These Mistakes Are Costing You Your Happiness in Life

I want you to ask yourself something: Are you genuinely happy? Take a moment to honestly think about that. Have you genuinely found happiness in life?

If your answer is no, or even maybe, let’s talk about the reasons why you aren’t happy, and the mistakes you might be making unknowingly that are costing you happiness.

1) You Haven’t Transformed Your Inner Critic into Your Inner Coach

The first mistake you might be making that is costing you your happiness is that you haven’t successfully transformed your inner critic into your inner coach.

Research indicates that, on average, people talk to themselves about 50,000 times a day. Unfortunately, most of that self-talk is about yourself, and according to the psychological researchers, it is about 80% negative.

Some examples of this might be:
“I shouldn’t have said that.”
“I don’t like the way my hair looks today.”
“I’ll never lose weight.”
“I can never seem to get organized.”

… and the list goes on.

We know from this research that these thoughts have a powerful effect on us. Our negative thoughts actually control our behavior.

The first thing you have to do if you want to find happiness in life, is put a muzzle on that inner critic and transform it into an encouraging, loving, and positive inner coach.

One of the most powerful exercises for retraining your inner critic is to teach it to tell you the total truth. Just like your parents disciplined you for your own good, your inner critic really has your best interests in mind when it is criticizing you. It wants you to get the benefit of the better behavior. The problem is that it tells you only part of the truth.

Whenever you hear a part of you judging yourself, simply reply,

“Thank you for caring. What is your fear? What specifically do you want me to do? How will this serve me? and Thank you.”

Do not let the seeming simplicity of this technique fool you. It is very powerful if you use it.

2) You’re Letting Your Limiting Beliefs Control You

Another mistake you might unknowingly be making and therefore sabotaging your own happiness is allowing yourself to be controlled by your limiting beliefs.

Many of us have beliefs that limit our success -- whether they are beliefs about our own capabilities, beliefs about what it takes to succeed, or even beliefs about how we should relate with other people.

Moving beyond your limiting beliefs is a critical step toward becoming happier and more successful.
Learn How to Find Happiness in Life in 4 Steps

To do this, you must first believe that you are capable of accomplishing your goals and that you are capable of being happy.

Here is a simple but powerful four-step process you can use to transform any limiting belief into an empowering belief:

Step 1: Identify a limiting belief that you want to change.

Step 2: Determine how that belief limits you.

Step 3: Decide how you would rather be, act, or feel. And…

Step 4: Create a turnaround statement that affirms or gives you permission to be, act, or feel this new way.

For example, a negative belief might be: “If I express my true feelings, people will think I’m weak and take advantage of me.”

The turnaround belief would then be:

“The more I express my true feelings, the more people love, respect, and support me.”

Once you have created a new belief, you will need to implant it into your subconscious mind through constant repetition for 2 or 3 minutes several times a day for a minimum of 30 days.

In conclusion, keeping these 2 possible mistakes in mind (listening to your inner critic without retraining it to be your inner coach and letting yourself be controlled by your unconscious limiting beliefs). Make a list of any beliefs that might be limiting you and follow the steps outlined above.

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How to Improve Your Mood Right Now: 3 Simple Habits

I often write about how a good start to your day often leads to having a good day in general.

A social, an energetic or a productive start sets the context for your day.

But on some days you may not get a good start for some reason.

Maybe you slept badly. Or the maybe grey skies and cold summer rain is dragging your energy down.

Or you might have lost that positive momentum during a hard first part of the day and after lunch you feel tired, low or lost in a somewhat sad or uninspired funk.

What to do then? Is that day lost and should you just aim for a better day tomorrow?

Well, today is not over yet.

Maybe you can still make something good out it.

Here’s how I do that by breaking the negative mood and getting a new start.

1. Appreciate what you have.

The simplest of my most commonly used pick-me-ups.

I take about 2 minutes and sit in silence.

I tell myself: OK, I might not feel so good right now, but what can I be grateful for and appreciate in my life?

I usually come up with one simple thing like:
My tasty food.
My health.
That I have a roof.

That one thing opens up my mind. It redirects my thoughts from the negativity.

Then I build upon that one thing. I make mental jumps from the roof, to the warmth in our home, to the fluffy cat sitting beside me on the sofa, to that I can work from home as the rain pours outside.

I make those small mental leaps by just moving my attention around in the room I am in. Like skipping from stone to stone over a stream. And I take the time to slowly appreciate all those things.

This changes my mood to a happier, warmer and more open one.

2. Act as you would like to feel.

Emotions work backwards too. So if I want to become more positive or enthusiastic then I act in the manner of a person who is positive or enthusiastic.

