Self Approval: Clearing The Path For Success

You cannot and will not be happy, successful, and at peace unless you take a good honest look at yourself first. You must take stock of all of the negatives so that you can get to work on your life. Below are 4 ways in which to start:

1. Get to know what other people like about you. Ask someone close to you to tell you honestly how he or she views you. Have that person rate you and your specific traits on a scale of one to five. Do people describe you as your own worst enemy? If they do, you need to work on your self-knowledge to understand why.

2. Determine what you expect to achieve in life. This is what you expect, not what you hope or dream for.

3. Consider your life for a moment. What drives you? What inhibits you?

4. Evaluate how you handle compliments. This is a good barometer of how you feel about yourself because if you accept them naturally without seeking them out you have strong self-approval and a sense of worthiness. Can you accept compliments without discomfort, or do you always have to take exception or deflect them? Do you crave compliments to the point that you will do anything to get them?

Once you begin to know and understand yourself more completely, then you must accept and love yourself. Self-approval is crucial to changing your life and pursuing your dreams and goals. Self-hatred, guilt, and long-standing anger block your growth. Practice self-love and forgiveness and they will carry over into your relationships, your work and the world around you.

By loving yourself, you open up the possibility for others to love you, too. Work to remove the psychological blinders that restrict your own growth. Understand yourself and your motives and the influences in your life and open yourself up. Direct your energy away from self-destruction or self-loathing. Forgive yourself. Forgive those who have hurt you. Give yourself self-approval and permission to move on.

Right now, write down all your bad habits and faults and all the mistakes you have made in your life. Did you hurt someone? Did you malign someone? Did you waste an opportunity? Have you written down everything that has nagged and eaten at you over the years? Good. Now take that piece of paper, tear it to shreds and throw it away. Forgive yourself for your faults and your mistakes and move on. The way to your dreams is now clear!

Popularity: 16% [?]

The Truth About Living A Life Of Security

One way to overcome the perceived need to work hard, instead of smart and creative, is to come to grips with the issue of security. In a world filled with much uncertainty, material wealth is the one thing that is supposed to provide the economic, physical, and emotional security everyone so much desires. Accountants, stockbrokers, financial planners, bankers, and retirement consultants will convince you that building an impressive portfolio of real estate, stocks, bonds, and T- bills is the only way to deal with all this uncertainty.

Security, as traditionally defined, doesn’t contribute nearly as much to emotional comfort as most people believe. Security based on materialistic and monetary pursuits is tenuous at best. The super rich can be killed in car accidents and terrorist attacks just as easily as the poor can be. Their health can fail at a much earlier age than that of someone with less money. And most rich people worry about losing their money in the event of a monetary collapse. On one hand, we want and strive for security; on the other, there may not be anything that even closely resembles security.

To get a better idea of how much security we can get through money, take a hard look at the type of individuals who are most obsessed with security. Security-minded individuals tend to be rigid, unbending, unadaptable, and uncreative. Their expenditures are usually limited to basic food, heat, clothing, and shelter. They won’t part with their money even for necessities, unless they know they are getting the best possible deal. Decreasing their bank accounts for a big expenditure brings extreme anxiety, worry, and fear and a sense of vulnerability. Every dollar spent seems to rob them of some inner sense of comfort.

To some, security is a steady job with normal work hours, unambiguous activities, strictly defined duties, and a foreseeable future. These people need a steady paycheck and will settle for a regular income with modest increases in pay. They don’t realize that holding on to a job does not bring true security. Jobs in modern times aren’t as secure as the jobs of just a few years ago. A job may mean security for paying bills today, but when security-minded people lose their jobs, they lose their security.

It’s no wonder that Tennessee Williams declared, “Security is a kind of death.” The security minded individual demonstrates, better than anyone else, that preoccupation with security is incompatible with living a relaxed, prosperous life. Paradoxically, to feel more secure in this ever-changing world, people must become less concerned with security as defined in the modern-day sense.

You may be surprised to learn that the present-day concept of security is far different from the original meaning of the word. If anyone in this world has security, as originally defined, that security isn’t based on money and material possessions. The word security actually means “without care” which has Latin origin. In this regard, true security is an internal state of being, not determined by how much money an individual is able to acquire.

Popularity: 15% [?]

