Affirmation from Louise Hay

Discover 5 Great Ways To Take Back Your Life

What does Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and positive thinking have to do with one another? Many people that suffer from ADD often develop negative patterns in their thinking process. They might also get frustrated more easily while dealing with certain challenges in life. Having constant thoughts of negativity or a dismal outlook on life only reinforces the difficulty in facing those challenges, which makes it harder to move forward.

However, practicing and utilizing positive thinking will allow individuals with ADD as well as others, to clearly focus on accomplishments and strengths in life, which helps to motivate and generate happiness. Because of this, individuals can devote more time for progress in their life and less time feeling useless and not moving anywhere. Here are 5 simple suggestions that will help you take back your life and put you on a path towards positive thinking.

1. Keep Repeating What You Are Grateful For In Life
Many challenges will not seem as bad when you remind yourself over and over again of the good things in life. Dedicate a few minutes each day and give appreciation to all the goodness that exists. No matter how small things might seem, they can still have a big impact on your life.

2. Get Rid Of The Negative Thoughts
Negative thoughts can grow, and grow fast. But, they can't control you unless you allow them to. Once a negative thought or feeling is in your mind, immediately break away from it and forget about it. The only way you can take back your life is by getting rid of the negative thoughts.

3. Take Your Life Back Simply By Giving Back
One of the best ways to feel good about yourself is simply by helping others. Try volunteering your time or maybe even donating more. Many people have certain skills that can be useful to some charitable organizations such as carpentry work, plumbing, electrical, computer repair, cooking and more. Volunteering your time and effort has a way of generating positive energy in the universe. The more you put out there, the more you will get back.

4. Increase Positive Energy By Being Social
Many people who are lonely, often generate negative feelings and emotions. In order to take back your life, you need to become more involved within social communities. Creating a social atmosphere for yourself and being around others who are positive will help you to generate positive energy for a happier life.

5. Think About Yourself
How can you take back your life? Start by taking better care of yourself. Being positive is a whole lot easier when you feel good about yourself. Get outside and go for walks or a bicycle ride. Start noticing what you are eating and begin eating more foods that will be healthier for you. Start exercising or become involved with activities within your community that will help you to feel better about yourself. Are you getting enough sleep? Make sure you rest enough each day as this can be a powerful boost in energy and positive thinking.

Being more positive about yourself is simple, surround yourself with positive people. Take back your life by letting go of the negative thoughts, emotions and feelings that have been holding you back from being happy, productive and energetic. Learn how to get organized and stay organized, which will help to reduce stress and negativity. But, the most important thing is, learn to move forward from the thoughts that have been keeping you from your own personal success.

Source

Affirmation from Louise Hay

Building Self Confidence – A Skill You Can Train

This article talks about the importance of confidence and how it heavily influences everything you do. I outline the fundamentals to build confidence.

Confidence is a skill. A skill you can train and learn. You probably heard about the phrase „Fake it till you make it". It is often said but not explained why it’s true.

Confidence is a skill like any other learned trait. You can’t expect to just be confident exactly like you can’t expect to speak french fluently without putting time into learning it. So why is that. Lack of confidence is the result of not having the experience of various situations in life. If I say to you, prepare a presentation and present it in front of 200 people. Most of you will be hesitant and be afraid of the task. That is because so many different unexpected situations can occur in which you mind find yourself lost. Repeating the tasks will lead to you facing every situation possible which will be hard at times and you will often fail but learn so much in the process. There is unfortunately no way around the failing part. But what you can do is minimizing the fail potential. So what can you do?

Confidence Building

Again, think about confidence as a learned skill. What if you have an important exam coming up? You learn for it. The more you learn the more you feel better about the exam and about your confidence concerning the task. So do what you can regarding preparation. Sometimes you can’t prepare and need to improvise. That’s where faking the confidence comes into play.

"Fake it till you make it"

The perception of others of you as a person is always vastly different to your own view of you. Walking straight, eye contact, loud and clear talking makes you look confident. Even if you don’t feel like you are confident, others will think you are. You will notice the different looks people give you and that will boost your confidence. So just get the ball rolling, the confidence will come.

Building self-confidence is a step-by-step progress. I might get a little mathematical here, but it helps getting my point across. You have the following situation. You are new in a city and want to set up your social life but are afraid or not confident enough to approach strangers. There are 2 possibilities.

Talking to a stranger and maybe become friends. There is of course a possibility of failing because he or she might react negatively about your approach. Let’s say there is at least a 50% chance that the encounter will yield positive results and the other half of the time, the stranger won’t react nicely.

The other possibility is simply not approaching. The expected outcome here is 0% progress.

"Failure is the key to confidence."

