Image courtesy of bjearwicke

It is not about what you know, it is about who you know.

Most of you may find this quote familiar. This quote still holds true today. You can be a great writer but it is hard to be discovered in this competitive world if you do not know anyone who can market your talent. At first, I find it difficult to accept this.

I believe that as long as you have the talent, you can excel in your field. However, as time goes by I find that talent alone is not enough. You need to know people. You need to know the right people to help you excel in your field.

To get to know more people who can help you to get to where you want to be, you have to have a pleasant personality.

How Having A Pleasant Personality Helps

In order to convince others to help you or work with you, you must have a pleasant personality. If you are such a jerk, no one will ever want to work with you. Ask yourself, if you do not like someone, how possible is it that you will end up working with him or her? If you do not even want to work with them, don’t even mention about helping them.

A pleasant personality helps. It will ensure others will like you more. Magic happens when others like you more. They pay more attention to you and they are more likely to help you or introduce someone helpful to you. In our society, the road to success will much easier when there are many people who are willing to help you. People found jobs through their friends and discover money-making opportunities through their network. This is the power of having a great network.

How To Have A Pleasant Personality

1. Help Others

Give before you receive. Many people have the wrong concept about giving and receiving. They think that they are entitled to something and hence they always want to receive before giving. It don’t work this way. It is impossible to get results when you do not put in the effort. You don’t expect others to help you when you are not helping others.

I once read a book that stated something like this, “You don’t expect a drink vending machine to drop you a can of drink without putting in a dollar first.” Very true. One of the keys to have a pleasant personality is sincerely help others. People like you more when you are of great help or service to others.

2. Be Interested In Others

Some people may find it hard to hold a conversation with others. In fact, this is rather simple. All you need to do is to be interested in others. People are always more interested in themselves. They want to talk more about themselves rather than listen to other people’s stories.

To appear interesting to others, be interested in others and get them to talk about themselves. Others will find you interesting when you are interested in them. When you can hold an interesting conversation with others (by the way, they are doing most of the talking), they will believe that you have a rather pleasant personality.

3. Be Cheerful And Optimistic

Would you rather be with someone who can make you laugh or someone who will bore you to death with their whining and complaints? I can’t stand negative people who try to spread the pessimism virus around. Most people don’t like them too. Keep the pessimism viruses at bay and do your best to keep them to the minimum.

Cheerful and optimistic people are well liked. Their cheerfulness and optimism is contagious. When you can make others happy, they will like you more.

4. Avoid Arguments Over Small Stuffs

Shun away from arguments over trivial matters. Don’t sweat the small stuff by Richard Carlson is a great read on this topic. When you get into an argument over trivial matters with someone, you destroy all the rapport you had built with them. It takes years to build rapport with others and seconds to destroy it. Whenever you think of entering an argument over trivial matters, think twice.

5. Don’t Be A Jerk

Don’t be caught up in office politics and start a back stabbing spree. If you think others don’t know what you are talking behind their back, you are wrong. This type of information is shared easily and there may be a back stabber in your own group too.

Being a hypocrite, avoid participating in backstabbing or any other actions that can damage your reputation. It isn’t easy to build your reputation and all it takes is a moment to destroy it. Just keep this rule in mind, don’t do what you do not want others to do upon to you.

Parting Words

Your aim is to enhance your personality so that others will like you more and be more willing to cooperate with you. You will also attract more people into your life and the more people you know, the higher the chances that they can help you to achieve your goals. It is great to have a wide network as you know, it is not about what you know, it is about who you know.

Vincent
Expanding His Network

Post from: Health Money Success

How To Have A Pleasant Personality

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Lately I have started to feel bored. I remembered what Tony Robbins had said, “your emotions are action indicators.” I don’t remember clearly what he had said but it is around these lines.

Things have started to get repetitive and dull for me. I have been writing to this blog twice weekly regularly and the tasks that I need to complete to reach my goals are getting repetitive. My blog is growing steadily, my affiliate site is not doing as well as I have expected and my training for my marathon is going smoothly. Overall, things are going well but the feeling of boredom lingers.

I tried to dig deeper for reasons that cause this feeling and I finally stumbled upon something.

Boredom = Action Indicator

I noticed that doing the same things repeatedly can lead to boredom. Boredom is also a sign that you need to be doing something new and get out of your comfort zone.