I might not feel like it. But I do it as best as I can anyway. I may for example:
Think of the task I have in front of me as something exciting and fun.
Answer some emails or talk to someone in a positive and enthusiastic manner.
Assume rapport if I feel unmotivated, negative or nervous before some kind of meeting (assuming rapport is to I think to myself that I am meeting one of my best friends just before the meeting and that puts me in the right mood and headspace).

3. Think for a minute and give someone a genuine compliment.

Here’s a fun one I use quite often and that will not only lift my own mood.

Spend one minute coming up with something you really and genuinely appreciate about someone in your life that is in the same room as you at some point during the day. Then tell him or her the genuine compliment you have come up with.

She or he will be happy. You’ll feel good about yourself and get positive feelings too from the now smiling, happy and complimented person. And so the mood for the both of you is changed for the better.

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9 Methods Of Benefiting From Criticism

Would you rather listen to someone tell you that you have beautiful eyes or that you're a terrible dancer? Compliments are easy to take. Criticism isn't quite as easy to take in. But criticism can be vital to your long-lasting success. Criticism is nothing more than advice in disguise.

You can decide to take advantage of it or ignore it. Nonetheless, not all criticism is accurate, well-intended, or beneficial.

Obtain criticism and use it to your benefit:

1. Adjust your viewpoint. We naturally love to listen to compliments as well as shy away from criticism. While compliments feel great, they do not accomplish much else. Objection can hurt, yet can inevitably be incredibly helpful. Discover how to value objection and criticism. You could even consider seeking objection as a tool for finding out how you can improve, and also as a useful tool for self-development.

2. Identify if the criticism is useful or harmful. Damaging objection can be overlooked. The intent of the person giving destructive criticism, is to create damage and harm. Constructive criticism has the possibility to be helpful. Consider the source and also the scenario prior to listening to the objective of the criticizer.

3. Swallow your pride. No one appreciates becoming aware of their imperfections or errors. Nevertheless, constructive criticism can be a valuable gift. Possibly you're discovering something that would certainly have taken years to determine by yourself. Leave your vanity at the door and also listen. No person is perfect.

4. Take your time. There's a propensity to react quickly as well as adversely to objection and criticism. You may deserve to be distressed, but then again, you might not.

Take the time to think of it before responding. If possible, sleep on it or even take the weekend to ponder it.

5. Don't be so hard on yourself. Simply because you may have done something the wrong way does not indicate you're less beneficial as a person. Go easy on yourself. Managing criticism and objection well is one method to reveal on your own that you truly do stand out from the crowd.

Few individuals can take criticism well. You'll have a big advantage over others if you can.

6. Take into consideration the validity. When criticism comes from the appropriate resource, it's most likely to be helpful and true. Be objective as well as determine if there is fact to the criticism. Often, individuals are running from misconceptions. Not all criticism is valid. It's up to you to figure out if the objection has any worth.

7. Include the info into your life. Now you recognize that you can be impatient, inexpensive, remote, or that you're a bad driver. Make a plan to resolve this concern if it is important to you. Remember that if a relied on source wanted to bring it up, it might be crucial. Provide it with the focus it deserves.

8. Decide that you're going to do better next time. You'll have plenty of chances to put your new understanding to the test. Bide your time until that chance shows up. This perspective can do marvels for your self-worth and also give you a sense of control over your life. Simply keep trying to improve. There's always tomorrow to try again.

9. Be grateful. It's hard to offer positive criticism to a friend, employee, or member of the family. Be thankful that somebody wanted to do that for you.

You can choose to snap or decide to be grateful when criticism comes your way. Some criticism is only meant to be upsetting and ought to be neglected. Constructive criticism from a trusted source can be a fantastic learning opportunity. Think about whether the objection is accurate as well as legitimate prior to considering it.

Be grateful for the constructive criticism you receive. It wasn't easy on the person providing it.

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The Effects of Negative Thinking

How many negative thoughts do you think you have in a day? It is estimated that most people think about 50,000 negative thoughts each day. This works out to about 80% of our total thoughts, so we don't really leave much room for positive thinking.

These negative thoughts can have a huge effect on how we life our lives. The way we think guides us towards failure or success, happiness or unhappiness and gives us the ability to make good or bad decisions. If we see life from a negative perspective, we are likely to struggle and never expect anything good to happen to us.

When we have negative thoughts, we have a choice as to what we can do. We can:

• dwell on them and allow them to make us miserable
• ignore them and hope they won't come back again
• change them into positive thoughts and create a new habit of positive thinking

Practice focusing on your thoughts. Be consciously aware of what you are thinking and challenge any negative thoughts. Don't allow yourself to be held captive by your thinking. Take control and change anything negative into something positive. All it takes is practice until it becomes a habit, a good one.

