You’re probably bombarded by messages like “Don’t do this” or “Don’t do that” on a daily basis by media or by some other source.  While that sort of thinking might work to help you keep rules and regulations in mind, it’s not a very healthy outlook to keep for the other factors of your life.

The Power of Positive Thinking

As kindergarten as it might sound, thinking good and happy thoughts actually affects your outward disposition and behavior.  Job applicants are the most popular anecdotal example because those who think positively and believe that they will get the job are a lot more relaxed and confident.  Your behavior is a psychological aspect of yourself, so changing the way you look at things will definitely affect the way you walk, talk, and act.

And it’s not all about just thinking good things that makes a difference.  When you think positively and, say, imagine yourself achieving your goal, you keep yourself focused on the finished line.  Thus, your actions are more probable to bring you one step closer to that finish line.  When you think positively despite setbacks or difficulties, you keep yourself from getting distracted with negative comments, and you get back on the road a lot more quickly.

Visualize and Affirm

You can break down positive thinking into two components - one that stretches from the time you prepare yourself to the time you actually work for a goal and another for the period of time after you have made your effort.

Before you set out to meet the challenge, set a clear goal and visualize yourself achieving that goal.  In your head, see yourself making that grade or winning that competition.  See yourself shaking the boss’ hand as he tells you that you just got yourself the promotion.  Imagine yourself crossing that finish line victorious.  You might call it mere fantasy, but it’s actually very effective preparation.  It helps you tune out the small, irrelevant, and insignificant disturbances to allow you to focus more on where you want to go and how you can get there.

If you managed to reach your goal, celebrate.  Congratulate yourself.  It sounds like gloating, but it’s actually affirmation because you’re telling yourself that you did a great job and was, thus, able to achieve the goal.  Affirm the good traits you brought out and positive actions that you did.  Tell yourself that you were confident.  Tell yourself that you were focused.  Doing so makes it easier to tap into those same things the next time around.

If you don’t reach your goal, on the other hand, affirm and use positive language nonetheless.  Don’t tell yourself that you didn’t place first in the race.  Tell yourself that you won second, and that you’d like yourself to go faster and stronger next time.  You give yourself congratulations for whatever you were able to achieve while at the same time provide a strong motivation for practice and improvement.

Can you call yourself an optimistic person?  Are you a positive thinker?  Do you believe that you can shape your own future and command your happiness?  You don’t have to be at the mercies of fate.  Your success in life and your happiness starts with having a positive mindset.  When you think positively, you become the master of your life.  You own your dreams, actions, happiness, and ultimately, your success.  When you are a positive thinker, it doesn’t mean that you deny the existence of misery, failures, or problems.  You just have an optimistic outlook.

Who is a Positive Thinker?

When you are a positive thinker, you believe that you can overcome any crisis that life throws your way.  People who tend to think positively accept their shortcomings but know how to channel their weaknesses to something positive.  They do not let their weaknesses get the best of them.  Instead, they make an effort to focus on their strengths.  They also try to remedy their weaknesses.  This attitude comes with a positive mindset.  A positive thinker knows that if he lets despair and helplessness get the best of them, they will lose.

How to Start Thinking Positively

Once you start thinking positively, you start a habit.  You then equip yourself with the capacity to become successful.  How do you start thinking positively?

a.    Decide to have a positive mindset.  This means committing to a positive attitude, controlling negativity, and deciding to have a control on how you react to challenges and setbacks that life throws your way.

b.    Surround yourself with positive people.  Avoid those who exude negativity.

c.    Focus on your strengths.  How you perceive yourself consciously will affect your subconscious, and this will ultimately reflect in your actions.

d.    Be open-minded.  Do not allow yourself to be put in a box.  If you do this, you limit and restrict possibilities.

e.    Strengthen your knowledge and skills.  When you acquire more and more knowledge, you become more confident.  The more confident you are about your abilities, the more positive you are about your life.

f.    Have long-term goals.  When you have goals, you have direction.  You do not allow yourself to be defeated easily by challenges and setbacks.

g.    Do not limit yourself.  Believe that you are capable of reaching immeasurable heights.  Believe that you have capabilities that you do not even know you possess.

h.    Have faith.  Do not ever lose your faith in yourself.

i.    Constantly motivate yourself.

j.    Keep yourself healthy.

You will notice with most successful people that the one thing they have in common is that they are very passionate with what they do.  While the meaning of success is relative, it still does include the fact that people who consider themselves successful, regardless of material wealth, have a strong love for their chosen careers.

They are happy doing what they do, and because they have fun, it’s almost like not going to work at all; hence, work becomes a happy place despite the occasional pressures.  When work becomes a less stressful place, you will also notice that you and everyone you work with become more productive.

Less Becomes More

You’ve probably worked for or been around people who seem to work 24/7 and still end up not accomplishing much or failing at it that they always go back to square one, and the process starts all over again.

It seems that no matter how much hard work they put in, targets are not met, deadlines are not delivered, and they end up with more losses than profits.  However, people who are less stressed at work know how to designate.

Even if you’re boss or a regular staff member, designating or delegating certain tasks makes everything simpler and easier.  You not only end up doing less and avoiding overworking yourself, but you also have more time to do recreational activities.  After all, all work and no play is bad for your health.

