I Thrive Here

Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.~Charles R. Swindoll

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Getting A Late Start This Year? Here Are The Top 5 Things You Can Do To Make 2018 YOUR YEAR And Finish Strong!

Wow! It is hard to believe that we are already three and a half months into 2018. Are you wondering how the time has passed so quickly? How far are you into accomplishing your goals for this year? Have you even started working on them? Before you rush off into a panic of trying to catch up on the things you wanted to get done this year, think about this. Have you clearly defined them? Have you set measurable steps to reach your goals and have you set defined deadlines for getting them done? Well, if you are in a bit of a rush now, I would believe that you haven’t and let me be the first to tell you, you are not alone. In fact, the majority of people do not have defined and detailed goals much less having them written them out. Instead most people have somewhat vague and general ideas of the things they want to do in life, their careers, and/or businesses. While some people can “get lucky” and experience a moderate level of success, most do not.

Without having a vivid and detailed plan it can be hard to stay motivated and focused on achieving your goals. It can be a bit like trying to hit a moving target in the dark. Your chance of hitting the mark is not good. But do not fear, because even though you may be starting late, if you know what to do and how to do it you can finish strong and enjoy many amazing accomplishments this year. So how do you do it? Here are 5 things you can do to make a real difference in this year over the last one.

 

I.  Take the time to visualize, to meditate, and to affirm what is important to you WITH FEELING! – You have to be clear on what you are trying to do. You need details and clarity when it comes to your goals. Generalizations do not provoke the emotion and feeling that makes up strong beliefs when it comes to your dreams of what is to be in your life. If your goal is to help others, you must be able to see in your mind the results of your efforts. You must see the smiling faces of those you wish to help. You must feel the warmth that comes from the gratitude of those you have assisted.

If it is material objects that you desire such as an exotic automobile. You must imagine slipping into the driver’s seat, the feel of the steering wheel as your hands clasps around it. You must hear the roar of the engine as you glide down the road, feel the pull of the inertia on your body as you cling to the curves in the road. Feel the contour of the seat against your back and hear your favorite music blaring from the speakers as the wind is whipping through your hair.

If it is a magnificent home, you must experience it fully as you walk down its halls and through each of its rooms. You must notice the smallest details such as your personal pictures hanging on the wall and your possessions throughout its interior. Feel your bed as you sink into utter comfort the moment you lie down. Picture yourself, your friends and family as you have dinner together; socializing in the kitchen as the meal is being prepared. Seeing them around the table engaged in conversation with one another as each in turn flashes a knowing and appreciative smile to you for bringing them together on this enjoyable evening.

Meditate on these thoughts, feel the emotion of the experiences, feel the gratitude of this being yours as if it already is. Take a few moments several times a day including when you first wake up and right before you go to sleep to see these visions of your life to be. Know that it is already yours and know that you are simply waiting for the here and now to catch up with your reality as you know it. Live it, breathe it, believe it, and FEEL it, and then you will live it. Believing IS seeing.

 

II.  Write It Down – One habit of the most successful and happy people on this planet is that they write everything down they desire to do, by hand! Today, we plan our lives by using online tools such as digital calendars, task planners, mind map apps, or a variety of other digital tools. While these are great tools for keeping us on track and accountable, they lack one significant factor in helping us to achieve our goals. That is the physical impact that handwriting your goals has on your subconscious mind. By hand writing what you most desire to achieve, it is made real to your subconscious mind. The subconscious mind cannot discern what is real from what your conscious mind believes is real, whether true or not. The act of hand writing what you want in such a way that it is written as if it already exists has a powerful effect on the subconscious mind. By doing this consistently, your subconscious mind will direct you to work towards manifesting your goals into your real life. The same way it works behind the scenes to control your autonomic bodily functions and your movements to complete any variety of tasks. It will move you towards the situations and circumstances that you desire in your life.

The bottom line is this, if you want to reach your desired goals in life, you must have a map to get you from where you currently are to where you wish to be. Without having a means to view your progress, how far you have come and how far you have left to go, you will become lost upon your way and never reach your destination.

