Maps tell you where you are and how to get to where you're going. Few people have the ability to sense their direction in life and take all the right turns. These people know who they are and where they're going. They are usually the ones who become the CEO's and wealthy entrepreneurs we read about in Forbes magazine. The truth is, you don't have to be a wealthy CEO or entrepreneur in order to be happy, but you do need a road map of where you're at and where you want to go in order to build your prosperity in any area of your life. The vision statement is our road map.
In order to write a dynamic vision statement, you must first look at the areas of your life you would like to change or create. These areas could fall into the categories of your finances, career, relationships, spirituality, health, or recreation. Here is a short list of questions you can ask yourself. Make sure to write down your answers as this gives your thoughts added power and helps to begin the creation process.
1. What areas of my life would I like to change (relationships, career, etc.), and in these areas, how would they be different? (Be specific)
2. What would I like to attract in to my life? (Be specific)
3. What are my values? (Things that I consider to be worthwhile, my driving forces) Examples: motivated, empowered, compassion, nurturing, friendly, ambitious, driven, etc.
3. If I had all the time and money available to do whatever I wanted, what would I do?
4. What actions am I willing to take in order to make this happen?
These are very basic questions, but the idea is, to ask yourself questions that stir your imagination and your emotions. The more you truly feel and believe your vision, the faster it will come to fruition.
Once you know where you are now, and what your destination is, writing a vision statement you can read 3 times a day, is a reminder of what you're aiming to build. The vision statement helps to reprogram the subconscious mind and assists you in mapping a plan of action towards your goals. Your vision can be the beginning of a new way of life if you dare to honor your feelings and commit to do the work.
Writing a vision statement can seem like a daunting task for some people, but if you take your time and don't get bogged down in over thinking, you are sure to come up with a solid written vision of your desired outcome. The following steps will assist you in writing an effective vision statement.
1. Know what you want to achieve, and write your future destination so that the end result is crystal clear.
2. If you're writing your own vision statement, write it in first person. If someone else is writing your vision statement, they may use second person writing style. Some people respond better when they feel someone else believes in their vision, and feel supported by another person.
3. Your vision should be written in present tense and it should read like your living it now.
4. Use positive words and phrases, such as transform, amazing, excellence, awesome, powerful, awe-inspiring, I'm now experiencing, I have reached, I have implemented, etc.
5. Using the word because at the beginning of a sentence can help you write a well written affirmative statement.
There are many good web sites on the internet that have well written examples of vision statements you can print out for more ideas, or if you don't like writing, you can hire someone to write one for you. You can try a vision statement writing service, or you can ask a life coach to write one for you for a small fee.
Success is an arbitrary word which means something different to each person. Regardless of the meaning we place on success, it is something that we are all familiar with in varying degrees. Throughout our life, we've experienced incremental successes along the way.
As children we may have made the honor roll or done well on a sports team. As we got older, success continued but likely shifted to social arenas. Your first date or first kiss may have been a success and when you passed your driver's license exam. Then, as we approached early adulthood, success meant something different... college acceptance, college grades, new boyfriend or girlfriend, a car, a job, a new position, etc.
Have you noticed that some of your successes generate negative emotions from your closest friends?
This is the "success-effect"! At the same time, some of your biggest successes seem to generate none of these emotions; no success-effect at all. Why is this?
Understanding what the Success Effect is and why it shows up at some points in your life yet not at others can influence your life. You might be able to handle it effectively when it comes up in a way that brings your friends and loved ones closer to you rather than pushing them away. And this is after all, what true success is all about.
Your success is like a shining light, but not always the way you would think. When you succeed, friends that have not had the same success as you may compare themselves to you, and see their own failures more clearly. They either acknowledge that which is painful OR they react negatively towards you as a self-defense mechanism. So why is it that the Success Effect only happens sometimes and not others?