I thought about it and noticed that I am not doing anything new at the moment and it seems like I am running in maintenance mode. Running in maintenance mode means that I am not growing and all I am doing is to maintain the standards. So to shake things up, I have decided to introduce things that I am not regularly doing into my routine. The only way you can kill off boredom is to start stepping out of your comfort zone and seek new challenges.

Upcoming Projects

1. Interviews

Long time readers know that I have conducted podcast interviews with successful people in the past and it has been drying up lately. I enjoy doing these interviews and I think it is a great way to learn from successful people. However, I have avoided doing it as I still have the fear of rejection and the feeling of nervousness when interviewing others.

I need to work on these negative emotions that are holding me back and start getting those interviews done. Practice makes perfect and I believe doing it repeatedly will definitely make me feel more comfortable with conducting interviews.

Note: If you have any person in mind that you want me to interview, do tell me in the comment section below.

2. New eBook

I have decided to write a new ebook. Writing an ebook is easy, writing a high quality ebook is a lot of work. I got to admit it that the first time I have completed “Unleash Your Maximum Potential”(If you have not downloaded your free copy, you can download it here), I thought to myself that I do not want to write an ebook again.

It is tedious to write an ebook as there are tons of work to do. Things like getting ideas, editing, formatting, hiring ebook designers and etc. However, I have decided to just go ahead and write my second ebook. Laziness has a limit.

If you have anything that you want to see me write about, do tell me.

3. Videos/Podcasts

I will make my own videos and post it over here. Instead of words, words and just words, I will present my ideas in videos to add more personal touch to it. I hope that this time round, my videos will turn out better. My first video for HealthMoneySuccess is a total failure. I talk like a vampire and you can laugh at it over here.

4. Consulting/Coaching

I have decided to venture into consulting/coaching. I do not have a definite plan in mind but I will definitely keep you people updated when I have some ideas about it.

What Can Your Boredom Do For You?

Boredom is an indicator that you need to do something new or challenging to push yourself out of your comfort zone. The next time when you feel bored, dig deeper into the causes of your boredom and brainstorm for new ideas and challenges. It may lead you to something exciting and help you to experience exponential growth.

Vincent
Stepping Out Of Comfort Zone

Post from: Health Money Success

How I Am Going To Get Rid Of Boredom And Start Growing

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The Key To Life – Running

“The key to life is running and reading.”
~Will Smith

“You will learn how to not quit when things get hard in your life.”
~Will Smith

Will Smith is one of my favorite idols and I love his attitude towards his life and work. In this video, he had mentioned that running and reading are the keys to life. I got to agree with him and I understand as I am an avid reader and runner myself.

I have been training hard for my marathon (my goals this year) and right now I am at the 8.7 miles (14km) mark. Will Smith’s words hit right on the spot. Whenever I run, there are inner chatters going through my mind. The little person will give me 101 reasons to stop running and try his best to convince me to stop.

Through frequent training and positive self talk, I manage to ignore the little person that is talking to me and right now I’m on the right track towards my goal. In life, this little person will appear in your mind too.

It will try to convince you to take the easy way out and give up at signs of hardship. It will tell you that it is hard to be rich, hard to earn promotions or impossible to talk to your dream girl/boy. It will do anything to bring you down and you will have to win this mini battle with this little person in order to grow and succeed.

One way to conquer the little person and negative inner chatter is to run. Running is an effective way for me to deal with this little person and my negative self talk and I bet it can work for you too. As Will Smith said it best, “You will learn how to not quit when things get hard in your life.”

Note: The first milestone of my marathon is nearing! I have a 10 miles (16km) competition coming this 14th March. I will keep you guys updated and hopefully take some pictures back to share with you.

Reading

How many books do you read in a month? 1? or none at all? Reading can help us to deal with problems, find solutions, get new ideas that we can use to improve ourselves. It is really important to read and if you truly want to grow and succeed in your life.

There are many people using excuses like they do not have enough time to read so many books. But why is it there are so many people with the same 24 hours and they can read so many books in a month and yet you can’t?

There is no lack of time, only a lack of priorities.

I am inspired by this video by Will Smith and I had picked up 2 great keys to life today, to run and to read. How about you? What do you think will happen to your life if you start running and reading more frequently? I look forward to your comments below.

