19 Quotes From Arnold Schwarzenegger

Arnold Schwarzenegger has achieved a great many things in his life, including being a former bodybuilder and multiple winner of the Mr. Universe title, a successful business owner, a high-profile actor and movie star, and the Governor of California.

Here are 19 quotes from Arnold Schwarzenegger to help you gain the mindset to achieve you own greatness:

1. “If you want to turn a vision into reality, you have to give 100% and never stop believing in your dream” – Arnold Schwarzenegger

2. “Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength” – Arnold Schwarzenegger

3. “The worst thing I can be is the same as everybody else. I hate that” – Arnold Schwarzenegger

4. “If you don’t find the time, if you don’t do the work, you don’t get the results” – Arnold Schwarzenegger

5. “We all have great inner power. The power is self-faith. There’s really an attitude to winning. You have to see yourself winning before you win. And you have to be hungry. You have to want to succeed” – Arnold Schwarzenegger

6. “What we face may look insurmountable, but what I learnt is that we are always stronger than we know” – Arnold Schwarzenegger

7. “For me life is continuously being hungry. The meaning of life is not simply to exist, to survive, but to move ahead, to go up, to achieve, to conquer” – Arnold Schwarzenegger

8. “If you don’t believe in yourself, then how will anyone else believe in you?” – Arnold Schwarzenegger

9. “99% of the people in the world need to be told what to do and how to behave” – Arnold Schwarzenegger

10. “Just remember, you can’t climb the ladder of success with your hands in your pockets” – Arnold Schwarzenegger

11. “Help others and give something back. I guarantee you will discover that while public service improves the lives and the world around you, its greatest reward is the enrichment and new meaning it will bring your own life” – Arnold Schwarzenegger

12. “I don’t walk away from things that I think are unfinished” – Arnold Schwarzenegger

13. “That’s what most people lack, having the guts to go on and just say they’ll go through the pain no matter what happens” – Arnold Schwarzenegger

14. “It is so important that you work your butt off. Don’t ever look for shortcuts. There are 24 hours a day. If you only sleep 6 hours a day, then you have 18 hours left. Most people work 8 or 10 hours. So now you still have 8 hours left. What do we do with these 8 hours? is really the question” - Arnold Schwarzenegger

15. “You have to remember something: Everybody pities the weak; jealousy you have to earn” – Arnold Schwarzenegger

16. “When you have a goal, when you have a vision, everything becomes easy” – Arnold Schwarzenegger

17. “Every rep that I do gets me closer to accomplishing that goal” – Arnold Schwarzenegger

18. “It’s all about the hard work that you put in” - Arnold Schwarzenegger

19. “Visualising a goal and going after it is fun. You have to have a purpose, no matter what you do in life, you have to have a purpose” - Arnold Schwarzenegger

10 Tips For Effective Time Management

Have you ever thought to yourself that there aren’t enough hours in the day, or felt overwhelmed at the tasks facing you? If you have, then this article can help you.

1. Clarify your goals and strategy

Be very clear about your aims and ambitions, both short- and long-term. Write them down. Once you know what you really want to achieve (and why) it’s easier to make decisions about what needs to be done, and to plan accordingly.

2. Focus on your top priorities

You’ll be more productive and profitable if you identify and focus on the areas that are most important to you. Work on the fundamentals first. The Latin word ‘fundamentum’ means foundation – so take action, build strong foundations and the rest should follow.

3. Schedule time

Literally write an appointment in your work planner (you do have one of those, don’t you?) to set aside a realistic block of time for your priority actions. This reduces anxiety over not having enough time and helps to keep you focused.

4. Say no!

Consider Jim Rohn’s suggestion. “Learn how to say no. Don't let your mouth overload your back.” Always check your schedule before committing to anything new. Don’t allow others to divert you from your objectives.

5. Create supportive systems

Create systems that help you be more effective and efficient. This includes systems for filing, managing information and communication.

6. Take a reality check

Will your current activity have a positive outcome, or are you doing it to avoid something else? Ask yourself – "will doing this help take me towards my goal?"

As Peter F Drucker observed “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”

7. Delegate

It’s tempting to do something yourself when you think you can do it faster and better. But consider the long term – delegation now will save time in the future.

8. Repeat your success

Remember the last time you went away on holiday, and how you got so much done in those few days before you left? What strategies and techniques did you employ that made you so effective and focused? Can you repeat them? Alternatively, imagine you are going away tomorrow and work through today accordingly.

