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Know What Is Going Into Your Mind

February 2, 2012 by · Leave a Comment

Part of knowing where you are is knowing what you are doing with your thoughts.  Many people look to their childhood, teen years, or past experiences to describe why they do the things they do.  These excuses begin to in grain themselves into your subconscious mind and they keep you from becoming who you were created to be.  Let me explain.

A person I know believes every person in her family hates her because she believed her mother hated her.  When her mother passed away she found a note in her baby book where her mom explained she really didn’t want a girl.  Her mind stopped on that phrase and it has increased to everyone hating her.  What she fails to mention is the rest of her life.  Her mother may not have wanted girls but she got two, both of whom knew the boys were favored as they were growing up, and both who were raised and loved just the same.  One sister loves her family and spend time with them every year, the other shuns them and blames them for her troubles.

When you put bad, evil, and scary lies into your head, what do you believe will come out of your thoughts.  If you watch only news TV, Fox or CNN, do you think you will be more or less likely to respond hatefully to the other sides arguments?  You will more than likely be aggressive toward anyone who does not share your point of view.  I am not saying you need to stop watching the news, that is a start, but not what I am saying.  What I am saying is, you need to be aware of what you are putting in your mind.

  1. Get control of your thoughts.  When you find yourself dwelling on an untruth or something you don’t want to think about write that thought on a 3×5 card and write lie or un-truth or stop or whatever will help you realize that is a bad thought.  On the other side of the card write the truth and start reading that and putting it in your mind.
  2. Change the channel.  Watching television can depress you many studies show.  And others show that stopping can make you feel better about your world.  I assume if your kid sits on the couch and watches one man have sex with different women until he finds the one he likes (The Bachelor) he or she will assume that is the best way to find their soul mate and maybe you will too.
  3. Read good books.  This is a hard one, because over 40% of all Americans didn’t read books unless they are for work or school.  From my own life I know most people read infrequently at best.
    • When you read look at the comments, praise, bibliography, or other content to find other authors to read.
    • Don’t get caught up trying to read crap. I started trying to read from the Great Books of the Western World and realized I didn’t need to know that material. My brother ate it up, but it is not for me.
    •  Don’t overwhelm yourself.  Just start by reading ten minutes a day and go from there.
  4. Don’t listen to negative people. Friends and family are a trap.  Spend as little time with the negative ones as you can.  I know this is hard when your father is a world renowned cynic and you feel obligated to see him every week, but you have to take responsibility for yourself. If he is tearing you down then you need to cut his time down to a minimum just to show respect.  If a friend is this way then reduce the time you spend with them and eventually just stop seeing them.  It isn’t a marriage, you don’t have to have a reason to get new friends.

Start becoming aware of what goes into your mind and take control of it.

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5 Ways To Change Your Mind

January 16, 2010 by · Leave a Comment

Ever since James Allen wrote “As A Man Thinketh” people have asked that question.  do you lay in bed every morning and think about how bad your day at work will be?  Do you stay awake at night because you think about how bad it will be to get up in the morning?  Or, do you Spend time at night focusing on the possibilities that lay ahead of you the next day?  Do you take time every evening to lay out the things that need to be done the next day and think about the success you will have when you accomplish them?

All the examples above focus on thinking about your work, but two focus on the bad and two focus on the possibilities.  If you spend your time every day thinking about how to get out of work or how bad your job is, that is what it will be.   You will always get what you think about.  I’m not talking manifesting millions of dollars.  I’m talking about just changing the way you view your life and career.

1.  Change the questions you ask .  If you are asking how can I get out of this, or how can I kill time this afternoon.  You will get the answers.  Ask those questions enough you will get to answer them from the house, and then you will be asking how do i pay my bills.  Instead of asking questions that will get you out of work ask, “How can I make this fun,” or “How can I get better ideas for this job.”  You can get all the answers you want if you ask the right questions.