Vincent
Runner and Reader

Post from: Health Money Success

Do You Know The Key To Life? – Use This Knowledge To Help You Excel In Life

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Image courtesy of http://www.sxc.hu/photo/483719

Recently I have just completed the book, “No B.S Time Management For Entrepreneurs” by Dan Kennedy. It is a great book on time management and anyone who wants to be more productive and get more out of their time should read that book.

In the book, there are various concepts on how to get the most out of our time. One of the concepts particularly caught my attention. It states that spending too much time with Time Vampires can result in losing our valuable time and cause a drastic dip in productivity.

Time Vampires

What exactly are Time Vampires? Time Vampires are people who tried to such as much “blood” (time) out of you as you permit. They tend to leave you dry and tired at the end of the day causing you to lose valuable time to do things that are of greater value.

If you think about it, there will definitely be some Time Vampires around you. Do you have colleagues that keep interrupting you with small talks during your work hours? Or friends that talk to you for hours on the phone about gossips or force you to listen to his/her complains? If you allow them to do what they want, they will suck out as much blood as they want and leave you exhausted by the end of the day.

If you truly want to achieve your goals or excellent results in life, you have to protect your time from anyone who tries to suck it out of you. Time is a limited resource and you only have 24 hours, 1440 minutes or 86400 seconds available to you every day. Everyone is given the same amount of time everyday and people who spend it wisely will be the top achievers in their field. Whoever that can maximize the value of their given time will ultimately do better in their life than those who can’t.

How To Protect Your Time From Time Vampires

For one to achieve something, they will definitely need time. If you want to achieve anything in your life, you will need to learn how to protect your time from Time Vampires. Here are some of the ways.

1. The Courage To Say NO.

This is something that you will need to work on. Too many times, we find it hard to reject the phone calls, small talks or outings. It is okay to do these tasks from time to time but doing them too frequently is a killer to your productivity. When you know that you have a tad too much of these counterproductive tasks, you will have to say NO to them.

Some of you may find it hard to say no to others. You have to understand that if you allow others to interrupt you when you are working on your important tasks, you will not complete your them. Start setting up your steel defense against them by saying NO to them and protect your time at all cost.

2. Be Busy

Acting busy is a way to deter Time Vampires from trying to suck out your time. When they approach, be busy and make sure that they can see it. People tend to avoid disturbing others when they see others are busy and Time Vampires are the same. If they try to reach you by phone, tell them that you are busy and you have only 5 minutes to spare. They will either come straight to the point or avoid disturbing you by hanging up.

3. Disappear

If Time Vampires cannot find you, they cannot disturb you. However, this is hard to achieve as we have phones that allow others to connect to us easily. If you are working at home and you find that you are getting too many interruptions, try to work at cafes near your house. You can choose to bring your phone along or leave it out totally. If you are bringing your phone along, silence it and finish your work before returning any calls.

Parting Words

There are too many Time Vampires out there trying to take up your time and the best way for you to protect your time is to avoid them. By saying NO to trivial matters, useless chatters, gossips and whining, you will be surprised by how much more important tasks that you can complete and move faster towards your goals. I would love to know how you protect yourselves against Time Vampires. Do share with you in the comment section below and I will talk to you soon.

Vincent

Exploring Ultimate Productivity

Post from: Health Money Success

Warning: Are You Spending Too Much Time With Time Vampires And Wasting Your Time Away?

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What is the habit that you want most to help you create more excellent results and success in life? I have thought long about it and I came out with the habit that I want most. It is the habit of constantly striving for improvement.

There are so many people who are masters in what they do and I believe that they all have the common habit of constantly striving for improvement. They practice constantly on what they are doing so that they can make small improvements each day.

Even though the improvements may be minor, years after years of making gradual improvements can end up in a snowball effect.

The Power Of Constantly Striving For Improvement

Everyone wants to make improvement in some aspect of their life. It may be financially, emotionally, physically or spiritually. However not everyone can attain their desired level of improvement and results. It is simply because they do not have the habit of constantly striving for improvement.

For one to attain their desired level of success, they need to do something every day to help them to reach their goals. Nevertheless, most people simply give up half way or they complete their most important tasks that can bring them nearer to their goal one day and skip them the next day.

The nemeses of the habit of constantly striving for improvement are giving up and the lack of consistency. No matter how good you have started your marathon, it does not make any difference if you are going to give up half way along the road. Lacking of consistency also means that you will lose the valuable momentum that can help you to push yourself towards your goals.

