New Year Resolutions

You may notice that I am posting this on Twelfth Night, well better late than never!

It is a long held tradition that people make resolutions at the beginning of a new year. It is a tradition, though, that has become laced with cynicism mainly because people do not expect they, or other people, will really stick to their resolutions. In fact, it has often become a game to see who breaks their resolution the soonest. Why should this be and is there any way of making resolutions work?

First of all, we need to have a look at the nature of resolutions and try to see why they may not work. People often make resolutions based around something they would like to improve or change in their life or themsleves; such as losing weight, giving up smoking or drinking.

Such resolutions are made half-heartedly and, often, with the expectation of failing. Nevertheless, such resolutions do indicate something that is a concern for the individual making them. Resolutions may be made in private or they may be made with friends. Making resolutions with friends can be beneficial because they can offer you support and encouragement but often, however, friends expect you to fail too and may be looking more to catch you out than to support you.

Resolutions are different from goals; resolutions are often made vaguely and without a timeframe or a reward system. Whereas goals are made more specific, with a timeframe, a reward system and they are often broken down into smaller more easily achievable steps. Goals can also be made with someone, a friend, coach, counsellor, who will genuinely support you and help you to achieve your goal.

Any change will take time; very few can be achieved overnight. Professional help and support can be necessary to help you achieve your serious goals. Many of us will give up at the first obstacle, setback or possibility of failure, with pofessional help, however, we can overcome obstacles and persevere with achieving our goals.

So I would say that my advice, for what it is worth, is that of you have made any resolutions this year then now is the time to seek professional support from a coach or counsellor to help you turn those resolutions into goals and give yourself greater chance of achieving the change you seek.

All the best in your efforts and may the new you be a better you. Happy new year.

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You Can Reach Your 2009 Goals With Mind Mapping
By Reuben Rock

Like many people, I always try to set goals for the new year. Each New Year’s Eve, I consider what resolutions are important to me and my family. These can range from personal, financial, business, health, fitness, or just about anything else.

Unfortunately, like most people, a lot of these goals go unreached. It’s hard to make your New Year’s resolutions stick, and it’s hard to admit that. So today I wanted to share with you my 2009 strategy - the secret weapon I’m using to flesh out my goals and make them a reality in the coming year.

It’s simple. Mindmapping! That’s the key, and I’ll explain how. When you set goals for yourself, you really must write them down. Put them on paper, and pin them up somewhere visible. Right now, my 2009 goals are thumb-tacked to the wall by my desk. I want to see them - all year long. And you should do the same!

Back to mind mapping - what is it? It’s a way of organizing ideas and making them fit together well. You start with anything - an idea, a word, a picture… then you just add to it. You draw lines from your main idea outward toward your connecting ideas, and you continue to do this until you have a huge web. Then you re-arrange the pieces and add details until you have a well-constructed (and well planned) mindmap. With your finished mind map, you can see exactly what steps lead up to a big goal.

That’s how I wrote my 2009 resolutions. In one big mindmap. And it’s organized into personal, academic, and business sections. Each section has a goal - and some details about the goal. Now I can see what needs to be done and how I can get there. Give it a try and see how mindmapping can be the powerful secret weapon that pushes you toward a successful 2009!

Want to learn more about Mind Mapping or other ways to reach your goals? Check out http://www.reubenrock.com and see what I’m blogging about today. I’ll fill you in on everything from making extra money, running an internet marketing business, getting through grad school, and even random daily troubles… You’re sure to find something of interest. And I’m happy to answer questions - just leave a comment or send an email.

Plus you can sign up to get my free audio course about article marketing (an easy way to bring in a few extra dollars this year)!

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Positive Attitude Tips That Will Assist You in Changing Your Life Forever
By Suellen Sutherland

Having a attitude shift will change your life forever. This will probably be one of the most challenging things that you will ever do. People do not realize just how exhausting it can be going through a day without having a negative thought. I remember the first two weeks were exhausting.

Some are fortunate and raised in a positive family environment, the majority of the population are not. When you have grown up surrounded by negativity it takes a very conscious decision to change.

When I chose to make the shift the most difficult thing as I said was going through a day without one negative thought. It is totally exhausting, you need to be conscious of every thought. It is so simple to let the old thought pattern slip back and this is why you must remain conscious at all times.

Do not engage in idle gossip, why waste positive energy on speaking negatively.

Try not to associate with people that have a negative attitude. If you must be aware of your thoughts.

Always attempt to turn every negative into a positive.

Do not speak ill of anyone.

