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Posts tagged Personal Success
How to Persuade and Influence People to Achieve Personal Power
May 14th
Your ability to persuade and influence people to help you get the things you want in life is one of the most important skills you can develop. By learning how to persuade and influence people, you can achieve greater personal power and get more of the things you want faster than anything else you do. It can mean the difference between success and failure. It can guarantee your progress and enable you to use all of your other skills and abilities at the very highest level. Learning how to persuade people will earn you the support and respect of your customers, bosses, co-workers, colleagues and friends. The ability to influence others to do what you want them to do can make you one of the most important people in your community.
Your job is to become absolutely excellent at influencing and motivating others to support and assist you in the achievement of your goals and the solving of your problems. All truly effective people have mastered the art of getting lots of other people to work with and for them in the accomplishment of their objectives. You can learn this skill set to achieve personal power and master the art of influencing others.
How Human Interaction Affects Your Ability to Influence People
The opposite of being influential is having little or no influence at all on the behaviors of other people. It is the difference between being powerful and being powerless. You can either persuade others to help you or be persuaded to help them. It is one or the other. Most people are not aware that every human interaction involves a complex process of persuasion and influence. And being unaware, they are usually the ones being persuaded to help others rather than the ones who are influencing people to help them.
All successful people with personal power are persuasion experts. They give a lot of thought to how they can get other people to help them. They plan and strategize before they act. They define their goals clearly and then they choose the people whose cooperation they will need to achieve those goals. They then think about what they will have to do in return to get the other people to help them. They achieve their goals of persuasion and influence indirectly.
The key to persuasion is motivation. Every human action is motivated by something. In order to learn how to persuade others, you must find out what motivates other people and then to provide that motivation. People have two major motivations: the desire for gain, and the fear of loss. The desire for gain motivates people to want more of the things they value in life. They want more money, more success, more health, more influence, more respect, more love and more happiness.
Human wants are limited only by individual imagination. No matter how much a person has, he or she still wants more and more. When you can show a person how he or she can get more of the things he or she wants by helping you achieve your goals, you can motivate them to act in your behalf and achieve greater personal power.
How to Persuade Others Through Leverage
You can learn how to persuade others by using leverage. Leverage means that you learn how to multiply yourself and get far more out of the hours you put in rather than doing everything yourself.
You leverage yourself through other people’s efforts by getting other people to work with you and for you in the accomplishment of your objectives. Sometimes you can ask them to help you voluntarily, although people won’t work for very long without some personal reward. At other times you can hire them to help you, thereby freeing you up to do higher value work.
The definition of management is “Getting things done through others.” To be a manager you must improve your personal power and know how to persuade and influence people to work in a common direction. This is why all excellent managers are also excellent low-pressure salespeople. They do not order people to do things, instead, they influence people to accept certain responsibilities, with specific deadlines, and agreed upon standards of performance. When a person has been persuaded that he has a vested interest in doing a job well, he accepts ownership of the job and the result. Once a person accepts ownership and responsibility, the manager can step aside confidently, knowing the job will be done on schedule.
Achieve Personal Power by Becoming an Expert
You can learn how to persuade others and can develop your personal power by always remembering that there are only two ways to get the things you want in life, you can do it all yourself, or you can get most of it done by others. Your ability to communicate, persuade, negotiate, influence, delegate and interact effectively with other people will enable you to develop leverage using other people’s efforts, other people’s knowledge and other people’s money. The development of your personal power will enable you to become one of the most powerful and influential people in your organization. By learning how to persuade and influence people, it will open up doors for you in every area of your life.
I hope you enjoyed this post on how to achieve personal power by learning how to persuade and influence people. Do you think that the ability to influence people is useful in your line of work? Please comment with your answer below!
Topics included in this article include
How to Persuade
Influence People
Personal Power
Effective Communication: 3 Ways to Improve Your Public Speaking and Presentation Skills
May 1st
There are three components you must know in order to improve your presentation skills for better public speaking. When someone asks me how he can build effective communication skills and improve his public speaking, I quote to him the words of Elbert Hubbard, who said, “The only way to learn to speak is to speak and speak, and speak and speak, and speak and speak and speak.”
But while it’s true that the only way to become good at anything is by repetition, over and over, until it becomes second nature, there are many things that you can do to be more effective speaking in front of audiences.
The starting point in the art of public speaking is to pick a subject that you really care about. It is to think through the subjects that have had an extraordinary impact on you, the subjects that you would like to share with others because you intensely feel that others could benefit from your knowledge. With this, you have a springboard off which you can leap into your first public talk.
The second part of public speaking is preparation for effective communication. Preparing is more important than anything except caring about your subject. It’s not unusual for a person to spend many hours, days and even weeks preparing for a talk.