Just take personal development as an example. You can try to pursue personal growth by reading books and blogs but giving up means you are stopping your own growth altogether. You will also not be able to grow as fast as you like if you are trying to grow yourself one day and stop for a few weeks before continuing again.

Think about the difference it can make to your life if you are able to take small steps everyday towards your goal. No matter what you do, you will definitely see small improvements every day until you become a master at what you are doing. In the book “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell, he mentioned the 10,000 hours rule. This rule simply states that for you to become a master at anything, you will need to commit at least 10,000 hours of practice to what you are doing.

Simple Calculation For Your 10,000 hours Mark

If you want to hit your 10,000 hours mark in whatever you are doing, just do this simple calculation.

Example:

I want to be excellent in writing and I decided that I would commit 2 hours every day to hone my craft.

Legend: A is the amount of days needed to hit your 10,000 hours mark.

A x (the amount of hours you want to commit each day) = 10,000 hours mark

A = 10,000/(the amount of hours you want to commit each day)

A = 10,000/2 = 5000 days

5000 days/ 365 days = 13.7 years

If I am only spending 2 hours daily on honing my writing skills, it will take me 13.7 years to become a master at it.

I bet most people after doing this calculation will simply think twice about whether they want to become a master in what they are doing. Most likely it is due to the overwhelming effect as the “it-will-take-too-much-time-and-effort” thought will pop out in your mind. This thinking will lead you to give up on what you are doing or being inconsistent with your action.

But the people who decided that they will follow through no matter what, they will be the one who achieve great success in what they are doing.

The Link Between Constant Change And Constant Improvement

Those who do not grow and improve die.

This metaphor is popular in the business world. Change is happening faster and faster right now. You can see that the industrial age is already gone and right now, we are in the information age where kids can become a millionaire just by creating an application for iPhone.

Businesses that refuse to change their strategies and improve can go bankrupt in a short amount of time. People who refuse to change and make improvements become obsolete in their industry and retrenchment may be just around the corner.

I’m not trying to inflict negative emotions here, I just want to bring the point to you that the only way you can deal with this rapid change is to have the habit of constantly striving for improvement. Changes are happening fast because everything around the world is growing and only by making constant improvement to yourself, you can keep up with it.

Parting Words

To help yourself to get the results that you want, you will have to have the habit of constantly striving for improvement. It may take time and effort, but time is going to past anyway even if you are not committing the time to improve yourself (Got to thanks Glen for this quote.)

If you have decided to commit yourself to get into this habit of constantly striving for improvement, you will be able to reap the rewards later and get the bigger share of the pie. Have you decided to have the bigger piece of the pie or are you satisfied with your share now?

Vincent
Constantly Striving For Improvement

Post from: Health Money Success

The Most Powerful Weapon That You Can Use To Drastically Improve Your Results In Life And Achieve Your Goals

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I have seen many people who frequently complain that they lack ideas. It may be ideas for starting a business, a blog post or an idea for creating a better life. Ideas may pop out of nowhere and they are important as these ideas may possibly be one that you need to improve some aspect of your life.

The Art Of Generating Ideas

Ideas are everywhere and there is an abundance of ideas out there waiting for us to capture it. People do not really suffer from a lack of ideas, they suffer from the perception that they lack the ideas. Ideas are freely available all around us and all we need is to be able to open our eyes to see them. Here are some of the ways that you can use to help you get more ideas to help you to make improvement to whatever aspect of your life.

1. Be Open

The first step to receive more ideas from our surroundings is to be open to them. Many of us suffer from the belief that ideas are hard to get. This is the wrong mindset to have. You cannot expect to receive ideas easily when you are thinking that getting ideas is hard.

Put yourself in the right mindset by thinking that there are ideas are overflowing from you and all you need is to catch the ideas that you think are suitable for you. Also, do not be quick to kill off ideas that come to you. There are people who I call ideas killer. They have the habit of trashing any ideas that came up to them by thinking how these ideas can’t work instead of thinking how can they make it work.

2. Be Aware And Explore Of Your Surroundings

Most of us are living in a rather hectic environment. We move so fast and we tend to do things unconsciously. Whenever we put ourselves in an unconscious mode, we tend to ignore things that are around us which may help us to generate valuable ideas.