17 Ways to properly welcome a new employee

Taking care of your employees during his or her first few weeks of work can mean the difference between their success and failure as employees as well as your success and failure as a supervisor. Proper orientation determines how fast the new employee can be productive and efficient in his or her new job while giving you a good opportunity to make to make your new employee part of your team.

Below is a list of suggestions that will help you deal with your new employees during their first few weeks to help make sure that they get started on the right track:

1. Give your employee a warm welcome. Nothing makes a new employee feel comfortable more than a warm welcome.
2. Give them a brief description about your role as a supervisor. This will make them more comfortable with you as the “boss”.
3. Give your new employee a welcome tour of the whole department, making sure she knows how to get to the bathroom, emergency exits, cafeteria, etc.
4. Give him a brief summary about the company as well as its mission and objectives.
5. Demonstrate your company’s products and/or services. This will make them more secure and confident with the work that they are going to be doing.
6. Explain to your new employee how the company works. Again, this will familiarize them with the company.
7. Provide them with a short story on how and when the company started.
8. If applicable, tell your new employee about the company’s competitors and what is being done to make sure that the company is staying ahead of the business.
9. Explain in detail your new employee’s responsibilities and describe her job functions.
10. Let your new employee be aware of what you and the company expect from them. This includes proper work ethics, productivity, teamwork, and appearance.
11. Explain the specific conditions and requirements of employment.
12. Be very clear about the rules, policies, procedures, and regulations.
13. Introduce your new employee to her co workers along with a brief description of their jobs and responsibilities.
14. Make sure your new employee understands and fully aware of his benefits such as salaries, pay periods, medical benefits, retirement, etc.
15. Outline opportunities for promotions and other opportunities to look forward to.
16. Explain and show proper use of safety devices.
17. Once you’re done with your portion of orientation, appoint your newly-hired person to an experienced employee for further training.

Popularity: 14% [?]

Understanding your present circumstances in life

Are you one of those people who fall short of their life’s desires due to having a difficulty in making decisions? You are not alone. In fact, many men and women, even if they work hard to master themselves in other personal development areas, falter in their efforts to seek a better life because of their lack of decision-making skills.

It is not as if these men and women do not set goals or have great visions, but rather they lack the courage needed to take risks in life in order to make changes. The most common reason for not making decisions is the fear of moving from the known to the unknown. This can also be referred to as the “comfort zone”.

We all have many different levels of comfort zones. And it is quite normal to want to stay within ones comfort zone, especially when it comes to making big decisions that can invariably affect our life in a great way. It is never easy to move away from what you already know, even if the change may be for the better. Other times, people may fear the decision-making process because it will expose them to possible criticism and evaluation from their family and friends.

If you want to achieve any great success in life, then mastering the ability to ignore the naysayers is an absolute must if you are to change and succeed. Of course you do not want to be wrong in the eyes of others, but you must learn how to ignore the good opinion of other people, always.

Think for a moment about all of the decisions you have made up to this point in your life. Guess what? Those decisions, every one of them, have culminated to what you are, what you have, what you do, and how you feel about yourself, right at this very moment.

This may come as a cold shock to you but you are not the victim of circumstances that happen to you, you are actually the creator of the decisions that can work for you or against you, it’s your “choice”. Having said that, it is quite obvious why the lack of making decisions in our lives may keep us in unwanted situations, because of the comfort level of staying put, even if where we are at is harmful to us in some shape or form.

And regardless of how much you may tend to blame other people or events that you think have shaped your life, the truth is that every decision was your decision to make. You are responsible.

Popularity: 15% [?]

Planning For Retirement

Three Critical Decisions about Your Retirement Wise retirement planning is not all numbers. There is a huge emotional component to it, reflecting the fact that retiring involves one of life’s most profound periods of change. No one really knows in advance how he or she will weather the process. That is why some people enter a period of prolonged depression, convinced that once a career ends, useful living stops, too.

For others, the transition is so easy that anyone observing them might think such individuals were born to retire. At any rate, three crucial decisions that many pre-retirees must make vividly display the mix of financial and emotional elements. They are:

1. Knowing when you should retire.

2. Sizing up an early-out offer from your employer.

3. Deciding between taking a lump-sum pension and an annuity.

Recent studies indicate that about 25% of retirees are unhappy, primarily because they had not been ready to retire. For some, the decision had not been theirs to make. But in general, at the end of a long career most people think they are headed for freedom and do not stop to consider whether the free time they’ll have will lie heavy on them or be the prolonged vacation they envision.

