“If you want your life to be more rewarding, you have to change the way you think.”

“For everyone of us that succeeds, it’s because there’s somebody there to show you the way out.”

One of the coolest things online this spring was the webinars with Oprah and Eckhart Tolle. Each week during 10 weeks they discussed the ego, the present, consciousness and other ideas from Tolle’s book A New Earth. 

Today I’d like to focus a bit on Oprah. So here are a few of her tips and reminders that resonate with me right now.

1. Keep your focus in the right place.

“Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.”

This is a pretty clever tip that can have a larger influence on your life than you may imagine. Within your mind there is something called Reticular Activation System (or RAS). It can help you because what you focus your thoughts on this system will start to try to find evidence of in your surroundings.

Since you can only take in a small part of all impressions what you focus on becomes very important.

In fact, changing what you focus on can seem to change your world radically.

When you focus on what you have and appreciate it or focus on what you want a lot of things will start to “pop up” in your reality. It was actually there all along.

But you can only see it when you shift your focus. If you focus on what you don’t have your RAS will only help you to find evidence of that.

By being thankful and making appreciating a regular habit you cannot only quickly change a sour mood into a positive one. You can also have more of what you want and kinda automatically find solutions and useful information that can help you to achieve what you are focused on. An external reminder or two – for instance post-it notes on your fridge – can be helpful to keep your focus in the right place in your day to day life.

2. Redefine failure.

“I do not believe in failure. It is not failure if you enjoyed the process.”

“Do the one thing you think you cannot do. Fail at it. Try again. Do better the second time. The only people who never tumble are those who never mount the high wire. This is your moment. Own it.”

“I believe that one of life’s greatest risks is never daring to risk.”

One of the big things holding people back from getting what they want is the fear of failure. But as written many times before, failure can be a very helpful learning experience. In fact, without failure you’ll probably never learn the things you need to achieve the success you dream of. So, instead of seeing failure as something big and scary, redefine it in your mind as a learning experience. Two more tips for dealing with failure in a useful way are:

• Create an abundance mentality. A scarcity mentality tells you that there is always a lack. An abundance mentality tells you that there is always an abundance. That there are always more goals that you can score, business opportunities to find and dates to be had. If you miss one, then learn what you can from it. But don’t let it drag you down. Use the first tip in this article and bring your focus back to what you want once again. Focus on the abundance. This will not only make it easier to take a chance on something but is also a good thing to focus on to reduce those negative feelings, those fears of failure that to a large degree is created within your mind because of a perceived lack.
• Focus on the process. What this means is that you just focus on what you are doing. You don’t think about the possible outcomes of what you are doing when you are doing what you do. You detach from that. You just keep your mind focused on doing the work. You don’t think about how you may fail, disappoint yourself or have great success. You don’t think about how you may disappoint, amuse or in some other way be seen through the eyes of others. You just focus on what you do. And so what you do becomes enjoyable even though it may contain some stumbling or failures. You can read more about focusing on the process and detaching from the outcome in The Relaxifying Secret to Success.

3. You are fueling your own fear.

“Whatever you fear most has no power – it is your fear that has the power.”

Fear is mostly just a loop of thoughts that you are feeding with new energy. When you accept what is and face your fear then you stop feeding it and it dissipates.

So the key is to accept. Accepting what is stops the flow of energy back into the fear. One way to do this is by surrendering to the emotion. And then to take the action that you fear. By surrendering you remove or at least weaken the negative emotion that is holding you back. By taking the action your mind gets the proof that whatever you feared wasn’t really that scary.

Here’s one way to surrender to your emotion:

When you feel a negative feeling then accept that feeling. Don’t try to fight it or to keep it out (like many of us have learned throughout life). Say yes to it.

Surrender and let it in. Observe the feeling in your mind and body without labeling or judging it. If you let it in – for me the feeling then often seems to physically locate itself to the middle of my chest – and just observe it for maybe a minute or two something wonderful happens. The feeling just weakens and sometimes vanishes completely.

4. Do the right thing.

“Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody’s going to know whether you did it or not.”

