Archive for Self Help
Success – and what it means
Posted by: | CommentsIt depends
Gather 100 people in a room and ask them what success feels, looks, and sounds like and you will probably get a different response for each and every one of them. There may be some basic themes around health (mind, body spirit), wealth and relationships. However, how those themes are expressed in one’s life will vary with each person you ask.
However, we aren’t talking about anyone else today but you.
The meaning of success for you
If I were to stop you in the street and ask you what success in your life would feel, look and sound like, would the answer slide gently and succinctly off your tongue? Or would you come up blank, while looking at me as though I were mad for stopping to ask you such a question in the first place? Would you reflexively clutch your valuables closer to you while shrugging off the annoyance of being stopped dead in your tracks and swiftly put as much distance between us as possible.
Hopefully the question would, at least, prompt some serious reflection followed up with the creation of a vision of what success would indeed look and feel like to you.
“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where–” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
“–so long as I get SOMEWHERE,” Alice added as an explanation.
“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter 6
Are you like Alice? Not really caring where you get to as long as you get somewhere.
The question I ask is this: How can you ever consider your life to be a successful on your terms, if you don’t first decide in what direction you would like your life to go?
You and your life are worth time and effort! If you aren’t prepared to invest in it, who is?
Would love to hear from you about your views of what would make your life a success.
In the next blog we’ll look at plotting, planning and messiness with respect to you creating a life of success.
I think I can I think I can I think I can….. OR I think I can’t
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n the last blog we talked about what you perceive as reality is indeed what you get as a reality. If you change your perceptual view you most often will change your world.
The story of the little engine has been told and retold many times. The underlying theme however is the same – a stranded train is unable to find an engine willing to take it on over difficult terrain to its destination. Only the little blue engine is willing to try, and while repeating the mantra “I think I can, I think I can” overcomes a seemingly impossible task.
An early version goes as follows:
A little railroad engine was employed about a station yard for such work as it was built for, pulling a few cars on and off the switches. One morning it was waiting for the next call when a long train of freight-cars asked a large engine in the roundhouse to take it over the hill “I can’t; that is too much a pull for me,” said the great engine built for hard work. Then the train asked another engine, and another, only to hear excuses and be refused. In desperation, the train asked the little switch engine to draw it up the grade and down on the other side. “I think I can,” puffed the little locomotive, and put itself in front of the great heavy train. As it went on the little engine kept bravely puffing faster and faster, “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.”As it neared the top of the grade, which had so discouraged the larger engines, it went more slowly. However, it still kept saying, “I–think–I–can, I–think–I–can.” It reached the top by drawing on bravery and then went on down the grade, congratulating itself by saying, “I thought I could, I thought I could.”
Question: How does your perception about your capability to attain the goals you’ve set for yourself affect their successful attainment?
I would love to hear your stories about how shifting your perspective assisted you in attaining your goals!
In the next blog we will be discussing the notion of success.
References
The Little Engine that Could, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Engine_That_Could accessed March 2010
The downside of upside thinking: the negative impact of positive self-statements
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Can positive self-statements enhance your life? Is the way to changing your life circumstance to negate negative thinking and replace it with positive self statements?
Well the answer to these questions is both yes and no.
You are often encouraged by magazine columnists, self-help books and talk-show hosts to boost your self-esteem, create the life you want or deal with the challenges of life by repeating mantra-like positive statements. Statements such “I am powerful and strong and can deal with anything that comes my way ” or “If I can dream it nothing can stop me from achieving ‘X’, ‘Y’ or ‘Z’”.
The bad news is this. Repeating sweeping statements such as “I am a wonderful, loveable person” over and over again, in an attempt to talk yourself into believing it probably won’t enhance your view of yourself or life, in fact it will probably make you feel worse.
A study by Joanne Wood and John Lee of the University of Waterloo and Elaine Perunovic of the University of New Brunswick, published in Psychological Science, seems to suggest that repeating such statements, if you don’t truly believe them, will probably make you feel worse. Their research showed that the unfavourable or negative thoughts you have about yourself intrude quite easily on your conscious mind – so if you are presenting yourself with a positive alternative thought it will just heighten feelings of self-depreciation. Read More→
