At first glance, lack of motivation can often seem to be caused by laziness or procrastination , but looks can be deceiving!  If you’re struggling to stay motivated while working on your goals or any other endeavor, a little introspection can be just the thing to provide clarity and insight about what’s really happening beneath the surface.

When working with coaching clients who are struggling to stay motivated, it’s my job to find out why and help them get past it. Granted, sometimes the problem is exhaustion or burnout and then the prescription might be a vacation. But when that’s not the case I like to use a series of simple questions to reveal the underlying cause. If you are finding it difficult to stay motivated, try this…

Write down the answers to these 5 questions

1) Am I afraid of failing? Fear of failure is an all-too-common reason why people lose motivation.  If this is one of the reasons you’re holding back, you’ll likely be able to come up with clear ideas why you feel so afraid.  For example, you may write, “I’m afraid of embarrassing myself in front of my family and friends,” or “I’m afraid I’ll be really disappointed in myself if I don’t make this happen.”  Whatever comes to mind, write it down and then really think about whether it would be so terrible to experience – or if it would be much worse to not try at all.

2) Do I really believe in my own ability to persevere until I make it? Likewise, you may be feeling uncertain about your ability to overcome obstacles and challenges, which is slightly different than a fear of failure.  For example, you may have a certain measure of confidence in your skills and abilities but doubt that you have the determination and fortitude to achieve the full outcome you desire.

3) Have I grown bored with the goals that once meant so much to me? This is an excellent question to ask because sometimes you’re not aware that your priorities and preferences have changed, and you can gain a lot of clarity by understanding what you REALLY want.  If you do find that you’ve lost interest in your initial goals, you simply need to come up with some new and exciting goals that will spark your eagerness to move forward again.

4) Am I afraid of what it might mean if I succeed? Another common fear is the fear of success.  A fear of success is more about fearing the baggage that often comes along with success.  You may feel nervous about taking on extra responsibility, feel overwhelmed by the increased attention your success would bring, or you might even be worried that you’ll never be able to “top” this level of success in the future.  The only way to work through these fears is to discredit them.  When you break them down and really examine them, you usually find that they’re groundless or irrational, which helps you to move past them.

5) What would make me feel more motivated about this goal or activity? Sometimes you can’t find any clear reason for feeling unmotivated, but asking this question can often help you feel more in control of your own willingness to take action.  Not only do you realize that you’re not powerless against a lack of motivation, you may come up with creative ideas that could inspire your sense of enthusiasm again.

Motivations is empowering

When we feel motivated we are energized and want to make things happen. When we lack motivation everything seems like drudgery and we have to flog ourselves to get anything done. If this has been your experience lately, it’s worth a little effort to get to the bottom of it so you can regain your enthusiasm and get excited about making thing happen.

What gets you motivated?
How do you maintain your motivation and enthusiasm?
The lines are open!

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My book TRUE SELF is the fastest inexpensive way (coaching is the fastest) to make positive life changes very quickly. Do you want to discover your core passions, dismantle your hidden, limiting beliefs, and realize your most desired goals? TRUE SELF will guide you smoothly through the process.

Why is it that everybody gets so excited at the beginning of a new year? Simply stated, people love the idea of renewal. The mindset of: “out with the old, in with the new” is very appealing for several reasons. If the previous year has felt stressful or tedious, then the prospect of a new beginning carries the feeling of renewed hope and possibility.

If the previous year has been rewarding, then there is the anticipation of even greater rewards in the year to come. It seems to be a basic feature of human nature to be optimistic about the future. Is that how you feel? Are you looking forward to positive changes in the year to come?

The beauty of optimism

Optimism is a beautiful state of mind. When we are optimistic we become more alert to new opportunities. Optimism allows us to focus on possibility. Because we keep track of time on a calendar, the dawn of a new year has come to represent a kind of emotional rebirth. It’s a new opportunity to shed old, unwanted aspects of life, and embrace something a little closer to our perceived ideal.