9. Balance your life

Formally schedule personal activities too, so that you make time for family, friends, your health and fun because having a balanced life reduces stress and increases energy levels. Time management is really about life management!

10. End the day

At the end of the working day, tidy your desk, make notes about what needs doing tomorrow and prioritise those tasks. You’ll worry less that evening and be prepared and focused the next morning.

Brian Tracy’s 7 Tips To Help You Start Your Day The Best Way

 

Is your morning routine helping or hindering your positivity and productivity?

In this video, Brian Tracy gives us 7 tips for our morning routine that can help set us up for the day ahead and increase our positivity and productivity.

1. Stop hitting the snooze button

If you stay in bed for as long as you can before you have to get up, you’re wasting away the most valuable hours of your day. Instead of hitting the snooze button on your alarm, set your alarm earlier and use the morning hours to accomplish important tasks, relax your mind and prepare for the day ahead.

2. Avoid checking emails right away

If you jump straight into your emails as soon as you wake up, you aren’t giving your mind the chance to make the transition from rest to work in the most beneficial way.

Instead of reading your emails, use this time to perform activities that will put you in a positive mental state, such as exercising, reading or meditating.

3. Don’t forget to exercise in the morning

Exercising offers lots of physical and mental benefits, especially early in the morning as it gets the blood flowing to both your brain and your body, which helps you to get going and sets you up for the day.

4. Stop leaving your bed unmade

Each morning before you leave the house, take the time to make your bed. Whilst this might seem like a trivial task, it offers a number of surprising benefits.

Firstly, it means that you’ll have started the day with at least one productive task completed. Secondly, it means that even if you don’t accomplish anything else for the rest of the day, you’ll have a nice and welcoming bed to go to sleep in at the end of the day.

5. Don’t skip breakfast

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day as it provides your mind and your body with the fuel that you need to help you get through the day.

6. Meditation

Meditation can help you to clear your mind first thing in the morning, and help to eliminate any worries or anxiety that you may have about any upcoming activities.

One of the best times to meditate is first thing in the morning after you’ve just woken up and your mind isn’t racing with all the distractions that will inevitably come up during the day.

7. Don’t waste your morning commute

Listening to an educational podcast or audiobook on your commute is a great way to learn and make the best use of your time. Over the course of months and years, your commuting time adds up and you can become an expert in a topic simply by using this time to learn.

“Successful people are simply those with successful habits”

– Brian Tracy

4 Ways To Postpone Your Procrastination

We’ve all procrastinated at something. We put off our exercise routine until tomorrow; we continually delay finishing that project or starting that business.

Procrastination is one of the biggest risks, if not the biggest, to stopping you from achieving your goals, dreams and all that you desire.

To help you slay this goal killer, here are 4 effective processes that you can use to help get you going and push through procrastination:

1. Do it now!

Hold your breath and jump right in! Putting things off until the last minute can be a bad habit, and like all habits it’s ingrained in your subconscious mind and is hard to break. It can feel like it’s just what you do and that it’s a part of who you are and you simply continue to repeat the process whenever you have a task or action to complete. 

You may also be feeling some fear relating to working on the action. This could be a fear of what could go wrong if you didn’t complete the task in the correct way, or it could even be a fear of what could happen if you completed it the way you think it should be completed. Fear is a very strong emotion that can feed your procrastination and strengthen your habit of leaving things until the last minute, or putting them off completely. 

Completing a task immediately may feel strange to you, or you may not feel as if you deserve to complete the action immediately without feeling the frustration and worry that can come with procrastination. But the sooner you complete a task or action, the sooner you can experience the positive feelings and benefits that come with it.

2. Take baby steps

Sometimes we procrastinate because the task may be intimidating to us. Perhaps we don’t know where to start. In these cases, it’s  fine to take it one step at a time. Say you’re preparing a business plan and for the 5th time this week, you’ve turned on your computer and looked at the blank screen. Or you’ve just remembered that you need to do some more research before you begin and you think you’re still not ready.

You simply need to break down the project into smaller pieces and tackle each bit separately. Make each task an individual project and after completion of each one, celebrate and acknowledge your achievement.

3. Forget it

Why force the issue? If you’ve been ‘dragging your feet’ on something for a very long time, it may actually have been for the best. Something, somewhere is trying to tell you something. That something is your intuition and it is usually right! 