Retirement planners say that six months or so after quitting work, reality sets in. To make sure that retirement is a welcome reality, weigh carefully the decision to call it quits. Look for the two prime signals that you are ready to retire: (1) You find it harder and harder to keep your mind on your work; and (2) You view retirement not as a passive vacation, but as an active adventure.

Be honest with yourself and admit just how rigid you might be in your life as it is at present. The more averse you are to change, the more you will have to work on making the transition bearable. If your employer provides retirement planning seminars, take advantage of them. They are apt to address emotional as well as financial issues. If such seminars are not available, seek them elsewhere, perhaps through community groups.

Popularity: 10% [?]

Creating Affirmations & Limiting Your Doubts

An affirmation is a statement of truth you make firm by repetition. Affirmations always take place in the present, hence the wording is always present tense. “I am a successful orchestral conductor, making $100,000 per year,” is how to state an affirmation, not, “I’m going to be…” or “I really want to be….” or “If it’s not too much trouble, I’d really like to be….”

Make an affirmation for:

* Your purpose
* Your Big Dream
* Each of the goals along the path to the Big Dream.

Read each affirmation out loud at least 1,000 times. (An hour each for your Purpose and Big Dream; 30 minutes each for your other goals.)

When you affirm, all that is between you and fulfilling that dream surfaces - in other words, the drawbacks of your “comfort zone.” Expect fear, guilt, unworthiness, hurt feelings, anger and discouragement to do what they do to get you to stop. Keep going.

To bring up the limitations faster, look at yourself in the mirror while repeating your affirmation out loud. You can record your affirmations on an endless-loop cassette (the kind used for outgoing messages in answering machines) and play it softly in the background no matter what else is going on.

You can get an earphone and play your tape on a portable stereo wherever you go. Talk about your portable paradise. You can put your affirmations on the walls of your sanctuary so that you see them every time you come in.

Popularity: 14% [?]

Accountability Gives You Power Over Your Life

Have you ever found yourself in situations where you look around and wonder, “How did I ever get here?” The simple truth is that we participate, either knowingly or unknowingly, in the process of getting where we are. The more we observe that and pay attention, the more aware we become.

At times we all want to say, “Who, me? I had nothing to do with creating this mess! It just happened!” Or, “It was so-and-so’s fault - there’s nothing I could have done!” We feel absolutely powerless over the situation - like helpless victims. The last thing we want to hear when we’re all caught up in our “victim story” is anything about being accountable and responsible!

Yet, it is assuming accountability that gives us power over our lives. The more we practice the habit of acting from a position of responsibility, the more effective we become as human beings, and the more successful we become as managers of our lives.

Popularity: 16% [?]

Turn 70,000 daily bad thoughts into good ones!

Do you think that you have to work harder to enjoy more out of life? Think again. The truth is that you actually must think more than the average man or average women does in regular society, if you want to work less and still enjoy more money and more freedom.

However, thinking more than the average person will not do you any good if your thoughts are focused on the wrong things or on all negative things. Your thinking must be entirely focused on quality and creative things in life.

The average person spends their life constantly chipped away by their worries and their fears. They focus too much of their time thinking about how something might go wrong, how they may not get the job, or about that parking ticket from last week.

This line of thinking just leads to attracting those very things into your life. If your goal is to make more money and spend less time working, then you are going to have to focus on thinking about success, not fearing it.

Researchers state that the average person thinks about 70,000 thoughts. Now just imagine the potential of your thoughts if only a fraction were backed up by creative action!

Unfortunately for most men and women, virtually all of these thoughts are the same ones that the individual has always thought about for a long period of time. In addition, the great majority of these thoughts are negative by nature, which in turn creates a current negative present time in your life.

Creative ability is largely wasted because of fear and worry more than anything else. For example, there are people with extremely talented writing skills who never attempt to write a book out of fear that nobody will like it. There are those with the talent of an artist or a singer but will never make anything of it because their parents have set fear in their minds, so they opt for a technical field instead.

Still though, many other people work themselves to the bone instead of spending more time with their creative thought because they are ruled by fear and by pressure to “make something of themselves” that society expects of them.

How many of your 70,000 daily thoughts are spend on worry and fear as opposed to the creative process? If making more money and getting out of the rat race of working for somebody else is one of your goals, then don’t let fear and worry rule over your creative thought. Use your mind to attract every positive thing in life that you desire, and for the good of all. Go for your dreams and ignore anything else but your creative mind.