This is a real interesting one. But how do you do it? How do you keep doing the right thing when nobody’s looking and checking up on you? I certainly don’t have a complete answer for that but two useful things I’ve found are these:

• Make your own rules. It seems to me that if you are to stick to doing the right thing then you need to take your eyes from the rules and values set by people around you. You need to define yourself and what you’re about. If you play by other people’s rules then you’ll be answering to those people. And it will be pretty easy to slip up or cheat when no-one is watching. But if you make your own rules then you answer to yourself. When you are accountable to yourself instead of the world around you it will be easier to do what you feel is right more consistently.
• Get off dependence on external validation. If you are dependent on external validation – people telling you that you are doing a good job etc. – then it will be hard to play by your own rules. You’ll constantly be looking outward to see how you are doing and adapt to what people are telling you. And if you’re hooked on such validation then it will be tempting to just cheat or skip doing the right thing when nobody is watching, because there is no-one there to praise you anyway. You can read more about external validation – and about replacing it with internal validation – in 9 Great Ways to Make Yourself Absolutely Miserable.

5. You get what you give. In more than one way.

“What I know for sure is that what you give comes back to you.”

This is of course a classic piece of advice. And I believe it’s pretty accurate. People tend to adapt and reciprocate. They treat you as you treat them. But lately I’ve also been thinking about how this seems to work in another way.

It seems to me that what you do to others you also directly do to yourself. If you pour out a lot of negativity out into the world then you also pour that energy into yourself. For the moment, it may feel good to gossip about your boss. But I believe that much of the negativity that you find in your life is caused by this behavior. It may not be directly tied to what you said or did. But it seems to me like you cannot hurt someone without, in some way, hurting yourself too.

The more negativity you dole out the worse you tend to feel in your everyday life. The more problems you find and cause. The more you overreact and feel a sad funk arising from nowhere in particular. Maybe it’s because giving out much negativity causes you to focus your RAS more on the negative things in your life.

6. Let go of the past. Live in the present.

“Breathe. Let go. And remind yourself that this very moment is the only one you know you have for sure.”

One of the best things you can do to improve your life and feeling of well-being is to let go of what has happened. To not be dwelling on whatever negative things that happened in the past for too long. But how do actually you do it?

I have found a few good tips so far. They work well, and will probably work even better as time passes and I get better at using them.

The first one is to ask yourself throughout the day or when you feel like you’re spiraling down into negative thoughts: what’s in it for me? What is in for me by thinking about these thoughts?

I often realize that there is very little in it for me. Negative thoughts or replaying a negative memory over and over in my mind isn’t helping that much. Sure, you can derive a sort of pleasure – a sort of importance – by feeling like a victim or by hating someone and secretly plotting for some kind of revenge. But really what you are doing is wasting your time and energy.

That’s what’s in it for you. For instance, someone who is hated might not feel good about it. Or s/he may on the other hand not even notice it. It is always the hater that suffers the worst, that carries around the self-imposed curse. S/he spends hours, days or months in a cloud of negative thoughts that spill over into the rest of his/her life too.

You have already read about the second tip: focus on what you want. And focus on the abundance instead of the scarcity.

The third tip is to learning to spend more and more time in the present rather than the past or a projected future. And the best practical way I have found so far to do that is ties back to the beginning of this article. Pick up a copy of Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth and if you like, start watching/listening to the webinars.

7. It’s up to you what happens.

“We are each responsible for our own life – no other person is or even can be.”

When we are young other people are responsible for our lives. I think that one sign of a mature person would be that he or she takes 100% responsibility for his/her own life. Still, there is often a lingering feeling that we may want someone else to still be responsible for our lives.

One way that this manifests is in how people go looking for magic pills. Instead of buckling down, taking responsibility for their own life and working step by step towards a goal there is a need for a book, a program, a pill or something we can buy that will make our problem go away. Like how mom or dad used to fix your problems and make them go away.

Now I’m not saying that I haven’t been looking for magic pills. Maybe everyone needs to go through such phases. But I think that when you can let go of such searching then you are probably on a road that will bring you better results than your search for magic pills did.

Why? Well, you realize that you need to be behind the wheel and in control. And when you stop spending time looking for the next magic pill you become focused. You realize that no book can give you more than the knowledge. You realize that you need to take action in your life and create your life in the way you want it.

And now all those books you bought may become more useful. Because you are no longer looking at them as a magic pills that will “fix you”. You see them as road maps that can guide you along your path.

Note: This is guest post by Mike King of Learn This.