Planning for Effective Communication
To prepare for a talk, the first thing to do is to write out an objective statement of what you wish to accomplish as a result of your presentation. Whether it’s a 10-minute presentation or a 10-hour presentation, the statement of your objective is the same. It’s the answer to the question, “Who is my audience, and what effect do I want my talk to have upon them?”
So you need to ask, “What action do I want this audience to take as a result of the things I say to them?” Write out this action statement of your objective very clearly. Then write down everything that you think you could possibly say, one point after the other, to this audience to cause them to take this action. Remember, the reason for public speaking is not simply to teach or to share information. It’s to move people’s minds and hearts and to provoke them into changing their behavior in some way.
Once you have an outline of what you want to accomplish and some of the ways that you can accomplish it, begin to do your research, if necessary. If you don’t have enough information, begin to read and to ask questions.
If you’re giving a short talk, the very best strategy to improve your presentation skills is to write it out, word for word, in detail. Then read through it and edit it. Revise it wherever necessary. Add to it, and subtract unnecessary data. Work on it until it is polished, and then read through it several times so that you have such a good sense of the material that you can go through the entire talk prior to falling asleep or while you’re driving your car.
Improve Your Presentation Skill
If the first two parts of successful public speaking are caring and preparing, the third part is practicing and improving your presentation skills. If you have a tape recorder or, even better, a video camera, record yourself giving the talk from beginning to end. Then listen to it or watch it, and make notes on how you could make it better. If you’re using a video camera, look into the camera and use the same facial expressions and the same body gestures that you would use if you were speaking directly to someone. When you critique yourself, be very hard on yourself. Remember, the more honest and objective you can be about how you come across to others, the faster you will build effective communication skills for success.
Practice makes perfect, and perfect practice makes it even more perfect. If you practice consistently, you will find that your presentation skills have dramatically improved over time. Remember, your ability to speak effectively in front of people can do more to advance your career and your life than perhaps any other skill you can develop.
Overcome Your Fear of Public Speaking
It’s normal and natural for you to be nervous about public speaking, but you must overcome that fear to improve your presentation skills. Fifty-four percent of American adults rank public speaking ahead of fear of death among life’s major fears. Most people become nervous and uneasy at the very thought of standing up to speak in front of an audience, and their hearts pound.
Speaking professionally really is not something that you can decide in favor of or against. You don’t really have a choice. If you want to realize your full potential in the world of business, you must learn how to improve your effective communication skills to better communicate with people. I have seen executives make extraordinary career jumps, saving themselves as much as five to 10 years of time working up the executive ladder, simply by using effective communication skills at a corporate meeting. I’ve observed men and women who’ve put their careers onto the fast track by overcoming their fears and developing their presentation skills.
Pay any price, spend any amount of time, overcome any obstacle, but make a decision, right now, that you’re going to learn to speak well before groups and practice your presentation skills consistently. It could be one of the most important decisions you ever make in assuring long-term success in your career.
Please comment below and share your thoughts about effective communication techniques for better public speaking. Also, please share with your friends if you enjoyed this post about improving your presentation skills for greater success!
Topics included in this article include
Public Speaking
Effective Communication
Presentation Skills
How to Be Happy: 5 Steps to Living a Life You Love
Apr 11th
So you want to learn how to be happy, but have no idea where to start. The good thing is, you can learn how to be happy and be more fulfilled in everything you do. You must first keep in mind that happiness in life is like a smorgasbord. If 100 people went to a smorgasbord and each put food on their plate in the quantity and mix that each felt would be most pleasing to him, every plate would be different. Even a husband and wife would go up to the smorgasbord and come back with plates that looked completely different.
Happiness is the same way. Each person requires a particular combination of those ingredients to feel the very best about himself or herself. Here are five ways to achieve your own happiness because you deserve it!
Listen to Your Heart
The ingredients in your happiness plate are changing continually. If you went to the same smorgasbord every day for a year, you probably would come back with a different plateful of food each time. Each day-sometimes each hour-only you can tell what it takes to make you happy. But to condition yourself to learn how to be happy, you must get in touch with your feelings and listen to your heart. This is the only way to judge whether a job, a relationship, an investment, or any decision, is right for you.
Be True to Yourself
You’re true to yourself only when you follow your inner light, when you listen to what Ralph Waldo Emerson called the “still, small voice within.” You’re being the very best person you can be only when you have the courage and the fortitude to allow your definition of happiness, whatever it may be, to be the guiding light of every part of your life.
You Deserve It
A very important point on the subject of happiness is whether or not you feel that you “deserve” to be happy. If you don’t feel like you deserve it, you must learn how to be happy by accepting the notion that you deserve it all.
You deserve all the happiness you can honestly attain through the application of your talents and abilities. The more you like and respect yourself, the more deserving you will feel of the good things in life. And the more deserving you feel, the more likely you will attain and hold on to the happiness you are working toward.
