You’ll Do It When You’re Forced To

“Hardships, poverty and wants are the best incentives, and the best foundation, for the success of man.” -Bradford Merrill

There is a great deal of truth to this statement.

Though not all of the challenges we face in life will be met with open arms, they can be the very things that put our lives on a course to success. Those “bumps in the road” can become the motivation that is necessary to make something better.

If I never got fired from my job back in December of 2006 then I would not be working full-time from home right now. I would still be broke, working 40 hours a week, living paycheck to paycheck.

If there was no contrast, no good and bad, in situations, where would we find incentive to do something else? Do you remember your first job? What was it?

Perhaps you had a newspaper route and you used your bicycle, delivering papers at the crack of dawn. Maybe you were a babysitter for neighborhood children or you may even have walked dogs. [Continue Reading]

You’re Already Working Hard At Something

A primary reason for lack of motivation is that to make the necessary changes that are conducive to success seem too difficult.

It is much easier to be a “watcher,” to sit back, stagnant, doing nothing while you groan and gripe about how terrible everything is and how tired you are of your current situation.

But the only reason that remaining static seems easier is because it is what you have become accustomed to doing. The fact of the matter is that you are already working to remain where you are currently.

Do you find it easy to ignore the desire to accomplish more in your life? Do you find it easy to hold yourself back from achieving your goals?

If so, you are keeping yourself in limbo. Momentum wants to pull you forward, where there is more for you, but your fears and doubts pull you backward and hold you down. It takes a great deal of internal strength, perseverance and endurance to remain balanced between such powerful forces.

It stands to reason that if you are working so hard to stay where you are, all it takes is a simple shift of focus to redirect your energies and move forward.

But how can that be done?

It may seem scary, like a huge leap from where you are to where you want to be; but it helps if you are able to identify the one thing that stands between you and your ability to reach for more.

While this hindrance is different for everyone, but there are some common reasons. Perhaps you can pinpoint your barrier to success and begin to make some changes in your life. [Continue Reading]

Purpose In Action

If your life seems to be weighed down by heavy energy and your motivation to do something meaningful has taken a nosedive – get moving! Inertia is like a virus that devours your joy, inspiration, and focus, leaving stagnation and dullness in its wake.

You end up feeling sluggish and scattered, knowing you’re not happy with your life circumstances but unclear what to do about them. The best weapon to clear away stagnation is simply: ACTION.

It doesn’t even matter what type of action you take. The important thing is to get some positive energy flowing through your life again. If you’re feeling confused and oppressed in your home, start clearing out your cabinets and closets.

Toss out old junk you no longer need. Better organize what you want to keep. If your body is feeling unbalanced or sluggish, start exercising immediately. Take a walk, do some yoga, stretch, drink plenty of water.

These actions will get positive energy flowing through your body again and you’ll quickly feel a surge of clarity and motivation. Do the same with all other areas of your life: financial, emotional, spiritual, physical, mental. Clear away what you don’t need and take action to bring in more of what you want. [Continue Reading]

Have Patience With Yourself

One of the greatest ways we hold ourselves back is by being far more demanding than we would with anyone else. We support, nurture and encourage our loved ones to be successful and happy, then turn around and belittle and scold ourselves for not doing or being “enough.”

We obsess about our physical flaws, dismiss our achievements and force ourselves to measure up to some imaginary standard we’ve set in our own minds. Is it any wonder we feel awful much of the time?

If this describes you, you are all too familiar with the sinking sense of defeat such habits cause. Perhaps you have given up on improving your life because you just “can’t seem to get it right.”

Maybe you have set goals and failed to achieve them in the past, or you avoid goal-setting activities altogether because you know you’ll never succeed anyway.

Perhaps it is time to ask yourself: Are you expecting too much? Are you pushing yourself beyond your limits, expecting perfection, and berating yourself viciously when you slip up? [Continue Reading]

Improving Your Optimism for Self-Improvement

Many individuals experience an issue with negative thinking. Many mental health professionals refer to this condition as “negativitis” because of the fact that, in many people, it can actually be considered a true medical condition.

