Advanced Life Skills

I’m sure that you realize the importance of setting goals.  Many of our readers have told me that they set lots of goals, big goals, little goals, short-term and long-term goals. 

Quite a few of you it seems, have read books on goal setting and many, if not most have watched the movie “The Secret.”

Is that true of you as well? If so then you probably have a great understanding of the basics of goal setting.  You’ve learned how to write down what you want to achieve and the reasons why you want to achieve that particular goal.  You know about motivation, obstacles and challenges, timelines, a plan of action, visualization and persistence.

So with all this knowledge at your disposal, let me ask you this, how many of you’re goals do you actually achieve?

If the percentage is not as high as you’d like it to be, don’t feel like you’re all alone.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people say, “I’m doing everything right and I still can’t accomplish my goals.”  Have you ever felt that way?

So what’s the problem?  First of all let me say that all the steps you’ve learned actually do work.  Unfortunately there are other necessary factors for goal setting success. It’s not so much that these important factors have been left out, but for some reason it seems like their value is not clearly communicated most of the time.

Let’s take this opportunity to review five of these important elements of successful goal setting.

1) Your mindset and self-image need to change with regard to and in conjunction with your goals. If somewhere deep inside yourself you don’t feel confident about your ability to succeed, that core belief will sabotage your efforts.

To accomplish big goals you need to be able to truly identify with what it will be like to really be there. When you absolutely know deep down that it will happen, then your identity becomes tied up with that vision, and you are on the way.

2) You need to develop the ability to mentally shrink down the size of your challenges in your mind. Your internal view of how big or small the challenge is will have a direct influence on your confidence. Your brain can make any tasks look big and impossible or it can make it seem totally doable.  It’s the same task but a completely different feeling. When your confidence is high, even a difficult challenge will seem fun and exhilarating.

3) When setbacks and problems come up you need to view them, not as walls or roadblocks, but as part of the growth process. You will meet unexpected challenges along the way, how you view them will determine weather you keep moving forward or abandon your goal. Make up your mind beforehand to allow yourself to embrace the opportunity to solve any unforeseen problem. I promise you, your untapped abilities will surprise you when the time comes.

4) Develop a burning passion for the results you are about to create. Fall in love with both the benefits and the process. Become intimately acquainted with the feelings of accomplishment and the satisfaction of reaching your goal. Knowing the benefits of reaching a goal is not enough. Get you emotions involved so you will stay motivated and focused.

5) Make an unbreakable commitment to see it through clear to the finish line – no matter what. That might be a huge commitment so it’s important to ask yourself beforehand, “Do I really want it enough to make that kind of commitment?” You need to be sure before you start. If you bail out part way through it will have a negative effect on your self-confidence and make things harder next time. If you see it through to success, your self-confidence will soar and it will be much easier the next time around.

If you want some practical help with achieving your goals I have an easy to follow 7-part mini course called “Developing a Mindset for Success” I would like you to have. There is also a great surprise welcome bonus that goes with it. There’s no hidden agenda here, I really want to help you to succeed.

PS. Sometime in September I will be releasing something very special. More on that in the days and weeks to come.

The rising costs of gas, food and everything else is having a negative affect on many peoples state of mind these days. Do you find yourself in that situation?

High prices can definitely affect much more than our wallets, they can also influence our overall attitude and mindset.  Negative thoughts and feelings about money can easily rob us of our sense of joy and happiness, which puts us in the grip of negativity. It becomes like a big dark cloud blocking out our light. When we allow this to happen, realize it or not, we have given our power to negativity.

Negative feelings prevent us from being a truly happy, loving, and abundant person. Abundance and lack cannot coexist. One or the other will always prevail.

Take a minute and focus on the words, positive, happy, loving, abundant. Those are good words aren’t they? They give us a positive and optimistic feeling.  That good feeling represents the way we truly want to be, our natural positive and loving state.

We actually block our ability to attract abundance into our lives when we hold the feeling that we lack money or any other resource. When we are confronted with high prices at the check out stand or gas pump, it puts us in touch with these negative feelings.

Here’s how we can use these situations as an opportunity to raise our awareness and initiate a quantum shift from a mindset of lack to one of abundance.

The next time you find yourself in this kind of situation take a moment to notice if you are upset about high prices. If so then you are in a mindset that is focused on lack. Our mind is only creative. It tries to create whatever we focus our attention on. If we hold in mind that prices are too high and we cannot afford it, our mind will immediately go to work to make that our reality.

When we don’t like something that means that we disapprove of it. By disapproving, we are sending negative energy to a situation we already see as negative. When we disapprove of anything or anyone we are feeding our consciousness with additional negative energy and compounding the problem.