Do Things That Make You Happy
It sounds simple, but not everyone takes the time to evaluate what makes them happy. You should do things that make you happy and consider happiness the organizing principle of your life. Compare every possible action and decision you make against your standard of happiness to see whether that action would make you happier or unhappier. Soon, you will discover that almost all of the problems in your life come from choices that you have made – or are currently making – that do not contribute to your happiness.
Pay the Price
Of course, there are countless times when you will have to do little things that don’t make you happy along the way toward those larger things that make you very happy indeed. We call this paying the price of success in advance. You must pay your dues. Sometimes these interim steps don’t make you happy directly, but the happiness you achieve from attaining your goal will be so great that it totally overwhelms the temporary inconveniences and dissatisfactions you have to endure in order to get there.
Remember, achieving your own happiness is the best measure of how well you are living your life and enjoying your relationships. So in order to learn how to be happy, be willing to work hard and pay the price for the satisfaction and rewards you desire.
Always go the extra mile and your success will be assured. When you decide to make your own happiness the chief organizing principle of your life and judge everything against that standard, you will be living the life of joy and happiness that you achieved through your own efforts.
Topics included in this article include
How to Be Happy
Make You Happy
You Deserve It
I hope you enjoyed this post on how to be happy and live a joyful life because you deserve it! Please share this with your friends and family!
Live Your Life: 7 Reasons Why You Are Amazing
Mar 26th
Please join me at my LIVE webcast TOMORROW, Tuesday March 27 for an exclusive sneak preview of my BRAND-NEW book, Kiss That Frog! Christina Tracy Stein, my daughter and co-author will sit down to discuss the message behind the book and how you can begin to turn negatives into positives in every area of your life.
Below is a short excerpt from Kiss That Frog, that explains the importance of accepting the 7 essential truths about yourself, and reminds us, “It doesn’t matter where you’re coming from; all that really matters is where you are going.” In the LIVE webcast Christina and I will dive deeper in to these 7 reasons and discuss what you MUST know in order to live your life full of happiness, peace, and joy.
Don’t miss out on this up close and personal LIVE event. Sign up here to reserve your spot and take action towards living a positive and fulfilling life free of negativity.
Live Your Life: 7 Reasons Why You Are Amazing
Your natural state is to be happy, peaceful, joyous, and full of excitement at being alive. In this natural state you feel wonderful about yourself and your relationships with the people in your life. You enjoy your work and derive a great sense of satisfaction from making a contribution that makes a difference. Your primary goal should be to organize your life in such a way that this is how you feel most of the time.
As a fully functioning, fully mature adult, you should be doing things every day that move you toward the fulfillment of your potential. You should feel grateful for all your blessings in every area. If you are unhappy or dissatisfied in any part of your life, something is not right in your thoughts, feelings, or actions, and it needs to be corrected.
The starting point in unlocking your full potential is to realize that you already are a prince or princess, deep down inside. No matter where you are today, or what you have done or not done in the past, you need to accept seven essential truths about you as a person and why you are special:
Reason #1: You Are Good
You are a thoroughly good and excellent person. No one is better than you or more gifted than you. Only when you doubt your essential goodness and value do you begin to question yourself. The inability to accept that you are good lies at the root of much of your discontent.
Reason #2: You Are Important, in Many, Many Ways
Your personal universe revolves around you as an individual. You give meaning to everything that you see or hear. How important you feel largely determines the quality of your life. Happy, successful people feel important and valuable. Because they feel and act this way, it becomes true for them.
Unhappy, frustrated people feel unimportant and of little value. They feel frustrated and unworthy. They feel “I’m not good enough,” and as a result they lash out at the world and engage in behaviors that hurt themselves and others. Remember, you are amazing and nothing in your world has any significance except for the significance that you attribute to it.
Reason #3: You Have the Ability Live your Life to the Greatest Potential
You have the capability to create and live your life as you desire and you have unlimited potential to accomplish this. You could not use your entire potential if you lived one hundred lifetimes. No matter what you have accomplished up to now, it is merely a hint of what is truly possible for you. And the more of your natural talents and abilities you develop in the present, the more of your potential you can develop in the future.
Your belief in your almost unlimited potential is the key to becoming everything you are truly capable of becoming.
Reason #4: Your Thoughts on Life are Essential to Creating Your Own World
Your thoughts on life and your beliefs actually create your realities, and every belief you have about yourself you learned, starting in infancy. The amazing thing is that most of the negative or self-limiting beliefs and doubts that interfere with your happiness and success are not based on fact or reality at all.
When you begin to question your self-limiting beliefs and develop beliefs consistent with the incredible person you really are, your life will begin to change almost immediately.