Remember, earlier we said success is arbitrary and each of us has our own definition of success. What this means, as it relates to the Success Effect, is that our friends and loved ones evaluate what we consider to be "success" by their own definitions. What we consider to be a huge success may not be to our friends because it doesn't meet their definition of success. In these cases, we generally don't see the Success Effect. However, regardless of the value we place on an achievement, if a friend evaluates this as a level of success they have not attained, they ask themselves a question subconsciously. "Am I moving forward to this or higher levels of success?" If their answer is "YES" then they may be supportive of your success. However, if they answer "NO" to that question... enter the Success Effect.
For you to use this to your advantage in creating closer relationships, you must understand this and act accordingly. They don't wish you failure. They are simply avoiding being positive about your success because that would mean they have to face their own deficiencies. Have empathy towards this fear and assist your friends and loved ones to grow. It is in this way that the Success Effect can serve you in being outward-focused.
So far we have been viewing this from the perspective of your successes and your friends. Let's cut the crap, you are guilty of this at times too, aren't you? We sure were... actually, quite frequently in our past. It has become much less often for us now but these emotions still show up from time to time. In fact, you are probably much further along than we were when we learned this concept.
We are all guilty of this at times if we are honest with ourselves. One of the 6 Human Needs is significance and since our brain processes all data through the concept of "relativity" we assign significance, or insignificance, by relating our experiences to those around us.
Let's talk about empowerment! The simplest and most certain way of never being "run" by this emotional response again is by becoming aware of where it comes from and why. It isn't that you are jealous of someone you care about. It isn't that you don't want them to have their successes. Of course not, you love them and care about them. You are comparing their haves with your have-not's. Here's how you can handle it:
1. Be aware of your jealous or envious feeling.
2. Recognize the truth; there is abundance in all things. There is no lack or limitation that can permanently and forever hold you back form anything you truly desire.
3. Think of three ways you have significance right now in your life. How does that make you feel?
4. Send the successful person love even if only in your mind. Create clear mental thoughts about how and why you are truly happy for them. Understand that you can have the same success or greater so there is no need to do anything but send them love for their success.
Perform these steps and you will begin at once to feel at ease. Your tension will release. You'll be overcome with peace and calm. You are now free to enjoy the love you have for your friend and support them in their journey.
By,
Michael Bloxton,
President & CEO,
oneMYnd, LLC.
1. Establish why stopping would be beneficial - If you want to break some bad habits that are harmful to your health or to others, you already know that doing it isn't good for you. Write down the habits you wish to change and list what good will come from those changes. Once you see them on paper, you'll realize they are much more hurtful than you might realize. Find reasons to stop!
2. Reward yourself - Once you break one of the habits you have, reward yourself something special. It doesn't have to be expensive, just something that you would really like to have. Rent a movie you've wanted to see and for the bigger things you accomplish, take a mini-vacation for the weekend.
3. Educate yourself from those who are successful - Buy a book, read an article, or search the web to find those who have achieved success and find out how they did it. I'm sure they had to overcome some habits on their road to success. Find out what they were and follow their lead.
4. Start out small - Don't try to do everything at once and don't start with the things that are huge. Start out small and work your way up. Set yourself milestones and make sure you keep to them. Reward yourself when you have accomplished each little target. Be careful not to overwhelm yourself otherwise you will just get frustrated and will end up giving up.
5. Break it down - If you tend to procrastinate then break down those larger projects into smaller ones. It makes the big one seem less intimidating, but you will eventually get the project done and probably in less time that you would have if you tried to tackle it all at once.
6. Make your goals for quitting realistic - You have to set goals for breaking a habit realistic. It takes twenty-eight days of doing something for it to become a habit, so make sure to invest those twenty-eight days into whatever you've decided to quit doing.
7. It is important to find a replacement for these bad habits (of course with a good habit.) otherwise there is just a void and you are used to doing something. Identify yourself with success, believe in your self and create positive attitude to changing your bad habits.
8. If you want to break the bad habits then stop identifying yourself with them. For example, stop thinking of yourself as a smoker and more that you smoke, it is an action not an identity. As soon as you think of it this way you will find it easier to stop. Changing an action is easier than trying to change a characteristic.