Think about something that you've been putting off again and again. What are the reasons that you need to complete this task in the first place? Does someone want you to do this? What is their agenda? What are your reasons for this lengthy delay? Maybe it’s not important to you or necessary for you to do it. I find it amazing that a lot of the time I put off doing something, I’m thankful that I did as it meant that I could focus my time and attention on something that truly mattered to me.

However, disregarding a task or a project after a long period of procrastination should usually be a last resort, and only when you know the consequences of dropping that task or project.

4. Put a support team in place

Do you put off tasks because you feel that they’re too big and complex for you to handle alone? Or because you need assistance? Be honest with yourself. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. There are many resources out there that can provide you with all you need to carry out your job. If you’re a solo-professional and you put off answering emails, then don’t answer them yourself. Hire an assistant, find a college student that wants experience, get a family member to help, or go online and find a virtual assistant. 

Procrastinating on life changing activities could be as a result of fear of the unknown. Get a mastermind group together, find a mentor, join a support group. Other people will have gone through what you’re facing or something very similar, and having the right people around you can help to give you the support and direction you need to make progress. 

Remember that you don’t have to do it all by yourself.

6 Questions To Ask Yourself When Pursuing Your Dreams

What are your dreams? Want to give your vision a jumpstart? Write down your goals and use these questions to speed up the delivery of your dreams.

1. What's your highest priority for your life?

What's most important for you to experience, explore or embrace? Until you answer this question, your life goals will be off purpose and take you in different directions. If your goals aren’t aligned with your inner passion, your intentions will lack the power to attract the people and situations necessary to make them a reality.

Take the time to identify your true joy. What activities did you enjoy as a child? What did you want to be when you were young? What are your hobbies now? When your goals are aligned with your soul, synchronicity kicks in to guide you to your target.

2. Is this your dream, or someone else's?

Are your goals your own choice, or what others think you should strive for? We can often get distracted by what other people are telling us is the best thing for us to do or to achieve.

Do you want to look back when you’re older and wish you had followed your passion? Will you regret having ‘played it safe’?

Whilst some people may try to convince you that it’s selfish to go after your own dreams, you can bring great joy to those around you if you’re living joyfully and purposefully.

3. Are you settling for less than?

Have you resigned yourself to accepting less than your full share of love, health, happiness and success? Have you compromised and sacrificed your dream for trying to make other people happy?

Anything short of living your true passions will never make you truly happy.

4. What will you feel like when you reach your dream?

Personal passion fuels a vision. Dive into the thrill and exhilaration of the feeling of living your dream life. Go around your day feeling and acting as if you’ve already achieved your goals and dreams, and you’re already living your dream life, and watch how the world around you changes to start matching your vision.

5. What steps can you take today to move you closer towards your dreams?

Don't delay your dreams. Set up the resources and systems around you to instantly translate your intentions into action. Jump on every opportunity that is in line with your purpose and vision.

Are there smaller projects that lead to your larger dream? If the dream is to run a marathon, train for a local fun run first.

Do something every day, no matter how small, to move you closer towards achieving your goals and dreams.

In addition, find a way to measure your progress. Keeping a track of your progress will help you to keep your focus and attention on your goals and dreams.

6. Are you telling yourself: "I can't have my dream"?

Do you have limiting beliefs that are preventing you from achieving your goals and living your dream life? People are often told by others what they can’t do or have, which makes them believe that they can’t live their dream lives.

The conditioning we receive as we go through life can make some of us believe that either we can't make a living from doing what we love, or that we don't deserve to live our dream life. To avoid the pain of feeling that they can't have their dream life, some people will keep their dreams buried so deeply that they can't remember they ever had a dream.

Everyone has a dream, and everyone is destined to fulfil their purpose. So why wait any longer? Identify your dreams, set your goals and go after what you want and truly deserve.

How To Get Through Hard Times

 

Are you going through a hard time in your life? Do you feel that people aren’t appreciating what you have to offer? Does it feel like everything is going wrong for you? Do you feel like giving up?

You will go through hard times in life, and whilst they’re happening to you, you might not understand why they’re happening. But once you’ve got through them and look back, you can see the lessons that were being offered and why you needed them.

Whilst the lesson may not be clear at the time, afterwards you might be able to see how it was needed to get you to the next level of your life.

If you’re currently going through a hard time, watch this video and let Les Brown, one of the best motivational speakers, give you the inspiration to keep going.

“If it’s hard, then do it hard”

 - Les Brown

Visualise And Create!

