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"A wise old owl sat on an oak; The more he saw the less he spoke; The less he spoke the more he heard; Why aren't we like that wise old bird?."

6 Principles To Increase Positive Thinking

Hi came across this great article, thought you all may find it interesting...

Blog about Happiness

If your feeling a bit under the weather start blogging about how to become more joyful. Even if it may not be your niche or even something your readers would appreciate. It will cause you to think happy thoughts first before you write thus changing your shift of emotion into a positive direction. Creating a positive snowball effect which can last the rest of the day if you put forth the effort.

Write out your feelings

Don't ever underestimate to power of venting your emotions on a piece of paper. Doing this clears the mind from all negativity leaving your canvas unpainted. After you have written down your emotions, tear the piece of paper apart. Make a solemn oath to start thinking positive today with confidence and positive expectancy. 

Smile Please

Today, give a glorified smile to every one you meet and greet. If you see a person walking towards you show those carnivore teeth by saying "How are you doing today". Don't be afraid to stop for a friendly conversation with this stranger. Remember like attracts like so if you feel attracted to this person dig in deep by asking them questions to create genuine interest.

Bask in life

Stop and smell the roses before you enter your office today. You may have a lot on your mind such as the rent, kids tuition fees or a mouth to feed. Yet this should not stop you from enjoying life on this abundant planet. We live in a universe where anything is possible as long as we believe it can be achived. Take the time out today to just appreciate life's glory by sitting next to a pond, riding you bike down a trail or whistling your favorite tune down the block.

Act

Change your current physiology by physically walking as if you were unstoppable and confidence. Act like this for an entire day with the intention of keeping your attitude focused on how to think positive. Perform this action long enough can create long lasting changes with a side effect of pure enjoyment.

Creative visualization

Start creating mental images in your mind which make you smile not frown. Feel these fantasies as if they have already happened. Doing this daily activities once you wake up in the morning and before you fall into your dream world will work wonder for your attitude. You will begin to wake up each day happy and energetic. Its a great way to learn how to be positive.

Did these tips help? Let me know give in your feedback I'm all ears for improvements and here to serve you all...... Thanks!

How to Use Your Subconscious to Change Your Life

By Karl Staib

Photo by The Half-Blood Prince

“Never go to sleep without a request to your subconscious.” – Thomas Edison

Your subconscious loves to do work while your body performs other tasks that are easy. I can prove this very easily by asking you how many good ideas you have had while driving or in the shower. When you are relaxed yet slightly distracted, your mind is often at its best.
Using subconscious requests will…

• Improve your motivation.
• Help you become happier.
• Increase your emotional intelligence.

You’ll see improvement in less than a month.
My last request was…


“Please give me more patience when commuting to work and allow me to even enjoy my time in the car.”
Within a month I was enjoying my ride to work.
My latest request is…
“Let’s find creative ways to grow my blog.”
I took this approach because it’s going to take a request to my subconscious and action in my waking life to make this happen. This request is only a few days old, but it’s already working. Instead of just asking people to help vote for my blog on social sites that rate articles such as Stumble Upon and Digg, I’ve change my communication. I now friend someone, give a compliment (only if they are worthy) and tell them that they ever need any help to shoot me a message. They are much more willing to help me out.

Mindset

My mindset is changing by setting my subconscious on a certain issue. I start to see new angles that I’ve never seen before. This subconscious request works for personal issues as well as work related concerns.


The 3 step request only takes five minutes:


Step 1: Before you turn out the light, close your eyes and take one minute to make a request to your subconscious. It can be anything. I would start small and make it open ended. I wouldn’t request to be an astronaut by the end of the month. Your subconscious is good, but not that good.