Stress is a common complaint from people about why they don’t lead a happier life, a more positive life. And since worry is one of those factors that leads to stress, I want to explore in detail what worrying causes, the things we can learn from worry and some steps to take that let us change the way we experience worry.

Worrying Stems from Fear

It’s simple definition, worry is the act of thinking about the unknown in a way that we fear. Regardless of what the situation, if you think about that event in a way that makes you fear the outcome, that thought will stay with you, generate more similar thoughts and create constant worry.

If you hold onto these thoughts, they can quickly become overestimated and exaggerated to the point that what started out as a simple concern, becomes a painful fear. The fear itself can cascade itself by generating worse and worse thoughts that just reinforce the worry and stress associated with it.

Now, its quite natural to have fears about the unknown. There is nothing wrong with fear, in fact, it has a lot of advantages which I’ll outline below. What’s dangerous about these fears though is if you allow yourself to focus on only the results you fear, even when there is no basis or reason to believe that that is the likely outcome.

This is the kind of fear and worry that gets you nowhere! Ignoring every other possible outcome (and generally the most likely and often positive outcomes) to think constantly about the one outcome we fear is a major cause of stress. This often is the worst outcome or the thing we fear the most. The problems this can cause are:

• Detracts your focus on useful activities.
• Worry from fear is hard to forget or unlearn, so it re-occurs easily and becomes habitual.
• Affects your other activities in a negative way (often pessimistically).

Advantages of Worry

There are some advantages you can have from worry as well:

• Worry can guide you to recognize what is meaningful if you don’t know already.
• Helps you to predict possible bad outcomes before they happen so you can avoid them.
• You can demonstrate care and love to others by showing signs of worry when its about their welfare.

Recognizing Worry

One of the first steps to learning to handle worries in a more positive way is to first recognize when you are in fact worrying. These are common visible traits of a person who is worrying.

• Irritability.
• Confusion.
• Nightmares.
• Insecurity.

Each of these traits and potentially many more are signs of a person under stress caused by worry. When you can learn to recognize these in your own behaviors, you should stop and take note as to WHY you are feeling and behaving that way, its quite possibly due to worry.

Unfortunately, since most worriers don’t even realize they worry as much as they do, some extra steps can make it even easier to recognize. Get a notepad and pick a couple of times that you can write down your thoughts every day (perhaps at meals or at certain times each day).

Do this for about a week or two, noting what were your main thoughts (and likely worries) at that time. What kinds of things were you doing? Who were you spending your time / thoughts on? Noting these things will help to show some simple patterns and identify a few main areas that seem worrisome and consume a lot of thoughts. It’s not until you recognize what you actually do worry about, that you’ll be able to change it.

These can be anything from worries about major areas in your life like your safety and security, welfare of others, loss of relationship control, self-control of circumstances, approvals and decisions that you rely on others for, money and finances, your faith or spirituality, your health and wellness all the way down to simpler worries like finding time to do what you want, getting your tasks completed, talking to strangers in public, driving somewhere, etc.

5 Ways to Control and Limit Your Worry

So, with some of your specific worries identified, its time to look at ways to change those worries and turn them around from being such a negative force.

The way to do this is to eliminate or at least for now, hide or minimize the negative thoughts and focus more on the positive outcomes with all the things that you normally find yourself worrying about. Some steps to do that are listed below. Combining several, all or just some of these with other techniques can make great progress to controlling and limiting your worry.

Write down all the positive outcomes and your most favorable one

Pick one of the items you regularly worry about and focus on it. Write down all the positive outcomes you have in relation to that activity and also write down your most favorable one, even if it doesn’t or is unlikely to ever happen. These positive outcomes are a reminder to all the good things that occur for that event and the most favorable one is a bit of carrot or a hope that it can be even better than you normally experience. This is important, as it can help to outbalance the negatives you are used to thinking.

Make your list as long as possible, try to get 10-20 positives for anything you normally find yourself stuck worrying about. Keep your list on hand and when you find yourself thinking about this event, read through your list. Reread it and even memorize it if it helps to keep attention to it. This process will slowly start to train your mind to look for different kinds of outcomes, the positive ones instead of the worst. This will reduce your worrying.