 

III.  Be Consistent – Consistency is the one thing that you must master if you wish to reach your goals in a timely fashion and be successful in your endeavors. Being consistent has the power of establishing credibility and reliability. Nothing you do will have more of an impact on those you wish to reach as being the voice that they hear, the face they see, and the person they trust on a regular basis to bring them what they want. Consistency, along with providing value, creates familiarity which, in turn, fosters trust. In, short, a person’s trust cannot be bought, it must be earned. Through your commitment to quality and consistency, you will earn the greatest asset to your success, another’s trust in you.

 

IV.  Change Your Programming/Habits – Your mind is very much like a computer but vastly faster and it has the potential of being immensely more powerful. But, as computers rely on their programing to carry out tasks, your mind relies on your own “database” of knowledge, instincts, skills, and experiences to navigate our way through your life. How well you manage your finances, career, business, personal life, relationships, and every other aspect of your life depends on your own “programming” and your habits. This very same “programming”, in turn, is responsible for how successful and happy you are in life, or not. Many times the greatest challenge that you will deal with is created by your lack of flexibility in your beliefs or your lack of perspective. Also, whether you are able to overcome these same challenges is very much dependent on the same. The problem you face is whether you are willing to allow your “programming” to be updated as needed. Habits that have developed over time, that may have worked early on in your life, does not continue to work as you are faced with changing times, situations, and opportunities.

You can only change the way you live when you open your mind to discarding habits and ways of thinking that no longer serve you in achieving your goals. Remember, all it takes is an average of 21 days to “unlearn”, or learn a habit and make a commitment to being greater than the sum of your parts.

 

V.  Invest In Yourself/Engage In Purposeful and Continuing Learning – Top performing athletes must engage in consistent & focused physical training to achieve peak performance. This is no secret, but it is what they do behind the scenes that gives them the competitive edge. Hours upon hours of grueling physical and strength training. The investment they must make in the proper food and nutritional supplements to fuel their body, and enduring the discomfort that they experience to become the best that they can be. If you want a successful, happy, and fulfilling life, it really is no different in that you have to build your “success” muscles. This also takes time, effort, money, and commitment to uncomfortable and sometimes painful change. Living the life you have lived that has brought you to where you are is not enough to get you to where you want to be. How many times have you heard someone say that they have had enough of school or college and have no desire to go back to “hitting the books”?

The fact is that if you wish to live a better, more fulfilling and successful life, you have to invest. Like your parents invested in your primary, secondary, and possibly your college education. You must realize that you must also consistently invest in yourself and your continuing education. Does this mean going back to school? Sometimes, depending on the skills that you need. But, your investment in further educating yourself in the skills and knowledge necessary to build success in life may not be in the structured courses offered in universities. But rather in the books, audio, and video content created by those who have achieved what you desire to have in your life.

Often people say that they cannot afford the cost of investing in courses, books and other content that can move them forward in life. Yet, those same people spend thousands of dollars per year on expensive clothing, entertainment, flashy automobiles, the latest “have-to-have” gadgets, extravagant homes… you get the picture. In reality if you are living the average paycheck to paycheck lifestyle you cannot afford NOT to invest in YOU.

If you truly want happiness and success in life, try not to spend any more than you have to on things that deteriorate, depreciate, and retain no value over time. Instead, choose to make a long term investment with the best potential in returns. Invest your time, your effort, and your money into the one thing that you will have for as long as you live and will never lose any value for you…Your mind, your body, and your spirit.

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Five Ways To Get Out Of A Life Rut (Part V)

Make new friends, but make them the right ones for you!
 
Making friends can be harder for some then others due to shyness, our routines, or the trap of our comfort zones. Whether or not you have some true friends, you can always have more. The catch is that you want to attract and make the right kind of friends for you! Take a few minutes to do research on some unique things to do in your area. Things that you think that you are the only person interested in. Then make plans to attend at least six of these events within the next 30 days. Be it an amateur archaeology dig, a photo tour of a certain place, a re-enactment event, serving as a volunteer tour guide, or any other event that puts you amongst people that have the same interests as you, make it a priority to attend and introduce yourself to at least 5 people. Engage them in conversation about whatever event or place you are at. Don’t settle for small talk. Ask them engaging questions like
 
  • “What was it that inspired you to come here today?”
  • “What is your spurred your interest in participating this event?”
  • “How did you become interested in this type of thing?”
 