Step 2: Take two minutes to visualize yourself actually able to do this thing. Whether it is getting the motivation to jog before work or eating a healthy snack, you must visualize yourself doing the request that you asked your subconscious. Let’s say you want to jog before work: imagine yourself getting up a few minutes earlier than usual, putting on your exercise clothes and jogging shoes, and heading out into the crisp air. Then you start jogging, watching the sun rise over the buildings, the birds chirping, and you are feeling good.


Step 3: Take two minutes to imagine the feeling that will occur when you are able to accomplish this new thing. How do you feel when you walk back in your front door after a morning jog? Energized? Whatever feeling you want to achieves imagine that you have already created this emotion inside of yourself. Let it sink in, then go to sleep and let your subconscious do the rest of the work.
Your subconscious mind wants to help you improve your life; you just have to trust its vast resources and allow it to do its thing.

Action Makes Your Request Real

You may not want to go jogging after the first subconscious request, but try to visualize yourself going through the motions the first couple of weeks. Then just start putting on your exercise gear and go for a five minute walk. Taking these baby steps will set you up for your jogging routine. Then after a few weeks just go for it. Now that you have your emotions geared toward jogging it should spur you into action.
By allowing the emotional momentum to build, you can create motivation that will help you accomplish things that make you happier.
Do you have a motivational tip to share? Have you ever tried making a subconscious requests before bed? 

We would love to hear it, let’s discuss it in the comment section...

Today is a Gift

ULS 003 | Even Eagles Need A Push

ULS 003 | Even Eagles Need A Push

How To Improve Your Lifestyle In 10 Easy Steps

How To Improve Your Lifestyle In 10 Easy Steps

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Balance Your Wheel of Life

Balance Your Wheel of Life

Are you living an extraordinary life?  Are you consistently reaching your goals and fulfilling your life dreams?  If not now, when?  People all over the world feel a sense of balance and are excited about their life. Fortunately, these are not characteristics that only certain people can attain.  This life satisfaction is available to everyone.  It is possible to start your journey now.

                Visual maps such as the Life Balance Wheel are excellent tools used to begin the process of reaching goals and transforming your life.  Take a few minutes and assess your life.   Rank each life area by drawing an arc at the number that represents your level of satisfaction. The center of the wheel is 0 and equals zero satisfaction, the outer edge of the wheel is 10 representing total satisfaction. 

Imagine this were a real wheel.  How bumpy or smooth would your ride be? What areas are balanced?  What areas need work? Identify the areas of your life you are most happy.  Express true gratitude for the success and peace in these areas and know that all components of your life can be equally fulfilling and balanced.   Next, identify an area you would like to improve.  What changes are you committed to making in your chosen area to increase your satisfaction?  Feel free to choose an area that already exhibits positive aspects. Don’t begin this process for the first time in choosing an area you feel you “should” change.  Let your first step on the journey be an enjoyable one!

 Finally, develop a plan:

1.    What are the changes that you are committed to making long term?  What are you committed to doing this week or today to start the process?

2.    How will you know you have been successful?

3.    Who can support you in your plan?

4.    How will you celebrate your success?

Consistency and accountability are important in designing a plan and achieving success.  Remember, it takes 21 days to develop a new habit so don’t give up.  Find a friend and make changes together or consider a coach.  A coach may be the answer if you need assistance in making your desired changes.  Often the coach is the missing link between dreaming of a different life and living a different life. A coach will assist you in discovering, clarifying, and creating your life, encouraging your self-discovery, eliciting solutions and strategies, and holding you accountable for your commitments.  

Do this exercise & tell us what you think......

How to Build Self Confidence: 6 Essential and Timeless Tips

by HENRIK EDBERG

Image by *Zara (license).

“Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world straight in the face.”
Helen Keller

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

“Confidence is courage at ease.”
Daniel Maher

I believe that one of the most common wishes is simply to feel more confident in various situations in life.

But how?

Confident friends may say: “Well, just be confident, man!”. However, to a person that doesn’t feel that confident this piece of advice may not be very helpful. At all.

Now, I hope you will find something useful in this article to help you improve and maintain your own levels of confidence.