Be grateful for the things that you have and things that are not yet yours. Know they are coming

Use positive phrases when speaking. Phrases that have intent and purpose.

Engage in positive conversation as often as possible.

Avoid news programs, they are full of negativity.

Creating a positive attitude will give only positive energy to the universe and that is what you in turn will receive back. You will be rewarded by attracting abundance into your life.

My wish is that everyone live the life of theirs dreams, that is why I created http://www.sassywomeninspired.com It is our birthright to have wealth and abundance, there is enough to go around. We want to show you how to attract things into your life. You can have anything you want once you learn the secrets of how the universe works on vibrational energy.

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What do you need to be successful?

Do you need talent? Do you need money? Do you need to overcome the opposition?

Not necessarily, not according to a new study of success written by Malcolm Gladwell. Having studied some of the most successful people of modern times and some historical figures, he concludes that there are only  two things you need in order to be successful.

So, the big question is; what are those two things and how do you go about getting them.

The key to Gladwell’s findings is that in order to be successful, you do not really need to have innate or natural talent. What appears to be far more important is dedication and perseverance. Dedication to keep on practicising and improving.  His study revealed that the most successful people put in around 10,000 hours of practice.

His findings defy the traditional belief that achievement is the combination of talent and practice. In fact, you do not need talent, just the perseverance to put in enough practice. This is an optimistic note as it suggests that anyone can achieve success if they are fully prepared to put in the effort required.

So how long would it take to acquire 10,000 hours of practice? Well, let’s say you practice for 5 hours a day. That is to say that you practice purposefully and intently with the sole idea of improving your self or your skills. If you practice for 5 hours a day, 5 days a week, that makes 100 hours a month or 1,000 hours a year (you can allow yourself time off at Christmas and family holidays etc.) That means it will take about 10 years to acrue enough practice to be successful.

So, okay, now we know that we need to practice what we do for 10 years, is that all? Well, no, there is one other thing that successful people seem to allhave in common and that’s an element of luck. This element of luck is usually cited as ‘being in the right place at the right time’.

You see, anyone can put in the practice and develop their knowledge and skills but without the lucky ‘break’ they are unlikely to succeed. So is there anyway you can improve your chances of being in the right place at the right time?

Well, as mentioned, it is down to luck. So you  you might think there was no way you could engineer it but, people reckon, it is possible to make your own luck. To do this, you need to be brave and ‘put yourself out there’. It is no use just sitting in your room studying and practising alone, you need to get out and make yoursewlf known to people and at venues allied to your area of study/practice. The downside is, you will still have to put inthe required hours of practice.

So you’re putting in 5 hours of practice a day, which doesn’t sound too much but then you have to put in extra time to get your face known, as it were. You can start to see why successful people tend to become single-minded and purposeful, devoting their time to their one pursuit.

You can read more about Malcolm Gladwell’s findings in his book, Outliers: The Story of Success

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Cover via Amazon

The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People - Revealed - How You Can Use Your Time Most Effectively
By Kevin J. John

How are you spending your time? Do you feel you are using it as effectively as possible? Are you achieving your life goals? Or are you stuck in a rut? Understanding the principles of time management as explained in “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” will help you to maximize your use of your time.

The Four Quadrants of Time Management

Stephen Covey talks about the four quadrants of time management.

It may help you understand the powerful ideas behind Stephen Covey’s concept if pick up a pen and piece of paper and sketch out a square divided into 4 quadrants. Write importance on the left of the square and urgency underneath.

As we go through the 4 quadrants, write a description of the activities in your life that fit into each quadrant in the squares.

Starting with the greatest time waster:

Quadrant 4 (bottom right) This is the quadrant of not important and not urgent activities, many of your favourite time wasters and diversions can be found here: trivial tasks, “busy” work, inconsequential phone calls, television. It’s ok to spend some time here if it’s part of planned downtime – time when you’re refreshing yourself.

Quadrant 3 (bottom left) This is the quadrant of not important but urgent activities. You’ll find things like phone calls from people demanding answers, interruptions from colleagues, short term urgent stuff and fixing minor problems around the home. Ask yourself “If I don’t do xxx, what would be the consequence?” In many cases the main result would be that you save time for something more useful!

Note: sometimes you end up spending time here because you’ve let things get out of hand and now it needs urgent attention.

Quadrant 1 (top left). This is the quadrant of important and urgent activities. This is the quadrant of flying by your pants crisis management, deadline driven project and fire fighting. Everyone ends up spending some time time here, it’s just that some spend more than others.