Reason #5: You Are Always Free to Choose
You are free to choose the content of your thoughts and the direction of your life. The one thing over which you have complete control is your inner life and your thinking. You can decide to think happy, fulfilling, uplifting thoughts that lead to positive actions and results. Or you can end up choosing negative, self-limiting thoughts that hold you back.
Reason #6: You Are Special and Destined for Greatness
You are meant to do something wonderful with your life. You are special and have a unique combination of talents, abilities, ideas, insights, and experiences that make you different from anyone who has ever lived. You are designed for success and engineered for greatness.
Your acceptance or non-acceptance of this point largely determines the size of the goals you set, your power of persistence in the face of adversity, the height of your achievements, and the whole direction of your life.
Reason #7: You Can Conquer Your Fear of Failure
There are no limits to what you can do, be, or have except the limits you place on your own thinking and your own imagination. The biggest enemies you will ever face are your own doubts and your fear of failure. These are usually negative beliefs, not necessarily based on fact that you have accepted over the years until you no longer question them.
Remember the rule: It doesn’t matter where you’re coming from; all that really matters is where you’re going.
If you enjoyed this post about how you can live your life full of happiness, peace, and joy, join me on Tues, March 27th for “The 12 Great Ways to Turn Negatives into Positives in your Life and Work,” a brand new, complimentary livestream presentation in which I team up with my daughter, clinical psychologist and personal development coach Christina Tracy Stein.
Together we reveal our BRAND-NEW book, Kiss That Frog, and show you how to take control and begin designing a life you love.
Reserve your spot now and get ready to experience a life you love, filled with happiness and fulfillment. Register for the LIVE webcast now!
What Am I Worth? The 7 R’s of Personal Management
Feb 28th
You can further your personal effort to increase your salary by engaging in the seven Rs of personal management. These seven Rs are: rethinking, reevaluating, reorganizing, restructuring, reengineering, reinventing, and refocusing.
In rethinking, you take time on a regular basis to think about who you are and where you are going, especially when you discontented for any reason. You can ask yourself this question: How much should I earn? and What am I worth? Since everything is changing so rapidly around you, more options are available to you now than ever before. And because it is very likely that you are going to be doing something completely different in a few years anyway, you can begin thinking today about where you want to be in the future. You can rethink and re-plan your entire career, and do it in a way to earn more money.
Reevaluate Your Situation
Reevaluating is the process of standing back and looking at yourself in terms of the marketplace. Whenever you experience frustration, continual roadblocks, or stress at work, you need to take time to reevaluate your situation and be sure that you are on the right track.
Your problems at work may be caused by your not working at the right job for you, or working at the wrong company, or with the wrong people. Your dissatisfaction may be caused by your selling a product or service that is wrong for you, or for many other reasons. Perhaps your heart is no longer in your work. It gives you little or no pleasure. Sometimes, the very best thing to do in a situation like this is to change the work you are doing or the company for which you are working, so that your work life is more consistent with your talents, abilities, desires, and values. Ask yourself, what is my future with this company?
Reorganize Your Life
In reorganization, you examine your daily activities and question whether or not you should do things differently if you want to get better results. Look for ways to work with greater efficiency and perform your tasks more effectively. Continually try to increase your output relative to your input of time and money. Look for ways to earn more money in a more efficient way.
Restructure Your Activities
In restructuring, you continually look at the specific things you do that contribute the most value to your company and to your customers. You focus more and more of your time and talent on the 20 percent of activities that contribute 80 percent of the value of all the things that you do. You concentrate on those activities that represent the highest payoff for everyone involved. This is a how to earn more money.
Reengineer Your Career
In reengineering your personal service corporation, you stand back and look at the entire process of your work, from the first thing you do in the morning to the actual results that you get for your company or your customer. You analyze this process and look for ways to streamline it by reducing steps, consolidating activities, outsourcing parts of the work, and even changing the process completely so that you can achieve the same or better results with less time and fewer resources. Reengineering shows you the way how to earn more. Reengineering is an ongoing process of simplifying your work and your activities so that you can get things done in less time.
Reinvent Yourself Regularly
In reinventing, you stand back from your work and imagine starting over again. Imagine that your job or industry disappeared completely. Imagine for a moment that you had to move across the street or across the country and begin your career or your business all over. What would you do differently? Where do you want to be in your career in three to five years? What changes would you have to make in reinventing your business to create the future that you desire? Ask yourself how much should I earn?
One of the best ways to reinvent yourself is to determine what it is that you really enjoy doing more than anything else, and then to begin figuring out how you can find or create a job doing more of it.
Refocus Your Energies
The final R stands for refocusing. This is really the key to the future. It is your ability to concentrate your energies single-mindedly on doing those few things that make all the difference in your life.
In most cases, people are unsuccessful because they spend too much time doing things that contribute little to their lives. They spend more and more time doing things that have less and less value. On the other hand, highly successful people do not do a lot of things, but the few things they do, they do extremely well.