Appreciate the good things from the day

Before you go to bed, take just a couple of minutes and think of 3-5 good things that happened to you that day and be appreciative of them. Maybe someone was extra nice or gave you a compliment, perhaps you got something done quickly or particularly well, or maybe just seeing a few new positives in some event was a highlight of your day, whatever it was, say it out loud or to yourself, or pray about it, whatever you want to do, just show some appreciation for those good events. This is again a step in learning to see more positives around you.

Don’t think about the next day when going to bed, just memories of that day

One thing I’ve read that traps a lot of worriers is that they think about or plan their next day before they go to bed. I can’t urge against this strongly enough. You don’t want to go to bed with your mind focused on foreseen problems of the next day. Especially in the mind of a worrier, since it will distract your sleep, your dreams and just reinforce itself through the night in habitual negative ways. You are much better off keeping your last thoughts before sleeping positive and NOT worrying about the next day when you go to sleep.

Use affirmations about that outcome already having occurred

Changing your mindset is not an easy task (I’ve written about mastering your state of mind here), and changing your beliefs that guide your reasons for worry fits into that mindset deeply. Changing that requires a number of tools and while affirmations may not work for everybody, they are a proven powerful tool which can definitely help you to change your thinking about the outcomes you worry about.

Basically, you affirm (or state in a present sense) how you feel about being and experiencing the positive outcomes you desire with complete disregard to previous negative worries you’ve had in the past. Its best to do these affirmations out loud, and repeatedly.

An example of someone who has previously been worried about driving in the city might sound like: I feel so independent and free to drive myself safely anywhere I like in the city.

Remind yourself of all the previous times the best action has occurred

Most worriers do so with little reason. If you count up all the outcomes and results of many events that a worrier stresses over, it’s easy to see that this worrying is usually unjustified. Looking at all the time the event just worked out and there was no reason to worry in the first place helps to re-enforce good outcomes. Use those numbers and histories to remind yourself that the most likely outcome is actually the desired outcome and any bad is VERY unlikely to occur so shouldn’t be worried about.

Avoiding Worry

So, even once you’ve learned to control and limit your worry, this can be taken even further by avoiding the process of worrying all together. I’m no expert here but I have found and read about several things that can help to free your mind of worry.

• Avoid the source or situation that generates the worry in the first place (after all, its not that easy to eliminate the fear behind a worry)
• Encourage new outcomes and be excited for new experiences. The fear of change usually turns this into worrying about the unknown so developing a sense of adventure for new experiences and outcomes will embrace them without needing to worry about them.
• Keep your results and records and remind yourself of how often things really do go as expected for you and that you have nothing to worry about!
• Don’t reinforce others to worry (make good outcomes welcome, encourage them)
• Whatever happens happens. You probably had no control over it anyway, so just let it go.
• Learn to just be, instead of wanting to control. This takes practice and faith, whether that is in you, others around you or something spiritual, faith is really the opposite of worry.

So, what can you really gain from worrying? Is there anything you can do about it anyway? What can you do next time to avoid worrying about it again?

Ask yourself some of these questions next time you find yourself worrying. Use some of these techniques to kill that unnecessary worry time in your life and live a more positive and carefree life!

Mike is the author of Learn This, a productivity blog for self learning career, leadership and life improvement tips. He’s written many articles about finding your passion in life, goal setting and many other ideas around learning to have a better and more positive life. Please subscribe to his RSS feed here to read more of his articles!

“Wealth, like happiness, is never attained when sought after directly. It comes as a by-product of providing a useful service.”
Henry Ford

“This communicating of a man’s self to his friend works two contrary effects; for it redoubleth joy, and cutteth griefs in half.”
Francis Bacon

“Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being.”
Goethe

How do you become a successful blogger?

The first answer that super-successful people like Steve Pavlina, Darren Rowse or Leo Babauta may offer you is probably to create and give value. If you give some kind of useful value to people then they are open and interested in reading your blog and recommending it to their friends.

You may give them practical tips for improving your life like this blog does. Or review the latest video-games for the gamer crowd. Or provide the latest scoops about Britney for people interested in gossip about celebrities.

Now, you may not be a blogger. But bloggers are basically just people in interactions or conversations with other people. Just like you are with your friends, family, co-workers, school mates or whoever you are hanging out and interacting with.