Listen to them more than you talk and when you talk, engage them in conversation about their personal interests and thoughts. Try to avoid being confrontational in favor of being more reflective. If you hit it off with them and vice-versa, exchange email addresses or phone numbers before you lose track of each other and then follow up with them within a few days of the event. One word of caution though, if you are married or serious relationship, avoid pursuing a closer relationship with anyone where there could be any potentially physical or romantic attraction towards them…or them to you. We are trying to make friends, not problems, focus on the goal!
 
Also, when you are choosing who you would like to pursue a friendship with ask yourself, “How can a friendship with this person benefit the both of us”? It has to be a win/win, not one-sided. Both you and the other person that you are wanting to bring into your social circle needs a return on the investment of effort and time that you both will have to put into that potential relationship to make it a healthy, beneficial and lasting one.
 
Another thing to do is surround yourself with the type of people that you desire to be like. Some questions that you should ask yourself prior to engaging with them is:
  • Are they happy?
  • Are they successful?
  • Are they enjoying the quality of life that you wish to have?
  • Do they treat others and you with respect and dignity?
 
As Jim Rohn said, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with”. Take this to heart because you can’t spend time and energy with those who do not have similar goals and aspirations. It is a losing venture that one or both of you will soon lose interest in, resulting in wasted time and energy. Also, remember that you can’t expect to get advice on how to succeed in life from people who have potential but never do anything with it. People who espouse negativity can only offer you advice on how to be negative and live in a negative way. People who are innately positive can only offer you guidance on how to be positive and how to achieve positivity in your life. Successful people…etc. You get the picture. Decide what it is that you want out of life. Then, surround yourself with only that type of people. Before you know it, as if by shear osmosis, you will become a product of your environment.
 
I hope that these five ways to get out of a rut helps you, in whatever challenging situation you are in. Remember to focus, stay determined, and keep your eye on the fast lane to happiness in your life.

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12 Steps To Leaving Your Comfort Zone Behind Forever – Part 9 – Risk Is Part Of The Game

I want to talk about something in this article that scares the hell out of most people and that is RISK. Taking a risk can be a sketchy prospect for most people. Before we start talking about what risk is:

Definition of; Risk (excerpt from Merriam Webster Dictionary)

1 :possibility of loss or injury :peril
2 :someone or something that creates or suggests a hazard
3 a :the chance of loss or the perils to the subject matter of an insurance contract; also :the degree of probability of such loss
b :a person or thing that is a specified hazard to an insurer
c :an insurance hazard from a specified cause or source war risk
4 :the chance that an investment (such as a stock or commodity) will lose value
— riskless play  \ˈris-kləs\ adjective
— at risk
:in a state or condition marked by a high level of risk or susceptibility patients at risk of infection.

Well as we can see, the word risk has many meanings depending on how it is applied to a situation. But let’s take a moment to look at how risk applies to our lives when we undertake the journey to improve our lives be it personally and professionally.

It’s easy to dream about the life you wish you were living. But, when we look at major change in our lives, most of us are taking a big step out of our comfort zone of what we are used to and of what we know. When the realization hits about what we are reaching for and what we may have to risk to grab the brass ring, it scares the crap out of us. Instead of looking towards the rewards that are to be gained, we look at what we could potentially lose. That is usually our material possessions even worse, it may change the way others look at us. Instead of seeing that perfectly constructed veneer that has been so carefully constructed to fool others into believe that we really have things together, it could reveal us to be actually vulnerable…even, heaven forbid…human.

This is not talking about strangers, friends,  people that are close to us, or even you. Being completely transparent, I am talking about myself as well. This is a real issue that I have struggled with in the past and continues to challenge me personally to this day. No matter how thick of skin we have, somewhere deep we all care about what others think of us. With the world being the way it is these days, it seems like everyone is ready to pounce on us if we make the slightest misstep. So risk? I’d have to say that there is some risk involved in the pursuit of what you want so badly. But, there always is risk in any endeavor in life worth pursuing. What about what you stand to lose? If what you have is so great then why do you want something different than what you already have, it’s great right? So do you really have so much to lose by going for it?