In life, there are polar opposites to everything …. Happiness and sadness, rich and poor, overweight and slim, success and failure, light and dark, and so on. It is the contrast and the differences between things that can really help us to clarify what we want in life. When it comes to living and creating our lives, there is what we want and there is what we don’t want.

In order to create what we want in our lives, we need to focus on what we want. If we want more money, we need to focus on prosperity and having more money. If we want the relationship of our dreams, we need to focus on being in the relationship of our dreams. If we want to have a fit and athletic body, then we need to focus on being fit and athletic.

The problem we face is that we tend to focus on the things that we don’t want in our lives, and that is generally what we are going through at that point in time.

When most people are trying to create something, it is something that they want, but don’t yet have, or it is something that they have or are currently going through, but don’t want. And this is the big problem.

If you’re focusing on what you don’t want or that you lack what you do want, then your point of attraction is on what you don’t want or on lack, and that is what you are creating more of.

If you don’t have a lot of money, and you find yourself struggling financially, then it is difficult to feel rich and prosperous when you’re worrying about your future or how you’re going to pay the next bill. If you’re overweight and struggling for breath every time you walk up a flight of stairs, it can be difficult to focus on being fit, slim and at your ideal weight. If you eat dinner alone every night it can be difficult to focus on being in that relationship you want, and it can seem more elusive than ever.

But in order to consciously ’create’ the life of your dreams and have the money, the relationship, the health, the body, whatever it is that you want, you must focus your attention on what you want.

This is where visualisation, and even daydreaming comes in.

When we were children, we would often be interrupted out of our daydreams by our parents or our teachers who would tell us to stop daydreaming. But daydreaming can help us to identify and visualise what we want in our lives.

As important as it is to think about what you want, and to visualise it, the real power to consciously creating your dreams comes from ‘feeling’ that you have what you want, or that what you want has happened. You get what you’re ’feeling’ in life. If you’re feeling bad about the bills and the increasing debt that seems to be arriving on an almost daily basis, then you’ll keep attracting more debt, which in turn will make you feel worse about debt, which will create more debt and so on…. until you end up in a negative cycle that seems like it will ever end.

It can be difficult to control your feelings, because it can be very difficult to control your thoughts.

If you’re struggling to control your thoughts and feelings, rather than trying to control your thoughts all the time, try a strategy where you consciously control your thoughts for small chunks of time.

Set aside a block of 5 to 15 minutes to consciously visualise what it is that you want. If you’re struggling to find a block of time during your day where you can visualise in peace with no distractions, then don’t worry, you can even do it when you’re doing something else (as long as it's safe to do so) and going about your daily routine. During that time, daydream and see the final result in your head. Imagine what you would feel, see, hear and touch, (and smell and taste if appropriate) if you had your heart’s desire. Use as many senses as you can – the more the better! If your mind wanders back to negative thoughts during this time, don’t worry, just go back to your daydream. The more you realise when you’re thinking negative thoughts and go back to your daydream, the easier and quicker it will become. The most important thing is to develop the discipline of going back to your daydream when you find yourself wandering off to negative thoughts.

Enjoy your daydreaming time, like a child would, do it as many times as you can throughout the day. The more the better!

If you develop the discipline of visualising and daydreaming your desires, you’ll be well on your way to consciously creating the life that you could only previously (day)dream about!

25 Quotes From Brian Tracy

Brian Tracy is a public speaker, author and producer of many top-selling personal and professional-development books and audio and video learning programs. He is the CEO of ‘Brian Tracy International’, a company which specialises in the training and development of individuals and organisations.

Here are 25 quotes from Brian Tracy to help you gain the mindset to achieve your goals and make your unique contribution to the world:

1. “The more reasons you have for achieving your goal, the more determined you will become” – Brian Tracy

2. “Decide upon your major definite purpose in life and then organise all your activities around it” – Brian Tracy

3. “I’ve found that luck is quite predictable. If you want more luck, take more chances. Be more active. Show up more often” – Brian Tracy

4. “Avoid negative people at all costs. They tire you out and wear you down” – Brian Tracy

5. “Whatever we expect with confidence becomes our own self-fulfilling prophecy” – Brian Tracy

6. “It doesn’t matter where you are coming from. All that matters is where you are going” – Brian Tracy

7. “Never say anything about yourself you do not want to come true” – Brian Tracy

8. “To earn more, you must learn more” – Brian Tracy

9. “Successful people launch. They start. They just do it. Unsuccessful people create excuses” – Brian Tracy

