Need a mantra to help you believe in yourself? Try mine. “I can do it, I can do it, I can do it!” It’s too simple, you tell me. But saying it and actually doing it are two different things. The first one is easy, the latter a totally different story.

Know the Real You

Have a one on one with yourself. List down questions and answer them truthfully. Who am I? What are my interests? What field am I good at? What skills do I possess? In which areas do I consider myself as ineffective or weak? How do I know I am weak at these? Have I tried these yet? Have I done anything to improve any of my shortcomings?

Asking these questions will aid you in understanding who you really are, from what you want to where you’re good at. Remember to stay honest in your answers as it will eventually affect the way you see yourself. You shouldn’t claim to be good at something you’re not nor should you be too humble to admit your talents. It might help to keep in mind that this list is only for your eyes! You can brag all you want as long as it’s true!

Focus on the Positive!

After realizing where you’re good at, direct your efforts to maximizing these. Do not limit yourself or set a ceiling. This will just bound you from achieving more. As for your weaknesses, make an effort to improve but never dwell on these. Do not let the negativity pull you down. Know that what you lack, some people possess and vice versa.

Be Your Own Cheerleader

Go ahead and give yourself a pep talk! Don’t wait for other people to praise you before you feel good about yourself. No need to say it out loud for others to hear. In your mind, shout out loud, “I am so good at this!” or “I can definitely pull this off!” Doing this whenever you start doubting your capabilities will give you an extra boost.

People usually say you become what you think you are. Perhaps true, perhaps not. But would you risk it? Knowing your worth will cost you nothing but a better way of seeing things, of doing work, and of living life. It puts you in control rather than letting others run your life. Keep the mantra. Believe that you can, no matter what.

Musicians, writers, and actors need it the way public officials, road maintenance workers, and teachers would.  It makes us strive in what we do, which, in turn, makes the output better.  What could be better to be inspired by and be an inspiration to others?

But finding your inspiration could be difficult.  Being an inspiration does not make life easier either.  For in the game of inspiration, where motivation and action are tossed in every manner and direction, it pays to know how much you are willing to throw.  Be a better inspiration for yourself and for others by following these tips.

No Need to Get Too Deep

You don’t need a huge brain to inspire others.  Accordingly, you don’t need to slave for hours in the library to get one.  Look around you.  The world offers a lot of inspiration not only for the masters of art but for also for people who enjoys it in a very different perspective.  It doesn’t take much to admire the things this world has to offer, and it doesn’t need much for them to push people to strive harder everyday.

Aim for the Better

Aim to change yourself and the world for the better.  People who continually inspire people are those who are willing to do what it takes to use one’s potential to change the world.  Think of Mother Theresa and others like her who, like her, do their fare share in making this world a better place.  You don’t have to do extraordinary feats just to inspire yourself and others.

Truth shall Set You Free

Truth guarantees a sustained inspiration, something that no lies and no cover-up could ever endure.  Truth provides you freedom that you couldn’t have when you’re telling a lie.  Don’t make others believe in something you are not.  You don’t want to believe in something that is built up on a lie.

You are Your Inspiration

If there’s one person who should strike inspiration to your soul, it should be you.  You should know better what’s in yourself that could make you and perhaps other people to strive harder.  Again, it needs not be something flashy or monumental.  Nothing inspires a common man like a simple act of good will in times when a simple act of good will is very much needed.

Be an Inspiration to Others

You don’t live for yourself alone.  You also serve your purpose to people apart from yourself.  If you can serve as an inspiration for other people, why not?

Do you feel that you are fulfilling your potential?  Are you satisfied with your job and feels like that is what you deserve?  Or do you think that you deserve better?  What you believe about yourself and your capabilities plays a huge role in your success.  If you limit yourself, then you will not try to venture out of the box that you have placed yourself into.  If you think that you can accomplish more, then you would be geared towards accomplishing what you believe you can still achieve.  Most of the time, people who believe that they have more to offer would end up proving the same thing to the world.

Factors to Consider When Determining Your Potential

You cannot sell yourself short.  However, you cannot be too confident.  A fish cannot fly, no matter how much it believes it can.  It can find ways definitely, and perhaps it can do the impossible and succeed, but it takes time.  So, you should be honest with yourself when you are analyzing your potentials.  The first factor that you have to consider is your options.  What are your options?  What is available to you?  Can you create these options?  The second thing that you have to consider is your strengths and weaknesses.  Be honest as much as possible when you analyze your capabilities and limitations.  Finally, the last factor that you have to consider is the resources available to you.  Do you have the things that you might need in order to pursue your potentials?