When a person experiences this type of thinking on a consistent basis, it can greatly affect the ambition, inspiration, and hope that the person may experience.

When a person is working on improving themselves, it is important to eliminate the issue of negative thinking. In this article, you will be introduced to a number of ways in which you can improve your optimism for self-improvement.

Thinking in a negative fashion, or pessimistically, is a condition in a person may overcome with a little self-discipline. This way of thinking is nothing more than an unhealthy habit that is acquired over time.

As with any unhealthy habit, it is important to know and understand that you can overcome this mode of thinking. [Continue Reading]

Blinders Can Be Your Best Friends

“Troubles are a lot like people - they grow bigger if you nurse them.” - Author Unknown

Whenever a person accuses you of “wearing blinders” it is normally a damaging remark that refers to your inability (or refusal) to confront fact or acknowledge the truth about something.

Although it is accurate that denial could be a bad matter whenever you apply it to ward off development or hide your head in the sand, entering the habit of selective denial could also benefit you vastly because you endeavor to attain favorable changes in your lifetime.

The trick is to determine how to apply mental blinders to exclude the stuff that would hold you back or take away from what you are attempting to achieve.

Negative thoughts, doubtfulnesses about your powers, fictitious determinations about what failures signify to you, and even negative remarks by other people in your lifetime could all take away from your power to focus and keep traveling ahead. [Continue Reading]

Become A Door-Builder Extraordinaire!

“If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.” - Milton Berle

Are you still expecting chance to come knocking on your door? Do you even have a door? Once we are born, all of us receives limitless doors that we can walk through. These “doors” are a symbolic representation for the many possible pathways we can journey throughout our lifespan.

We might not apply all of them, but they’re there whenever we choose we would like to. Nonetheless, during the course of our lifetimes, a lot of us get scared by what might be milling around behind those doors.

We have not opened them to peek since we are certain it must be something scary – so we lock away the door tight, board it up, and stuff heavy pieces of furniture in front of it. Even if chance DID knock, we would not be able to detect the door, not to mention open it up.

If you would like to convert your life into something miraculous, begin constructing doors like mad! You can either clear the ones you have barricaded in the past, or snap up a saw, a few nails and a hammer and begin constructing fresh ones! [Continue Reading]

Change Your Perceptions To Change Your Life

“Men are not prisoners of fate, but prisoners of their own minds.” - Franklin D. Roosevelt

Whether or not you believe it, you might not realize that how you think can affect how you act; in turn, this can affect what happens to you.

For example, if you’re fearful that something might happen, it’s much more likely that that thing is going to happen to you, not necessarily because of magical “energy” that works against you, but simply because oftentimes, you bring exactly that which you fear into fruition by your own actions. In short, your perceptions can affect and even actually help create your reality.

The way you see the world around you can help determine how you feel about yourself, your talents and potential, and your progress, as well as how “lucky” those are around you.

If you’re convinced, for example, that you’re less lucky than other people are, you might think that you don’t have as many opportunities as other people do. If you feel like the world is against you, you may always think that you will lose out no matter what you do. [Continue Reading]

Always Demand The Best From Yourself

“Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anyone else expects of you. Never excuse yourself.” - Henry Ward Beecher

Why is that we are so good at demanding the best from others, yet when it comes to ourselves we always give ourselves more slack?

We allow excuses to take over our lives and hold us back. We then use those same excuses to explain why we haven‘t been able to achieve the successful that we desire.

It’s not surprising that we try to go a little easier on ourselves since we already feel pressured and overwhelmed by our obligations and the expectations of others.

However, while the demands of life can deplete our resources, demanding more from ourselves can actually add more to who we are.

The harder we work on ourselves, and the more excellence we demand from our actions, the more focused we will be and the better people we will be because of it. [Continue Reading]