This seems to be the secret to great success and achievement in every area of life.
Become a Master of Change
The advantage of practicing the seven Rs is that they allow you to regain control over your present and future. With a sense of control comes a feeling of personal power, greater self-confidence and self-esteem. When you focus on these techniques you learn how to earn more money, feel happier, and have control of your own life and future, rather than allowing them to be determined by the unpredictable winds of change.
Topics included in this article include
How much should I earn
Increase salary
How to earn more
Earn more money
What am I worth
Hope you enjoyed this post. And keep asking yourself this question: What am I worth? Please leave a comment and share with your friends!
Be the Best You: 7 Keys to a Positive Personality
Feb 23rd
Your physical diet has a large impact on your health and energy levels. If you eat fresh, healthy, high-quality foods of all kinds and avoid the foods that are bad for you, you will have more energy, be generally resistant to most diseases, sleep better, and feel healthier and happier.
In the same way, your mental diet largely determines your character and your personality and almost everything that happens to you in life. When you feed your mind with positive ideas, information, books, conversations, audio programs, and thoughts, you develop a more positive and effective personality. You become more influential and persuasive. You enjoy greater confidence and self-esteem.
Those who work with computers use the expression “GOGO,” or “garbage in, garbage out.” But the reverse is also true, “Good in, good out.”
When you make a clear, unequivocal decision that you are going to take complete control over your mind, eliminate the negative emotions and thoughts that may have held you back in the past, and become a completely positive person, you can actually bring about your own personal transformation.
Be the Best You Can Be
Mental fitness is like physical fitness. You develop high levels of self-esteem and a positive mental attitude with training and practice. Here are the seven keys to becoming a completely positive person:
1. Positive self-talk: Speak to yourself positively; control your inner dialog. Use affirmations phrased in the positive, present, and personal tense: “I like myself!” “I can do it!” “I feel terrific!” “ I am responsible!”
We believe that fully 95 percent of your emotions are determined by the way you talk to yourself as you go throughout your day. The sad fact is that if you do not deliberately and consciously talk to yourself in a positive and constructive way, you will, by default, think about things that will make you unhappy or cause you worry and anxiety.
As we said before, your mind is like a garden. If you do not deliberately plant flowers and tend carefully, weeds will grow without any encouragement at all.
2. Positive visualization: Perhaps the most powerful ability that you have is the ability to visualize and see your goals as already accomplished.
Create a clear, exciting picture of your goal and your ideal life, and replay this picture in your mind over and over. All improvement in your life begins with an improvement in your mental pictures. As you “see” yourself on the inside, you will “be” on the outside.
3. Positive people: Your choice of the people with whom you live, work, and associate will have more of an impact on your emotions and your success that any other factor. Decide today to associate with winners, with positive people, with people who are happy and optimistic and who are going somewhere with their lives.
Avoid negative people at all costs. Negative people are the primary source of most of life’s unhappiness. Resolve that from today onward, you are not going to have stressful or negative people in your life.
4. Positive mental food: Just as your body is healthy to the degree to which you eat healthy, nutritious foods, your mind is healthy to the degree to which you feed it with “mental protein” rather than “mental candy.”
Read books, magazines, and articles that are educational, inspirational, or motivational. Feed your mind with information and ideas that are uplifting and that make you feel happy and more confident about yourself and your world.
Listen to positive, constructive CDs and audio programs in your car and on your MP3 player or iPod. Feed your mind continually with positive messages that help you think and act better and make you more capable and competent in your field.
Watch positive and educational DVDs, educational television programs, online courses, and other uplifting material that increases your knowledge and makes you feel good about yourself and your life.
5. Positive training and development: Almost everyone in our society starts off with limited resources, sometimes with no money at all. Virtually all fortunes begin with the sale of personal services of some kind. All the people who are at the top today were once at the bottom, and sometimes they fell to the bottom several times.
The miracle of lifelong learning and personal improvement is what takes you from rags to riches, from poverty to affluence, and from underachievement to success and financial independence. As Jim Rohn sald, ”Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.”
When you dedicate yourself to learning and growing and becoming better and more effective in your thoughts and actions, you take complete control of your life and dramatically increase the speed at which you move upward to greater heights.
6. Positive health habits: Take excellent care of your physical health and wellness. Resolve today that you are going to live to be eighty, ninety, or one hundred years old and still be dancing in the evenings.
Eat healthy foods, natural and nutritious, and eat them sparingly and in proper balance. A nutritional diet will have an immediate, positive effect on your thoughts and feelings.
Resolve to get regular exercise, at least two hundred minutes of motion per week, walking , running, swimming, bicycling, or working out on equipment in the gym. When you exercise on a regular basis, you feel happier and healthier and experience lower levels of stress and fatigue than a person who sits on the couch and watches television all evening.