1. Take action. Get it done.

“Having once decided to achieve a certain task, achieve it at all costs of tedium and distaste. The gain in self-confidence of having accomplished a tiresome labor is immense.”Thomas A. Bennett

“Nothing builds self-esteem and self-confidence like accomplishment.”
Thomas Carlyle

“Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.”
Dale Carnegie

The most important step in building self confidence is simply to take action. Working on something and getting it done. Sitting at home and thinking about it will just make you feel worse. Simple. But not always easy to do. To make it a bit easier, here are a three of my favourite ways to make it easer to take action:

• Be present. This will help you snap out of over thinking and just go and do whatever you want to get done. This is probably the best tip I have found so far for taking more action since it puts you in a state where you feel little emotional resistance to the work you’ll do. And it puts you in state where the right actions often just seem to flow out of you in a focused but relaxed way and without much effort. One of the simplest ways to connect with the present moment is just to keep your focus on your breathing for a minute or two.
• Lighten up. One way to dissuade yourself from taking action is to take whatever you are about to do too seriously. That makes it feel too big, too difficult and too scary. If you on the other hand relax a bit and lighten up you often realize that those problems and negative feelings are just something you are creating in your own mind. With a lighter state of mind your tasks seems lighter and become easier to get started with. Have a look at Lighten Up! for more on this.
• Really, really want it. Then taking action isn’t something you have to force. Taking action becomes a very natural thing. It’s something you can’t wait to do.

2. Face your fear.

“The way to develop self-confidence is to do the thing you fear.”
William Jennings Bryan

“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

Look, I could tell you to do affirmations or other exercises for months in front of your mirror. It may have a positive effect. Just like preparing yourself it may help you to take action with more confidence.

But to be frank, if you don’t listen to the quotes above and face your fears you won’t experience any better self confidence on a deeper and more fundamental level. Having experiences where you face your fear is what really builds self confidence. There is no way around it.

However, there are ways to face your fears that do not include that much shaking of the knees. There are ways to make it easier for yourself.

• Be curious. When you are stuck in fear you are closed up. You tend to create division in your world and mind. You create barriers between you and other things/people. When you shift to being curious your perceptions go SWOOSH! and the world just opens up. Curiosity is filled with anticipation and enthusiasm. It opens you up. And when you are open and enthusiastic then you have more fun things to think about than focusing on your fear. How do you become more curious? One way is to remember how life has become more fun in the past thanks to your curiosity and to remember all the cool things it helped you to discover and experience.
• Realize that fear is often based on unhelpful interpretation.As humans we like to look for patterns. The problem is just that we often find negative and not so helpful patterns in our lives based on just one or two experiences. Or by misjudging situations. Or through some silly miscommunication. When you get too identified with your thoughts you’ll believe anything they tell you. A more helpful practise may be to not take your thoughts too seriously. A lot of the time they and your memory are pretty inaccurate.

Image by *Zara (license).

3. Understand in what order things happen.

One of my favourite snippets of movie-dialogue is this one from the 1999 film “Three Kings”.

In this scene Major Archie Gates (George Clooney) wants the small team to save a fellow soldier and steal Saddam’s gold just after the first Gulf War has ended.

The young soldier Conrad Vig (Spike Jonze) has his doubts about the plan:

Archie Gates: You’re scared, right?
Conrad Vig: Maybe.
Archie Gates: The way it works is, you do the thing you’re scared shitless of, and you get the courage AFTER you do it, not before you do it.
Conrad Vig: That’s a dumbass way to work. It should be the other way around.
Archie Gates: I know. That’s the way it works.

Great movie. Great little piece of dialogue. Even though it may not be what people want to hear.

The thing is, when you do things you don’t just build confidence in your ability to handle different situations. You also experience progressive desensitization. What that means is that situations – like for example public speaking or maybe just showing your latest blogpost to an audience out there – that made you feel all shaky become more and more normal in your life. It is not longer something you psyche yourself up to do. It just becomes normal. Like tying your shoes, hanging out with your friends or taking a shower.