Think about the thought process that most of us go through this time of year. We reflect on the last 12 months and analyze whether or not we are satisfied with the results we produced. And regardless of whether we are satisfied with those results or not, we make adjustments in an attempt to ensure that the next 12 months will be even better. Then we project that new, improved vision into our immediate future.

Making good use of optimism

Optimism alone is not enough to make positive changes in your life. That’s why most New Year’s resolutions tend to fall by the wayside after a few months. The intentions are good, but there’s a big difference between intentions and results.

If you’ve been making the same basic resolutions year after year, then obviously you didn’t produce the results you wanted. And you know what they say about doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. So, what does it really take to turn our intentions into results? Well, let me ask you this…

What do you think it takes?

Chances are you already have a pretty good idea of what it takes to turn your intentions into results. After all, it’s not some secret formula that’s been purposely hidden from the general public. It is however, a formula that often goes ignored by the general public. Why? Simply stated, because effort is required, and many people are not willing to put forth the effort.

We all like the idea of making positive changes in our lives. And when we see that others have accomplished the things that we’d like to accomplish, we are encouraged. But to produce the same results that they did, we must be willing to put forth the same amount of effort. When you combine the effort with intention you produce results. If you don’t get the results you want, you simply change the way you apply your efforts.

Could this be the year of amazing results for you?

Yes, it could! All you need to do is apply the formula. Like any formula, there are several factors involved. Let’s take a minute to review some of the more important ones in order to make sure that you have what you need to produce the results you intend.

1) Clearly defined goals. Before you can design a plan to accomplish your goals you need to be very, very clear on exactly what it is you intend to accomplish. When setting goals you need to be as specific as you possibly can. Include precise details so that you know exactly what it is you’re working toward.

2) Commitment. Never say you are going to “try” to reach your goals. The word “try” opens the door to failure. Make a commitment to see your goals through to the end, no matter what. Put a high priority on your goals, and make a determination not to allow anything to stop you from reaching them.

3) Understand your reasons. In addition to clearly defining your goals you also need to clearly define the reasons why you want to reach those goals. The underlying reason is more important than the goal itself. How will this goal affect your life in a positive way and why is that important to you? A person can accomplish just about anything if they have a good enough reason.

4) Create emotional anchors. What positive emotions are associated with your goal? Once you identify those emotions, be sure to associate them with your goal. Your goal needs to represent those emotions to your nervous system. Emotions are the horsepower of motivation. To stay motivated you need to do more than think about your goals, you need to feel them.

5) Establish some milestones. You need a way to determine whether or not you are on course toward your goals. The easiest way to do this is to identify certain notable features that you will encounter as you move toward your goal. These will be your milestones. Identifying them ahead of time will help keep you on track and provide a sense of accomplishment along the way.

6) Make a timetable. One of the biggest problems with New Year’s resolutions is that people know when they’re going to start, but they have not set a time of completion. How long will your goal take to accomplish? Having a set timetable is one of the most effective ways I know to keep you focused on the task at hand. Before you start, establish a time for completion.

7) Identify success. What will successfully reaching your goal look like? What will it feel like? How will you know when you get there? These are all questions that need to be answered before you begin. If you don’t know exactly what success looks like, and how will you know when you arrive? Don’t take this for granted. Take the time to clearly identify what success means to you before you start moving forward.

Success is not an accident

If you’ve been disappointed in your results in the past, chances are you ignored one or more of the important factors above. If you’re feeling optimistic about your future, and would truly love to make some positive changes in your life, then you should definitely capitalize on that feeling. In reality, there is no reason to wait for a new year to put this process to work for you. But it is a new year, so why not take advantage of it?

I want you to have the most rewarding, productive, result producing year of your life. I truly do! I also know that wishing won’t get it done. Yes, effort is required, but what meaningful aspect of life doesn’t require effort? Everything worthwhile in this life requires some form of effort. Now that you’ve got the formula, there is still…

One more vital element

You must take consistent, focused action. Start now, and don’t stop until you reach your goal regardless of the challenges or setbacks you may encounter. Remember, results are a combination of intention and applied effort. If you don’t get the results you want, you simply continue to change the way you apply your efforts until you produce the results you want.