10. “Decide how much you want to be earning one year, five years and ten years from today. What will you have to do to achieve these amounts?” – Brian Tracy

11. “The key to success is action” – Brian Tracy

12. “Whatever you are, always be a good one” – Brian Tracy

13. “Develop an attitude of gratitude. Say thank you to everyone you meet for everything they do for you” – Brian Tracy

14. “The key to success is for you to make a habit throughout your life of doing the things you fear” – Brian Tracy

15. “The kindest thing you can do for the people you care about is to become a happy, joyous person” – Brian Tracy

16. “A clear vision, backed by definite plans, gives you a tremendous feeling of confidence and personal power” – Brian Tracy

17. “Your success in your job is always based on the quality and quantity of your outputs” – Brian Tracy

18. “Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are always asking, “What’s in it for me?”” – Brian Tracy

19. “Integrity is the most valuable and respected quality of leadership. Always keep your word” – Brian Tracy

20. “People with clear, written goals, accomplish far more in a shorter period of time than people without them could ever imagine” – Brian Tracy

21. “If you wish to achieve worthwhile things in your personal and career life, you must become a worthwhile person in your own self-development” – Brian Tracy

22. “Make your life a masterpiece. Imagine no limitations on what you can be, have or do” – Brian Tracy

23. “There is never enough time to do everything, but there is always enough time to do the most important thing” – Brian Tracy

24. “Leaders think and talk about solutions. Followers think and talk about their problems” – Brian Tracy

25. “Time management is really personal management, life management, and management of yourself” – Brian Tracy 

9 Ways To Combat Fear

Fear can get to the best of us. Whether it’s fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of the unknown or even the fear of success, everybody will have likely experienced fear at some point in their lives, and it can be a real stumbling block that holds them back from being truly successful.

The good news is that fear can’t hold you back forever, if you don’t let it. There are several ways to overcome fear, and different ways will work for different people. 

Here are 9 ways you can try to help you combat any fear that you may be facing:

1. Separate reality from perception

Ask yourself what is really going on, identify the facts and place them over your feelings. It’s often a worst-case outcome that we fear rather than the issue that we’re facing. By identifying what is actually going on and what is likely to be the outcome, you will likely reduce the fear that you’ve been feeling.

2. Identify the trigger

Find out what it is in a situation that is triggering the fear that you’re feeling. Learning to identify what triggers your fearful feelings will help you learn to combat it.

3. Know where fear lives in your body

A lot of times, fear takes over physically. It affects different people in different ways. Identify if it affects your physical body, and if it does, where it affects you, and do the work to release the tension in your body that has resulted from your fearful feelings. For example, if you feel your back stiffen up or you feel extra tension there when you’re feeling fearful, you can try some techniques such as stretching, foam rolling or massaging, to help release the stress and tension.

4. Practice gratitude

Everyday list out as many things as you can think of that you’re grateful for. If you find this difficult to begin with, start off with just 1 to 3 things you’re thankful for, and you’ll soon be listing a lot more as you start to get used to thinking about the things that you’re grateful for. It doesn’t matter how big or small the things you’re grateful for are, gratitude helps shift you into a more positive frame of mind, which, over time, will help you to feel less fearful.

5. Listen to your inner voice

Pay attention to your inner conversations. Your inner dialogue can cause you to feel fearful and if you’re not aware that you’re saying fearful things to yourself, the fear will build up. If you wouldn’t say it to a friend, don’t say it to yourself. Speak positively to yourself and remind yourself of your strengths.

6. Change your focus

Remind yourself that the moment and the feeling you’re having is temporary and that it will pass. Focus on the positive outcome of the situation, rather than anything fearful or negative that might happen, especially if there is no evidence to suggest that the thing that you fear is likely to happen.

7. Look at the glass as being half-full

Perception is a very powerful thing, and how you feel about your situation will dictate how you respond. Finding the benefits of the situation and thinking positively about what’s going on will give you a much better chance of success. Changing your mindset won’t happen overnight, but start practicing with just one thought. What is one recurring negative / fearful thought you have? Work on identifying how what you’re fearful of could be of benefit to you. Over time this change in mindset and reflecting on your situation will become a habit.

8. Practice breathing exercises

Breathing helps to centre your body. When you’re feeling fearful, your heart rate goes up and your breathing becomes quicker and shallow. Practice taking in some deep, long breaths. If you practice when you’re not feeling fearful or stressed it will be easier to do when you do find yourself in a fearful situation. Practice taking in 5 to 10 slow, deep breaths and feel how it helps to calm and centre you.