In fact you may be like many people who get a real buzz out of operating here. You could end up choosing to spend a lot of time in quadrant 1. I know, I’ve been there!

The downside of this quadrant is that after a while you end up going round in endless circles going nowhere – the same crises just keep re-occurring. The stress keeps growing and you’re at great risk of burning yourself out. This is not a good place to operate in the long term!

Quadrant 2 (top right). This is the quadrant of important and not urgent activities. The stuff that you really need to do but always gets pushed aside by the quadrant 1 and 3 activities. Examples are: planning, preventing quadrant 2 and 3 crises, building relationships, looking for new opportunities, purposeful recreation (remember those quadrant 4 activities – they can be turned into something valuable!).

You are a smart reader and you have probably guessed that the key to success espoused by “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” is that you should focus on spending as much time as possible in Quadrant 2.

If you are successful in spending a significant part of your time on the long range planning and prevention activities in quadrant 2 you will prevent the quadrant 1 and 3 crises from eating up your life in ineffective activities. You will also be moving towards your life goals.

Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People teaches us that we should spend as much of our time as possible in important non-urgent activities such as planning, avoiding future crises, building relationships and looking for new opportunities and ideas. How are you spending your time?

Do you want to find out more about the 7 habits of highly effective people ?

You can get a free e-course the success principle. Visit my website for more resources, articles, and support materials about success and personal growth \.

Kevin John has spent many years helping businesses owners, aspiring business owners, and private individuals to develop the understanding and skills needed to achieve the success that they want.

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Affirmations - How to Make Them Work For You
By Barbara Faison

What do you think about most of the time? Are your thoughts positive, negative, neutral?
When something doesn’t go the way you want, what is your first thought? Our thoughts are constantly running around in our minds. Sometimes we forget that we can manage our thoughts. What we focus on expands in our lives. When we learn how to shift our focus from what we don’t want to what we do want, miracles happen.

Learning to use affirmations is one way to shift your focus from what you “don’t” want to what you “do” want. Affirmations are positive statements of truth and change. An affirmation can reflect how you truly feel about yourself, “I am unique.” Affirmations can also help you move to where you want to be, “I relax and allow my inner spirit to guide my life.” Your subconscious mind is like a video recorder that never stops running, it picks up sounds, ideas, thoughts, and feelings. Whether you believe them or not, affirmations make an impact on your subconscious mind. These statements help you train and focus on what you “truly” want in your life. When you realize the power that you have to manage your thoughts and emotions you move into a new understanding of how to truly engage with life.

I recommend you think, write and say affirmations to continue to impress your subconscious
mind. You can think them throughout your day and definitely focus on them whenever you find yourself feeling stressed, anxious, depressed or having feelings that are not positive. Here are a few of my favorites. Enjoy!

• I am a unique divine expression of love.
• I am available to receive more good than I have ever imagined.
• I am alive, alert, awake and enthusiastic!
• I believe my path is mine alone and I know that I am where I should be at this time, space and place.
• I relax and allow my inner spirit to guide my life.
• I design all areas of my life with ease and grace.
• I am grateful for all the teachers and lessons of my life.

When you find yourself focusing on what you don’t want - try one or all of these affirmations to jumpstart your thoughts back to where you truly want to be. Remember you have the power to create the life you want to live.

Barbara J. Faison is the author the book, Why Struggle? life is too short to wear tight shoes and the beginners meditation cd, Be Still: Learn to Meditate in 10 Minutes a Day. She educates, inspires, and enlightens her audiences with her unique perspective on living by design and embracing change and adventure as friends along your self-discovery journey. Salsa dancing, yoga and daily meditation are some of the ways she lives her life by design. Read book excerpts or listen to a sample meditation at http://www.dontstress.net

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In times like now when we face economic uncertainty, it is hard to stay with a positive mental attitude and work toward building a life of your dreams. That is often because the ‘here and now’ becomes much more important than the future. This article reminds us of things we can still do, despite the economic difficulties, to keep building our dream life.

11 Things You Can Do Today to Begin Creating Your Dream Life
By Stephen Mark

Many times people are drawn to the negative, so the pursuit of creating your dream life can be hard work. You need to train your brain to think positive again, like when you were a kid. You have to learn how to rid your mind of all the negative thoughts and emotions learned over the years and just remember the lessons learned.