If you are really serious about finally producing meaningful changes in your life, I encourage you to pick up a copy of TRUE SELF. The whole process is laid out for you in an easy to follow format that is guaranteed to help you transform your life. Instead of just making resolutions this year, why not decide to turn your intentions into tangible results?

What kind of year do you intend to have?
How serious are you about making positive changes?
The lines are open!

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When you employ the power of positive thinking, how do you apply it? Are you working to overcome a limiting mindset or to adopt a positive one? Do your positive thoughts include pictures, sounds and feelings?

While you’re at it, what is your vision for your life based on? Did you form it around your past, your present or your future?

You and I have these movies we play in our head. They start with a dialog and then move into pictures. Then they become moving pictures, and finally, we attach feelings to them.

Motivated by our personal vision

These mind movies and the feelings that come with them are what I like to call our personal visions. They are three-dimensional and they have feelings attached. These personal visions are also great motivation generators.

The energies that fuel our ability to attract and our ability to act grow out of these visions. The degree of contrast between what is actually taking place in our life now, and what we envision achieving, motivates us to close the gap as we move towards that vision.

These Energies Can Be Defined As:
- Enthusiasm
- Physical Energy
- Courage
- Persistence
- Confidence
- Conviction
- Creativity

When you and I are motivated enough, meaning we are producing the energies from this list; we can, and we will, do just about anything we set our minds to.

So the question is: What have we set our minds to do?

The greatest opportunity for a misunderstanding here is to think that what you and I want, even what we have a burning desire for, is in fact what we have set our minds to. There is often a huge difference.

For example, think of something you have wanted for a long while; something you’ve wanted very badly and may have even worked hard for, but are no closer to having now than when you started wanting it.

Now think of something you have felt for some time was inevitable. Something you have often seen happening in your mind’s eye. Something you believe will happen, whether you really want it to or not. Notice how it seems to always happen, or how you seem to progress towards it. This is no coincidence! You attract it into existence.

Motivation has no conscience

Surprisingly, motivation does not care about motives. It is not dependent on what you want or don’t want; need or don’t need. Motivation happens in accordance with what you expect, what you think will happen. It is anchored to the mind movies you play in your head and the scenarios you believe will come true.

Now let’s talk about belief

Let’s say that you really, really want to reap some future prosperity. You really want to raise your income to the next level. But is it really possible to believe you will, when it’s something you’ve never done before? Will positive thinking be enough to manifest that prosperity?

Without mastering the art of visualization and motivation, we will tend to believe only those things that we have actually experienced. When we allow our past experiences to establish our beliefs, we tend to stay stuck in creating in a circle. We will go round and round, producing the same quality of results repeatedly.

This sounds a lot like the definition of insanity: “Doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result!”

How do we break the cycle?

The only way to break this cycle and produce unprecedented results is to establish a belief about your future that is not anchored in the past. You have to establish a new belief that is in alignment with what you want, not in alignment with what you have achieved. To do this, you must activate a different set of resources than those that produced your past results. What are those resources?

They are the part of us that is powerful beyond analytical thinking and include our energy, our emotions, our thoughts, and our subconscious mind. This part of us cannot tell the difference between a real experience and one that has been vividly imagined. Think about that.

There is a very powerful aspect of your mind that cannot tell the difference between imagining that you earn an extra $10,000 every month and actually earning an extra $10,000 a month.

The conscious mind can definitely tell the difference. It’s the part of us that will attempt to limit our expectations according to past results. This is the part of us that watches a movie and says, “It’s not real, it’s just pretend, performed by actors and actresses.”

So on some levels, the conscious mind is fairly limited when it comes to producing extraordinary results. In contrast, the part of us that is unlimited and extraordinary experiences a movie and sheds tears of joy or sadness, or responds however the writers, directors and actors intended for us to respond. That part of us cannot tell the difference because it is fully involved in the experience

Ask yourself these feeling based questions

If you really had been earning $10,000 a month, what do you feel you could expect to earn next month? How would you feel about the opportunities in front of you? Who would you be willing to approach? What would you sound like? What feelings would others get from you? What level of enthusiasm would you convey? How optimistic would you be, how creative? How much confidence would you have?