Good Working Environment

One other thing that contributes greatly to people’s accomplishing more at work, or simply put, being more productive is a good working environment – literally, spiritually, emotionally, and mentally.

If your place of work is messy, hot, and such, and it makes you uncomfortable staying there for at least eight hours per day, chances are, you’re going because you need the money and nothing more, or you’re about to quit.

However, a clean and aesthetically pleasing work place is not enough.  A good working environment is more importantly dependent on the kind of people you work with and their characters.

A high-paying job isn’t worth much if you end up hating your boss at the end of the day, or you dread getting up each morning to go to work.  This will not only result in making you an unhappy employee, but there’s also a very big chance that you will not be as productive and creative as you should be.

In the end, to accomplish more without exerting yourself to your limits, your work and the work place should be something that you love.

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?

The clincher in any job application, promotion, and other business deals is the all-too-important interview. Some people breeze through it as if it were the easiest thing to do in the world, while others struggle and dread it. To some degree, being able to talk your way in and out of almost anything is an innate talent. However, no case is lost because anyone can develop the gift of gab.

If you come prepared for the interview, there’s no reason to fear it, much less fail it. The key is to come as well-prepared as you possibly can, and this means putting in a little effort to do your research and perhaps even rehearse what you, more or less, are going to say.

Say It with Ease

What you say during an interview can prove to be a deal breaker if you don’t know what you’re talking about and you just rattle on and on senselessly; or you over-compensate your lack of knowledge on the topic by veering away from the subject and passionately talking about something else. Either way, you could lose face and a potential career.

It is best to study all the possible questions that your interviewer could pose during your actual dialogue. If this is for a job interview, your potential answers should cover your previous work history. Remember every detail as possible as you don’t know which area the interviewer will focus on and research on the position you’re applying for. This way, all bases are covered.

Generally, whatever interview you’re going to, your first rule of thumb is to find out as much as you can about the subject of the interview or, if that is quite vague for you, learn a little info about the company and the person/s who will be talking to you.

Avoiding Difficult Qs

Since you don’t have control of the flow of questions, you could find yourself being asked about things that you will not be comfortable talking about. Should this happen, simply give a general answer without being too vague.

You can avoid going into specifics if it will implicate your previous company or anyone else, or if you’d rather keep that part private. Politely decline to answer it directly and say why you’d rather talk about it under different circumstances – without bashing anybody or being negative about it.

During an interview, your attitude will also say it all so make sure that you gracefully answer everything without being a pushover.

In order to be successful you need to know how to fail. You can find a lot of articles describing how you can be successful. Depending on what you are trying to achieve, you need to apply a particular plan. But irrespective of which area you are in, the following are the ways how you can fail.

Limiting yourself

Think that you can’t do it and guess what? You will not do it. If you limit yourself and you don’t believe in what you can achieve then what do you expect? A lot of pyschologists say “We are what we think!” Think that you are a failure and you will become one.

Losing focus

Everyone has a lot of ideas. Ideas come and go. We chose what we think is the best idea and focus on it. Focus is a key component to success. Hoping from one idea to another, without giving the chance for any of the ideas to grow and prosper is a very common way how people fail. It’s not because their ideas are wrong and there is nothing wrong with the way how they are executing them… it’s because succeeding needs time.

Last week, I went to a leading consumer appliance store to buy a home appliance. I asked for help because I could not make up my mind on which appliance to choose out of two in particular. A young salesman approached me and started what seemed to me like a pre-learned keynote speech saying things like…

“Sir we are not like our competitors. We here value our customers.” - It was in the first place why I went to the store because I thought that they value me. But he made me ask myself, “Why is he emphasizing it? Maybe it’s not true and he wants me to believe it is?”

“Unlike our competitors we will replace your broken appliance if it is still in the warranty period.” - That is the definition of warranty no? I mean if something breaks down within the period of warranty it should be either fixed or replaced. But yet again he made me ask myself why is he emphasising it?

To cut a long story short, I thanked the salesman for his help and left the store. With the new questions that the salesman made me ask I felt that I’d better get some trusted advice from a couple of close friends.

This experience made me think and from it we can all learn that, when we speak we are instilling feelings in our listeners, be they a family member, friend, or colleague. The feelings that we instil in the people we are addressing are associated with us and what we say. In the case of the salesman, he instilled in me negative feelings which I automatically associated with the store he was representing.

On the other hand if you speak positively, people will associate positive feelings with you and what you do. Hence, next time when you speak, keep in mind what feelings you want to instil in your listeners and speak accordingly.

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?

Remember to do this! Don’t forget to finish off that task by tomorrow! Have you done this? Can you tell me the progress of that task please?

Management expects their employees to answer such questions immediately to enable them to make accurate plans. If not provided with the right tools employees tend to use out of date techniques to handle their to do list. Old technique include:

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I have read a lot about the Job Security Myth and how untrue it is that companies offer job security. Recently, I encountered Lawrence Cheok’s blog. This blog offers advice on how one should strike a balance between work and leisure. I highly recommend that you read the Stop working hard for job security post by Lawrence Cheok for a detailed explanation about the old fashioned way how to make money and ways how to have job security. Lawrence is the author of the Money Mindset Series.  I have personally subscribed to Lawrence Cheok’s RSS feed.