This understanding came as I began to open up more to others. It was really a part of my goal of opening myself up to others, to allow them to see the real me. In doing this, I had to become more engaged with them as I spoke to them, related to them. To do this, I had to understand who and what they were.

This may all sound rather trivial to you, but it was a revelation to me. As I got to know others for who and what they were, I had to deal with my own preconceived notions. I would see someone and immediately form an opinion as to who they were and what their personality was. I was seldom right, at least not to the point I thought I would be.

As I learned to accept myself and open myself to others, I had to learn to accept them, not for who I thought they were, but who they really were. Some people were much nicer than I thought and some not as nice. Some were as open and cultured as I thought, some, not so much.

The thing about this is, as I lowered my own defenses, I began to see people for who they truly were. I found that I enjoyed who they really were when I no longer laid my crap on them. Since I tend to be critical, I expected people to be less. When I allowed them to be who they really were, I was delighted to find that they were much better than my mind told me. I found the same thing about me.

As I allowed myself to be more open, less caring about whether or not someone accepted me or not, I liked myself a lot more. Since I seemed less uptight and defensive, they liked me more. A vicious circle of people liking people made its way into my mind. Could this actually be how we are supposed to act? We learn to like ourselves and others for who they are! What a concept. If we stopped all the rhetoric about race, gender, religion, education, and so on, we might actually all get along. At least until the beer runs out!

Self Determination

Do you have self determination? You may be asking yourself what determination even is. The dictionary defines determination as “the act of coming to a decision or of fixing or settling a purpose.” Do you have that?

Do you know what you want?

What is it you want most in life? What are you doing toward achieving that goal? What have you done in the past and what are you planning to do in the near future; the distant future?

I have written enough recently about finding your purpose or your goals. What I want to write about now is having the determination to carry through with whatever it is you have decided you want to do.

Many times people do know what they want, but they never do anything toward achieving it. Oh, they might do a few half hearted things that really amount to nothing, but they do nothing concrete about it.

What are your fears?

There are many reasons why. Some are afraid that if they try, they will fail and some are afraid that if they try they might succeed. Some are afraid that if they try, others will find out about it and ridicule them. Do any of those reasons sound familiar to you?

Here is the biggest one, in my opinion. I have no statistics to back this up, it is purely my thoughts. I believe that most people never try because, for whatever reason, they don’t believe they can do it. How about that?

You must believe in yourself!

You cannot have determination if you have no belief in yourself. You must believe that what you want can come to reality or at least close or you will never have the determination to get through the hard times, the ridicule that might come and the self doubt.

What is your determination like? Do you have the determination to believe in yourself enough to do something wonderful in your life? Do you have the sort of faith in yourself that will allow you to live at least a few of your dreams?

Here’s to You!

P.S. Here is a book that is rated highly for those who want to improve their lives and perhaps get a little self determination. I haven’t read it yet, but it is definitely on my list to read! It is worth a look!

Overcoming Fear

Overcoming fear; that’s a tall order for many of us. We develop fears when we are children and carry them with us all through our lives. However, as we work to improve our lives, overcoming fear is not only a good thing, it is an essential thing.

There has been a lot of talk over the last few years about the law of attraction. The law basically states that we attract into our lives what we think about and believe. Now I want to say right here and now that, for the most part, I believe in the law of attraction. Where I differ from some is that I do not believe that we attract things out of thin air, out of the cosmos. I believe that we “attract” things by our actions. We think about success, we act toward success, we attract success. We manifest the attraction.

It is said that positive thoughts are stronger than negative ones and that may well be true. Once you have control of your thought processes, the positive will always win out over the negative. First you have to have control.

I said that we develop most of our fears when we are children and that is true. Since we develop them early, they have a strong hold on the way we think. Since we attract what we think about, this means that we attract negative things.

How does fear really attract negative stuff?

Now I have always heard this and understood it to mean that we attract negative stuff because we fear the positive. For instance, we fear success because we subconsciously believe that we are unable to handle success or we are undeserving of success. Therefore, we attract failure. Perhaps we fear having money because we think we can’t handle it so we attract poverty.

This is not correct! We attract the negative because we fear that very thing! If we fear poverty, not having enough money to pay the bills, barely scraping by, that’s what we think about. Since we think about it, we attract it. If we fear having a heart attack, we think about it obsessively and drive ourselves to having a heart attack.

It may seem like a small difference, but really it is quite large. I used to think that I feared success and that was why I failed at things. The problem was when I really thought about it, I didn’t feel like I feared success; I wanted it! Then I understood that what I feared was failure, and since the fear caused me to think about it, I acted like a failure and I failed. I feared being in poor health and since I thought about it, I didn’t exercise, because of my poor health and I attracted it.

What to do???

Write down the things in your life that you don’t like. What are the things that you would like to change? Now, be honest with your self and see if you are afraid of those things. I would guess that you will find some fear behind each of the things about your life you dislike. Learn to overcome the fear and you will improve your life!