When we make a decision and let go of the negativity and disapproval, we are releasing that negative energy from our consciousness. The next step is to project positive energy and approval into that situation, effectively replacing the negative with positive.

Granted, this shift in mindset won’t cause prices to come down, in fact they may even go up. What it will do is prevent external forces from having a negative influence on our sense of joy and abundance. When we operate from abundance we attract abundance into our life and free ourselves from the grip of negativity.

PS. Speak your mind – leave a comment!

I enjoyed reading this article at StarLightWalker and wanted to share a portion of it. As we examine our own belief patterns in the light of challenges it can stimulate profound progress in our personal growth as this article points out.

Embracing Setbacks: Harnessing the Power of Failure

If you are anything like me, the idea of failure conjures up all sorts of negative images and feelings.  Indeed, one of the hardest lessons for me to learn (and one that I must admit that I am still in the process of learning) has been understanding the fact that failing at a particular task does not mean that I am a failure.

I am not sure where this tendency to identify myself with the outcome of my efforts originally came from, but there is no doubt that it is a deeply ingrained, habitual pattern of evaluating myself and the world.  For as far back as I can remember I have always had a sense of needing to “earn” love and acceptance - by getting good grades in school, merit badges in Boy Scouts, and later in life through promotions and salary increases at work.  Within this worldview my value as a person was not something intrinsic; rather, it was tied to my achievements, and as a result there was a strong sense that success made me a better person and failure made me a worse person.  Given this habitual perceptual frame, it takes persistence and an almost stubborn optimism to remind myself that I am not my outcomes!

When you step back and examine the premise of this worldview, it becomes apparent that there is something insidiously self-sabotaging in the agreements that support its structure.  In what way could failure - whether at school, at work, or even at play - cause me to be a worse person?  And for that matter, why would success cause me to be a better person?  What linkage is there between my ability to perform a task or achieve a goal and my worth as a person?  When you give it a bit a thought, it becomes clear that this premise is absurd.  My value as a person has nothing to do with whether or not I succeed or fail at a particular task.  Certainly from a spiritual perspective my worthiness is an intrinsic property of my existence - my value lies in the fact that I am a unique manifestation of the Divine (or in more traditional terms, a child of God) - and is in no way dependent on what I do or do not achieve.

The absurdity of the idea of earning value through success becomes particularly clear if we apply it to very specific examples.  Am I a better person if I am successful at badminton, and a worse person if I fail to hit the birdie?  Am I somehow a better person if I succeed at making a soufflé?  If it is clear in these instances that the entire premise of the statement is nonsense, why would we buy into this worldview when the subject is the grades I get in school, the level of income I earn, or the job title I have at work?  Yet how many of us, particularly success-driven self-improvement nuts like me, have bought into this worldview?

In the realm of personal growth, my experience is that failure and crisis tend to stimulate growth whereas success tends to limit the opportunity for growth.  When we succeed there is little pressure to examine our ideas or behaviors, as the fact that we are succeeding indicates that our current strategies and tactics are working.  As a result, when we are on a roll - succeeding - we tend to repeat our behaviors in an effort to maintain the status quo.  As a result, while these periods may exhibit incremental growth and improvement they very seldom precipitate radical breakthroughs or transformation.  Rather it is failure that is the harbinger of dramatic growth and transformation.

When we fail we tend to ponder, to re-examine our strategies and tactics - and in so doing we are often forced to question the core assumptions and beliefs that are the foundation and basis for our current life strategies.  Failure urges us to question the foundational concepts of ourselves and our world, and in so doing encourages us to expand our perspective.  And it is in this questioning of our preconceived views that miracles and magic occur.

Today I want to share an inspiring comment submitted by Rachel in response to my post of 7/16/08 titled “Are You Challenged or Disabled?”

Rachel has been legally blind all of her life and yet she can clearly see the difference between challenged and disabled. Those of us who are sighted really can’t fully appreciate or imagine how difficult life would be without our eyesight. How well do you think you would deal with the loss of your vision?

Here’s what Rachel had to say:

“I was born with a visual impairment. My sight issues have rarely limited me, any limitations I have had were mostly self-imposed.

I have a Masters degree in Fine Arts from the University of Michigan. I was the first legally blind, visual artist to graduate with a master’s from that university.

At times I have used my “disability” as an excuse for not living up to my fullest potential. At other times I have over compensated for my sight issues and not allowed myself to receive the appropriate help when I needed it.

What I find most interesting is I AM NOT ALONE. You don’t have to have a obvious disability to be disabled in certain areas of your life. We have all resorted to using “coping skills” because we didn’t have other more appropriate tools at our disposal.”