Compare those answers to how you currently approach your income opportunities. If there is a difference, your current vision is anchored in the present; and if you are only earning $1,000 a month you will only see a $1,000-a-month opportunity. That $9,000 difference is huge when it comes to how you present yourself and where you see opportunity.

Take advantage of your hidden resources. Create a new mind movie to represent what you EXPECT life to be like. The part of you that will get it done cannot tell the difference, and it will respond in accordance with your vision. It will start responding immediately, and it will motivate you to move purposefully in the direction of your vision.

What kind of mind movies do you have?
Are they three dimensional with feelings attached?
The lines are open!

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When it comes to manifesting our dreams and accomplishing our goals, there are three vital components that deserve our attention. Before we get into that, ask yourself the following question:

Am I actively moving in the direction of my goals and dreams each and every day?

Everybody has dreams and most people have goals. If you want your goals and dreams to become reality, you must move toward them consistently and purposefully. By nature, we always begin with distance between where we are and where we want to be. Our job is to narrow that distance until it no longer exists. To accomplish that, we need to draw our goals and dreams closer to us, while simultaneously moving toward them.

Some people attempt to attract their goals without taking much action. Others choose to act on their goals, but without the added advantage of also drawing those goals to them. Action alone can bring positive results, but it is much faster to combine the two techniques.

For the sake of clarity, let’s differentiate between dreams and wishful thinking. In some conversations, the two might be interchangeable. Not so in this case. When I talk about dreams, I am really talking about highly desirable goals, future realities that we fully intend to realize. For our purposes, a dream is something that we are willing to work toward, and are determined to manifest, just like a goal.

What kind of life do you dream about?

When you project your thoughts into the future, how do you see things? Do you see a variety of positive changes across the full spectrum of your life? Do you see yourself healthier, wealthier, and wiser? Are you willing to move toward that vision in order to realize it?

If so, then this is really a highly desirable goal, and that is exactly the kind of dream we are talking about today.

3 ways to move toward the realization of our dreams

1) Total clarity. Before we do anything else, we need to clearly define exactly what our dream or goal is. This is not the time to deal in generalities; we need to be very specific. One of the best ways for you to get really clear is to write down a detailed description of exactly what you want to accomplish.

Writing things down requires that we get a well defined mental image first. The very process of putting our thoughts into words creates clarity. This clarity will help you to form a vivid mental image that you can carry around with you 24 hours a day. Most of the time your personal reference to your new goal will be that mental image, but you will also be able to refer back to the written description to help you maintain clarity.

One of the most powerful things you can include when writing down your goals and dreams is how they make you feel. The feelings you attach to the things you intend to accomplish are your greatest source of motivation and energy. So, be sure to include your feelings in your written description. Think carefully about each aspect of this future reality. How does it make you feel? What emotional anchors resonate with each detail? Write them down.

As you read back through your written description, allow yourself to experience those feelings and get emotionally involved in the picture. When you conjure up this mental image of how your life is going to be, fully experience it on an emotional level. This is the true power of having clearly defined goals, and identifying your emotional attachments to them.

2) Take action. Now that you can see and feel your goal with clarity, it’s time to begin moving toward it. What steps do you need to take to move you closer to realizing this dream? What sequence do those steps need to be in to produce your intended result? What action can you take each and every day to keep you moving in the right direction? Once again, writing these things down will produce clarity. It is much easier to take action when you know what actions need to be taken.

Reaching your goals means that you need to take the proper actions at the right time. There is a natural sequence that will produce your intended result. Following the right sequence allows events to unfold in a very productive way. Always take time to create an action plan. Not only will it keep you moving in the right direction, but it will also allow you to anticipate what comes next.

Of course, we can’t anticipate everything, and we need to be willing to make adjustments along the way. That’s the beauty of having an action plan, it allows us to be flexible without getting too far off course. So, even though we will need to make minor adjustments, a plan keeps us heading in the right direction until we reach our goal.