The first option results in a better outcome since 50% of the time you will have a positive encounter. The question is now if the 50% negative encounters makes you choose the second option of not talking to strangers. Are the negative encounters really negative in the long run? No. Each conversation or approach you learn more and more things. What’s the best approach to a stranger, what questions to ask and so on. If they don’t react nicely, you have valuable information and feedback about your approach.

This is very important in every kind of encounter. You choose how failing affects you. The stranger won’t think about what happened for longer than a minute. Why would you? You have to fail to succeed. If you don’t take initiative you can not win. Even negative results have a positive side. You gain experience and can improve your approach. Take the best out of failure and see it as a positive experience in the long run.

Everything regarding confidence can be viewed with these guidelines. Speaking in public, what will happen if you fail? Will it really affect your life more negatively than not speaking in public at all? It’s all about your own perception. People just do not care if someone makes a mistake in a presentation or if you talk to them. Your audience is there to learn, not to make fun of you. If there are people laughing about something you do, those are the people with opinions you shouldn’t care about at all. In the end the human mind always exaggerates such encounters and makes you over analyze the situation.

The start is definitely the hardest part of all. Only asking someone for the way is a huge deal for some people, but after they’ve done it they are incredibly happy. It’s exactly the same with asking someone out for a date. Ask them with fake confidence, you will be surprised how often they will see your confidence and act upon it. If they say no, who cares? As I’ve said, they won’t think about it for more than a minute, why would you.

Source

SELF LOVE - Motivational Video

High Performance Habits in 5 Minutes

Quote

The 6 Stages to Plan on When You Want to Change

Way back in 1977, while I was graduating from Simmons College (and wondering how the heck I was going to get a job using what I’d learned), James Prochaska and his colleagues at the University of Rhode Island were developing a revolutionary new theory about how people change. It was called the Transtheoretical Model (TTM), which proposed that people who successfully change their behavior pass through six stages.

* Precontemplation (not ready): You don’t intend to take action anytime soon. You may not even know what the problem is.

* Contemplation (getting ready): You become aware of the problem and start to weigh the pros and cons of changing your behavior.

* Preparation (ready): You intend to take action in the immediate future. You make a plan to change and start taking small steps toward the change.

* Action: You are now making modifications in your behavior.

* Maintenance: You have successfully changed and you’re working to prevent relapse.

* Termination (this stage is optional; not everyone attains it): You are no longer tempted by your former behavior and don’t even consider returning to it.

While Prochaska et. al. focused mainly on how to help people modify unhealthy habits, such as smoking and overeating, his model of change can also apply to the world of business.

Here’s an example of these stages in action:

Stephanie hired me because she was in the process of starting her own marketing firm. She was still working full-time at her day job and spending close to another 40 hours a week building her own company. Understandably, she was getting tired. But she couldn’t begin to consider quitting her old job until she could support herself and her family with her new one.

Stephanie was in the precontemplation stage: she had the feeling something was amiss, but she didn’t know what to do about it.

I gave Stephanie the assignment to imagine what her life and her workday would look like when she could focus exclusively on her new business. How did her behavior represent her values? Was she able to be her authentic self in the new role?

By visualizing what it might be like to focus all her energy on her new business, Stephanie entered the contemplation stage. She had begun to assess the benefits (and the risks) of taking this big step in her career.

Next, I asked Stephanie to figure out what had to happen before she could leave her full-time job. Our following session was devoted to reviewing her vision and creating steps to get her there, including a timeline. With that, Stephanie moved into the preparation stage: she was now ready to move into action.

What I’ve learned from reviewing Prochaska’s model and working with my clients is that there’s a process and an order to change. The actions you need to take depend on what stage you are at in the process. There’s a time to mull over an idea, a time to address whether the change is possible by exploring the pros and cons and reaching out to others for input, a time to put a stake in the ground by committing to dates, and a time to move into action.

As you work toward your goals that require change this year, consider: Where are you in the process? If you can’t make a decision about what to do, maybe the pros of changing don’t outweigh the cons: the pain of staying put has not yet become worse than the discomfort of change. Perhaps the time isn’t quite right. Sometimes you have to go backward a step or two in the process. Sometimes you just have to leap across that barrier.

You can take a more mindful approach to change by being aware of where you are within the process of change, and using that knowledge to support you.

Source

Quotes - Dr John Demartini

How forgiveness and empathy might harm you

Anyone who has low confidence and self-esteem will know that a lot of one’s energy goes towards forgiveness and empathy. Towards worrying about what others think of you.

When we do this, we give others the opportunity to walk all over us. Partly because we don’t wanna lose the people we happen to have in our lives.

But also because we’re used to thinking of forgiveness and empathy as good things. - In fact, don’t most people raise their kids into thinking like that?