In blogging giving value may be one of the three things I suggested above. In your daily life it may be things like:

• Bringing a positive attitude and vibe into interactions.
• Offering useful advice or knowledge to someone.
• Just offering a listening ear to someone who needs it.
• Cheering someone up.
• Hugs.
• Helping someone out with moving, cooking, cleaning up etc.
• Taking the lead and creating a fun situation for your friends such as a picnic or a night out on the town.
• Being totally present in conversation and focused on the other person. This is a quality that I believe is often mentioned about networkers that are great at creating new relationships like Bill Clinton.

Now, why should you go to all that trouble and effort? It’s easier to just get people to do those things for you instead. Well, here are four reasons.

1. It makes you feel awesome.

It’s funny, for quite a long time I thought that the way to feel better was to get people to give me things. To give me some kind of value.

And that makes you feel good. For a short while. Then your emotions kinda snaps the other way like a rubber band. And, once again, you don’t feel so good.

Why? Well, you are taking these things and adding them to yourself. But the ego always wants more. The positive feelings you get from whatever you are given wears off pretty quickly. And so you want people to give you more value again. It’s like when you buy a new shirt or pair of shoes. You feel great about them for a while but after that they lose their magic. They become “normal”. And so you go the store again.

Now, giving value is to a better way to feel good. You control how much value you want to give and how you feel. It’s a more consistent way to feel good. To me it’s almost always more powerful than the quick hits of positive emotions you get from getting value.

But it’s a bit counter-intuitive. When you’re feeling down, it seems pretty natural to need a compliment to feel better instead of giving someone a compliment. So I have an external reminder in the form of a post-it note on my desk that says: “Feeling bad? Give value.”

2. You tend to get what you give.

People often have a strong feeling of wanting to give what they got. Perhaps not right away, but over time reciprocity and a positive relationship can build. And in general, what you give you tend to get back from the world around you.

I try to avoid keeping this in the forefront of my mind while giving value though.

It’s a good idea to do so because if you don’t then it may make whatever you doing seem insincere. Like you are just out to get something from the other person. And if you are just doing things for people to get them to do things for you then you may not feel so good about yourself and become a bit negative, irritated or needy.

Some people won’t reciprocate. They may be totally stuck in a sucking value kind of mode. And well, in time you may naturally feel inclined to give more value to and hang out with people that reciprocate and offer value to you.

3. It makes your life a whole lot more fun.

By giving value in a genuine way you tend to take more action than if you are waiting for someone to give you value. And by taking more action and giving more value you tend to – over time – create more interesting and fun situations. Because more action leads to more things happening and more value given leads to more reciprocation from other people.

And since you feel awesome from giving value that emotion is of course contagious. So you and the people around feel better and tend to get into a more positive and open mood and frame of mind.

4. It makes it easier to start new relationships.

Much of this post is about improving your relationships with people. But it’s also a good way to start a relationship.

If you read any blogs about blogging then you may have read that a not so useful way to email a blogger and create a relationship with that person is to just ask him/her to do something for you. I agree with that.

If someone sends me an email where s/he offers value – perhaps give me a compliment, constructive criticism, offers to help if I would need it in the future – I tend to feel grateful and think that this person who emailed me is a cool and sympathetic person. If I, on the other hand, get an email where someone just wants me to do this or that then that’s often a bit of a turn-off. I think this is true in off-line interactions too.

Now, how can you bring more value into the lives of the people around you? Think about it from time to time. And take action on your ideas.

And remember what Seneca said.

“It is another’s fault if he be ungrateful, but it is mine if I do not give. To find one thankful man, I will oblige a great many that are not so.”

Even though people may not appreciate the value you give you can still feel good about yourself. Their reaction and response is their business. Not a always an easy lesson to incorporate into your own life. But a useful one to keep your mood and belief in yourself from going on an emotional roller coaster controlled by other people’s responses to what you do.

Like so many other thought habits, this one can take time to change. Over time you can become more and more of person that gives value instead of doing the opposite. And if you are anything like me then you’ll slip many times and fall back into the value sucking mode. And that is one reason why I wrote this article. To remind myself of how I can quickly turn a negative mood around and overall make my life a more positive place to be.

And more of your time each week with people who are trying to improve themselves and/or are living a good life in a positive, healthy and relaxed way.

“You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.”

“The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problem.”