Tips on How to Fulfill Your Potential

After you have carefully analyzed the factors that would affect your potentials, you can then proceed to making the necessary changes in your life in order to allow room for growth and maximization of your full potential.  Here are some tips on how to fulfill these potentials:

a.               Start with wherever you are.  Do not waste time lamenting on what you think you need or what should be different. Instead, focus on what you have and grow from there.

b.                Focus on your strengths rather than on weaknesses, your success rather than your failure, what you’ve accomplished rather than what you wished you could have done.

c.                 Always make a conscious and wise choice.  Do not shirk from mistakes.  Learn from them.

d.            Have an open mind.  Do not limit yourself to what you believe things should be. Admit to mistakes and open your mind to possibilities.

e.                  Learn to improvise.

Today’s hectic lives demand a lot from us.  We have to stand out among the crowd to get the attention of somebody, somebody who can help us become successful. And we have to be creative and be different from all the rest so as to make it big in whatever industry we have chosen. A mediocre person will always live a mediocre life. 

Get Your Creative Juice Flowing

 If you are stumped for an idea and need to have your creative juice flowing, here are some tips.

1.         Relax and open up your mind so ideas can enter your mind more quickly.  Your creativity can be hindered by things that trouble you, so it is wiser to have a clearer mind before you open yourself up to new ideas.

2.         Be a keen observer of your surroundings.  By looking way past the mundane, you will surely see something extraordinary that can be the basis of a new idea.

3.         Find an inspiration.  Nothing will make you work harder to become successful than having an inspiration.  Your inspiration should be something that can inspire you through your road to success.

4.         List down every idea that goes into your head, be it silly or serious.  Sometimes, it is one of these random ideas that can be your ticket to success.

5.         Believe in your creative concept.  Believing that you can make your idea into a reality is what can make you a success.

Be creative and be different if you want to be noticed in your niche industry.

Whether you’re a student starting out or a practiced professional, the message that you probably get from the rest of the world sounds something like “Achieve everything.”  Day in and day out, you are bombarded with images of men and women from all over the globe, people who seem to have everything: prestige, position, and of course, money.  And it’s almost certain that, at one point or another, you wanted deep down to be like them.  But believe it or not, your hurried and harried lifestyle in today’s tech-connected and frenetic world might not lead you to the comfortable lifestyle of your dreams. 

Priorities, Priorities

Have you ever wished that you could be in two places at once?

People today want to do too much.  You have to be at a meeting by this time, but only after a family engagement two hours prior, and you have to leave by a certain time to make it to a social gathering afterwards.  All too often, the different aspects of your life – your career, your family, and your social life – have time demands that overlap each other.  At those times, you probably try to be in as many events as possible – to make the most of the time, supposedly – and, thus, feel worn and tired by the end of the day.

Instead of gathering all your appointments and then rushing through as many of them as possible in the course of a day, prioritize.  Set which ones precedence over another.  For example, you could set family reunions ahead of business functions, which could then be set over social gatherings.  Sure, you might not be able to get to as many events as with the other paradigm, but you get to do more and enjoy more at each event because you’re not so pressured with time.

A Change of Pace

The statement that 24 hours is insufficient in a day is a common complaint all over the world.  You’re not the only person who wants to do more, and so you’re not the only person rushing from one meeting to the next, reading papers and writing reports frantically in between.  You probably also bring some work home so you could supposedly do more for the day.  However, a very thin line exists between ‘hardworking’ and ‘overworked.’

Make sure that you take some time to slow down in each day.  Set a certain period, such as the hour immediately after you arrive home from work, to be your time for rest and quality time with the family.  Don’t let your days become just a single continuous blur of work just so you could earn more income because that sort of lifestyle could actually end up endangering your life with stress-related conditions.  Many studies have also proven that you’re sharper and more efficient at work when you take half an hour to an hour’s rest a couple of times throughout the day.  And you can bring that all the way to the boss.

I simply don’t have words to add to this story! I recommend that you first watch the video and then read the story of Dick and his disabled son Rick

If I asked to you to name the largest deciding factor in the success and social status of the world’s most affluent and happy people, what would you guess it was? Would you say it was being born into a good family? Would you say it was a good education or perhaps sheer, raw talent? But any way you guess it, you’d probably be wrong. In fact, the greatest contributing factor to an upwardly mobile social status or an ever-increasing bank account is the ability to plan your future in the long term. And long term doesn’t mean planning next year or even the next five years. Long term planning means projecting yourself twenty or even thirty and forty years into the future and planning your every day toward achieving those goals over all else. Think you’ve got what it takes?

