Michael

Watch your manner of speech if you wish to develop a peaceful state of mind. Start each day by affirming peaceful, contented and happy attitudes and your days will tend to be pleasant and successful. – Norman Vincent Peale

How do you start your day?

Is it a struggle? Are you grumpy? Do you love the mornings? Are you slightly comatose (like me)? Is it the best or worst part of your day? Do you start with a great attitude or one of dread?

How you start your day can set the stage for your entire waking experience until you go to sleep. In fact, the first thoughts of the morning can help set both positive and negative expectations. I personally choose the positive thoughts. I’ve tried the other way. It’s not near as pleasant.

Before you get up in the morning, take a few moments to set the stage for a better day. Your thoughts can be as simple as enjoying the feel of your bed as you stretch your limbs. You could think of some enjoyable moments you will have later in the morning. You could begin to savor that first cup of coffee or tea before you even boil the water. The specific thoughts are not so important, but the feeling behind them are extremely vital for carrying positivity throughout your day. Whatever works for you, make sure that your thoughts right after you wake up make you smile and feel great. The effect on your day will be dramatic.

At the end of your day, before you fall asleep and as you lay in your bed, remember all the good things that happened. Think about how nice it will be to experience some good things tomorrow. Make your last thoughts be positive ones. When you wake up in the morning, you’ll be slightly ahead of the game and can get an easier start on positive thinking.

Try this out. You could be pleasantly surprised and find these two small techniques to be quite addicting.

Michael

You will never be happier than you expect. To change your happiness, change your expectation. – Bette Davis

The expectation you have of your own level of happiness is a powerful influence. There may be other indicators, but this one is big. If your expectation is that you will not be happy, you are starting from a place that almost completely precludes you from being happy. At the very least, with that negative expectation, you would not reach a high level of happiness nor one you deserve.

What’s interesting to me is that we hide these negative expectations in a variety of ways. Sometimes we blame others or things that happen. We also tend to look too much at what is currently going on in our lives and extrapolate that bad experience into the future. Going to work seems to bring many negative expectations. Bad relationships, lack of money and physical problems round up the other, most popular excuses used in negative expectations.

The good news is that true happiness is state of being completely within our minds. It really doesn’t have to do with anything else. We have the power to change and control what we are thinking. Therefore our expectations are directly related to what thoughts are swirling around our minds.

I have found that I get what I expect. It can be surprising at times. I expect a lot from people at my job. I expect to have good things come my way. I expect to be happy throughout the day so much so, that I spontaneously smile.

Learn to control or change your expectations and watch you level of happiness increase.

Michael

You only lose energy when life becomes dull in your mind. Your mind gets bored and therefore tired of doing nothing. Get interested in something! Get absolutely enthralled in something! Get out of yourself! Be somebody! Do something! The more you lose yourself in something bigger than yourself, the more energy you will have. – Norman Vincent Peale

What gets you excited? What drives your curiosity? What makes you feel excited and alive? What interests you?

It’s important to keep the mind active. Boredom can have a huge negative effect on your state of mind, attitude and your emotional level.

Participating in fun activities that keep your mind involved is a great way to increase your energy level also. Sitting around all day doing nothing, watching TV, staring at the ceiling or moping around is not the best use of your time. You’ll feel tired, your attitude will be terrible and your life will not be interesting.

Find something you love to do or better yet several things that keep your interest. Find your passion. Don’t worry if you aren’t good at it. That’s not the point. Having fun and keep your mind active is the way to go.

Michael

95% of your emotions are determined by the way you talk to yourself. – Brian Tracy

This is so true and the implications of this statement are enormous. It means that by using our mind; i.e. changing our internal dialogue, we can dramatically change the emotions we are experiencing.

In fact, we can use our emotional state to determine what our self-talk is actually telling us. In other words, if we are feeling negative emotion, then 95 out of 100 times it’s something we are telling ourselves. Obviously, this works for positive emotional states also. We don’t typically want to change those, unless of course we would like to either enhance those positive feelings or learn what we are telling ourselves so that we can repeat.

Next time you are feeling down or just not as happy as you can be, listen to what you are telling yourself. Listening is an important step and all change will happen from that point. Once you know how you talk to yourself, than you can start to slowly change what you are saying. Overtime your attitude and average emotional state will improve.

Michael

If you can keep your head when all around you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, then the world is yours and all that’s in it. – Rudyard Kipling

I’m being looked at for a potential opportunity where I will have to deal with some very difficult people, day in and day out. I’ve dealt with people like this many times before. One of my skill sets is being able to handle this kind of behavior without losing my temper or my mind. It would be a very challenging and difficult position, but that doesn’t really bother me.

I’m very thankful to have had the chance to work with these difficult people. Because of them, I rarely meet someone that I can’t deal with. It’s great.

I have my own way of handling them.

1. I don’t take any of it personal, even when it is.
2. I don’t get emotional about the situation.
3. I say no when it is appropriate to say no.
4. I stick to the facts.
5. I always tell the truth.

This five-fold technique has worked brilliantly for me. Except for #5, it did take me breaking each one of these rules to figure them out. I may not be taking this position, but it would be because of other, more personal reasons than the fact that they may be candidates for the most difficult people in the world.