It may seem simple enough to think positive, but when you are used to thinking negatively, it can be very hard. You will subconsciously be inclined to go to the negative if it connects you and another person. You have to make a conscious effort to fight off the negative thoughts and only focus on the positive ones. Sometimes it can feel and be like a battle, but you can do it if you embrace the idea and thoughts that can come with it. On the flip side, by being a positive thinker, your issues with fighting off negative thoughts will become easier since they eventually cease to exist or become a very small part of your thoughts. That’s because your positive thoughts are going to be overriding any negative ones. Just like fears, they are created in our mind - most of the time never coming true. You will have the necessary will power to stop negative thoughts in their tracks. You just have to learn to focus your energy on the right things in your life.

Look at the most successful people around you, who are they friends with, what do they do in their free time? (How do you personally define success? Hmmm…) Do they take time out of their day to spend with their friends and family or do they sit in front of the TV or computer like a programmed robot by themselves? You have to fully immerse yourself into positive thinking and creating your dream life for anything to happen. You have to surround yourself with positive influences. You have to be very focused on the positive and be committed to pushing away the negative thoughts and beliefs. There are always things beyond your control, however it is how you react to these things that create your future.

Here are some things you can do right now to start creating your dream life and make positive thinking easier:

1. Focus on positive thinking and positive things. This includes reading books that are upbeat like “21 Days To Creating Your Dream Life”, “The Power of Positive Thinking”, “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living” or “Awaken the Giant Within”. The list goes on and on. Sometimes you just need to learn a new way to look at things.

2. Visualize. You have to imagine yourself being positive, acting positive and thinking positive, doing positive things for others. You should picture positive things in your mind and allow yourself to think and feel these positive situations. Catch yourself when you focus on the negatives and stop yourself. Start thinking and focusing on the good versus the bad. Not everything is in our control, but how you approach everyday situations can determine how you perceive them.

3. Use positive words in your everyday conversations. Avoid negative ones as much as possible. Watch how your friends and coworkers interactions with you change. Try and make your conversations and thoughts positive. When you are thinking to yourself, use positive words - get rid of the negative self-talk. Most people like to be around other positive people.

4. Stop making excuses. What holds many people back from being a success? Excuses. Hold yourself accountable for accomplishments, learn from past failures - but don’t dwell on them or make excuses for them. Live in the moment, not in the past.

5. Give time, money, or knowledge to help others. When you give in any form, you will feel better about yourself. If helping at a shelter, a retirement home, a hospital, you may learn how lucky or wealthy you already are, be it in the form of friends or financially. Surprisingly, you will likely learn new things with everything you do.

6. Be aware of negative thoughts. When you have a negative thought, you have to recognize it and replace right away with a positive thought. Think about where the negative thought came from, why you had it and how to deal with it. Being a positive thinker does not mean you can avoid all negative things. It means you learn how to constructively deal with negativity and how not to allow negativity to influence you.

7. Be persistent with positive thinking. Positive thinking should become second nature to you. You want to train your subconscious to be positive. Don’t let a day go by without making sure you are thinking positive. Put your energy into focusing on what’s right, not what’s wrong. Stop yourself when thinking negatively. Be thankful for what you have today. Health, love, shelter, family, friends…

8. Identify the fears that cause you to think negatively. Most of the time, when a fear is confronted, it ends up not being as intimidating as it first seemed. Fear is simply your minds lack of being able to see that bad things will not always happen. When you learn to let go of fear and trust in yourself you will see it is much easier to stay positive.

9. Watch your emotions. Try to stick to feelings of happiness, so that success and strength dominates you internally. Try to avoid feelings of weakness, fear and self-doubt.

10. Do things that make you happy. Watch happy movies, read happy books and listen to happy upbeat music. Surround yourself with happiness and you will begin to react to that.

11. Smile. Use your smile to project your positive attitude. Let your smile speak for you. If you do nothing else, then put a smile on your face. It will do a world of wonder.

Make positive thinking part of your lifestyle. It is just like changing anything else in your life. Let’s say you’re giving up smoking. You’re not going to tempt yourself with carrying around a pack of cigars or cigarettes or really want to be around people who smoke. Will you? The same can be said for positive people.

Make sure you’re ready for such a big change in your life. Ask yourself some important questions such as: Are you ready to be a positive thinker? Are you ready to let go of the negative thoughts and patterns? Are you ready to become and think more optimistically? Can you let go of the things that don’t really matter and look on the bright side of things? Are you willing to work towards becoming a positive thinker? Being true to yourself, you have to answer yes to these questions to be able to become a positive thinker enabling you to create your dream life.

Stephen Mark is a serial entrepreneur, a motivator, a visionary, a philanthropist, and a facilitator.

Author of 21 Days To Creating Your Dream Life. For more details, you can visit http://www.StephenMark.com

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