3) Attract your dream to you. Now that you know exactly where you are going, how you feel about it, and how you are going to get there, what’s next? When we started out there was distance between you and the goal you are working toward. You have been actively closing that distance by moving toward your vision for the future. Now, it’s time to draw your dream toward you.

How can you do that? It’s really just a matter of perspective. Up until now, you have been projecting yourself into this vision that exists in the future, but let’s reverse that. Instead of projecting yourself into a future reality, allow yourself to receive that reality in the present tense.

See yourself as stationary and your goal as something that moves toward you, and then surrounds and engulfs you. Wrap yourself up in it like a giant blanket. Feel the joy of receiving that vision. Imagine how wonderful it feels to have the reality of that vision totally permeate your life right now. Feel it in the here and now.

Here are a couple of examples:

*** If part of your dream was a beautiful new home, don’t see it from the outside; see yourself in the middle of that beautiful dream house. See yourself living there, going about your daily activities, feeling completely at home and comfortable. See yourself as a full participant, not a spectator.

*** If you have been actively moving toward a new career, visualize yourself actually performing the duties of that career. Again, don’t see it from the outside as a spectator would. If your new career involves a desk, a computer, and a telephone, put yourself there. Look at the screen, answer the phone, lean back in that amazingly comfortable leather chair – participate!

Always harness the power of a 3 dimensional approach

By employing all three of these techniques, your dreams will become your realities much faster than you may have thought possible. Nothing in life is one-dimensional. The quicker you shorten the distance between where you are and where you want to be, the more empowered you become. This approach allows you to override the perceived limitations of time and space, and to more fully comprehend your own ability to manifest your dreams and goals.

What do you think about this approach?
Was this information helpful?
The lines are open!

If you enjoyed this article, consider email or RSS updates!

My book TRUE SELF is the fastest inexpensive way (coaching is the fastest) to make positive life changes very quickly. Do you want to discover your core passions, dismantle your hidden, limiting beliefs, and realize your most desired goals? TRUE SELF will guide you smoothly through the process.

Have you ever held back on doing something because you were afraid of failure?  Most people have!  Let’s face it; no one likes to fail.  None of us likes to feel like we’re ineffective, weak, or lacking in any way, and that’s exactly how failure makes us feel.

However, you may be surprised to know that failure doesn’t exist – until YOU say it does.  In the dictionary, failure has several definitions:

1. A failing to do or perform
2. A state of inability to perform a normal function adequately
3. A fracturing or giving way under stress
4. A lack of success

Look carefully at those definitions and you’ll probably realize they have one thing in common when it comes to goal achievement:

Failure is only a type of perception

If you believe you have failed, then you have.  If you believe you don’t have the ability to succeed, then you don’t.  If you believe you can’t handle the pressure of achieving your goals, you can’t.  If you believe you’re not successful, you aren’t.  Failure only exists in your own mind!  The moment you decide to give up or stop working toward your goals, failure is born.

But what if you never do that?  What if you continue working toward your goals, one step at a time for as long as it takes?  There’s no failure then, is there?

This insight should be very encouraging if you’ve been working toward goals and have not yet seen positive results.  If you keep going and continue making whatever adjustment are needed, how can you fail?

3 tips to help you stay focused on your goals

1) Never give yourself an out. Most people give themselves an out without even realizing it. It’s called a fade out!  They are willing to work hard on achieving their goals, but only until the going gets too rough or their motivation dwindles.  Don’t do that!  Commit to making your goals happen, no matter what!  Never quit, never contemplate admitting failure, and never lose your inner determination.

2) Don’t get hooked on a specific timeframe for completion. It’s a good idea to set a general timeline, but be aware that some circumstances will be beyond your control. You can never say for sure exactly when your goal will be achieved.  If you lock yourself into a very restrictive timeline, you might be setting yourself up to feel like a failure!  Instead, get a general idea of when you’d like your goal to be completed, but then take it one day at a time and focus on making progress instead of reaching the finish line in as little time as possible.

