If You're Afraid of Failure, You Need to Read This

Why are we so afraid of failure? I mean, I know I've held myself back on account of fear more times than I'd like to admit. But what am I so afraid of? What is the worst thing that can happen if I step out and try something? Take a risk? Begin an adventure?

I don't really like fear. The very first poem I wrote was when I was 13. I wrote it, submitted to the local newspaper in hopes of getting it published, and lo and behold, it was. The poem was titled "What is Fear?" I cannot remember the words, but I generally feared a lot of things back then- even failure.

Fear stifles. It cripples and paralyzes.

But the truth is that "failure" is a noun and it's subjective. When I realized this, I began to see things differently. Why can Mike, the average guy down the street, jump the hurdles of so-called "failure", continuing on with great faith and joy in his endeavors? While Jim, the Harvard grad, sit and cry his eyes out when his business only lasts one year, resolving never to try that again?

Did both fail? Well, yes, if we're defining failure in terms of "things not going as planned". But how can one guy be cool with it, dust himself off, and get back up and try again and the other guy can't?

They view failure differently. We want to look at things when they don't go as planned as "learning opportunities".

Listen, if you get this, it will change your life.

Do you know that the writer, Agatha Christie, received 500 rejections in her life trying to get books published? She could have sunk her head in shame, feeling like a failure, but she didn't. She determined to NOT let a rejection (or hurdles in general) keep her down. She learned from her setbacks and kept her hand to the plow. You know what? She sold a freakin' lot of books!

We see the successful people. Or the happy people. Or the peaceful people. We want what they have, but are we willing to keep the momentum moving forward even when trials come? Even when failures come? Even when all your buddies are laughing at you, mocking you for pursuing your passion?

You're not a failure. There's no right or wrong in the grand scheme of things. Whether it takes you one year to hit your mark or five years, it's alright! Just keep on getting up and doing what you know to do in order to get what you want. If you don't know what to do, ask for some help! There's someone who has done what you want to do. There's probably a lot of people! Get on the phone and reach out. Send an email- whatever you have to do to get the low down.

We're in this together. Life, I mean.

What do you want? Have you given up on account of a perceived failure?

Commit with me to take the word "failure" out of our vocabulary!

Let's create a good life, enjoying the journey all along the way.

 Source: 

The Power of Thankfulness: 5 Essential Tips

“I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.”
G.K. Chesterton

“Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.”
Robert Brault

“Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

This week many of my readers will celebrate Thanksgiving.

So I thought it would be a good time to share a handful of my favorite tips for making thankfulness a daily part of life.

Because being thankful for what you have is one of the simplest and easiest ways to lift your mood. To give your motivation a jolt. And to live a happier life.

No matter who you are or where you live in the world.



1. Pause and look around yourself.

A simple first step to being more thankful is to pause during your day and ask yourself these two questions:
What are 3 things I can be thankful for in my life today?
Who are 3 people I can be thankful to have in my life and why?

If you don’t come up with 3 people and 3 things each day then that is OK. One thing or person is great too.

But if you can, try to not repeat yourself too often. Instead, think of more people and things to be grateful for to, day by day, expand your thankful view of your world.

2. Express your thankfulness.

Don’t stop at just coming up with people for whom you are grateful to have in your life.

Take a few seconds to tell them about it. This will make their lives happier. And as their faces light up with a smile you’ll feel happier too.

Now, that gratitude could just be a small sentence. But it can have a big impact on someone’s day, week or even life.

So be sure to make the small effort to express it.

3. Look towards yourself too.

It is not only things that are important. Or other people.

You are important and valuable too.

So appreciate that.

Ask yourself:

What are 3 things I can be thankful for about myself?

It could be that you were a good sister during a crisis last week. It could be that you finally got done with that boring or difficult task you had been procrastinating on.

Your self-gratitude does not have to be all about achievements. You can simply be thankful for your good sense of humor. Or the help you give your friends and family by being a good listener from time to time.