9. Create a safe space

When you feel safe and secure, there is no room for fear. Find somewhere safe you can retreat to when ill feelings begin. This could be a real place, such as your bedroom, or a place in your mind, such as the beach. This sense of comfort will help soothe you and allow you to face your fear.

Remember, not everything works for everyone, but these 9 strategies will give you a place to start. Start practising these techniques to see whether they help you, and if they do, keep using them. Don’t let fear hold you back from reaching your dreams and your highest potential.

How Can You Benefit From Meditation?

 

It’s often said that we can benefit from meditation. But what are the benefits?

In this video, neuroscientist and associate professor in the Department of Neurobiology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, Andrew Huberman, looks at the benefits of meditation.

Andrew Huberman informs us that we have no sensory neurons on our brain. This means that if we focus our attention on a point a couple of inches behind our forehead, we bring our attention to a spotlight where there is no sensation, and our thoughts, emotions and memories take on more prominence in our perception. This in turn helps us to become more self-aware and we get to see how disorganised, random and intrusive our thoughts truly are.

“Being mindful and aware can enhance one’s level of presence and happiness”

 - Andrew Huberman

3 Powerful Tips To Help You Manage Everyday Stress

Stress can manifest in a number of ways, including when you carry over yesterday’s concerns into today and add them to the concerns that you’re having right now. This build-up of stress over a period of days (or, sometimes, longer) will almost always end up with you experiencing a high stress level. Therefore, it’s important that you’re able to release all of your concerns from the previous day, or days, and concentrate wholly on what’s happening today.

With that in mind, here are 3 quick and simple stress busting tips that you can use every day, or whenever you start feeling stress building up, to help you reduce your stress levels:

Stress Busting Tip #1

Commit right now to releasing every negative thought from yesterday and be mindful of the now – this present moment. Take in three very deep breaths and slowly release each one.

As you take those deep breaths, feel each and every concern, each and every problem, and each and every unresolved moment, begin to dissolve. Keep your focus on your breathing. You can deal with your concerns and problems at a later time, but for now, you want only to be in this very moment.

As you feel your concerns and problems dissolving, keep taking deep and slow breaths and feel yourself getting lighter as you go to your inner quiet place. Go deep inside to a place where you feel you are at peace. Then just relax and breathe in deeply and enjoy the feeling of being present and at peace within yourself.

Use this special time and place to be calm. Free your mind and body of all worry, all regret, all disappointment, all anger and any grief that you may have been feeling earlier.

Stress Busting Tip #2

Next, think of one quick and easy act that helps you relax, such as taking a quick stroll, doing some gardening, listening to some music, and then go and do that thing. Whilst you’re doing this act, keep your mind in its quiet and calm place.

Practice this act of being quiet and calm every day and you’ll soon see the benefits that it brings into all areas of your life. At the first sign of feeling stressed, go back to this mindful, quiet place and start all over again until you’ve reached your inner place of calm.

Stress Busting Tip #3 

The very best thing you can do for yourself is to eat, drink and rest to your best physical and mental health. This may not always seem easy in modern life, as we often feel that our attention and energy is being drawn in all directions at once!

Stress can easily be brought on by not eating and drinking properly, or when you don’t get the number of hours of sleep that you need each night.

Limit the amount of salt, sugar, caffeine and alcohol you consume and drink plenty of clean, pure water each day. Do at least some form of moderate exercise every day, even if it’s only a 20 minute brisk walk. This will breathe new life into your skin and hair, and will nourish all of your vital organs.

Take time to breathe properly. It’s easy to forget about the quality of our breathing when we’re stressed or rushing around. Take the time everyday to focus on your breathing and take deep belly breathes to send pure oxygen to all of your body.

Laughter is often said to be the best medicine, so find something that you find funny and laugh, and then laugh some more!

Spend time doing the things that give you the most joy and pleasure. It’s easy to stop doing the things that we love doing when we’re so busy doing the things that we think we have to do. Engage in healthy and fulfilling relationships and work on any problems that could erode the closeness that you have with someone special.

When we are content and living a balanced life, we seem to be able to brush off everyday stresses and the hold they seem to have on us gets weaker. We’re better equipped to deal with the unexpected when we’re living more authentically and in line with our highest values.