3) Finally, be sure that you don’t view obstacles and setbacks as failures. The two are completely different.  An obstacle, setback or delay means only one thing:  it’s not time for your goal to be completed yet.  That’s it!  It doesn’t mean you failed; it doesn’t mean you’re weak; it doesn’t mean you’ll never achieve your goals.  It simply means you’re not done yet.  You’ve got to keep moving forward and find a way over, around, or through the obstacle.

How does eliminating the fear of failure make you feel?
What would you try to accomplish if failure didn’t exist?
The lines are open!

If you enjoyed this article, consider email or RSS updates!

My book TRUE SELF is the fastest inexpensive way (coaching is the fastest) to make positive life changes very quickly. Do you want to discover your core passions, dismantle your hidden, limiting beliefs, and realize your most desired goals? TRUE SELF will guide you through the process.

I have often said that the mind works in pictures, and that is true.  So how can words radically alter our feelings if our mind files everything in pictures?

It’s true that we can picture something in our minds without having words to describe it.  But once you have a picture in your mind that you want to communicate to someone, what’s the first thing you do?  The first thing you do is try to find words to describe that picture, right?

Now it becomes a word picture

Even though our mental file cabinets are filled with pictures that represent experiences, we use words to access those files.  The word labels that we use for those experiences tell our nervous system where they are filed.  So the word labels in effect come to represent the whole experience, not just a description of the experience.

Before you can articulate a feeling or experience, you need words to describe it.  If the words you use are not accurate you will misrepresent that experience to others.  Now here’s the fascinating thing about that, you will also misrepresent that experience to yourself.  Why not use this fact to your advantage?

Increased motivation and resourcefulness

One of our personal goals should be to try and remain in the most resourceful mental state possible, under any circumstances.  When we are in a negative head space it tends to rob us of our resources.  Alternately, a positive mindset increases our resourcefulness.  The more resourceful we feel, the more motivated we are to take action. When we lack resourcefulness, we also lack motivation.

How do we use our emotional vocabulary to motivate ourselves to take action?  We can choose word labels that frame our experiences in a way that empowers us with greater resourcefulness.

Adjusting your emotional vocabulary

How resourceful do you feel when you’re infuriated?  Think about that for a minute, imagine yourself totally infuriated, and note how you feel.  Now notice what happens to those feelings if you change the label from infuriated to mildly annoyed.  Not only will you feel less angry, but you also feel more resourceful.  Let’s take it one step farther.  What if you represent that same experience by saying to yourself, “I was mildly annoyed but it passed quickly.”  How does that affect your degree of resourcefulness?

Can you see the practical application of this information?  Feeling resourceful equates to feeling motivated, and feeling motivated leads to taking action.  The more ways we find to stay in a resourceful mental state, the more likely we will be to keep taking positive action in the direction of our goals and aspirations.

From depressed to empowered

It’s a clinical fact that more and more people are suffering from depression these days.  Depression is a debilitating state of mind that leaves people feeling helpless and hopeless. This is the polar opposite of feeling empowered and motivate.

In his book ‘Awaken the Giant Within,’ author Anthony Robbins describes one man’s battle against depression.  After explaining to the man the effect that his words were having on his emotional state, the man agreed to the following.  For the next 10 days he promised not to use the word ‘depressed,’ not even once. If he felt tempted you use that word he would replace it by saying, “I’m feeling a little bit down, I’m getting better, or I’m turning things around.”

Simply shifting the word label used to describe his feelings completely changed his pattern of thinking.  The level of pain that he experienced decreased which helped him stay in a more resourceful mental state.  Two years later that man said that he had not felt depressed, not even once, since he agreed to stop using the word ‘depressed’ to describe his feelings.  By not using that word label, he completely changed his experience.

Use your emotional vocabulary skillfully!

Now imagine the effect on your life if you consistently and purposely diminished the emotional impact of your negative experiences and simultaneously intensify your positive experience. Skilled use of your emotional vocabulary allows you to do exactly that.

Life is full of challenges, staying motivated in the face of such challenges has a dramatic effect on the quality of your life.  Will we learn from our challenges, or be devastated by them?  Much will depend on our resourcefulness at the time.  Learning to represent our experiences in ways that empower us is a huge step in the pursuit of personal excellence.