Especially, get ample rest and relaxation. You need to recharge your batteries on a regular basis, especially when you are going through periods of stress or difficulty. Vince Lombardi once said, “Fatigue makes cowards of us all.”
Some of the factors that predispose us to negative emotions of all kinds are poor health habits, sleep deprivation, lack of exercise, and nonstop work. Seek balance in your life.
7. Positive expectations: Practicing the Law of Attraction is one of the most powerful techniques you can use to become a positive person and to ensure positive outcomes and better results in your life.
Your expectations become your own self-fulfilling prophesies. Whatever you expect, with confidence, seems to come into your life.
Since you can control your expectations, you should always expect the best. Expect to be successful. Expect to be popular when you meet new people. Expect to achieve great goals and create a wonderful life for yourself. When you constantly expect good things to happen, you will seldom be disappointed.
Hope you enjoyed this post. Please leave a comment and share with your friends!
How to Let Go: 4 People You MUST Forgive
Jan 17th
There are four people you need to forgive if you are serious about changing your life and learning how to live in the now.
The first are your parents, living or dead. You must absolutely forgive them for every mistake they ever made in bringing you up. At the very least, you should be grateful to them for giving you life. They got you here. If you are happy to be alive, you can forgive them for everything else. Never complain about them again.
Many of my seminar participants have phoned or visited their parents and told them that they forgive them for everything. Often this simple act of courage and character has had a profound effect on their relationship with their mother or father. From that day onward, they have become good friends, which lasted the rest of their lives together.
On the other hand, by not forgiving your parents, you remain forever a child. You block your own chance to grow up and become a fully functioning adult. You continue to see yourself as a victim. Even worse, you keep your negative feelings of inferiority and anger alive. If your parents die without your having forgiven them, it can bother you for the rest of your life.
Close Personal Relationships
The second person or persons you must forgive are the people from your marriages or relationships that didn’t work out. These intimate relationships can be so intense, and so threatening to your feelings of self-esteem and self-worth, that you can be angry and unforgiving toward those people for years.
But you were at least partially responsible. Have the personal strength and integrity to say, “I am responsible,” and then forgive the other person and let him or her go. Say the words, “I forgive him/her for everything and I wish him/her well.” Each time you repeat this, the negative emotion attached to the memory will diminish. Soon it will be gone forever.
The Letter
Many of my graduates have found that “the letter” is the key to putting a bad relationship behind them forever. This is a powerful technique that can free you from feelings of anger and resentment almost instantly.
Here is how it works: You to sit down and write the other person a letter of forgiveness. It consists of three parts.
First you say, “I forgive you for everything you ever did that hurt me.”
Second, you write out a description or list of every single thing that you are still mad about. Some people write several pages in this part.
Third, you end the letter with the words, “I wish you well.”
You then take the letter to the mailbox and drop it in. At that moment, you will feel a huge sense of relief, and you will be free at last.
By the way, don’t worry about how the other person might react. That is not your concern. Your goal is to free yourself, to regain your peace of mind, and to get on with the wonderful life that lies ahead of you.
Clear Your Slate
The third person you must forgive is everyone else in your life who has ever hurt you in any way. Let them go. Forgive every boss, business partner, friend, crook or betrayer who has ever caused you grief of any kind. Clean the slate and forgive to forget. Wipe each of their names and images off by saying, “I forgive him/her for everything, and I wish him/her well.” Repeat this statement each time you think of the person or situation until the negative feelings are gone.
Set Yourself Free
The fourth and final person you have to forgive is yourself. You must absolutely forgive yourself for every silly, senseless, wicked, brainless, thoughtless or cruel thing you have ever done or said. Stop carrying these past mistakes around with you. That was then and this is now.
Think of it this way. When you did those things in the past that you still feel badly about, you were not the person you are today. At that time, you were a different person, younger and less experienced. You were not your true self. You were an immature version of the person you have become with experience. Stop beating yourself up for something that occurred in the past that you cannot change.
Just say, “I forgive myself for every mistake I ever made. I am a thoroughly good person and I am going to have a wonderful future.” Whenever you think of that event or situation, just repeat, “I forgive myself completely.” And then get on with your life. Focus on the future rather than the past and don’t look back. Look at where you are going rather than where you have been.
Finally, if you did something that hurt someone, and you still feel badly about it, you can go to that person, or write, and apologize. Tell the person you are sorry for what you did or said. Whatever his or her reaction, positive or negative, it doesn’t matter. The very act of repentance, of expressing regret, will set you free.
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3 Easy Habits to a Healthy Lifestyle
Jan 9th
There has never been a time in human history where you can live longer and live better than you can today. Incredible advances in pharmaceuticals, medicine and healthcare enable people to overcome disease and illness and continue to thrive well into their 70s and 80s. Perhaps the largest growing demographic group in America today is people who are 90 and 100 years old, or more. Your job is to join this group and to be fit and healthy all the days of your life.