Here’s to You!

adventure

One of the reasons we seek self improvement is that our life is not what we want it to be. Instead of our life being a series of wild adventures, living life to the fullest, it is boring at best and one crisis after another at worst.

King of the hill.

I live on a hill. It’s great in the summer. There is always a breeze. In the winter, here in upstate NY, it can be nasty. When there is snow, like today and the plows haven’t been by, and my tires need replacing, it can be tough getting up the hill.

Here is where having a positive attitude makes all the difference in the world. As my car slowly crawled up the hill there were a couple of times that it almost stopped. I thought about backing down the hill and walking up. I know if I had done that, I would have been angry as I walked up the hill. I would have complained about the hill, the snow and how I didn’t know how I would get my car back up to my house.

Instead, I remembered to look at it like an adventure. I made a game out of seeing if I could keep the car moving, if only and inch or two. I zigzagged, I used different gears, I tried letting off the gas and then slowly giving it more. It was a game to see how far I could get. The car now sits in my driveway and I feel like I’m king of the mountain instead of a slave to it.

Where’s your sense of adventure?

As you work at self improvement, try to see life’s ups and downs and opportunities for adventure. I recently heard someone say that there is no avoiding crisis. We are either moving out of crisis, resting from a crisis, or moving into a crisis. Life has a way of happening.

Why let it get to you? I did this for years and I can tell you it never did me any good. Look at is as an adventure. We watch Indiana Jones run through the jungle trying to escape his enemies and think it would be great to have and adventure and then crumble when it snows, or our boss yells at us.

Let the boss incident motivate you to defeat that evil foe by unexpectedly doing the job in a fast and excellent manner. Let the disaster that has befallen you at home be the adventure that brings out the dare-devil or genius in you.

How do you find your sense of adventure?

There is a book that I recommend that helps with this. I will admit that I have not completely read it through, but what I have is good! It is rated quite high on Amazon. The book is called The Tao of Motivation: Inspire Yourself and Others. Check it out and see if this would help you find that sense of adventure in your life (affiliate link). It might be the best $15.00 you ever spent on yourself.

If you never find that sense of your life being a series of wild adventures, will you be doomed to a life of boring mediocrity? Self Improvement means stepping out of your comfort zone enough to experience. I suggest you do!

Here’s to You!

P.S. Have you ever wondered about your personal personality type? Watch for your chance to find out coming here soon!

What sort of posts do you want? Do you want “how to” posts or would you prefer something else? The “how to” posts are probably most useful, but they tend to be a little dry.

What sort of products or programs would you like to see? Most of the products that I offer are affiliate links to folks like Amazon. I am still working on offering my own product, but it is still in the works hopefully the middle of January

I am going to start a monthly podcast. I want to interview people who have turned their lives around and become somewhat successful. The reason is to give you stories of real people telling how they made the change. Are there people you would like to hear interviewed or maybe you would even like to be interviewed.

Again, this site will only be helpful if it is something that you want and need. It doesn’t matter what I think, what’s important is you.

Please comment or email me with your suggestions. I can’t do this without your input. Well, I can, but then it would just be my gibberish and may not help you in the least.

Here’s to You!

A New You

In just a few days, we will be in a new year, a new decade. As we look to the new year, why not look forward to who and what we want to be. Self improvement is all about becoming who we want to be. Why not have a new life in the new year?

You may be thinking that having a new life sounds great but there is no way that things are going to be different. You know, with an attitude like that you are absolutely right. Nothing will be different because you don’t expect them to be. We create our realities and the way we think determines our reality.

You also may be thinking that improving your life, having a new you sounds like a dream come true, but you have no idea how to get there. You decide; that’s how you get there. What do I mean? I mean that you decide that things will be different, you will be different and then refuse to let go of that decision.

I have said many times that life doesn’t change in an instant; it’s a process. That’s true, but the decision to change comes in a heartbeat. You need only to make the decision to change and you have taken the first step in the process. Often you need a defining moment to come to the point of making this decision, but the decision has to be made.

In my life I learned that it is easy to make the decision, but hard to stick to it. It takes a certain mind set. Old habits die hard. We learn to live using our defense mechanisms and attention getting devices. Our ego doesn’t want to give those things up. It knows how to deal with life using then and doesn’t want to go into unknown territory.

Talk to your inner self, your ego, and tell it that things are going to change. Tell it that is has to learn to deal with life in a new way, a way that is healthier and happier. Let your inner self know that you are taking control. When old ways of thinking try to take hold, just tell that inner self that you no longer accept that way of thinking and put it away.

This new year promises to be an amazing one. I am so excited about it I can hardly stand it! Why not greet this new year with a new you. Decide today that this year will be your year. This will be the year that you are successful at whatever it is you want. This is your year!

Here’s to You!

Self Coaching

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