I used to spend pretty much of my time in the unconscious mode and this cause me to fail to notice things that are around me. I questioned myself why others can get ideas from things around me that I had failed to notice.

After years of missing out from valuable ideas, I decided that I would shift myself into a more conscious mode by being aware of the things happening around me. One way to get into a more conscious mode is to ask yourself more questions of why things happen that way instead of ignoring it.

3. Steal Ideas

Ok, I may get some flak on this. However, I do not really mean steal others ideas and let me explain. Sometimes ideas from others may be used as a stepping-stone towards your next idea. Finding the strengths and weaknesses of other ideas and make changes to them by drastically improve the strengths and reduce the weaknesses will get you a brand new improvised idea.

Google is not the first to come out with idea of creating a search engine. They copied the idea of search engine from others and make drastic changes to it to become the number 1 search engine in the world. Or if you find that you are having trouble in thinking about what to write, you can borrow others ideas by finding out what others are writing in their niche and find out what points are they missing in their articles and write on that.

There are also many people who want to start a business but they think that they do not have any ideas to start one. Instead of thinking too hard about it, you can simply copy a business idea and try to improvise it to make it better.

4. Break Out Of Your Routine

If you are spending too much time in your usual routine, you will miss tons of ideas outside your routine. We tend to get fresh ideas when we are doing something fresh. It does not really make sense when you are trying to get new ideas by following your old routine.

Occasionally, you should try to learn a new skill, mix with new people, take a different route home or read a book that you normally would not read. Doing these can allow you to see things in different view and it will make you aware of things that you will normally miss out.

5. Read, Watch, Listen And Learn

Most of the time I get my ideas of writing my articles by reading new books frequently, watching videos, listen to audiobooks or just by observing things. I have been writing about personal development for a year and 4 months and HealthMoneySuccess right now have 142 articles published. If I lock myself up for this year and 4 months, I will definitely suffer from a lack of ideas to write.

To allow myself to keep on writing helpful content, I make it a point to keep learning by reading books, watching videos and listening to audiobooks and podcast. By constantly learning through these mediums, I always pick up new ideas that I can share with my readers. Therefore, it is almost impossible to suffer from a lack of ideas if you are constantly learning.

The Art Of Capturing Ideas

How many times do you have a great idea only to find yourself forgotten all about it? If you have all the ideas in the world but you fail to remember any of them, it is the same as having no ideas at all. Ideas come and go and that is why you must make it a point to capture them down so that you can reflect upon them later. Here are some of my preferred ways of capturing my ideas.

1. Physical Note Book

I have a small notebook that is 2 inch by 2 inch. It is a rather small notebook so that I can bring them out easily and whenever an idea spring into my mind, I capture them down immediately. I use it to capture article ideas and right now, I have too many article ideas to write about instead of suffering from a lack of ideas.

2. Digital Gadgets

Since I got my iPhone, I have used it more often to capture my ideas. I use either the default note application or Evernote to write down my ideas, which I had included in the article “My Top 11 iPhone Applications“. Evernote allow you to capture your ideas in your phone but you will also be able to access it online by logging into your account. However, I still prefer the method of using the pen and notebook as I find it to be much faster than using the iPhone.

Parting Words

Ideas are everywhere around us and every new idea can help us to improve some aspect of our life. All it takes is to put in some effort to find them and utilize them. If you are able to generate more ideas, capture them and take action, how positively do you think it can affect your life?

As usual, I welcome your comments in the comment section.

Cheers,
Vincent

P.S: If you are a blogger and you are suffering from a lack of ideas for your next post, did you notice that I did not cover on the part on taking action on your idea. You can write an article about it and send a trackback to this post to share with everyone.

Post from: Health Money Success

The Art Of Generating And Capturing Ideas

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Image courtesy of alexhd57

Do you have a pair of lucky socks?  Is there a particular shirt that you wear when your favorite team is playing that brings them good luck?   In business, love, and life, there are some who believe if you are lucky, you will succeed in these areas.  But what if you had the power to change your luck?  Well, I believe it is possible.

First, let me say that I don’t believe in luck in the traditional sense.  I do not think that luck is something that is given to you at birth and you either have it or you don’t.  I prefer to believe that luck is a result of how we react to the things in life we encounter.

