criticize in yourself that is what you will see in yourself and pay attention to in others.
So what can you do? You can start digging where you are standing. Instead of asking yourself those negative questions continually, ask yourself: what is good about me? Ask yourself where your strengths and talents lie. And don’t give up at once just because a negative mindset may initially not let you see what’s good and positive about you.
What you focus on most of the time is what you will see of reality. Knowing your weaknesses and learning from mistakes is helpful. But to dwell on criticism and the negative parts will just keep you in a loop where you create more of that for yourself.
At some point it’s useful to move on from that and start to shift your focus to the positive. And see what gold that will help you uncover.

4. Go further than you may think you can.

“I’ve always believed no matter how many shots I miss, I’m going to make the next one.”
One big problem with success is that you may want it right now. Or at least very soon. No wonder, advertising continually bombards us with messages of how we can become thin or rich in just 30 days. And people often want to believe in that.
Now, I’m not saying that a lot of the stuff out there doesn’t work. They probably do work. I’m just saying that it may take more time, patience and work than advertised to get you where you want to go.
It’s useful to take a break from advertised perspectives and let more realistic perspectives seep into your mind. Learn from people who have gone where you want to go. Talk to them. Read what they have to say in books or online. This will not give complete plan but a clearer perspective of what is needed to achieve what you want.
And then you plug away. You don’t let setbacks or failure discourage you. You go out and try again. And just when you feel like giving up you go on a little further. And a little further.
Because it’s often darkest before the dawn.

5. Put down the extra, unnecessary baggage you are carrying.

“The latter part of a wise person’s life is occupied with curing the follies, prejudices and false opinions they contracted earlier.”
We pick a whole lot when we are young. Some of it is helpful. A lot of it will hold you back and create a lot of unnecessary suffering in your life.
You may have learned things from society – or sometimes gotten stuff drilled into your head – when you were young. You may have taken what someone said or did to you once or repeatedly as an absolute truth about you and your life.
But as a grown up, as you start to examine your life and beliefs you may discover that those things was just things that happened. They are in the past. You are here now.
And by grasping that it’s you who are always in control of your life – that you are creating it right now – you understand that unhelpful beliefs or what happened doesn’t have to mean that much really.
You can choose to drop them and continue with a lightness in your step down a road that you are creating for yourself now. One tip that can help you with that is to first accept that you are carrying the negative thing and how it is affecting you. And then to let it go. Acceptance of what already is does – even though it may sound counterintuitive – make it easier to let something go.

6. Be good to yourself in simple ways.

“The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.”
It’s nowadays common to run yourself into the ground and then, as you feel like a shadow of your former self, to seek help.
But a big part of keeping your health – mentally and physically – in good shape is to prevent problems before they even show up and force you to go to the doctor.
Swift brings some common sense into this challenge. By doing simple things consistently, by making them ingrained habits one can avoid many problems down the line.
• Doctor Diet. Eat not too little or too much. Eat slowly to really enjoy the taste and avoid overeating, an upset stomach and added stress.
• Doctor Quiet. Always being around noise, other people and stimulation via a lot of information can drain you. It’s important to find some quiet time for yourself regularly to avoid being overloaded. Being out in nature is for instance one good way to reconnect with the quiet and stillness.
• Doctor Merryman. How happy and positive one wants to feel is often to a large degree a choice. You can cultivate a negative attitude towards everything. Or a positive one. And a whole lot of tips for creating a positive and optimistic attitude can be found in my book The Power of Positivity.
Now, this may sound like almost stupidly simple advice. And the information is very simple. Many very helpful things are very simple.
More advanced tips can sound intriguing because one may associate complicated with better. But everything has to have foundations. Without those everything you build on top of them will only work at a limited capacity or sometimes just crumble.

7. Be open to the idea that you can always learn.

“No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience.”
Being open to this will open up your mind. If you think you know everything, great insights and wonderful new paths to explore will just pass you by.
By being open you’ll see, feel and learn things you wouldn’t otherwise. But be careful of focusing too much on learning from books, blogs etc. They have a place and can help you correct things may have done backwards for all of your life.
But the most important thing is to live. And to learn from your experiences. Because it is there you find true understanding of things.

A wake up call........

I was fortunate enough to see a motivational speaker last week at our mid year work conference. Wow, what a fantastic experience. I asked myself the following question during and after the event which reminded me of something that I had been forgetting:

How am I adding value to those people around me and how am I passing on my energy to other people? Two very good questions (even if I do say so myself). The emotions that this guy evoked in me were ones of disappointment and excitement. Disappointment because I had felt like I had lost my way slightly in adding non-material value people and excitement because I knew that I could change it in an instant!!!

One example he gave, is something that I had been doing previously, but had gotten out of the habit of doing and that how you respond to people when they ask you how you are! Simple things eh! He said that the normal response when you are asked about how you are is…….ok, not bad, fair to middling!!!! Those responses are very non-commital!! It reminded me of the power of using more exciting and energetic words such as fantastic, fabulous, awesome, brilliant or something similar!

So I decided that I would reinstate my belief in the power of positive response to the question “How are you?” and put it into practice. So when I went to get my morning coffee at Starbucks when I was in Windsor, I asked the girls behind the till area……”How are you?” their response was “We’re ok thanks, How are you?”, well this was my chance to shine……”I am fantastic thanks” their response was “Wow, fantastic, what have you got be fantastic about?”, “Well I have plenty of reasons really, where do you want me start?” They responded positively and as we continued to chat they ended up saying “We would love to be outside in this weather, but we have to work.” I then proceeded to tell them why it was so great to work where they worked i.e. it’s a really busy site so the time goes quick, the view out of the window is of Windsor castle, its right by the Thames so you can go there with your lunch……….etc etc……

Now, the above sounds a bit cheesy, but it raises the question - What are you enthusiastic about today? What are the things in your life that you are thankful for? What non-materialistic things are you giving others everyday?

Remember you interact with hundreds of people each day either directly or indirectly, why not make their life a bit brighter!

If you look hard enough there is always something to be excited, happy, enthusiastic and energised about. Whether it be the sun shining after the weather being miserable for a few days or having a fantastic meal with friends or simply getting a smile from some one………