And the thankfulness doesn’t have to be about big things either. It could simply be about the fact that you floss for a couple of minutes in the morning.

4. Be thankful for the things you may take for granted.

The things we get very used to having can become things we take for granted. But they are not things everyone in the world has access to.

A few such things that I like to reflect upon and feel very thankful for having are:
A roof over my head and a warm home.
Plenty of drinkable water.
That I don’t have to go hungry.
Being able to enjoy the small and free pleasures of life.
Access to the internet so that I can learn and connect with people.

I have found that being grateful for things like these are especially helpful to zoom out and to put my situation in perspective when I am going through a tough time in life.

5. Start or end your day with thankfulness.

To make thankfulness into a habit that sticks find a regular time for it in your day.

For example, you can start your day in a good way by finding 3 things to be grateful for about yourself over breakfast.

Or you can take a few minutes in the evening, just before going to bed, to use a journal to write down 3 things you are grateful for about your day.

Try a tiny time commitment like one of these and see what impact it has on your life.

Plus-You Can Now Join Our FREE Mastering Success Facebook Community at www.masteringsuccess.group

Source

Go Easy on Yourself: 4 Tips to Help You Do What Matters in a Self-Kind Way

“You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.”
Buddha

“People throw away what they could have by insisting on perfection, which they cannot have, and looking for it where they will never find it.”
Edith Schaeffer

One common way to get things done, to achieve and to motivate yourself is to be kind of hard on yourself.

To set very high standards for yourself that you want to stick to every time.

Now, this way of going about things can indeed help you to accomplish big things in your life and to get things done every week.

But it comes at a price.

Three negative things about taking this position towards yourself are:
You tear your self-esteem down. As you achieve things you tend to tear down your own self-esteem at the same time. So you feel less and less like you deserve success. And frustration and being angry can become more and more common as you fail to reach those very high standards.
You suck the fun and excitement out of things. A hard or harsh attitude towards yourself has a tendency to make things that used to be fun and exciting less and less so. This attitude does instead over time turn those things into just work that you may start to dread because you fear failure or not meeting your high standards.
You’ll perform worse and worse. As your self-esteem goes down you’ll feel less motivated to tackle the tasks and projects in your life. As the fun and excitement goes out of many of the things you do procrastination tends to become more and more common. Plus, the work you put in becomes less energetic and focused and so the results aren’t that good anymore either.

I used to take the harder and harsher path. It did help in some ways. But it wasn’t worth it.

So what can you do if you feel that you are maybe too hard on yourself or you beat yourself up quite often?

Here are 4 tips that helped me to become kinder towards myself, to get more of the most important things done and to feel better about myself and my life.

1. Remind yourself of the negative effects of this attitude.

To just remind yourself of how damaging being hard on yourself has been is in my experience a very effective way to replace the old habit with going easier on yourself.

2. Go for more human and smarter standards for yourself.

Movies, books and the people around you may push standards on you that are just pure fantasy or some kind of perfect dream.

But life is life, not a fantasy or dream and to set such extremely high standards that no one can live up to just leads to what you may see as failure and disappointment in yourself and in your life.

Instead, relax a bit and accept that everything and everyone has flaws and things don’t always go as planned.

Accept that you can still improve things but they will never be perfect.

And realize that you won’t be rejected if things or you aren’t perfect. At least not by reasonably well-balanced human beings, like most people actually are in reality.

3. Focus on the positive and helpful feedback in setbacks.

It is very common to be hard on yourself when you make a mistake or fail.

But it is also a very destructive habit because it can magnify one such event into something that makes you feel depressed for weeks or makes you quit altogether.

So when you are hard on yourself for a failure or mistake then relax a bit and go a bit easier on yourself. Remind yourself of why this is a much better strategy to keep the motivation and self-esteem up.

And ask yourself:
What is one thing I can I learn from this situation?
How can I use what I learn from this to not make the same mistake again and to move forward in a smarter way?