There are things in life that we can control and things we cannot control.  For example, we had no control over when and where we were born. We also have no control over who our parents were when we were born. But from there, we have the power to choose how we will react to those things.  There are people who are born under favorable circumstances but their lives end in disaster.  There are others who are born in the most trying conditions whose lives are examples of great success.

Blue Moons, Green Clovers and Purple Horseshoes

As a kid, Lucky Charms was one of my favorite cereals to eat.  I used to love to fill a big bowl on Saturday mornings and plop myself in front of the TV to watch 3 straight hours of cartoons.  It was great!  Besides having great tasting marshmallows, I somehow felt lucky after I ate the cereal.  I knew deep down that the green clover was just an oddly shaped marshmallow with added food coloring.  But I liked the idea of having something that made me lucky.

“Poof”, back to the real world.  It would be nice if horseshoes were lucky but the reality is that they aren’t.   Luck isn’t something that can be contained in a horseshoe, rabbit’s foot, or four leaf clovers.  Many successful people believe that luck is something that can be created.  I like the quote by Langston Coleman that said, “Luck is what you have left over after you give 100 percent”.

Still, some people just feel that they are unlucky.  They feel like they are not lucky enough to find the relationship they want.  They feel that only lucky people are able to land a dream job.  What they do not realize is that by thinking they are unlucky; they are actually making themselves less likely to change their luck.

So why does it seem that some people have all the luck when others can’t seem to get a break?  While researching for this post, I found that many “lucky” people shared some of the same characteristics.

Focus-Lucky people focus on the good things that happen and ignore the bad things.

Positive attitude-People who have a positive attitude tend to attract positive people into their lives.

Confidence-In studies of people who consider themselves lucky, most of them also consider themselves confident.

Resiliency-People who consider themselves lucky seem to be able to bounce back quicker when bad things happen.

“I’ve found that luck is quite predictable. If you want more luck, take more chances. Be more active. Show up more often.”- Brian Tracy

Turning Your Luck Around

In order to change your luck you must start by changing yourself.  We all have the power to choose how we will react to our circumstances.  If you choose the right actions, you will begin to produce better results.  Here are some ways you can turn your luck around.

Expect to Be Lucky

When you expect that good things will happen, they usually do.  If you feel that you are unlucky in love, then you are less likely to recognize a new love interest that enters your life.  Low expectations will lead you to give up faster.  When you expect to be lucky, you will continue to try to succeed no matter the circumstance.

Your actions will follow your beliefs.  If you believe that you are lucky, then your actions will follow that belief.  You may begin to take more chances because you expect a positive outcome as opposed to a negative one.  Changing your belief is the first step to changing your luck.

Be Active

When we encounter a streak of bad luck, we can sometimes feel discouraged and defeated.  At these times, the worst thing that you can do is throw a pity party.  Instead, remain active in whatever you are doing.  By being active, you will begin to see changes in your outlook on the situation.  Also, when you are staying active, you create opportunities for a change in your circumstances.

Lookout for Opportunities

Professor Richard Wiseman author of The Luck Factor set out to examine the role luck plays in the lives of people.  He put an ad in a newspaper asking for volunteers who felt that they were particularly luck or unlucky.   In the experiment, he gave both lucky and unlucky people a newspaper and asked them to count the number of advertisements in the paper.

He secretly put a message that said, “Tell the experimenter you have seen this ad and win $50” half way through the newspaper.  The message took up half of the page and was very easy to see but somehow the unlucky people tended to miss it.

Wiseman concluded that unlucky people tend to be more tense thus unable to see opportunities that were right in front of them.  In order to change you luck you must be able to lookout for opportunities that present themselves every day.  You never know, the opportunity could be staring you in the face.

Experience Something New

When we experience something new, we are allowing ourselves the opportunity to discover hidden advantages.  My first trip to New York City happened because I was in a stagnate stage of my life.  I felt like everything in my life wasn’t going well.  So, I decided to hop a plane and spend a few days in a city that I’ve never been to.  Just making the decision to fly to New York turned my outlook around.

I began to make strides in my professional and personal life soon after that.  The experience left me energized and inspired.  I don’t think I would have been able to bounce back if I didn’t take a chance to experience something new.

How do you go about changing your luck?