For almost the entire history of the human race, longevity was a matter of accident or coincidence. Today longevity is a matter of design and choice. You can actually decide today to enjoy superb levels of physical health, and by developing specific health habits, you can assure that you live longer and better than has been possible for any other generation in human history.
Choose to Be Healthy and Fit
The first habit for you to develop is the habit of achieving and maintaining your proper weight. More than 60% of Americans today are officially classified as “obese.” This means that they are more than 20% above their ideal weight, based on height and weight charts. Even worse, there are many millions who are officially classified as “morbidly obese.” This means that they are 40% and 50% above their ideal weights. They are in danger of dying from being so overweight.
Everything you are, and ever will be, is the result of your choices and decisions. If you want to change some aspect of your life, you have to make new choices and new decisions, and then you must discipline yourself to follow-through on your decisions.
Being overweight is very much a matter of choice. No one can eat for you but yourself. No one can put the food into your mouth for you. You only eat as the result of your own decisions and your own actions. Anyone who is overweight is in that condition because they have been unable to restrain themselves in the presence of food for a very long time.
The only way to achieve your proper weight is to develop the habit of eating less and exercising more each day and each week. But just as it takes you months and years to become overweight, it takes you many months to get rid of the weight once you make that decision.
It is not easy to lose weight. This is because you develop automatic habits of eating that are hard to break. You get into a rhythm of eating certain foods – morning, noon and night. You become accustomed to eating snacks between meals, and to overeating in the evening. It is not easy to break these habits, but it is definitely possible. This is your goal.
Eat the Right Foods
The second habit you need to develop for long life full of health and fitness is the habit of eating a proper diet. You have to develop the habit of eating the right foods, in the right proportions, at the right times.
Everyone knows that they should eat a more balanced diet, containing more fruits, vegetables and whole grain products. In addition to this basic principle, there are several things that you can do to modify your diet, and develop the habits of good nutrition, which will lead to a combination of weight loss and higher levels of energy and fitness.
In addition to eating a peak performance diet to achieve rapid weight loss and improved functioning, you should develop the habit of eliminating the “three white poisons” from your die, which are salt, sugar, and flour. This change in your diet is so simple and yet so powerful that every one of my students who tries it is absolutely amazed at how quickly they get noticeable results.
Get Lots of Exercise & Rest
The third habit you need to develop is the habit of effective exercise. Many people stop exercising in their late teens and early twenties, even people who were active in sports when they were growing up. However, the human body, made up of 610 muscles, is meant to be exercised regularly throughout your life.
Develop the habit of articulating and moving every joint in your body, every single day. This keeps your muscles and joints agile and flexible. Regular exercise assures that you have greater balance and mobility. It helps to diminish the likelihood of muscle or joint pain or problems.
Develop the habit of exercising 200 minutes each week. If all you did were to go for a walk, 30 minutes per day, seven days per week, you would be one of the fittest people in our society. If you disciplined yourself to ride an exercise bicycle, work out on a treadmill, swim, jog or engage in any aerobic exercises that get your lungs and heart pumping, you will dramatically improve your levels of health and energy in a short period of time.
The next habit that you need for superb all around health is the habit of proper rest. You need seven to eight hours of sleep each night for optimal performance. If you get less than six to seven hours of sleep per night, and you continue to work as hard as you normally do at your job, you will eventually develop a “sleep deficiency.”
You can change the way you feel about yourself, and your performance in your work and personal life, by developing the habit of going to bed early, by 10:00 pm each night and getting a good night’s sleep every night of the week.
The Year in Review & Moving Forward Into 2012
Dec 29th
Hello, my Friends,
This has been a busy, exciting and challenging year, especially after my cancer and treatment in 2010, accompanied by a dramatic decline in the business market for speaking and training services.
Fortunately, I try to practice what I preach by bouncing back from temporary difficulties and launching new programs and services. “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”
The biggest concern facing most people this year, and for years to come, is money- how to get more of it, get out of debt, and build financial independence, both for individuals and businesses.
We therefore developed 7 new 12 hour CD programs to help our clients to produce, sell, market, manage, and make more money. It is called the “Made Simple” series. They are:
Business Success Made Simple
Business Start-Up Success Made Simple
Sales Success Made Simple
Management Success Made Simple
Time Management Made Simple
Personal Success Made Simple
Wealth Building Made Simple
Each program includes access to our online video training programs, plus PDF versions of the notes, plus application exercises.
We launched our “Total Business Mastery – The 3-Day MBA Program” in 2011 and presented it to several hundred business owners and entrepreneurs. It is so powerful that participants start to transform their business within a few days.