2.  Finish an important task.  When you spend time focusing on how to get out of work you tend to leave the things that really need to be done until the last-minute.  Stop procrastinating and do the things that need to be done before the deadline.  When you get an important project off your desk you feel better and a great weight is lifted from your soldiers.  Don’t say if I do the work they will only give me more.  That is bad thinking.  If you want to succeed you will have to pay the price and if it means doing more work you can handle it because you are asking better questions.

3.   Don’t focus on the past.  We all work with someone who has gotten under our skin at some time.  You can not dwell on those past arguments or on people who have gotten promoted before you.  If you focus on why she said this or why he got promoted and you didn’t you will never get promoted and possibly not keep your job to long.  Focus on what can be.  focus on that next promotion opportunity.  focus on who is in charge of that promotion and begin to find out what he or she is looking for in a candidate for promotion.  When you look to the future, the past will become very dim.

4.   Don’t focus on your critics.   “Just Drop it.”  Have you ever  said that, well us it to your advantage.  Just drop it.  If you focus on people who criticize  you are going to become angry and they will gain power over you.  Think about it.  No one can make you mad, unless you let them.  When you let them make you mad you give them power over you so they can come back at any time and change your whole attitude.  this will make your work poor and your focus from the good to the bad and how to get out of work.

5.   Focus on Others.   Giving back is a vital key to a successful life.  when you turn your focus off of yourself and begin to look at how you can reach out to others you begin to see success in a different light.  When you work with anyone who is handicapped in any way, you begin to see that success is not just having things. some times it is just seeing, or standing, or just listening.

If you follow these five steps you will begin to see your mind focusing on what it takes to succeed more and more and on failure less and less.

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What Were You Thinking

January 10, 2010 by · Leave a Comment
Tiger Woods
Image via Wikipedia

Have you ever asked that question of someone, or maybe yourself when they or you made a complete blunder?  I am watching a one year old pull over signs as his mother yells from across the room not to do that, like the one year old can understand, and I am thinking what are you thinking.  I know don’t sweat the small stuff, I’m trying.  Where do we hear it the most.  unless you have an overly dramatic parent or friend that says that a lot, you hear it in sports.  When the quarterback or pitcher makes a bad throw the announcer yells, “What was he thinking!”  Or when Tiger woods makes a bad shot the announcer says in a hushed tone, “I don’t know what he was thinking.”  Never mind that the person who commented could not even tie the shoes of most of these athletes but he or she has more power than anyone to disparage the play simply because he or she has a microphone or is a fan of the team.  Chang it to people who have success.  Does anyone ever ask Donald trump what he is thinking when he makes a good deal, or Tiger when he makes a good shot.  what do they think about when they have success.  What was Sully Sullenberger thinking when he landed that plane in the Hudson River.  He said he was thinking about the procedure.  Why?  Because he had made that landing or similar ones in a simulator before.  He had practiced the shot.

So What Were They Thinking?

Most professional athletes are the same way.  They practice being successful over and over and over.  Their minds are trained for success.  They watch the right films to put into their heads what to expect from each opponent in that game.  the study playbooks that have hundreds of different plays and memorize each one so success is always on their brain.  They believe they can do it.  When asked before the 2009 Masters if he believed he could win Tiger Woods replied, “Of course.”  If he thought about loosing all the time he would not be the tiger Woods we know.  He would be bagging groceries and maybe playing golf as a hobby but not the best golfer of our time.  If you want to be successful you have to start putting successful thoughts in your mind.  Success does not show up for most people.  Winning the lottery is not a practical avenue for success.  It is a poor persons tax not a success strategy.

Practice what you want to achieve.  If you start out as a hobby with what you want to be successful at, you can get really good at it before you quit your job and go full-time.  Turn off the television and begin to see yourself doing what it is you’re called to do in life.  If you don’t know what your calling is then begin to ask yourself what would I do if money were no object?  What would I do for free or little money?  What are your hobbies you enjoy doing now?  What did you want to do as a kid?  For me it was ppofessional speaking.  I would walk around our kitchen and speak to an audience of ten thousand people.  I would visualize them as I talked.  See yourself succeeding and practice being that success and as you begin to see yourself as a success you will begin to become what you dream about.

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