  •  Stuff? They make more of it everyday, there is no danger of running out of it.
  • Money? They make more of it constantly and there is billions, if not trillions of it in circulation all over the world. Again, no danger of running out of it.
  • Friends? You found the ones you have, right? There are over seven billion people on this planet, ‘nuff said?

Respect and love? Would anyone that respects and love you stop just because because you fail at something? Love is unconditional and respect? Well, have you ever lost respect for someone to works hard and is willing to try for what is important to them?

One more thing to remember is that anyone who has ever been successful did not do so without taking some serious risks. The only thing to remember that there is a big difference between taking a risk and gambling. Gambling leaves your chances up to the luck of the draw. Those who are successful have learned from their mistakes and failures. They know the odds because they have done their research and taken effort to ensure that any risk they take is minimal. In other words, they take calculated risks by making their own “luck”.

As we come to to the end of this article the one take away is that you need recognize is that anything that is worth having comes with a price. That price is that if your arms are full of what you can’t let go, there is little room to hold what is yet to come. Let it go! Because if you want to win, you have to realize that risk is part of the game!

Thank you for reading this week’s article. Please join me for the next article in this series, Surviving In The Ordinary Vs. Living In The Extraordinary.

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12 Steps To Leaving Your Comfort Zone Behind Forever – Part 5 – Reinvent Yourself

So far, if you have been following our articles on “12 Steps To Leaving Your Comfort Zone Behind Forever”, you have:

  • Learned how to create your map that will help guide you to a new life.
  • Learned that you will need to get used to being in a state of being “uncomfortable”.
  • Learned that you have to think in “bigger” ways to have a “bigger” life.
  • Learned that you have to change your habits and rituals if you want a different result in life than what you have been experiencing thus far.

 

The question is that, while you may have learned some of what you will need to do to have the life you desire, have you been applying what you have learned? If not, you will continue to get more of what you have received in the past and while that may be enough to allow you to survive, it will not be enough to allow you to thrive in your life. You cannot continue to be the same person that you have been in the past with all of the same routines, work ethic, habits in your finances, lifestyle, health, and mindset and live the life that you want. You may have heard stories several times in your life about people who have literally went from rags to riches through playing sports, inheriting money, or winning the lottery only to find themselves back in the grips of poverty or even owing millions just a few years (or even a year) later. This is because they had no time to learn what they need to know about managing large sums of money when they had only dealt with meager amounts prior to receiving massive amounts of money. They never had the time to develop the discipline, habits, education, and experience necessary to successfully build, maintain, and grow their fortune. They never had to deal with failure and losses along the way to teach them what to do if things started going wrong. They never learned about living on only part of what you earn and diverting the rest to savings and investments. This is only some of the reasons why you cannot become who you want to be and live the kind of life you want and remain unchanged from the person you currently are.

 

What you must learn to do next to become who you want to be is Re-Invent Yourself! This is not to say that you have to become something that you are not. After all, who would want to sacrifice who they authentically are for success? I, for one, would not and neither should you. What I am talking about when I say “Re-Invent Yourself” is that you have to replace your mindset and how you presently do things with thoughts and actions that are useful in leading you from where you currently are in your life to where you wish to be. To be a true success and experience the happiness, that you hope, comes with it, you must be able to believe in yourself and you must feel good about yourself (and what you do). You must have the confidence & knowledge that comes from achieving your goals through working smart as well as being able to learn from your failures and keeping a proper perspective on both.