Did this make sense to you?
Did you discover ways to adjust you emotional Vocabulary?
Could you benefit from greater motivation and resourcefulness?
The lines are open!

This is part 2 of a 2 part series on The Power of Your Emotional Vocabulary. Here’s the link to part 1 if you missed it: Harness the Power of Your Emotional Vocabulary

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Questions can be used in many ways to assist us in our personal development. Asking the right ones can help break down the emotional anchors of limiting beliefs. This is powerful because beliefs are not usually subject to logic, but questions can help break down that resistance.

Another important way that we can use questions for personal development has to do with how we focus. The mind loves to find answers to questions. Give your mind a question and it immediately goes to work trying to find you the answer. So, asking the right questions will encourage our mind to think in a positive direction. This means that our focus will also move in that same positive direction.

Personal development has everything to do with focus. We grow as a person in the same direction as our focus. If we focus on negative things, that will define our world. This is the opposite of personal development. But we can’t focus in two directions at once. This means that carefully constructed questions actually harness our attention and move it along the path of our choice. The video below will show you how to do that. It’s called…

Use Questions to Empower Yourself

Personal development follows focus

I hope you found this information helpful. With a little practice you’ll find that using built in assumptions in this way will become almost second nature. Learning to make positive assumptions about the various situations in our life has a dramatic effect on our attitude, and our perception of life in general.

As we continually train our mind to focus in positive directions, the negative aspects of life fade into the background. It’s the classic half-full half-empty syndrome. When we are focused on possibility and opportunity our world responds accordingly. New opportunities will arise, and we will see possibility everywhere we look. This is the power of using questions as personal development tools.

Do you have a favorite assumption that you like to use?
Do you feel there is personal development value in this method?
The lines are open and your thoughts are very important!

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“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” -Lao-tzu

Editor’s Note: his is a guest post by
Kristi Hines, the creator of Kikolani

Sometimes it is easier to set goals than to actually do something to work towards them.  Large projects can seem overwhelming, and if you feel like you are always busy with the day to day things, it can feel like you will never have the time to do something grander.

Childhood Wisdom

There is a song that I remember from elementary school that went something like this.

“Little by little, inch by inch
By the yard it’s hard, by the inch, what a cinch.
Never stare up the stairs, just step up the steps
Little by little, inch by inch.”

It was always just a cute little rhyme we sang during class, but looking back, what a great piece of advice.  Instead of letting yourself become consumed into thinking about how to get everything done in the entire scope of the project, just take it one step at a time.

Why This Works

Whenever you actually get started doing something, it tends to feel less daunting.  You might even find that it will be easier than you thought it would be during the planning phase.  Plus, once you begin to see any amount of progress, you will become more motivated to push into the project further and continue to get more things accomplished.

Breaking Your Big Idea Into Smaller Portions

So how do you break things down into simpler to tackle parts?  Here are just a few examples…

Imagine that your goal is to write a book.  Instead of thinking about the daunting task of what may feel like never-ending writing, why not just sit down and write a short summary of your story, a first paragraph, a list of characters, or a description of the main character?

Imagine that your goal is to start a blog.  Instead of thinking about setting the platform up, choosing the theme, writing the content, and marketing, why not just purchase the domain name and hosting?

Imagine that your goal is to do some spring cleaning?  Instead of thinking about how long it is going to take to go through all five rooms in your house, why not just look into one room, pick one closet, and throw some items you no longer want in a bag to be donated?

Imagine that your goal is to start exercising.  Instead of thinking about how tough it will be to commit waking up an hour earlier and starting a regular routine, why not just take five minutes and go out for a walk?

How Do You Tackle Your Projects?

Do you find it difficult to begin large projects?  Have you ever tried just starting with something simple to motivate yourself to get a project going?

Want to know more about Kristi? be sure to visit her at Kikolani for all the latest tips and pointers on blogging and social media. Her popular series Fetching Friday is something I look forward to every week.

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