Her Conclusion:

“A disability is not something that happens TO YOU, it’s something that you do to yourself. There’s really only disabled thinking.”

Thank’s Rachel for sharing your story with us.

PS. If you would like to check out Rachel’s blog it’s called Why Not Rachel

PPS. Do you have a personal story you are willing to share? Please take a moment to leave a comment. If you found Rachel’s story inspiring you can use the Share This button below to share it with others.

From a young age, you are appointed. Appointed to what and by whom?

By your parents as “old enough to stay home alone.”By your institutions as “educated enough to enter the full time work force.” By your employers as “responsible enough for promotion.”

Ask yourself these important question:

1) Have you become mentally conditioned by all this external appointment?

2) Have you given your power to someone or something outside of yourself?

Could this be the invisible Great Wall of China that’s blocking you from rocketing toward your goals and reaching your full potential?

For most of us, to one degree or another, the answer is “yes.”

From a young age, powerful forces within society condition you to undervalue who and what you are — so you will look to them for your own self-worth — so you will look to them for validation, power, and permission, through the appointments they bestow on you.

Yes, we have all been hypnotized into believing we are smaller than we really are. Just as a fishbowl keeps goldfish tiny … we have all to one extent or another been fooled into believing our value equals the size of our external appointments.

The question is not: Have you given your power to someone or something outside of yourself? But rather: How can you take it back?

Unlike a goldfish swimming around oblivious in a tank, you have a choice!

Power is an inside job. You do not need to import it from external sources. All you need do is peel away the lies you’ve been told — and went on to tell yourself — that  are keeping you wading around in the kiddy pool of life.

Realize our school system, government, and industries reward dependency, NOT self-reliance … conformity, NOT innovation … slavery to the status quo, NOT fearless adventure into the unknown.

Aside from the 3Rs, (reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic) what you learn through formalized education is obsolete, outdated knowledge by the time you learn it. Worse, it is designed to prepare you to become a droid in a large vertically integrated company or institution the likes of which are disintegrating daily.

The result is the inevitable stunting of your initiative, creativity, and capacity for capitalist thinking. Naturally, you fail to appoint yourself captain of the myriad entrepreneurial opportunities around you. And then you wonder why external appointment eludes you.

Please don’t limit your life with these kinds of hideous hallucinations. Expand your beliefs to encompass the life you were born for. Emerson said, “Do the thing, and you will have the power.” You don’t need anyone’s permission.

Source: This article is made up of excerpts from a blog post by Daniel Levis at The total Package which is a great copywriting blog full of free resources for anyone with a website or blog.

I just finished reading a post on Jonathan Fields blog – Awake at the Wheel, which said that 52% of Americans would rather be dead than disabled.

When you think of disabled - what do you think of?

Most of us immediately think of those who are physically disabled because that is usually how the term is applied.  I went to the dictionary to find a definition for “disabled” and I was surprised that the first definition was handicapped.  Next I looked up the term handicapped and it listed disabled as one of its definitions.

Looking a little deeper I also found the definition “disadvantaged” applied to both of these terms.  I also discovered that the dictionary did not restrict these terms to physical challenges but also to mental challenges.

In my mind there is a huge difference between disabled and disadvantaged.

Let’s face it, there are numerous areas in which we can be challenged or handicapped. In fact if you think about it, isn’t it true that we are all somewhat handicapped either physically, mentally, emotionally or socially?

Sometimes we apply the term dysfunctional to relationships, as in the expression “they come from a dysfunctional family.”  In this case we could say that the social dynamic of the family is severally handicapped.

So let’s get to the point of this article.  Handicapped means challenged and we are all challenged in one way or another.  Being physically handicapped is a challenge that others can see.  Being mentally, emotionally or socially handicapped may not be so obvious, but it can be equally disabling.

I have a friend named John who is an incredible athlete. Running, bicycling, hiking, weight lifting and just about any sport you can think of, John’s into it.  Sadly, due to circumstances beyond his control John recently had to have the lower third of one of his legs amputated.

What would you do if you were in John’s situation?  Would you be among that 52% that would rather be dead?  Would you consider losing part of one in your legs as a disability or a handicap?  Would you consider yourself to be dysfunctional or challenged? Think about that for a minute. Try to put yourself in John’s shoes, so to speak.

Life is full of challenges.  It’s up to you whether or not those challenges become disabilities.  Nothing has any value except what we assign it.  If we decide that our challenges our insurmountable then they become our disabilities.  On the other hand, if we view our challenges as opportunities to learn and grow, then our challenges actually contribute to our personal development.