If someone offered you thirty dollars for free, would you take it? Most people would not, and the reason is incredibly revealing.
The rules of the game are simple; take $100 and two people. One is the banker who decides how the money will be divided between the two. The banker can choose any amount to keep for himself.
The only catch? He can only make one offer, and the other person can accept his offer or say no to it, in which case neither player gets any money.
As Eban Pagan shares, the test has been given in various countries and in various cultures and the results are consistent and fascinating.
Many people feel the pressure to split the money evenly, and both players walk away with fifty dollars each.
However, there are a number of bankers who believe that since they are in control of the game, they deserve more money. After all, they feel they are being generous offering the other player any money at all, even though they are not playing with their own money to begin with.
With this belief system, it is not uncommon for the banker to feel entitled to a larger cut and offer to split the money sixty forty. In this case, though feeling somewhat slighted, the receiver almost always accepted the offer and walked away with $40 while the banker kept $60.
It is at this point that things got even more interesting. Some bankers tried to go even further to keep more of the free money for themselves. They decided they were entitled to a bigger slice of the pie, and offered the other player thirty dollars while they kept seventy dollars to themselves.
Remember, if the offer is rejected by the other player, neither person gets any money.
And it was precisely here that people's ideas about what is fair came into play. In every case this was the cut off point and each player put into this scenario rejected the banker's offer and both players walked away with nothing.
When the researchers asked why the other player rejected the banker's offer, in each case they said they would rather have nothing than to watch the other guy get so much more than they would have.
In summary, even though they could have had thirty free dollars, they said it was too difficult to feel like they were receiving the short end of the stick. At that point it became more important to ensure the other guy didn't get too far ahead.
Researchers labeled this 70/30 mark the "justice mechanism." It is where people drew the line at what they felt was fair.
As Eban Pagan shares, it is also one of the reasons many people never reach their own goals. Because instead of focusing on what they could obtain they spend all their energy anxious that somebody else might be getting ahead.
What is the solution? Learn to celebrate when other people succeed, and learn to stop comparing your own life with anyone else. Simply put, come to love receiving the short end of the stick. If you can stop competing with other people and learn to love getting less, the paradox is that you will always walk away with more.
Everybody on this planet wants to be successful, because the desire to succeed and be one of the best is keyed into human beings. Even in prehistoric times, men would try to outdo each other because the best man would lead the tribes or clans. In the modern world, success is usually measured on the basis of money, and a great man is evaluated in terms of how much money he has. If you have a desire to be rich, then you should not feel guilty about it because you just desire to be the best. People who want to be rich but are unable to achieve their dreams often wonder why lady luck passed them by and made their friends or their neighbors rich. There is no answer to this question, because the question is flawed in itself. The reason why people end up achieving their dreams and desires is not that lady luck thinks they deserve it. Instead, it is the fact that these people feel the desire so strongly that they take hard decisions in their lives with respect to their growth while others choose to procrastinate or dither.
In simpler words, the true secret to becoming rich is not the fact that some freak incident driven by chance gives the person an opportunity, but instead is the ability of this person to take hard decisions. The reasoning behind this is fairly elementary in that a person cannot achieve what he wants to achieve if he is not willing to make sacrifices for it. Nothing in this world comes for free, which is why having a burning desire is very important for a person.
Owing to this burning desire, the person feels driven away from procrastination and towards strong decisions. In fact, if you go through history and try to analyze various interviews of all the successful people, one thing that you will find to be the same in all of them is a resolve to achieve what they want. This resolve is a direct result of the burning desire. Furthermore, this resolve drives the person towards making decisions that he may not be able to make without the focus or the determination.
Strong decision making skills are often also a sign of a person of a strong will, and a strong will can only be a result of determination. A prime example of this strong will and strong decision making skills would be Henry Ford, who was regarded by many as obstinate. However, it is his determination that resulted in the creation of the model T which is regarded as one of the most important steps for the automobile industry.
Effectively, if you are looking to become rich then you should set a certain amount in your sights, make an organized plan for achieving it and then leave no stone unturned or decision untaken to achieve it.