 

Imagine, if you will, how you would feel when things are going great for you. You have a nice home, the car you wish you had, a loving family, plenty of money, no debt, you are doing what you love to do for a living, you have & wear nice clothes, you are a picture of health, and live your life exactly as you wish to be living it. How would you feel if you were living this life? How well do you think your existing life, possessions, financial habits, your work, and your mindset would fit into that picture? Probably not so well. Maybe, wealth and material possessions are not your thing. Maybe you would like to travel the world, help others, and be free from your present work-a-day life; is that you? Either way, is how you picture your ideal life a far cry from what you have, what you do, and who you are today? If so, think about what you would have to do to be that person in your mind? You would have to re-invent who and what you are to become what you want to be. The thing is, what most people in that position do not realize is the best and fastest way to accomplish this goal is by becoming the person you desire to be one step at a time, in any way you can bring it into your life TODAY! You may not have the money or ability to just walk away from your life and re-invent it overnight. But what you can do is start with the little things that can make a big difference in your life immediately. If you want to feel better about yourself and build a solid, positive self-image:

  • Start by working on your health and physical condition. Eat better by making smart choices in what you consume, get more exercise (you don’t have to be a member of a gym to walk more, do some sit-ups, and get more physical activity). Do this consistently and you will begin to see results!
  • Dress yourself better! While you may feel more relaxed, you may notice how you never feel as good when you are dressed in old, poor fitting clothing as you do when you are dressed up and ready to go out for a night on the town. The old phrase “you clean up nicely” applies more than you know. While there are times that are appropriate to relax and dress down, most people feel much better about themselves when they are cleaned-up, well groomed, dressed up and looking their best. This is not to say that you need to be dressed up in a tuxedo or if you are a woman dressed up in a formal gown or dress to go out in the day or go to work. But if it’s appropriate, it doesn’t hurt to be dressed in a nice pair of slacks and a crisp-ironed shirt or a nice polo shirt. If you are a woman, you might want to consider a blouse and pants that flatter your figure (whatever it may be) or maybe a business-style dress. The point is, whether man or woman, when you look & smell nice, you feel great and that is exactly what you want to feel like, better about yourself.
  • Surround yourself with people that inspire and motivate you. Jim Rohn once said, “You‘re the average of the five people you spend mostof your time with”.  This is truer than most people like to believe but, you can see it time and time again if you just look around. How many underachievers do you see hanging around successful people? How many pessimistic people do you see in a crowd of positive, optimistic people? How many poverty-minded people do you see in a group of wealthy people trying to learn what they know, and vice-versa? Not many, if any. I say this not to judge, but as a fact. It does not typically happen in normal life UNLESS, a person is on fire about changing their paradigm (and their future). The point of this is that if you are serious about changing your life for the better and permanently; in the process of re-inventing yourself, you also need to change the people that you spend the most time with. Work to surround yourself with the kind of people that you admire and want to be the most like. It is only there that you will learn what you need to know and grow into the person you wish to become in the process.
  • Find a mentor! Make a real effort to find a person that you respect, admire, and who has been successful in life (and business if that is what you are looking to do). When you find them, introduce yourself and authentically become the friend that they would like to spend time with, provide them with value and make yourself useful in their lives. Do not become an annoyance by picking their brain for what you are wanting to learn. Instead be truthful with them and let them know of your desire for them to become your mentor then, if they accept, be open to learn from them in what they are willing to teach you and grow more from the experience.
  • Make a conscious effort to live in a state of happiness and gratefulness. This can prove to be one of the biggest challenges in re-inventing yourself, especially if you are not normally a person that always has an optimistic point of view. Until you develop these habits to the point where you don’t consciously have to pay attention to them, make the effort to maintain a smile most of the time, pay attention to keeping a positive point of view when dealing with situations in your life and work, and most importantly, you must learn to consistently live in a state of gratitude for what you have in the moment. While is fine to want to have more, you must learn not to focus on that. Having abundance in your life is a by-product of being grateful for what you have, what you are given, living in a state of happiness in the here & now, being open to receiving, and taking action towards your goals in your life and work.
  • Dream Build! Take some time every week or so to spend a few minutes or hours feeling what it would be like to have the life that you want. Remember that feeling something in reality is a powerful motivator. Go into the car dealership where your dream car awaits and take a test drive (don’t forget to dress the part when you go in if you want them to take you seriously). Visit some open houses on the weekend in the style of the home you want to live in, it makes no difference if you can afford it today, browse your way through the rooms and take it all in while keeping the thought in your mind of what it would be like to live here. Save some of your money so that once a month or so you can splurge on something that you could enjoy on a regular basis if you had the means to do so. Get away for a weekend, stay in a nice hotel (there are great travel discounts available if you just search a little), if you are at the beach, rent a jet ski and go riding or go out on a deep sea fishing expedition, have a nice dining experience, and maybe rent a luxury car if you are on a mini vacation (or for a weekend of driving enjoyment) so you can really get the feel of what it would be like to live this lifestyle every day.