“If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide.”

Mahatma Gandhi needs no long introduction. Everyone knows about the man who lead the Indian people to independence from British rule in 1947.

So let’s just move on to some of my favorite tips from Mahatma Gandhi.

1. Change yourself.

“You must be the change you want to see in the world.”

“As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world – that is the myth of the atomic age – as in being able to remake ourselves.”

If you change yourself you will change your world.

If you change how you think then you will change how you feel and what actions you take. And so the world around you will change.

Not only because you are now viewing your environment through new lenses of thoughts and emotions but also because the change within can allow you to take action in ways you wouldn’t have – or maybe even have thought about – while stuck in your old thought patterns.

And the problem with changing your outer world without changing yourself is that you will still be you when you reach that change you have strived for.

You will still have your flaws, anger, laziness, negativity, self-sabotaging tendencies etc. intact.

And so in this new situation you will still not find what you hoped for since your mind is still seeping with that negative stuff.

And if you get more without having some insight into and distance from your ego it may grow more powerful. Since your ego loves to divide things, to find enemies and to create separation it may start to try to create even more problems and conflicts in your life and world.

2. You are in control.

“Nobody can hurt me without my permission.”

What you feel and how you react to something is always up to you. There may be a “normal” or a common way to react to different things. But that’s mostly just all it is.

You can choose your own thoughts, reactions and emotions to pretty much everything.

You don’t have to overthink, freak out, worry of even react in a negative way. Perhaps not every time or instantly.

Sometimes a knee-jerk reaction just goes off. Or an old thought habit kicks in.

And as you realize that no-one outside of yourself can actually control how you feel you can start to incorporate this thinking into your daily life and develop it as a thought habit.

A habit that you can grow stronger and stronger over time. Doing this makes life a whole lot easier and more pleasurable.

3. Forgive and let it go.

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”

“An eye for eye only ends up making the whole world blind.”

Fighting evil with evil won’t help anyone. And as said in the previous tip, you always choose how to react to something.

When you can incorporate such a thought habit more and more into your life then you can react in a way that is more useful to you and others.

You realize that forgiving and letting go of the past will do you and the people in your world a great service.

And spending your time in some negative memory won’t help you after you have learned the lessons you can learn from that experience.

You’ll probably just cause yourself more suffering and paralyze yourself from taking action in this present moment.

If you don’t forgive then you let the past and another person to control how you feel. By forgiving you release yourself from those bonds. And then you can focus totally on, for instance, the next point.

4. Without action you aren’t going anywhere.

“An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching.”

Without taking action very little will be done. However, taking action can be hard and difficult. There can be much inner resistance.

And so you may resort to preaching, as Gandhi says. Or reading and studying endlessly. And feeling like you are moving forward.

But getting little or no practical results in real life.

So, to really get where you want to go and to really understand yourself and your world you need to practice. Books can mostly just bring you knowledge.

You have to take action and translate that knowledge into results and understanding.

Move on to the next point for more on the best tip for taking more action that I have found so far.

5. Take care of this moment.

“I do not want to foresee the future. I am concerned with taking care of the present. God has given me no control over the moment following.”

The best way that I have found to overcome the inner resistance that often stops us from taking action is to stay in the present as much as possible and to be accepting.

Why?

Well, when you are in the present moment you don’t worry about the next moment that you can’t control anyway. And the resistance to action that comes from you imagining negative future consequences – or reflecting on past failures – of your actions loses its power.

And so it becomes easier to both take action and to keep your focus on this moment and perform better.

Have a look at 8 Ways to Return to the Present Moment for tips on how quickly step into the now. And remember that reconnecting with and staying in the now is a mental habit – a sort of muscle – that you grow.

Over time it becomes more powerful and makes it easier to slip into the present moment.

6. Everyone is human.

“I claim to be a simple individual liable to err like any other fellow mortal. I own, however, that I have humility enough to confess my errors and to retrace my steps.”

“It is unwise to be too sure of one’s own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.”

When you start to make myths out of people – even though they may have produced extraordinary results – you run the risk of becoming disconnected from them.

You can start to feel self-doubt and like you could never achieve similar things that they did because they are so very different.

So it’s important to keep in mind that everyone is just a human being no matter who they are.