Author’s Bio:
Ralph is not only committed to his own personal development, but he is also committed to the personal development of everyone he comes in contact with.  He is the main writer for his blog Potential 2 Success, a site that focuses on result driven personal development.

Post from: Health Money Success

How to Turn Your Luck Around

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Image courtesy frecuencia

Watching TV is one of the world’s favorite leisure activities. Studies have shown that on average, people spend 3 hours daily watching TV shows. This is about 90 hours per month or 1080 hours per year. This is a lot of time that we can spend on other tasks that can help us to move closer to our goals.

I also find that the news on TV is not really helping us to grow and in fact, it can plant negative thoughts in our mind. These negative thoughts can grow and affect the way we think and act. I will elaborate on these points below.

Why I Quit Watching TV Shows

1. Wasting Too Much Time

Spending lots of time watching TV shows can be really counter productive. Imagine spending 3 hours daily doing nothing but watching TV shows that includes re-runs, commercials and negative news. How productive can you be? These 3 hours can be spent on things that truly matters instead. Such as doing tasks that will bring you closer to your goals.

I believe moderation is the key here. If you truly want to accelerate your personal growth, limit your time on the TV and spend those times on tasks that truly matters. Just a reminder, how is your New Year Resolution going?

2. Negative News

Negative news is all around us. Go pick up your daily newspaper and look at the headline or watch the TV news. Most of the time they are announcing negative news about recession, natural disaster, robberies or murders.

Negative news sells and I don’t think they will ever go away. If you walk past a newspaper stand and the headline is “Weather is good and the economy is stable”, most likely you will take a look at it, smile and continue to walk off.

But if the news headline is “Recession is coming and there may be a typhoon around your area”, immediately you pay attention to it and rush off to buy the newspaper to read more about it.

If you are constantly putting fearful and negative thoughts into your mind, it will start to turn negative and fearful. You may than find that you become more of a pessimist and it affect the way you think and act.

I had read articles and books on successful people and the one thing they have in common is that they protect their mind. They refuse to allow negative news that they have no control over to enter their mind.

There isn’t any use for reading negative information but there isn’t anything that you can do about it. You definitely do not want these negative news to affect the way that you look at the world (example: reading about robberies and think that the world is hostile). A strong and positive mindset is one of the best weapons that you can use in the pursuit of success.

3. Wrong Influence

The media have the habit to portray the wrong images to the audience. One great example; they like to portray the rich as bad people and the poor as good people. How many times have you seen a rich person and you think that he must be a jerk? Or you saw a beautiful lady and you think that she must have a flirty personality?

Most probably it is due to watching too many TV shows that show you this type of content and it have conditioned your mind to think this way. If you truly want to be rich and successful, you definitely can’t have the thought “the rich are bad people” in your mind. If you think the rich are bad, how can you possibly want to be rich? You are creating an inner friction in yourself that will slow you down when you try to achieve financial success.

Parting Words

I have not watch any dramas or TV shows for about 2 years. As such, I am able to use this free time to train for my marathon, work on my blog, create websites and study for my school work.

I wonder how much difference will it make to your life if you start to spend lesser time in front of the TV? How much more productive you will be? How much stronger will your mindset become?

As always, discussion in the comments section is welcomed.

Cheers,

Vincent

Post from: Health Money Success

Are You Watching Too Much TV Shows? – Why Watching TV Shows Is Bad For You?

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Recently I find that I am getting more aware of my inner self talk. I’m putting in more effort to listen to what I am saying to myself so that I can discover whether what I am saying is empowering or disempowering myself.

Everyone have this inner self talk going on but not everyone will pay attention to it. But believe me, you will want to know what you are saying to yourself everyday. This is one of the key to unleashing your maximum potential. (If you have not get your free copy of Unleash Your Maximum Potential, you can get it here.)

Inner Chatters

So what do I mean by inner self talk? The inner self talk that is happening in you is a form of communication between you and yourself. It is basically talking to yourself about certain topics and it may be positive or negative. Depending on what you are saying to yourself, your own self talk can empower or disempower you.

If you had read the goals that I had set for myself in this year of 2010, you will know that one of my goals is to complete a marathon by the end of the year. My recent trainings have made me more aware of the inner self talk that is going on in my mind.

Recently I had just hit the 6.2 miles mark and whenever I got tired the inner chatters start to surface. Some examples would be.

