Many people are afraid of failure, but how many do you know that are afraid of success? Ask yourself, “Am I afraid of success?”

There are many reasons why we might turn away from the challenges and opportunities that could bring us success, but it is usually because we just don’t believe we have what it takes to be successful. 

The good news is that self-belief can be improved. One way is to remember the successes and wins you have had in the past, and vividly imagine yourself repeating similar successes in the new situation. Another is to set yourself up to succeed by taking on risks you are quite confident you can handle, and then gradually – step by step expand and increase the intensity.

It is important to surround yourself with supportive people who believe in you, like family, friends and fellow work colleagues. Importantly you need to control your self-talk and negative thinking. You don’t want to end up self defeating yourself before you start. Why not begin today to live your life in the present, so that you will have no regrets in the future.

Remember, Life Is Not A Dress Rehearsal, It Is Real!

If you’d like to add new depth of meaning to your life, and give your energy level a boost at the same time, then read on. There’s a fantastic idea that seems to have died lately, and that’s really disappointing, because it’s an idea that helps give meaning and purpose to life. It can also do wonders for your energy levels, relationships, and self-esteem. That idea is ” good service.”  

To be more specific by “good service,” I mean the act of doing something to assist or benefit someone else without any expectation of reward, acknowledgement or reciprocation.  Whenever you have a personal or business contact with someone, and you take a moment to put yourself in their shoes and behave accordingly, you change the balance of power in the world – from fear and hate to caring and consideration.

You may be a bank officer, a receptionist, a lawyer or an IT specialist – it doesn’t really matter what you do. What matters is how you do it – the creative, personal touches you add to make someone’s day a little easier or a little smoother. 

Some people will notice what you’ve done, and some won’t. But I guarantee you, if you start to approach your job with the goal of giving truly good and caring service, you will be transforming your work into something wonderful.

Do you look at the future with hope and a belief that no matter what comes your way, you will succeed?  Or, do you look at the future as hopeless, and there’s nothing that can be done to change it? What you believe has a lot to do with how well you deal with life’s challenges.

Our beliefs affect what happens to us.  As human beings, we move toward and become like what we think about and our present thoughts determine our future.

As human beings, we are goal-oriented. Also, we are picture-oriented. We think in pictures.  If I say, “blue ball” you don’t see the words ‘blue’and ‘ball.’ In your mind, you actually “see” a blue ball.

We don’t see with our eyes. We pick up light with our eyes and then it is translated into pictures in our brains, depending upon how we’ve been conditioned to translate the light. Words create pictures, and we are drawn to pictures.

So, if you believe the future is hopeless, you will be drawn to every hopeless, depressing, “it always happens to me” story you can find. We are comfortable when we find evidence to prove what we believe is true, and we act in accordance with those beliefs. This is also known as a self-fulfilling prophecy. “I knew it was going to be bad, and it is!”

The same thing holds true if we believe the future is full of opportunity, and that we have the power within to make it even better. We will see evidence of the possibilities, and be drawn to them because that’s what we are thinking about. It is not surprising that people who look with positive intent are healthier, happier and more successful.

So, how do we make that switch in belief? It’s all about changing that internal picture you hold, and it isn’t going to happen overnight. It is made, first, by your intent and hard work on your part to change your beliefs. 

Worth the effort?  You bet it is!

Do you ever feel like things in your life have gotten out of control?

No matter how diligently you set goals, visualise results, and affirm a positive outcome, every once in a while your life is going to feel as if it’s gone a little crazy.  Carefully laid out plans go up in smoke.  People you counted on bail out on you.  A health or family crisis strikes. An natural disaster puts you back to square one. And we’ve seen alot of that lately here in Australia. Suddenly you feel as if you’re completely off course, out of control, and lost at sea.

At times like this, there are a few things it may help you to remember. First of all, no one can control every aspect of his or her life, and adversity comes to all of us, no matter how moral we are, and no matter how good our attitude is.  Bad things happen to good people all the time.

Second, it’s important to realise that there is one, and only one, thing in life that is completely within your power to control, and that is your response to what happens to you.  When you find yourself overcome with feelings of fear, helplessness, doom and gloom, you can put the brakes on these feelings by gently but firmly choosing to shift the focus of the thoughts that are running through your mind.

Your feelings are a direct result of the thoughts you think, and setting aside some time every morning and evening for positive visualisation, affirmation, or guided meditation is a highly effective way of getting these thoughts back under your control again.

Try it.  I think you’ll be surprised at just how well it works.

For specific techniques read The Truth About Goal Setting.

One of the most powerful forces in the world is under your complete control, and how you use it determines what happens to you in life. Here’s what I mean.

If you are a parent, how many times have you told your kids to “pay attention!”  I’m pretty sure you do it all the time, because you know it’s important.  But I wonder if you really understand the power of our focused attention?

Have you ever been playing a game, take for example, tennis, and when your time on the court is almost up, you say to your partner, “OK, now, we’ve only got a few minutes left, so let’s really do our best!”  And suddenly, instead of volleys that last for five or six returns, they go on for five or ten minutes!  Or perhaps you’ve put off working on a project until the last possible moment, and then you amaze yourself with how much you get done in an incredibly short space of time.  I think we’ve all experienced similar things. It’s not the deadline itself that boosts your productivity and effectiveness.  It’s the incredible power of your focused attention.

The point is, there is absolutely no reason why you can’t perform this well all the time.  All of us have the potential to be peak performers. Unfortunately, only some of us have learned how to control and focus our attention, to harness our thoughts, beliefs and attitudes and direct them toward what we want, when we want.