And I think it’s important to remember that we are all human and prone to make mistakes. Holding people to unreasonable standards will only create more unnecessary conflicts in your world and negativity within you.

It’s also important to remember this to avoid falling into the pretty useless habit of beating yourself up over mistakes that you have made.

And instead be able to see with clarity where you went wrong and what you can learn from your mistake. And then try again.

7. Persist.

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

Be persistent. In time the opposition around you will fade and fall away.

And your inner resistance and self-sabotaging tendencies that want to hold you back and keep you like you have always been will grow weaker.

Find what you really like to do. Then it will be easier to stay positive and you’ll find the inner motivation to keep going, going and going.

You can also find a lot of useful tips on how keep your motivation up in 32 Simple Ways to Motivate Yourself.

One reason Gandhi was so successful with his method of non-violence was because he and his followers were so persistent. They just didn’t give up.

Success or victory will seldom come as quickly as you would have liked it to. I think one of the reasons people don’t get what they want is simply because they give up too soon.

The time they think an achievement will require isn’t the same amount of time it usually takes to achieve that goal.

This faulty belief partly comes from the world we live in. A world full of magic pill solutions where advertising continually promises us that we can lose a lot of weight or earn a ton of money in just 30 days.

Finally, one useful tip to keep your persistence going is to listen to Gandhi’s third quote in this article and keep a sense of humor. It can lighten things up at the toughest of times.

8. See the good in people and help them.

“I look only to the good qualities of men. Not being faultless myself, I won’t presume to probe into the faults of others.”

“Man becomes great exactly in the degree in which he works for the welfare of his fellow-men.”

“I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people.”

There is pretty much always something good in people. And things that may not be so good. But you can choose what things to focus on.

And if you want improvement then focusing on the good in people is a useful choice. It also makes life easier for you as your world and relationships become more pleasant and positive.

And when you see the good in people it becomes easier to motivate yourself to be of service to them. By being of service to other people, by giving them value you not only make their lives better.

Over time you tend to get what you give. And the people you help may feel more inclined to help other people. And so you, together, create an upward spiral of positive change that grows and becomes stronger.

Nowadays it’s easier than ever to help people out and to start such a spiral. You can do via social media, a podcast, a channel on Youtube or you can start a website like I did.

Another tip is to strengthen your social skills. By doing you can become a more influential person and make the upward spiral I mentioned even stronger.

Move on to the next tip for more on that.

9. Be congruent, be authentic, be your true self.

“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”

“Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well.”

I think that one of the best tips for improving your social skills is to behave in a congruent manner and communicate in an authentic way.

People seem to really like authentic communication. And there is much inner enjoyment to be found when your thoughts, words and actions are aligned. You feel powerful and good about yourself.

When words and thoughts are aligned then that shows through in your communication. Because now you have your voice tonality and body language – some say they are over 90 percent of communication – in alignment with your words.

With these channels in alignment people tend to really listen to what you’re saying. You are communicating without incongruency, mixed messages or perhaps a sort of phoniness.

Also, if your actions aren’t in alignment with what you’re communicating then you start to hurt your own belief in what you can do. And other people’s belief in you too.

10. Continue to grow and evolve.

“Constant development is the law of life, and a man who always tries to maintain his dogmas in order to appear consistent drives himself into a false position.”

You can pretty much always improve your skills, habits or re-evaluate your evaluations. You can gain deeper understanding of yourself and the world.

Sure, you may look inconsistent or like you don’t know what you are doing from time to time. You may have trouble to act congruently or to communicate authentically

But if you don’t then you will, as Gandhi says, drive yourself into a false position.

A place where you try to uphold or cling to your old views to appear consistent while you realize within that something is wrong. It’s not a fun place to be.

To choose to grow and evolve is a happier and more useful path to take.

Want more motivation for your daily life? Then have a look at this post full with Monday blessings and this one with Thursday blessings to keep your focus steadily on gratitude and on joy in your day to day life.

Note: This is a guest post by Jennifer of Principles for Peace.

Lori Jewett of Between Us Girls wrote an excellent guest post on the Positivity Blog titled 5 Compelling Reasons to be More Assertive. I thought I would follow up with that post on some specific steps, ways to become more assertive.

What is assertiveness?

First of all, I wanted to clear up any misconceptions about this word assertiveness and what it is. Often when people hear the word assertiveness they think of aggressiveness, being mean, pushy or bossy.