The Research

In the few years before 1970, Harvard University sociologist Edward Banfield conducted research into what behaviors and social factors could predict wealth, affluence and success. Banfield was using what we today would call “success modeling.” What he discovered, and would eventually publish in his controversial book “The Unheavenly City,” was that the only accurate predictor of success was what he referred to as “long-time perspective.” You see, Banfield studied education, race, family, upbringing, intelligence and behavior and found that the only thing that was held constant in those that succeeded was the ability and the habit of planning out their time not in the increments of hours, days or weeks, but in decades! 

That bears repeating: the only factor was how far into the future a person routinely planned.

Let that sink in for a second because it’s not a stretch to say that that information could change your life.

So how far into the future do you plan?

If you’re like most folks it’s usually to the next paycheck. We plan from pay period to pay period or, if we’re really on the ball, even a whole year in advance, but that’s where most of us stop. Think about all of the people you know who don’t even plan more than an hour into the future. Usually they make excuses like, “living in the moment” or “being spontaneous,” but never mistake good time management for being trapped, or stuffy. Learn how to use your time to its fullest and you’ll find you suddenly have more of it available to you. If you’re one of those people who rarely plans ahead, don’t feel bad because success is not out of your reach. The beauty of success modeling is that the information you receive from research like Banfield’s can be put to immediate, practical use.

The Steps You Can Take:

1. Discover Your Dream -  this is the hardest step on this list and there is just no getting around it. You have to find what it is that you love because that’s what you’re going to be working toward every single day. And don’t be afraid to plan big. Who wants to look thirty years into the future and imagine themselves still at a job they hate or retiring penniless? If you’re going to work your entire life for something, you might as well make it something that you actually want. Dream big or don’t dream at all.

I know some people might feel that planning that far ahead is all well and good for someone in their twenties, but what if you’re only a few year away from retirement? What if you feel you’re too old to start dreaming up something new? Well, I’m here to tell you that you’re never too old to start working toward your dreams and I’ve seen the proof of it. My father has worked in professional broadcasting all his life and one of the people he’s had the pleasure of becoming friends with is Rhubarb Jones, the most famous man in radio here in Atlanta and a man I have always known as Uncle Rhubarb. This man, well into his fifties and well over thirty years into an incredibly successful radio career decided to go back to college and in 2006 earned his Masters Degree in the hopes of becoming a college professor when he finally decides to hang up the headphones. Rhubarb was a smart enough man to look well into his golden years and find what it was he still had left in him. Don’t make the mistake of believing the myth that beyond forty or fifty is the backside of life. There is no hill. 

Start imagining the world you want. If you don’t know where you want to go you’ll never get there.

2. Get Over Your Fear of Disappointment - even more debilitating than a fear of failure is a fear of disappointment. We’re too afraid to plan ahead because we don’t want to face the disappointment if we fail to achieve our goals. We don’t want to write down a to-do list because we’re too afraid of not getting every item crossed off. Dreaming big isn’t a pleasurable experience because the thought of potential disappointments is always lingering. I know that, for me anyway, it wasn’t always like that. I know that when I was a kid, I used to dream big everyday. I fell asleep every night dreaming of the wonderful things I wanted to happen in my life. I spent many a school period daydreaming wondrous things that I could achieve and I always told myself that I would never loose that desire to imagine and dream. But I, like so many others, was ambushed by adulthood and somewhere along the line, my dreaming days fell by the wayside. I never knew it was gone until it was too late.

I lost my desire to dream because I was overwhelmed by the fear of never achieving those dreams. To never achieve my dreams was far better than trying and being disappointed by my own failure. I psyched myself out before I even had a chance to begin. But once I realized my loss, I took the necessary steps to regain it again. Now I can live with hope that my dreams may come to fruition instead of in the fear that they will ultimately fail. If the fear of disappointment has you, shake it off now and start looking toward hope, because that’s what your dreams are for.
 