And so, this can easily lead to being a pushover. Being people-pleasing and putting up with way more than you ought to.

Even putting up with being hurt. And even repeatedly.

We might try to justify it. Downplay it. See it from the other person’s perspective. ("He’s probably been having some rough times lately, so it’s only right that he vents, and maybe I can help out a little by letting him take it out on me".)

Ultimately, none of those things help us. In fact, in those situations they only harm us. — By assisting us in neglecting the one thing that should, ideally, matter the most to anyone:

Our own needs.

If we’re not used to asserting ourselves, setting boundaries for ourselves, having standards for ourselves, and saying no, we slowly let our own needs deteriorate. And if you don’t allow yourself what’s vital for yourself, what kind of person do you expect to be??
Now, forgiveness and empathy aren’t bad things in and by themselves. But they don’t necessarily solve anything in and by themselves, either.

And sometimes, forgiveness and empathy might do us more harm than good! This tends to happen when we cultivate them towards other people first, and towards ourselves second.

When you have confidence, you have no problem putting your own needs ahead of others’. Confidence, among other things, means conviction that you deserve whatever you want in life.

"But how can I be convinced of that?? We’re all just people! So how am I "better" than anyone else??"

Nobody said you were. But nobody said you weren’t, either. And if anyone did, what would you expect to gain from listening?

Also, if you please others more than yourself, aren’t you living by something equally as arbitrary, only self-destructive?

Think about it: If you don’t put your own needs first, how do you expect to get anywhere in life??

"But if I put my own needs first, won’t people think I’m being selfish/egotistical/stuck-up/narcissistic/etc.?"

Yeah, notice how that’s still worrying about what other people think.
First and foremost, we need to realize that opinions, whether our own or others’, are simply opinions.

They’re not necessarily true or false, they’re nothing more than different perspectives. So, we need to ask ourselves, "What perspectives can I use? And what perspectives are harmful to me?"

Now often, we do NEED other people’s perspectives. So as not to get stuck in our own, and so as to provide a certain amount of experience when needed. But there’s a world of difference between that, and living by other people’s opinions.

ACTION ITEM:

This week, assert yourself just one more time than you normally do. If that means just once, it’s still better than none. It might mean not taking a certain task upon you even if urgent. It might mean putting some time off for yourself each day. Or it might just mean telling someone to piss off, plain and simple. Turn off your phone and work on something that’s important to you.

Anyone should do that every single day. Because it doesn't make you an asshole; it just makes you self-assertive and confident.



Source

Affirmation from Louise Hay

We "Grow" Through What we "Go" Through

Sooner or later, everybody experiences a challenge in their life of some sort. These challenges could be health related, financial, or you could be dealing with the loss of a love one, struggling with an addiction, etc.

Although these challenges are inevitable, the fact of the matter is that the majority of us would rather avoid these challenges, if possible. Needless to say, we should avoid and prevent things and events that could cause problems in our lives, if possible.

However, because we know challenges are coming, it is prudent for us to learn how to better handle challenges in our life when they come.

What I will discuss in this article is the importance of challenges in our lives and how to deal with challenges in a way that converts them to being more of an advantage.

The Importance of Challenges

We all know that most challenges causes us pain, hardship and/or discomfort of some kind and because of this, it is very hard for us to appreciate challenges and what they bring to our lives. Have you given much thought to how some of your challenges have resulted in a positive change in your life? They may have caused you to learn something new or develop in a certain area. They may have brought new people into your life. Some people have launched a new business or product or service because of a problem they were facing. Some people have become prominent well known motivational speakers and advocates for a cause because of a challenge they are facing or have overcame. These people are able to positively touch and change the lives of many.

Use Your Challenge to Your Advantage

When facing challenges, we should look for silver linings in them to see what we can learn from them and how we can use our challenges to better our lives and/or the lives of others. Challenges are so much a part of life that there is a good chance that you are facing a challenge of some sort right now. Maybe you should start documenting how you are dealing with your challenge. Keep a record of what things you have learned to make dealing with your challenge easier and what things should be avoided. Maybe even talk about how your current challenge could have been avoided altogether had you been aware of and act on certain information prior to.

There is a very high probability that there are many other people going though the exact same challenge as you. You may be able to help someone by sharing your experience and you may be blessed for doing so.

If you look at your challenge as an opportunity to learn from it, you will deal with it better, resent it a little less and increase the chances of growing from your experience and becoming a better person as a result of it. Your current challenge may be developing you into a person who is knowledgeable and qualified to help others with a similar challenge. At the very least, just as challenges are inevitable in life, it is also inevitable that you will learn and grow from your challenge if you approach them in this manner.

Source

Motivational video "Change your mind in just 2.50 mins"