 

Bear in mind that you will not only re-invent yourself once, but many times as you learn and grow as a person and in your knowledge that you attain along your journey. And what about once you achieve your goals? Then the journey will continue as your reach ever higher towards becoming all you can be in this life. Change is perpetual. Here’s to the Re-Invention of the new YOU!

 

Thank you for reading this article. Please not only read it, but apply it in your life to get real results that can change your life for the better. Please join us next week in our continuing series of articles on “12 Steps To Leaving Your Comfort Zone Behind Forever” as we explore the next topic on Living Life As An Adventure.

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12 Steps To Leaving Your Comfort Zone Behind Forever – Part 4 – Change Your Habits

A big challenge in leaving your comfort zone has to do with your habits. Your habits have great control over what you think, what you speak, what you do and most of them have been a part of you for a long time. Your habits have everything to do with your accomplishments, your level of success in life or your lack thereof. The blessing and the curse that lies in our habits is that they help the things that we do in our lives virtually run on autopilot. This is why without the proper habits, most of us stay where we are in life or in the case of bad habits they allow our quality of life to decline. The good news is that we cannot only learn positive new habits and reprogram old habits, but we can do away with non-useful or negative habits.

Now this is not to say that this can be done without quite a bit of work. To learn new habits or reprogram old habits requires commitment, consistency, effort, attention and time. While it can range widely from person to person, the accepted time to form a new habit is typically 21 days. It can also take about the same amount of time to rid yourself of old habits that hold you back from accomplishing what you desire most in life. Without a doubt what keeps most people from achieving their dreams in life is taking the time to assess all of your habits in every area of your life and determining what habits help you in achieving your goals, and also which habits are destructive to what you’re trying to achieve. This leads us to the first step in the creation of your new positive habits and the elimination of your old, useless and negative habits. Block out one hour of your day when you can spend some focused, uninterrupted time with some paper and a pen (and yes handwriting this exercise is necessary if you truly want make a difference in your life). By handwriting your existing habits, your goals, and determining which new habits you will have to cultivate to achieve your goals; it will give you a reference to turn to when things become difficult in breaking old habits and creating new ones.

We all know how hard old habits can be to break and new habits can be just as hard to form because you will not only encounter great resistance in creating them but often along the way we can lose focus and question while we are doing this in the first place. A great example of this is in getting our health on track, especially if we are out of shape and have not been eating well or exercising on a regular basis. While it is easy to think about the benefits of getting yourself in shape and it is exciting to take out the new gym membership, after about the first one to three workouts (when your muscles are aching and the last thing you want to do is trudge back to the gym to endure even more pain) you think to yourself “what the hell am I doing”? You begin to question “why did I start this in the first place”? If you are serious about developing this new habit of eating better, working out and taking better care of yourself; it is at that moment you need to refocus on your goal of getting yourself in the best shape of your life.

What you need to know is that changing your habits is one of the key points necessary if you plan to leave your comfort zone behind and move forward with the pursuit of the life you’ve always dreamed of, the one that you’ve always desired to live. But in the process of getting motivated to change your habits, one thing you do not want to do is try to change or create too many habits at once. That is a recipe for failure.

Depending on your fortitude and commitment it may take less than, or more than, 21 days to change your habits. But rest assured, the rewards outweigh the sacrifices and the things that you will be able to achieve in the future may very well astound you (and even some of those who said you could never do it). Now that you know what to do, there’s no time like like the present, let’s do it!

Thank you for reading our article on Changing Your Habits. Please join us next week for a continuing series “12 Steps To Leaving Your Comfort Zone Behind Forever” with our article focusing on Reinventing Yourself.

 

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