You can take control of your life today. Identify and then isolate one thing that is causing you stress in your life right now, and then work on it until you regain control.

2 Simple Strategies For Getting The Outcome You Want

 

We want things to go the way we plan and expect them to go, but when things go wrong or don’t go as planned, or when something happens to throw us off balance and doubt ourselves, we can sometimes find it tough to deal with. Life is full of ups and downs and will always throw challenges at us. We can’t control everything, nor should we try. It’s not what happens to us but how we deal with what happens to us that makes the difference.

Here are two simple strategies that you can use to help you come out on top.

1. Focus on your strengths

There are two sides to every person. Sometimes they’re happy and sometimes they’re sad; sometimes hopeful, sometimes pessimistic; sometimes childish and sometimes mature. We also have a whole load of strengths and weaknesses that affect what we do and how we do it. However, we’re often told to focus our effort and attention on our weaknesses rather than our strengths.

A strength is something that you do consistently well and get an inherent satisfaction from. It could be tackling and solving complex problems, empathising and communicating with people, being creative or being able to cook a certain dish to perfection.

Focusing on what you do well rather than what you’re not so good at has a number of benefits. When you look at what you’re not good at, you can feel bad about yourself and your ability, which in turn can make you less likely to do something about it. But when you focus on, and play to, your strengths you’re almost guaranteed to get results, and the raised emotions and thoughts can help to eliminate any negative effect your weaknesses might have.

2. Set things up ahead of time

Whilst there will be times when you can, or need to, just head into something without setting things up in advance, there will be other times when you might not get the results you wanted if you just blunder forwards making things up as you go. Whatever challenges or opportunities you face, you’ll stand a much better chance of getting a great result if you set things up to succeed ahead of time.

When setting things up, ask yourself what exactly do you want to happen? What solution, outcome or result would be great? Get really clear on the outcome you want and how it would feel to get the outcome you’re looking for. Then start breaking the desired outcome down. What can you do to make it more likely that you’ll achieve your desired outcome? What do you need to put in place before starting? What resources will you need to help you achieve the outcome you want? What will help to make your desired outcome happen? What do you need to do and what are you willing to do to ensure the best outcome?

These 2 simple strategies can make a big difference in helping you get what you want in your life, so don’t delay, identify your strengths and start planning how you’re going to achieve your goals.

Are You Living Your Purpose In Life?

 

In this video, television host and comedian Steve Harvey, asks whether we are living our purpose in life. 

Do you wake up with enthusiasm and inspiration when you’re alarm clock goes off in the morning, or do you find your job makes you feel sick?

How you feel when you wake up will tell you a lot about whether you’re living your gift and your true purpose in life.

It’s important for us to pay attention to what burns in our hearts, and we should pay close attention to the thing that makes us happy.

Steve Harvey tells us that our gift will make room for us and that we should stop running away from it by trying to be something that we’re not gifted at.

How do we know what our gift is? Steve Harvey says that it’s the thing that we do the absolute best with the least amount of effort.

What are you the absolute best at, but which you find easy to do? That may well be your true calling in life!

“If when the alarm clock goes off in the morning and you ain’t happy about it, you ain’t doing what you wanna do”

 - Steve Harvey

Connecting With Your Higher-Self

When you want to listen to a particular radio station, you tune your radio to that station by tuning it to a specific frequency. The same is needed when you want to watch a particular channel on your TV.

It is the frequency you tune into that determines what you hear and what you see.

Our brains operate in very much the same way, except that we only have two stations that we can tune into - the ‘ego station’ and the ‘higher-self station’.

The ‘ego station’ is the station that originates in the programmed mind, which contains all of our limiting beliefs that hold us back and create our fears. The ego station is our wounded self, our false self. It’s the protected and conditioned self that we learned to be as we were growing up, and needed to find ways to have control over getting love and praise, avoiding pain, and feeling safe. Our wounded self is a closed circuit - it operates on old information that we acquired as we were growing up. This old information is no longer relevant or even true. The wounded self is not open to new information or truth.

The ‘higher-self station’ is the station that taps into the unlimited information from the universe. This information is that which is beyond the programmed mind. The higher-self station taps into the Source of truth that is always here to guide us in our highest good.

How do you tune your frequency to your higher-self station?

We’ve all been given a "dial" that allows us to either tune to the low frequency of our ego station, or to the high frequency of our higher-self station. This dial is our INTENT.