• My legs are tired.
• Are you sure you are going to complete a full marathon?
• How much more further do I need to go?
• When am I going to reach my finishing point?
• I feel like my lungs are bursting, maybe it is time to stop?
• I’m really tired, can I just stop?
• 6 miles is tiring enough and I still set a goal to complete a marathon?
• Is publishing my goals on my blog a good decision? Now I can’t back off!

Notice anything? These chatters are not positive at all! They create doubts in my mind and increase the possibility of me stopping.

Your Inner Chatters

What about you? Have you ever take note of how are you communicating with yourself? Are you failing with your diet plan or stuck in the job that you hate because of all the negative inner self talk that is going on in you? Are you empowering yourself or disempowering yourself?

These inner self talks are powerful. Imagine every time when you want to start to lose weight, your inner self talk surfaced and you start telling yourself “This is hard!” or “I’m going to suffer in this diet”. How possible do you think that you are going to complete your diet and really start to lose weight? You may not even start in the first place after your negative inner self talks disempower you.

If you do not notice what you are telling to yourself or your negative self talk, you are allowing it to gobble you up. Most likely you will start to feel miserable and frustrated because you will feel that you are not growing and achieving.

How To Get Rid Of The Negative Self Talk

1. Awareness

If you are pursuing personal growth, you may have heard a lot about increasing your awareness. Because only by being aware, you can than know what is wrong and hence make changes to it.

It is the same in this scenario. If you have not caught your negative self talk yet, you may have to be more aware of it. Be more conscious of your emotions. Negative self talk usually surfaces when you are harboring negative emotions. Catch them at this time and take note of them.

2. Question.

Once you took note of the negative self talk, observe it. Ask yourself how these negative chatters are obstructing you from fulfilling your potential and how much frustration has it cause you in the past.

You have to address how much frustration and pain it causes you so that it can help you to reinforce your determination to change it.

3. Decide and Replace.

There isn’t any delete button in our mind and our negative self talk will not go away just by deciding to get rid of it. You will have to replace your negative self talk with a positive one.

Some examples;

Instead of saying “I think I can’t lose weight”, say “I can lose weight easily with the right strategies”.

Instead of saying “I hate my job”, why not say “I now know what I dislike hence I will make a better decision in my next job hunt.”

You get the picture?

You can also do something to interrupt your negative inner chatter to prevent it from happening. Whenever I am jogging and when my negative self talk starts to surface, I immediately interrupt it by saying “keep moving forward”. I kept repeating this 3 words and it pushes away all the negative thoughts and reinforce on my determination to complete my run. By repeating and focusing on my so call mantra, the negative self talk will not be able to surface.

Parting Words

Your negative self talk can disempower you and stop you from taking the action that you want. However when you turn your self talk into a positive one, you will feel much more empowered and capable to achieve the things that you want to achieve.

You want to keep yourself empowered and stay in a positive state for as much time as possible because these are the time when you can take serious action. So start today by being more aware of your self talk and turn them into positive and empowering ones.

Cheers,
Vincent

P.S: So have you noticed about the positive and negative self talk that you are saying to yourself? I look forward to your comments below.

P.P.S: If you have problems capturing your negative self talk, you can either ask me in the comment section or drop me a mail through the contact page.

Post from: Health Money Success

Do You Make This Mistake? – Learn The Art Of Eliminating Negative Self Talk

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Protect Your Dream

This is a scene taken from The Pursuit Of Happiness. I totally love this movie and I had watched it twice. The story is based on a true story of Chris Gardner, a homeless salesman to a millionaire stock broker. If you have not watched it, I recommend that you go borrow it from your friends or get it at Amazon.

I believe many others have allowed others to kill off their dreams. Many people are fearful of going in the opposite direction of where the crowd is going. Hence, the social pressure can make one to give up their dream just for the sake of going with the crowd.

I believe some of you may have faced friends who had failed in their business and tried to convince that you can’t succeed. Or maybe you have friends who are overweight and think that it is ok to be overweight and convinced you not to make any changes? Maybe there will be people out there who are telling you that blogging is a waste of time?

Are you doing something that is different from others and they are disapproving of it and tell you to stop dreaming?

If so, are you allowing their words to get to you and kill off your dream?

I would love to hear your comments at the comment section below.

Vincent

Post from: Health Money Success

Are You Giving Others Permission To Kill Your Dream?

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