While some people are that way, that is actually not assertiveness. Assertiveness is healthy, good for everyone involved. Assertiveness is a way to get your needs met without offending others. It is so powerful, yet no one is hurt. That does not mean that people will not at first reject your new found assertiveness. However, if they do, they will eventually respect you, because real assertiveness involves both respect for yourself and the other person.

Before I get into the “how to” of assertiveness, let me first of all say that I used to be the least assertive person ever born. I was always afraid of rejection and wanted to keep the peace. Learning to be assertive gave me so much power and freedom – all at the expense of no one. It gave me all the benefits that Lori outlined in her great post.

Some of the material in this post I learned from a non profit program, www.sftawareness.org. I am who I am today because of Ron Wilkins (the pioneer of this program) and Gary Washer, an excellent SFT trainer. The rest of it I learned from experience along the way.

Six Never Fail Ways to be Assertive

1. As we have already stated, respect both yourself and the other person (or people) involved.

It all starts here. This is the foundation. Respect of everyone is necessary.

2. Always begin with a disarming statement.

Begin with any of the following statements. You may find a few others along the way, but these will always work. Choose any one of these depending on the situation and your personal preference. In some instances, you may use more than one, but usually one will suffice:

• Compliment the other person. The compliment must be sincere. Saying “Thank you.” is considered a compliment, but of course is not the only way. Something like, “You really mean a lot to me” or “Thank you for your advice or “Thank you for your opinion” would be some examples of this.
• Apologize. Apologize for any part of anything you may have done wrong or apologize that the person took offense to something you have done. Some examples would be “I’m sorry” or “I’m sorry. I really messed up this time” or “I’m really sorry you took offense at what I said (or did).” If you did wrong admit it. If not, you can still apologize without saying you did anything wrong (as in the last example). This is a great one to use for someone who takes things personally.
• Agree with the person. “You’re right….” Is an example. Some other examples are “I can see why you would say that” or “That makes sense.”
• Acknowledge their thoughts and/or feelings. Everybody wants to be understood. This one shows the person that you are talking to that they are understood. It will require you to hear more than just their words. It requires you to listen and note their body language. Are they flailing their arms around in disgust? You might say something like, “I can see that you are really frustrated” or “I can see that you are very upset about this.” Another one might be “I can see that this makes you sad.”
• Ask them a question. Say something like, “Do you mind if I ask you a question.” Almost always they will say “yes.” Then, they have given you permission to ask/say what you need to ask or say. It’s harder for them to be offended if they have already given you permission to say something. You can often be blunt and get away with it when you first ask permission with a question. Be nice though. :) This is often a good way to help someone see the “light” or see things from a different perspective.

3. Once you use a disarming statement, you then can state your needs – whatever they may be.

A full assertive example might be. “Thank you for inviting me. I won’t be able to come this time.” If they ask you why you can not come you could say, “I really appreciate the invitation, but I’m very busy tonight – maybe another time.” You have complimented them, stated your needs and not backed down to them.

4. Recognize that just because you state your needs that does not always mean you will always get your needs met.

However, if you use a disarming statement you have a much greater chance of getting what you want. Even if you don’t get what you want it still feels good to be able to say what you need without offending anyone.

5. Practice.

Practice makes perfect.

Recognize that it may be scary at first and that it probably won’t be perfect. Don’t be too hard on yourself. Simply resolve to learn from each attempt how to do it better next time.

Becoming assertive may be one of the hardest things you have ever done (it was for me), but learning it and mastering it is one of the most rewarding.

Even though I’m still working on mastering it, I now find it fun to come up with an effective assertive statement.

6. Celebrate each success.

Give yourself a pat on the back for each time you are assertive. Each attempt will boost your confidence.

One of best things about assertiveness is that when you master it, you are often able to be assertive in such a way that you leave people speechless with their jaws dropped. There is nothing left for them to say. It feels so good to do this!

Jennifer loves helping people achieve peace, happiness and success in their lives and writes regularly in her blog www.principlesforpeace.com. If you found this article helpful consider subscribing to Jennifer’s blog via your reader or if you prefer email subscription you may fill in the form at her site. One of Jennifer’s best posts is Steps Needed to Win through Adversity.