3. Start Being Okay With Discomfort -  we have a great problem with discomfort in western society. We avoid it if at all possible, even if it could bring us the things we desire. We don’t want to exercise because it’s hot, sweaty and painful. We want the weight loss that the exercise could bring, but we don’t want to have to work for it. If you want to start developing a long-time perspective you have got to start being okay with discomfort. You must learn to face a little bit of pain and suffering in the short term so that you can find success and wellbeing in the long term. Once you have discovered what it is you want so far down the road, you must develop the courage to do anything to get it. You must learn to push through the discomfort of today, if that discomfort can bring you closer to your dreams.  

Start getting yourself into the mindset of doing your important tasks first, before you can talk yourself out of them. It’s a universal rule that we will always procrastinate on those tasks that will bring us the most success. This being the case, you must learn to see past the short term discomfort of your work and to the long term benefits it will bring. Keep your eye on the prize and grit your teeth when you need to.

4. Have Courage Enough to Make Goals - let’s face it, goals are scary. For one thing, we generally don’t like making promises to yourself that we’re not sure we can keep. We don’t like getting our hopes up and most of the time we just really have no idea of what we could feasibly achieve. We sit down to make our goals, become too frightened to dream big and start aiming as low as possible. We’ve gotten so used to aiming low that we’re unaware that we can aim any higher. Start finding the courage to make big goals. Don’t say you want a 3% raise just because that’s all you think you could get. Goals aren’t meant to be the things you think you could settle for, goals are like sign posts to success.

Have the guts to stand up for what you really want. Put them in writing, in plain view, and look at them everyday. Tell yourself that no matter what happens, come hell or high water, you can and will achieve them. It takes more than a little courage. It takes more than a little perseverance, but just remember that when the going gets tough, refer to number three.

Never Again Be Bogged Down

You already know that time management is an indispensable skill. You already know that planning out your days and making the most of your time can present you with amazing rewards in both your personal and professional life but you might not be taking your skills as far as they can go. Remember that the only predicting factor for success has nothing to do with the school you went to or who you know, it has everything to do with how far into the future you can plan. Take what you already know about managing your time and your talents and project yourself twenty or even thirty years into the future and write down what you see. What kind of job do you have? What is your home like? Your family like? What is life for you going to be thirty years down the yellow brick road? 

However you see it, write it down and review those plans from time to time. Once you have this plan written down, you will never again be bogged down in indecision or prone to procrastination. When you come to a fork in the road, figure out which one leads you closer to those plans. When you find yourself in hard times, look toward your goals and know that once through this moment of discomfort you will be one step closer to where you want to stay. So knowing what you know now, you must ask yourself the big question: Right now, this instant, how far into the future have you planned?

Daniel Roach is dedicated to a no-nonsense view of personal development. Through his website and blog he is dedicated to helping people make lasting changes through lasting effort. If you enjoyed this post and are serious about your personal growth, consider subscribing to his RSS feed.

Your query returned 5 results.

A true friend always finds time for you

Irrespective of whether your friend is busy or not, the fact that you need his/her help has a higher priority. Therefore a true friend will put aside everything else and come over to give you a helping hand in whatever you need.

A true friend is always on your side even though you are losing

The ultimate test to verify if someone is a true friend is when you are going through difficult times. When you have money and you offer drinks on the house, everyone smiles and says that you are a great person. But when you’re broke or down, not everybody will stand by you to listen to what you have to say. Only true friends will stay.

A true friend gives without waiting for something back

Friendship is give and take but it does not necessarily happen in a sequential manner. A true friend is ready to give a lot before asking for something back.

A true friend respects your opinion

Even though you don’t agree with your friend about something, s/he will still respect your ideas and agrees that you don’t agree on that particular point. A true friend values your friendship more than the topics that you don’t agree on.

True friendship is shown through small things

A true friend shows that s/he cares by giving attention to small things like remembering your birthday. Even though you may have not met for a very long time, a true friend would still remember about your birthday, for example.

A short one for the weekend, before another week starts.

On my way back home, after a hard day at the office I got stuck in traffic. It was raining so heavily that cars had to slow down, since the weather conditions were extremely bad. While stuck in traffic, I stared at the wipers going from side to side every time removing new drops of rain. Wipers were in constant battle with the rain. Isn’t that a good analogy of life? 

The rain represents constant obstacles in life which block our view and slow us down from achieving our goals. On the other hand, wipers represent our constant effort to remove obstacles from our view. This effort helps us get a clear view even if for a short time. While the view is clear we can think clearly and move closer to our personal goals.

Moral of the story: What would you do if the rain increases? Would you simply switch the wipers on a faster mode?