Popularity: 14% [?]

Insecurity: Learn to identify your personality type

Internal conflict is considered conflict that you have within yourself. It reflects the difference between what you really feel and what you do about it. On the other hand, “interpersonal” conflict occurs between you and another person.

Everyone has four basic psychological needs. When these needs are violated, conflicts are produced. When conflicts are produced, people react in one of four ways. They can retaliate, dominate, isolate, or cooperate.

The four basic psychological needs are: The need to be valued and treated as a human being; the need to have control; the need for self esteem and self worth; and the need to be consistent.

Let’s start with the first need, and that is the need to be valued and treated as a human being. We all need to be appreciated. We all want for others to recognize our worth. We all want other people to value us and our contributions. People are more motivated when they are being recognized. Every time we feel unappreciated, taken advantage of, or taken for granted, our strong needs to be appreciated and valued have been violated, thus triggering our fear and anger response.

The second is the need to be in control. Being in control is an important matter for everyone, more for some than others. The more insecure you feel about yourself, the more controlling you become. On the other hand, if you feel secure and confident about yourself, then the less need you have to control others. Remember this the next time you have to deal with a very controlling person.

Third, we have the need for self esteem and self worth. A strong self esteem gives a powerful, solid groundwork for dealing with all types of situations in the right way. With a strong self esteem, you have the ability to respond to any type of situations, rather than react to it. Responding to a problem means approaching it in a positive, controlled way and is always open to solutions. On the other hand, reacting to a problem means approaching it in a negative, emotional, and often inappropriate way.

And finally, we have the need to be consistent. As soon as you put your foot down and decided on a situation, it’s very hard to go back and admit your mistake. The need to be consisted, along with the need to be right makes saving face a very important factor in most conflicts.

Popularity: 16% [?]

Doing What You Love For A Living

Success and happiness means finding something you enjoy doing and then building your goals around it. For example, I have a friend who said she loved to bake cheesecakes but she was afraid that thinking she could make a living from baking them was silly. Instead, I told her to write it down so we could brainstorm about how she could make money doing something she liked. We came up with a strategy for her to begin setting goals and creating a success plan and she called me a couple of weeks later and told me she’d quit her job.

She said, “I am baking cheesecakes every day and selling the cakes at twelve dollars each to specialty food stores throughout Ohio.” She began making a good living doing what she loved. She was in control of her life and loving it. What if her cheesecake business had failed? That’s okay, because if you love what you are doing, at least you can enjoy the trip. George Burns said it best, “I would rather fail at what I love than succeed at what I hate.”

Identify Your Talents and Nurture Them

Identify what you want to do and go after it. Assess your talents and then think of where they can take you. Write down the things you enjoy doing and how they might be turned into productive, marketable skills. You do have talents, you know. We all have things that we have a knack for and enjoy doing; those are talents. It is simply a matter of identifying them and developing them.

Do you get along well with people? Then you have a talent that can be channeled many ways - public relations, personnel training, etc. Are you good with numbers? Accounting, income tax preparation, bookkeeping, loan management, and banking are all possibilities for you. Are you musically inclined but not a particularly good musician? How about sound engineering? Band promotion? Record marketing? Jingle writing? What do you enjoy doing? How can you do what you enjoy and make a living at it?

Everyone Has Something To Offer

Most people never nurture their talents, skills and abilities. If you don’t they will never serve you. I believe that each of us came here with something to give the world. Each of us has a unique offering. No one else is going to produce your product, write your book, open your academy. And if you don’t bring your gift forward, if you die with it still inside you, then we all suffer from being deprived of your particular genius.

I heard a minister once say that the richest place on the planet is not some diamond mine or an oil field. It is a cemetery, because in the cemetery, we bury the inventions that were never produced, the ideas and dreams that never became reality, the hopes and aspirations that were never acted upon. Most people take their dreams to the grave with them because they are fearful or they don’t feel worthy or they listen to negative inner conversations instead of creating their own circumstances for success and exercising the power to change their lives. But if you tune out those voices, your talents - no matter how basic - will take you many places. You too have something that you brought to the universe. If you decide to develop what you do well and become a master of yourself, if you set goals and go after them with all the determination you can muster, your gifts will take you places that will amaze you!

Popularity: 15% [?]

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