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It's All in Your Mind:
8 Steps to Preparing
Your Mind for Success
by
Leslie Malin
Do you
struggle to achieve what you know you are capable of? Do you have
creative insights, great ideas, and talent, but somehow don't put it
all together? Or, are you successful in your endeavors, but only in
fits and starts? Does your success feel arbitrary and not reproducible?
If
these statements describe you, don't beat yourself up, they are typical
of many of us.
The tragedy is that you are missing out on enjoying the successful
outcomes of your ideas, talents and desires and that others, who are
eager for your contributions and wisdom, are not benefiting from what
you have to offer.
James Allen the author of a slim masterpiece called, "As a Man
Thinketh" written in 1902, wrote: "As a man thinketh in his heart
so is he. A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the
complete sum of his thoughts."
We are only as successful as our thoughts allow us to be.
Endless research about successful people has shown that they are
convinced that they will achieve what they want. It's not that they are
luckier than you, smarter, or know more of the right people.
Their
thoughts lead them to success - often after years of trail and error.
Consider Edison, Ford and the Wright brothers whose innumerable
failed attempts led to enormous success. Their way of thinking
welcomed failures as a step closer to success.
Are you tired of allowing your unique talents and abilities to
flounder, sputter and stall? If so, 8 Steps for Preparing Your Mind for
Success can liberate your mind and thoughts to create the conditions of
life and work for which you yearn. But you must be really ready to make
it happen. No lip service or half-hearted intentions. Change will only
occur when you are prepared to do the work.
8 Steps to Preparing Your Mind for Success
1. Identify Your Heart's Desire:
First begin with a Vision of Life and Work that is bigger than anything
you have yet dared. Vision isn't a list of chores and a to-do
list, how demotivating is that? A Vision is something that inspires,
motivates, and makes you feel excited and alive and, if you accomplish
it,will fulfill your heart's desire.
Write down what you want to feel when you are at work or working in
your business. With pen in hand just write for 3 pages, yes, 3
handwritten pages. Don't take your pen off the paper, don't think,
don't edit or worry about spelling, punctuation or feeling self
conscious about what you have written. Go for It.
After you have completed this, check out how you feel: Is your heart
racing? Do you feel excited, uplifted and energized? Do you feel
happy? Great!
2. Pay attention:
What follows your initial positive reactions. Are you beginning to feel
uncomfortable, anxious and doubting? Are there intruding thoughts that
are creating a downward pull? Listen closely, what are you saying to
yourself? The negative energy barriers in your life are your
self-limiting beliefs. And self-limiting beliefs are things that we say
to ourselves over and over again. They are long held habits of thought
that create behaviors of avoidance, procrastination, self-sabotage,
doubt and defeat. And, guess what - we all have them.
Do you think to yourself, "Oh I'll never finish this. Someone else has
already done this and better. I don't have the time, the money, the
energy". Sound familiar? Buddhists call these thoughts, "hungry
ghosts". They haunt us, often for decades, and they feed off of
and remain vibrantly alive because we spend so much time focusing on
them rather than on our positive intentions of creating success.
3. Write down what your hungry ghosts are saying:
Pay attention for one full week to your self-limiting beliefs. Stay
vigilant and don't go unconscious. Keep a journal handy to write down
your Negative Intentions (all those no's and fears) that often
determine our actions more powerfully than Positive Intentions.
Concretize them and determine the cost you are paying by holding on to
them.
You can't get rid of them by pretending that they don't exist. That's
just denial and self-delusion. Rather, treat them as real entities and
thank them for trying to keep you safe, but tell them that you will no
longer give them your time, energy or hope. Remember, you are in charge
of what you think.
4. Tell people who believe in you:
What these ghosts incessantly whisper to you. Ask them to help you to
see yourself in the positive ways that they see you. If you don't have
someone like that in your life, maybe it's time to get yourself a good
coach or therapist.
5. The Work:
One of the best approaches that I know to undo these limiting and often
crippling beliefs is found in "Loving
What Is", by Byron Katie. Her process, known as The Work,
provides a formula for testing out the veracity of these thoughts and
turning them around.
In a simplified version here is her formula. It is best done by writing
it down one step at a time:
a) What is the limiting belief (if there are several, analyze them one
at a time.
b) What do you really want?
c) Is that belief true?
d) Can you absolutely know that it is true?
e) How do you react when you think that belief?
f) Who would you be without that belief?
g) Turn it around (in other words, "I am not smart enough," can be
'turned around' by writing, "I have all the knowledge I need. What I
don’t know I can learn. I can get other people to help me and leverage
their abilities to help me.")
h) Action Plan – develop a specific picture of how you will proceed
with your new mindset.
6. Place your responses and turn around sentences
where you can see them every day:
Say them out loud. especially when your resolve begins to weaken.
Record them and play them back. Remember, limiting self-beliefs are a
habit of thought and habits take 21 days to break.
That's right. If you can substitute a new habit for 21 days straight
for an old one that you want to give up, you will create a new,
positive habit.
Now,
you may falter and have to begin again a few times to get to the 21
days, but that’s just fine. Just remember Edison, every effort
that does not get you the results you want, gets you closer to your
goal.
7. Celebrate every success regardless of how small:
Each success reflects a new way of thinking. Each small success adds to
your strength in tearing down old beliefs. Small, incremental steps
achieve giant results. As an ancient Japanese saying goes, "A journey
of a thousand miles begins with a single step".
8. Share your success with others:
You will delight, amaze and maybe even inspire them to do some ghost
busting of their own!
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Leslie
Malin, MSW, President of Management by Design is a co-author of "The
Essential Coaching Book: Secrets to a Winning Life," and is the author
of two forthcoming books: "Meeting Yourself on the Way to Work: Finding
Meaning from 9 to 5" and "HireSmart: A Practical Guide for Business
Owners & Their Managers".
As an entrepreneur, coach, consultant and therapist she guides
independent professionals, solopreneurs and small business owners who
want to create their success by choice, not by chance.
Her expertise in working with people in career transition or seeking
their first job provides mastery of the job-search process.
Undue the "default thinking" in your life, get your FREE Copy of "As a
Man Thinketh", by James Allen by emailing Leslie at
results@lesliemalin.com with your contact information (Full name and
email)and be signed up for her ezine, "On the Way". Browse her website
at http://www.lesliemalincoach.com.
Leslie is available for public speaking engagements, executive
retreats and motivational seminars. Contact her at:
results@lesliemalin.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Leslie_Malin
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