Michael

Be not afraid of going slowly; be afraid only of standing still. – Chinese Proverb

To me, standing still means stagnation, no change, no fun, a sort of death. I have to keep moving, growing, becoming, experiencing and enjoying things for me to feel alive. I don’t like to sit and not grow. Life is about movement, about changing positions and experiencing new things.

I’m a very curious person so I’m never at a loss for something interesting to explore or learn. I ask so many questions that many years ago my nickname for a period of time was “Question Mark.” I took it as a compliment because I was learning at lightning speed while everyone else was sitting around in utter stagnation.

The great thing about life is that you can continue learning, expanding, and experiencing new things until you die. There aren’t really any limits because no matter what your situation, something can always help you be a little bit more.

Life can be just as exciting as we want to make it or it can be stale and distasteful.

I choose exciting.

Michael

You all have powers you never dreamed of. You can do things you never thought you could do. There are no limitations in what you can do except the limitations in your own mind as to what you cannot do. Don’t think you cannot. Think you can. – Darwin P. Kingsley

Our limitations exist solely in our own mind. If you don’t think you can do something, then you have already failed. It’s amazing, but I’ve seen it time and time again with a variety of people and also with myself. From physical endeavors to complex mental activities, thinking you can’t do something will prevent you from succeeding. But, when you change your thoughts and your mental patterns to think you can or believe you can, miracles seem to become commonplace.

It’s quite extraordinary and it seems to work every time.  Our thoughts are more powerful than we have been taught. Athletes have known this for years. You can usually see a great athlete visualizing their routine in their mind. Studies have shown that the mental exercise of visualizing their routine perfectly does as much good as their actual physical practice.

We hear of people overcoming tremendous adversity by only changing their attitude and hence their beliefs.

You are more powerful than you may have previously believed. And you if change your beliefs to believe my previous statement, you will start to make some serious headway into opening yourself up to a higher potential.

Have a great day!

Michael

Don’t have that conversation with yourself where you say, “He’s got more talent than I do,” or “She’s faster than I am.” Success depends on what’s in your mind…Success is about your spirit. – George Foreman

Your self confidence can take a huge hit when you compare yourself to others. In fact, comparison to others will completely shut yourself down from doing things that you enjoy. What quickly follows is a tremendous drop in your level of happiness.

The majority of my life was rife with comparison to others. It was not a very pleasant time; low self-confidence, fleeting moments of true happiness and no avenue to get out of this negative spiral.

Finally, about 10 years ago, I was able to figure out how to get out of the comparison game. Here were my thoughts about comparison that helped me bridge the gap from my negative place to where I am now:

Take any field or subject. There is one person on the planet that is the worst and there is one person on the planet that is the best. Everyone else falls in between. Not a few of us, but every other person falls in the middle. Now, if you are the worst then you have two choices; continue practicing, performing and etc. because you love it or if you hate what you are doing, then do something else. If you are the best, then congratulations!

Everyone in the middle has the same choice as the worst. We can continue in our field or subject because we really love doing it or stop and do something else.

The only reason to do anything is because of the enjoyment we get from doing it. Two of my favorite activities are photography and playing music. It would be easy to compare my photography to Ansel Adams and the like. But, frankly that would be counterproductive. I take photographs for the sheer enjoyment of it. My guitar playing is not rock star quality either, but you know what? I love playing music.

So, we can relax and have fun with our activities, pastimes, hobbies and etc. or we can be miserable because we aren’t the best. Which sounds better to you?

Michael

Life is not that serious. We think it is as we go through our day performing our responsibilities, driving from here to there, making phone calls, working and etc. All this activity and the importance of it pales to the importance of how we feel.

If you don’t feel good doing something, then you should stop and either find out why, change your attitude or go do something else. Life can be fun and is meant to be. The choice is always ours. I mean that to cover all activities including mundane things like washing dishes. Those type of activities can be fun automatically, you could make it fun or you could simply not do it.

I try to consciously make choices by whether it will be fun or not. Of course, there are times, like at work, where I don’t have a choice. But, I always have a choice on how I will react or respond internally. I can make it fun. I can change my attitude to something better. I’m the one in control of how I feel. No one else.

If you can take the edge off your life by not taking things so seriously, you’ll have almost immediate benefits. You may even smile more.

One final note: It doesn’t matter why you take things seriously. Most of us try to associate our negative feelings and experiences with things that happened in the past. But right now, the reasons are irrelevant. That’s because we have the power to change at any time. And there is no time like now to change.

Use your power to change and start to feel better.

Michael

I’ve learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision. – Maya Angelou

Too many times we make decisions based on thinking we have to settle for one thing or another. Our true selves don’t accept this and we react by feeling bad about the decision, questioning why we are making the decision and have a general feeling of “giving up.” Life doesn’t have to be this way.

An open heart implies hope and a belief that everything will work out. Having an open heart when making a decision means that the best possible solutions will come your way. It means that you are ready to take new steps towards a better life.

An open heart means we are ready to try something new or learn a new skill. It means we have learned to forgive ourselves for past mistakes which are irrelevant in the present moment anyway. An open heart sees the world of infinite possibilities. An open heart implies love of self and others. Wisdom and patience come from open hearts.

The interesting thing is that every human being has the capability of having an open heart. It’s actually more natural than many believe.

Remember that it is never too late to start something new. It is never too late to make a positive change. It’s never too late to cultivate an open heart.

Nothing is stopping you except your own thoughts.

Michael