Do you think that something bad is going to happen to you? If you focus on this thought, something bad might just happen to you, especially since you are expecting it. Try thinking about some good things that could happen and you might just get a surprise.

When you look for the negatives in life, you will always find them. This world is full of negativity. However, the same thing happens when you look for the positives in life. You usually find what you are looking for. So focus on the positives in your life and start enjoying your life.

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Why You Should Start A Passion Project

Is there something you yearn to do? Maybe you haven't told anyone... but still, you keep thinking about it.

Maybe you dream of publishing a graphic novel

or taking the world of knitting by storm with bespoke mittens.

Maybe you are fascinated by origami

or you've always wanted to learn Italian.

But so far you haven't pursued it because it doesn't seem practical. Or responsible. You've got a list of things to do and if it's not on the list, it's not important. Who has time to be frivolous?

I invite you to start a passion project.

A passion project is a trendy name for doing something that excites and inspires you. You do it for your own satisfaction, not for anybody else's. It piques your curiosity and spurs your energy. It doesn't need a purpose.

If you're already thinking "I don't have time for that", then consider this: passion projects are about fostering your well-being by doing something that lights you up.

Passion projects are about freedom too, because there are no rules about what a passion project should be.

The way to begin finding your passion is simple: be curious. Pay attention to what interests you. Your project is something you are drawn to, not something you think your way to. That's why it's a passion project - it elicits a strong emotion. It makes you feel like "Oooh! Yes, THAT!"

If you find yourself describing it with language like "implementing synergistically scalable benefits" you are probably heading in the direction of a resumé-padding project, not a passion project. Check in with your curiosity again.

Are you still resisting your project? Don't judge or censor your ideas with criticisms like "that's silly" or "I can't do that" or "what will people think".It's not about the results, it's about creative action on your terms.

You get to devote as much time and energy to it as you want. Remember, the main benefit of doing a passion project is this: it feels good. It nourishes your spirit. Do not underestimate the power of generating positive feelings - this is what happiness is made of.

A passion project may provide other benefits like learning new skills, meeting new people, contributing to a current career or developing a new one. These bonuses are like icing on the cake. But even if they don't happen, the inspiration, sense of satisfaction and meaning the project provides will carry over into other areas of your life in beneficial ways.

University of Pennsylvania professor Adam Grant writes about pursuing creative interests: "Relative to typical scientists, Nobel Prize winners are 22 times more likely to perform as actors, dancers or magicians; 12 times more likely to write poetry, plays or novels; seven times more likely to dabble in arts and crafts; and twice as likely to play an instrument or compose music."

Play with your curiosity and let yourself explore something new. You never know where your "Oooh! Yes, THAT!" will take you.

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Letting Go of the Fear of the Future

In the future, there is a true hope. In the future, there is a reflection of the abundance and gratitude of today.

Letting go of the fear of the future means, in general, letting go of most of your fears.

Just think about it: 99% of all of our worries and fears are connected only and exclusively with thoughts about the future:

·        What will tomorrow bring us?

·        What if it were something highly unpredictable, or even painful?

·        Will I be able to handle it?

·        Am I ready for that?

·        How will I protect my family?

·        How will I deal with that?

But, what happens when we let go of all these fears?

What happens when we surrender ourselves to the uncertainty of the future, letting ourselves experience all the feelings that lie behind, and letting them simply go, once and forever?

Can we even do that?

Can Letting Go take us so far?

After several Letting Go meditations related to the uncertainty of the future, some interesting revelations came to me when all the negative emotions behind these fears were surrendered, released, and let go.

The most surprising one was the realization that there is not such a thing as a future.

Any moment of our life we live at is defined by being in a state of a clear presence. We simply can't live in the past or future; we can only live in the present.

So, all we can really be fearful of, is just our presence, as this is the only state that we are actually experiencing. Yes, we can also think of extensions, multiplication or variations of the presence, which are often falsely altered with the word "future", but it is still just another form of the presence.

Now, this is great news.

Why?

Because the good thing about the presence is, that we can shape it and define it exactly as we want to - in any given moment. We can instantly decide if we want to be joyful or fearful right now, if we want to be exuberant or impoverished. We have the power of the full choice about the presence, about the actual, instant moment.

But, because the future is, in fact, just an extension or multiplication (or variation) of the presence, by shaping our presence, we can then immediately shape our future as well:

If we feel true hope today, we already create it for our future too.

If we feel abundance and gratitude today, we already create it for our future as well.