We ultimately only have two intents to choose from:

1. The intent to get love and avoid pain with some form of controlling behaviour; or

2. The intent to learn about loving ourselves and others.

The intent to have control over getting love and avoiding pain lowers our frequency and keeps us stuck in our limited, ego, mind. When we choose this intent/frequency, we are stuck with the unloving thoughts and actions that create fear, anxiety, depression, guilt, shame, stress, anger, jealousy, resentment, and other negative feelings. The ego frequency is the frequency of being a victim. 

At any moment, we can change our minds and choose the intent to learn. To learn about love and what is in our highest good, and to learn about our ego mind rather than stay stuck in it. The moment we choose the intent to learn about love, we raise our frequency and are able to access the ‘higher-self station’.

This is like moving out of the limitations of our personal computer and into the possibilities of the Internet - only better.

The only thing that stops us from choosing the higher-self station is our addiction to control. The ego mind wants control over our feelings, over the feelings and actions of other people, and over the outcome of things. When our desire for control is greater than our desire to be loving to ourselves and others, and greater than our desire to live in truth, we will remain stuck in the ego station.

The ego station tells us that we can have control over things that we actually have no control over, such as other people and their thoughts and actions, and outcomes that we desire.

Our feelings are an inner guidance system, that lets us know when we’re either on-track or off-track in our thinking and behaviour. It’s important that we acknowledge and identify our feelings instead of trying to control them or ignore them.

When you choose the intent to learn about loving yourself and others, and tuning into your higher-self station, you will discover great joy and access the incredible information that is your truth.

25 Quotes From Les Brown

Les Brown is a world renowned motivational public speaker who overcame being declared as “educable mentally retarded” in elementary school to achieve many great things including becoming a broadcast station manager, political commentator and multi-term state representative.

Let these 25 quotes from Les Brown fuel your hunger and help you overcome your fears and perceived limitations to find the greatness within you:

1. “If you don’t program yourself, life will program you” – Les Brown

2. “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream” – Les Brown

3. “Help others achieve their dreams and you will achieve yours” – Les Brown

4. “If you want to become the best at what you do, you’ve got to be willing to fail, again and again. And then finally, one day, you can fail your way to greatness” – Les Brown

5. “If you take responsibility for yourself, you will develop a hunger to accomplish your dream” – Les Brown

6. “Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears” – Les Brown

7. “Align yourself with people that you can learn from, people who want more out of life, people who are stretching and searching and seeking some higher ground in life” – Les Brown

8. “Ask for help. Not because you are weak, but because you want to remain strong” – Les Brown

9. “It’s not over until you win” – Les Brown

10. “It really doesn’t matter what’s going on right now. The only thing that matters is what you’re going to do about it. Do something powerful!” – Les Brown

11. “Make change a tool for your success. Let it happen, and celebrate the possibilities” – Les Brown

12. “One of the most essential things you need to do for yourself is to choose a goal that is important to you” – Les Brown

13. “When you face your fear, most of the time you will discover that it was not really such a big threat after all. We all need some form of deeply rooted, powerful motivation. It empowers us to overcome obstacles so we can live our dreams” – Les Brown

14. “Other people’s opinion of you does not have to become your reality” – Les Brown

15. “Life has no limitations except the ones you make” – Les Brown

16. “I can bounce back from adversity and reinvent my life – It’s possible” – Les Brown

17. “If you run around with 9 losers, pretty soon you’ll be the 10^th loser” – Les Brown

18. “You cannot expect to achieve new goals or move beyond your present circumstances unless you change” – Les Brown

19. “When you want something, you have to be willing to pay your dues” – Les Brown

20. “Remember, in life, you will always be faced with a series of God-ordained opportunities brilliantly disguised as problems and challenges” – Les Brown

21. “The graveyard is the richest place on earth, because it is here that you will find all the hopes and dreams that were never fulfilled, the books that were never written, the songs that were never sung, the inventions that were never shared, the cures that were never discovered, all because someone was too afraid to take that first step, keep with the problem, or determined to carry out their dream” – Les Brown

22. “A lot of people do not muster the courage to live their dreams because they are afraid to die” – Les Brown

23. “You don’t have to be great to get started, but you have to get started to be great” – Les Brown

24. “Life takes on meaning when you become motivated, set goals and charge after them in an unstoppable manner” – Les Brown

25. “I have learnt that to get out of life what I expect, I must commit myself to beginning each day by concentrating on positive thoughts and focusing on my goals” – Les Brown