It may seem scary now. But after having done whatever you fear a few to a dozen times or so you may think: “Is that it?”. You almost feel disappointed of how anticlimactic it has become. You may even get a bit angry with yourself and wonder why you avoided doing it for so long.

4. Prepare.

“One important key to success is self-confidence. An important key to self- confidence is preparation.”
Arthur Ashe

When you know nothing of what you are about to do it’s very easy to get lost in vague, foggy fear and start building big horror scenarios in your mind of what may happen if you give it a try.

Preparing yourself and educating yourself can be a big help here. By for example rehearsing and rewriting your speech over and over you can pretty much learn it by heart. By doing research you can find breathing techniques that can quickly make your calmer and present. Or simple visualization techniques that make you feel more confident and positive as you step out on the stage.

This is obviously more work than not doing anything about the speech at all before you start giving it. But it can make a huge difference in your confidence levels if you take the time to prepare yourself. And of course, the speech and the delivery of it will most likely be a lot better too.

5. Realize that failure or being wrong will not kill you.

“Confidence comes not from always being right but from not fearing to be wrong.”
Peter T. Mcintyre

“I quit being afraid when my first venture failed and the sky didn’t fall down.”
Allen H. Neuharth

Again, you have to face your fear. Because it is only then that you discover the thing that billions of people throughout history have discovered before you. Failure won’t kill you. Nor will being wrong. The sky will not fall down. That’s just what people that haven’t faced their fear yet think.

The thing is to reframe failure from being something that makes your legs shake to something useful and important for the growth of your self confidence and your overall growth as a human being. Here are four ways that failure can help you out:

• You learn. Instead of seeing failure as something horrible you can start to view it more as a learning experience. When standing in the middle of a failure, you can ask yourself questions like: What’s awesome about this situation? What can I learn from this situation?
• You gain experiences you could not get any other way. Ideally, you probably want to learn from other people’s mistakes and failures. That’s not always easy to do though. Sometimes you just have to fail on your own to learn a lesson and to gain an experience no one can relate to you in mere words.
• You become stronger. Every time you fail you become more accustomed to it. You realize more and more that it’s not the end of the world. And, again, you get desensitized. You can handle things that would have been very hard to handle a few years back. Failing can also a have an exhilarating component because even though you failed you at least took a chance. You didn’t just sit on you hands doing nothing. And that took quite a bit of courage and determination.
• Your chances of succeeding increases. Every time you fail you can learn and increase your inner strength. So every failure can make you more and more likely to succeed.

And remember, the world doesn’t revolve around you. You may like to think so. But it doesn’t. People really don’t care that much about what you do. They have their own life, problems and worries that the world revolves around them to focus on. They don’t think that much about you or are constantly monitoring what you do wrong or when you fail.

Maybe a disappointing thought. But a liberating and relieving one too because now you can let go of that worry that everyone is watching you.

Image by Son of Groucho (license).

6. Get to know who you are and what you want out of life.

“The world has the habit of making room for the man whose words and actions show that he knows where he is going.”
Napoleon Hill

“Don’t listen to anyone who tells you that you can’t do this or that. That’s nonsense. Make up your mind, you’ll never use crutches or a stick, then have a go at everything. Go to school, join in all the games you can. Go anywhere you want to. But never, never let them persuade you that things are too difficult or impossible.”
Douglas Bader

To build and find more confidence in yourself you have to get to know yourself better. Go exploring. Face some of your fears. Fail over and over and understand that it isn’t really that big of a deal. Grow stronger through such experiences and also become more internally relaxed. Figure out what really excites you by simply trying a whole bunch of stuff out.

When you know more about who you are and what you want out of life – not other people say you want – you will have more confidence in yourself and what you can do.

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