I admit that this concept can be a bit difficult to understand for most of you right now. However, after several letting go of these future related issues, you will start seeing it clearer.. This concept needs to be fully experienced (by letting go of the barriers for this experience) first, in order to be able to absolutely understand it, accept it and take great advantages of it.

So here is letting go process of the fear of the future:

1. In a quiet place, close your eyes and think of any of your recent fears about the future.

2. Start noticing the feelings (as they will start coming up) behind your thoughts.

3. Don't try to label these feelings in any way, rationalize or analyze them. Just let them come out and express themselves.

4. Start surrendering yourself to these feelings slowly, let them express themselves fully all over your body (or any other part where you feel them most intensively). Don't push them back, don't block them or act on them either. Just let them be in their natural way and instead, be an independent observer of them, as if they weren't even yours.

5. After a while, make a decision about letting them go once and forever, and then let them actually go and disappear.

The process above will probably need to be, in the case of many people, repeated during the following days, or even weeks, to start experiencing the new, clear perception of the concept of the future (anxiety about the future is in general quite a strong issue) and to start experiencing how worries about the future begin to vanish.

Remember that, with Letting Go, we can't control the moment of the revelation. All we can do is to let go and then let the revelation come to us in the moment it is ready to come. I can guarantee you, that sooner or later it will come, if we let go and surrender ourselves properly. There is no other way.By letting go and surrendering ourselves, we clear the path ahead of us; we clear the vision, and we only need to wait for our own conscious and unconscious mind to adjust to this new reality. Paradoxically, our own brain is quite often the weakest link in our growth!

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Your greatest fear is your biggest enemy

Let me tell you right now that fear will not disappear. Fear is part of life. To fear is to be human, and fear is a valuable auto-response in certain life situations.

It’s just that we don’t handle it very well in non threatening life scenarios.

The wealthy have developed courage de-risking strategies and have all worked on ways to manage their fear.

The only fear you should fear is fear itself.

I have personally struggled with this for most of my life and have because of this done many workshops and courses on fear and how to manage it. So here is what I learned about fear.

One of the main ways to deal with fear is to expose yourself to it in a controlled environment. Start small, so you don’t get consumed by fear or you don’t fail too big and too fast.

But you’ve got to do it, right away. Just like an inoculating injection is actually a little bit of the virus, you’ve got to experience the exact fear full on to beat it. There is no other way around it, but people spend their whole lives trying to find it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson says: ‘do the thing you fear, and the death of fear is certain’. That is true in many cases, as once you have faced your fear, and found the fear unfounded, how can you fear it again?

You’ve seen the proof and the reality and you realised all the fear was imagined in your head.

Our unconscious mind creates all kinds of negative scenarios in an attempt to protect us, but remember that its job is to protect you and keep you safe, not to help you reach Wealth and fulfilment.

Our fears have not evolved as fast as the world we live in, so we fear small things like public speaking and asking someone out on a date as much as we do severe heights or death (which we really should fear).

I’ve walked multiple times over glowing coals, have broken arrows with my throat and done all kinds of things to build references in my memory that I can do things that my mind doesn’t believe I can.

And man you feel great when you beat it!

But all you are beating is the imagined reality in your head that never happens that way anyway..

One of the best definitions I ever heard is based on the astonishing fact that fear and excitement are biochemically the same.

So how come that we love one and want to avoid the other?

It appears that with excitement we anticipate a pleasurable outcome, with fear we anticipate future pain. So nothing actually yet happened, but it’s the anticipation that creates the emotion.

Wealthy and successful people have learned to manage this self-talk, helped by references of past success or their peers and mentors.

They have learned a better response mechanism, to feel the fear and to go for it. They know you can’t hide from it because it will sabotage your Wealth.

They know what is on the other side of fear; everything they want, and that they have 2 easy choices: don’t do it and forever regret it, keep telling yourself stories as to why you never did it; or do it and collect the money, honey.

So what are you going to do my friend?

Let the fear keep you small, block your progress and limit your achievement?

Or

Just decide. Do something. Anything?

Look for the truth. Look for the facts. (Fear feeds on lies)

What’s the worst that can happen? The biggest way to reduce risk is increasing your knowledge. (Fear feeds on the unknown)

‘Get perfect later.’ (Fear feeds on perfectionism)

Don’t wait to run the marathon. Take the first step today. (Fear feeds on waiting for the ‘right time’)

“Fears are educated into us and can, if we wish, be educated out.”

So “educate them out”. Beginning today. You’re smart. A go-getter. A person of excellence–and vision

Inspire others by your bigness. Dream big but start small. Act now. Don’t stop. Change the world

We are with you every step of the way.

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