How did John decide to deal with this situation?

Less than a year after his amputation John successfully ran the Monterey Marathon, all 26 miles of it.  Last time I saw John we barely had time to speak, why?  Because he was so involved in a volleyball game that I did not want to break his concentration.  John was an athlete before his amputation and he’s still an athlete today. He did not allow himself to become a victim of his circumstances.

What can we learn from John’s example?

No matter what challenges we face in life, the meaning of those challenges is always our choice.  With the right mindset we can overcome any hurdle, rise to any set of circumstances and conquer any challenges.

We can all learn the life skills that will empower us to overcome any physical, mental, emotional or social obstacles that we encounter. Remember, it’s not what happens to you that’s important in the long run - it’s how you decide to deal with it.  You do not need to be the victim of your circumstances.

Never allow your challenges to become your disabilities, choose personal growth instead. Make the choice to allow yourself to become the architect of your own life and the designer of your own destiny.

“Within each of us lies the power of our consent to health and sickness, to riches and poverty, to freedom and to slavery. It is we who control these, and not another.” -Richard Bach

Today’s post is comprised of excerpts from an article by Tina on her blog “Think Simple Now.” I would encourage you to read the entire article, which is titled “How to Keep a Relationship.” Tina is a passionate and engaging writer and I felt that this particular post was exceptional. Please keep in mind that we are starting in the middle of the story…
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It is inevitable that partners are going to have different opinions, and everyone has days where their emotions can get the better of them. The problem is not that we have conflicts with our partner, the problem lies in the way we handle the situation. When our egos get in the way, our mind becomes clouded and we end up making mountains out of mole hills.

Some of us use these conflicts as an opportunity to answer: Is my relationship stronger than the problem? They use the situation as a way to measure the relationship stability. They fail to see that this question itself causes conflict, since it forces comparison. Instead, a more effective question to ask is: Are we mature enough as people to resolve the conflict with consideration, awareness and grace?

• What Kind Of House Do You Want To Live In?
• What kind of relationships do you want?
• What Kind Of Lifestyle Do You Want To Live?
• What level of Self-Esteem & Confidence?
• What Locations Do You Want To Travel Too?
• What Kind Of Car Do You Want To Drive?
• How do you want to spend your time?

If no one has ever told you that you can be successful, then stop right now and -

Your mindset takes in, digests, uses or rejects what is valuable and what is not.

Your mindset influences your behaviors, and your behaviors bring forth your successes or failures. The good part is that your mindset is created and controlled by you. Your thoughts, beliefs, feelings, and decisions form the action patterns that lead to the results you produce.

To create the life you desire and accomplish your goals, you must first develop the corresponding mindset.

2) Look at the areas in your life where you consistently make firm decisions and notice the results. Next, take a look at the areas in life that you struggle with and discover what decisions you need to make in order to end your struggles.

Who are you?  It’s not a trick question. Your ability to navigate successfully through this thing we call life hinges on how well you know yourself. Here’s a list of seven different aspects of YOU that merit your attention.

1) Know your values. These are the things that matter most to you. What are your personal values and standards? What are your priorities and your beliefs? Why are these things important to you and how committed are you to each of them?

2) Know your strengths.  What natural abilities do you possess and which ones do you want to cultivate and develop? The strengths you have and those you develop are your personal assets. They give you a unique position in life and you need to be aware of them.

3) Know your passions.  What are you passionate about? What is it that gets you excited or demands your undivided attention? What activities and pursuits make you feel really alive? You can’t build your life around your passions if you don’t know what they are.

4) Know your tendencies. Your tendencies often become habits, either good or bad. Do you tend to jump into things on a whim? Do you procrastinate or over react? Knowing your habitual tendencies can help you to analyze areas that need some improvement. It can also help you identify which tendencies most contribute to your strengths and successes.

5) Know your limitations. You will never be the best at everything. It’s better to know which skills or activities are beyond your ability for now. That way you can delegate those things to others while you focus your energy where it’s the most effective.

6) Know your goals. What do you really want to achieve? Goals need to be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time sensitive. Clarity is key when it comes to setting your goals. Clarity leads to action, lack of it leads to confusion.

7) Know your direction. Where do you want to go with your life? Once you understand your values, strengths, passions, tendencies, limitations and goals – you need to have a destination to move toward, a direction. Don’t worry about reaching your destination because in reality - it’s the journey that counts. So pick a direction and move toward it, then let life unfold before you.

You are a beautiful and unique individual, why not spend some time getting to know yourself? It will certainly be time well spent.

PS. Want to share your thoughts or passions? Please leave a comment