You can learn this skill. And once you’ve learned it, you’ll be amazed at how much your life will change for the better.

How well do you wait for things? What happens when we’re forced to wait for something?

These days, everywhere you look people are in a hurry. Timesaving devices are cropping up as quickly as ever, because, as we all know by now, time is money, and we’re all in a mad rush to either save it or spend it. But what happens when you are forced to wait for something? You have a 3:00 doctor’s appointment, but you don’t get in until 3:45. You are on the end of a line that is ten people long at the bank or a couple of hundred people long at the football waiting to get in. Or, and here is a growing problem all over the world, you are stuck in traffic.

Now, as I see it, there are two ways to look at waiting. You can spend the time fuming, working yourself into a huff about all the valuable time you’re being forced to waste, raising your blood pressure and your stress level as you sit or stand there. Or, you can regard waiting as a gift of time. What can you do with this gift? Here are just a few suggestions.

Use it to develop possible solutions to personal problems. Do mental gymnastics – commit something to memory or see how long a list of things you can remember. Get creative. Carry a book with you, one that you find difficult to read for more than a short period at a time. Set goals for the rest of the day or week.

I personally have one of my small ‘Take a Minute’ books in the door console and just flick through the pages.  It really puts the situation in perspective.

Don’t waste the time you spend waiting. Use it to create a better life.

How important are beliefs and expectations in determining what happens to us in life? They may be more important than you think.

Have you ever noticed that people who expect the best in life usually seem to get it?

And have you noticed that the reverse also seems to be true? Do you think it happens that way due to coincidence or luck? Or is something else going on?

I’ll tell you what I think. One of the basic principles of the concepts I know is that we move toward and become like that which we think about, and we behave not in accordance with the truth but with the truth as we perceive and believe it to be. So when you expect the best from yourself and others, you behave in ways that almost guarantee you are going to get it.

The same is true when you expect trouble. You set yourself up for it in countless ways and sure enough, trouble shows up at your door, just about knocking it down. What do you expect for yourself? Do you expect to do the things you dream about or do you expect obstacles, opposition and eventual disappointment?

What do you expect from your kids, your spouse, and your co-workers? Do you expect excellence, integrity and respect? Or do you have to keep after them all the time to keep them from messing things up? Why not try expecting the best? It’s a habit that can be learned and it’s probably the best habit you can get your children into, too.

If you consistently and lovingly give them a better, much more positive expectation, they are far more likely to go out and make it happen.

A number of years ago my wife and I lost a substantial amount of money through a property investing company that went broke.  Now normally I would be extremely skeptical of such ventures, however, when my wife’s closest friend worked at the company our fears were somewhat minimal as she was continually telling us how successful the company was.

After losing this money and becoming quite negative, I seemed to start attracting all sorts of bad things into our lives.  In a space of 6 weeks this is what happened – My wife crashed her car through the front window of a shop 2 days before Christmas (accidently put it into Drive instead of Reverse), our washing machine blew up (3 months out of warranty), our upstairs toilet leaked through the roof to downstairs, one of dogs needed urgent vet treatment for a paralysis tick.

Now once I sought legal advice and was advised that there was little to no hope of recovering any of our money, I was able to ‘let go’ of the negativity and get on with my life.  This change in ‘attitude’ enabled me to let go of my negativety and start being positive again.  Within 2 weeks, all sorts of new and exciting opportunties were presenting themselves and I was able to look at this period as a very good and ‘expensive’ life-long learning experience.

Regards
Damien Clarke

Today I want to tell you about one of the guiding principles I use in the work that I do with helping people change their habits for the better.

During the last 13+ years, I’ve worked closely with many people who wanted to improve their performance. And when I work with them, one of the things I make sure they understand before we really get started has to do with the way the process of change works.

It is simply this: All meaningful and lasting change starts on the inside and then works its way out- it does not start outside in.

In other words, we think ourselves into behaving. If you don’t change the picture in your mind before you start to change anything else about yourself, you will have a tendency to slip back to the old picture, the old you, the old way. That’s what happens, for example, if you force yourself to lose weight without first changing your inner picture. If you continue to see yourself as overweight in your mind’s eye, you’ll start to gain the weight back as soon as you take it off.

It is also why, if your dominant picture of yourself is as a smoker, and you try to quit, you’ll have a strong tendency to relapse once you relax the control it takes to stop in the first place.

Affirmations and visualisations are an excellent way to change your internal pictures and make sure that new behaviour lasts. They help you create your reality from the inside out, which is the absolute best way to do it.

Success is Yours
Damien Clarke

In the 90’s it was a time of rapid change, and I believed that the new century would be no different – I was right. The ability to quickly adapt to change is still a survival skill and a tremendous skill to have.

One of the secrets to happiness in these changing times is the ability to be flexible – the power to adapt. Some people make themselves miserable by being very stubborn about their plans for the future. They choose a path and refuse to deviate from it, no matter what.

We are entering a phase of massive change and if you don’t embrace it for what it’s worth you will be left behind.

Now, persistence and tenacity are normally great qualities to have, but when it’s necessary to take a new direction, resistance can keep us stuck in the mud. The happiest and most successful people are those who are eager to learn new ways. They adapt to new systems when the old ones don’t work or when something better comes along. 

If one career path ends, they enthusiastically learn a new way to make a living. If their relationship ends, they are able to adjust to being alone or to a new partner. If people frustrate and annoy them and they see that these people aren’t going to change, they accept them the way they are and relax, or they express their regrets without judging or blaming and move on.

The only constant in life is Change! Embrace and encourage it!