I just returned from presenting this program in Shanghai in November for 380 participants @ $3000 per person. They want me to come back and give it 10 more times in China, all over the country. My clients are already booking me to present it in Europe in 2012 as well.
This year, I set a goal to visit my 100th country, which I achieved in December when I spoke in Vietnam. I was all over South Vietnam during the war, but this was my first time back since then. What a difference! Ho Chi Minh City is modern, booming and full of life and energy.
In both the Spring and the Fall, I spoke all over Europe several times, including four days in Russia. I am already booked all over the world again for 2012.
We also relaunched our “Power of Personal Achievement – The Phoenix Seminar” in 2011, where participants learn how to unlock their full potentials for success and achievement.
We also began our 3-day intensive “Brian Tracy’s Speaking Academy,” where we teach people how to speak in front of any audience, and get standing ovations.
My family is in great health and doing well in each area of life. My daughter Christina has opened her own practice as a Family and Personal Psychologist, is having her third child in February, and we have co-written our first book together, “Kiss That Frog – Turning Negatives Into Positives.” Her husband Damon is busy and successful, as are their children, Julia and Will.
My son Michael is the chief marketing and sales executive for a high-tech company in San Diego, and doing very well. His two years in direct selling have made him a real selling professional. His lovely wife Tasha is expecting their first child in February, as well. I will be a grandfather twice more!
My son David and his wife Sara both graduated from the University of Nevada at Las Vegas this year, David in June and Sara in December. I flew straight from Bangkok via LAX to be there. David is now a specialist in Personality Assessment and Individual Motivation.
My daughter Catherine is in her third year at the University of Miami. She served an internship at the Heritage Foundation in Washington this summer. She is doing well and is also with us in Hawaii.
My lovely wife Barbara and I have been married 32 years, and it just keeps getting better and better. We took an Alaska cruise in July to celebrate our anniversary.
As always, we resolve to make this New Year, 2012, the best year of our lives, and you should as well. Remember, the future is only limited by your imagination. And since your imagination can have no limits, your future can be unlimited as well.
Best wishes to you!
Brian
Show Your Thanks and Boost Motivation
Nov 21st
In honor of Thanksgiving this week, I want to encourage you to voice your “attitude of gratitude”. Say thank you and give constructive feedback to your staff, friends, children and co-workers and encourage them to be better in their lives and work. Make it a habit to give people continual praise and encouragement. The more you praise and encourage positive constructive behaviors, the more deposits you make to the emotional bank account. The easier it will then be for people to take constructive feedback from you at a later time.
Appreciate People for Everything They Do
There are three keys to getting the best out of others, and the first of these is appreciation. Every time you thank another person, you cause that person to like themselves better. You raise their self-esteem and improve their self-image. You cause them to feel more important. You make them feel that what they did was valuable and worthwhile. You empower them.
Build Your Own Self-Esteem
And the wonderful thing about thanking other people is that, every time you say the words “thank you,” you like yourself better as well. You feel better inside. You feel happier and more content with yourself and life. You feel more fully integrated and positive about what you are doing. When you develop an attitude of gratitude that flows forth from you in all of your interactions with others, you will be amazed at how popular you will become and how eager others will be to help you in whatever you are doing.
Praise and Approve Others Continually
The second way to make people feel important, raise self-esteem and give them a sense of power and energy, is by the generous use of praise and approval. Psychological tests show that, when children are praised by the people that they look up to, their energy levels rise, their heart rates and respiratory rates increase and they feel happier about themselves overall.
Make People Feel Important
Perhaps the most valuable lesson in Ken Blanchard’s book The One Minute Manager is his recommendation to be giving “one-minute praising” at every opportunity. If you go around your home and through your social relationships praising and giving genuine and honest approval to people for their accomplishments, large and small, you will be amazed at how much more people like you and how much more willing they are to help you achieve your goals.
Practice the Law of Reciprocity
There is a psychological law of reciprocity that says, “If you make me feel good about myself, I will find a way to make you feel good about yourself.” In other words, people will always look for ways to reciprocate your kindnesses toward them. When you look for every opportunity to do and say things that make other people feel good about themselves, you will be astonished at not only how good you feel, but at the wonderful things that begin to happen all around you.
Pay Attention When They Talk
The third way to empower others, to build their self-esteem and make them feel important is simply to pay close attention to them when they talk. The great majority of people are so busy trying to be heard that they become impatient when others are talking. But this is not for you. Remember, the most important single activity that takes place over time is listening intently to the other person when he or she is talking and expressing himself or herself.
Take Every Opportunity to Build People Up
Again, the three general rules for empowering the people around you, which apply to everyone you meet, are appreciation, approval, and attention. Say thank you and voice your gratitude to others on every occasion. Praise them for every accomplishment. And pay close attention to them when they talk and want to interact with you. These three behaviors alone will make you a master of human interaction and will greatly empower the people around you.
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