4. Celebrate your small steps of progress.

If you are in the habit of only celebrating when you reach a big milestone or a perfect moment or two then you may lose your motivation and feel like you are never happy or arriving where you want to be.

So make a habit of celebrating your small daily and weekly successes too.

This will help you to keep the soul-tiring monotony away and help you to stay enthusiastic instead of getting more and more unmotivated until you may even consider quitting halfway to that big milestone.

Source

7 Important Things Nobody Tells You About Motivation

Do you have 50 great ideas a day? New business plans? New blogs to start? New books to write? New courses to create? New speeches to give? New inventions to launch?

You may even start on some of these projects but lose motivation very quickly. It seems like ideas come up and fly away without you taking action on them. You’re wondering why some people can start on projects and keep pushing forward while you tend to lose interest after you start something.

Well, here’s the thing. Motivation isn’t something you’re born with. It’s not that some people are naturally motivated and others aren’t motivated at all. The big secret is that motivation can be cultivated which means that you too can do something to improve the level of motivation in your life. When you feel like scrapping the idea because you’ve lost interest, have a look at your motivation tank.

Here are 7 unspoken rules of motivation that will help you move forward to achieving your dreams:

1. Starting small helps you get motivated

If you love to bite off more than you can chew, take note of this principle. If you go after big tasks and giant goals, without breaking them down, you won’t feel very motivated. Instead of going for the kill every day, take small steps to achieving your life goals. Small steps means taking the smallest of steps. What is the very smallest action step you can break down? Take that step today. Buy the domain name. Write your first hundred words. Get the running shoes out of the closet.

2. Having a reason “why” helps you stay motivated

This is the biggest reason you don’t have the mojo to keep going. You start something but then suddenly feel like you have no reason to pursue it. If you’re going to go after something, get super clear on why this is important to your life. Come up with a list of reasons on why the dream is important or why the goal matters.  Keep this list at the top of your mind and look at it every day. Make sure you have emotional, psychological and purpose-filled reasons to go after whatever it is you want.

“A dream doesn’t become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work.” – Colin Powell

3. Your vision of what’s possible helps you keep going

So often, we start and stop because we can’t see the end product. We can’t see what the promise land looks like. If you want to stay motivated, you have to keep the vision of what’s possible in front of you. Spend a couple minutes envisioning achieving your goal or dream. What does that feel like? How do you view yourself after you’ve achieved it? Taste the sweetness of having done what you’re setting out to do.

4. Habits are the fuel for motivation

Yes, you should take small steps but not occasionally and not when you feel like it. The way to make sure you remain motivated, especially in the beginning, is to turn your dreams into actionable steps that you do consistently. Write for five minutes a day. Run for five minutes a day. Work on your business plan for five minutes a day. It’s not how long you do something as  much as how consistently you do something. Use habits to keep you moving forward.  

5. Acknowledging your progress is critical

You may move ahead but feel more behind. When you don’t feel like you’re progressing forward, you begin to feel like you’ve lost. The way to help you stay motivated is to regularly remind yourself of how far you’ve come along. To do that, acknowledge your progress. Track your progress and celebrate milestones. Look back and show yourself how much farther along you are.

6. Your inner circle impacts your motivation

If you don’t think your friends, mentor and inner circle matters, you’re wrong. You’re going to do what your circle of influence does. If your inner circle is lazing around and slacking , you’re going to do the same. If you hang around go-getters who are going after their dreams, you’re going to do so likewise. The people around you can be the sun that helps you flourish or the weeds that will cripple your progress. Add more sun in your life and cut the weeds out. Be conscious and aware of who you’re surrounding yourself with because they have a direct effect on your motivation.

“Surround yourself with the dreamers and the doers, the believers and thinkers, but most of all, surround yourself with those who see the greatness within you, even when you don’t see it yourself.” – Edmund Lee

7. Failure can unleash your motivation

You might feel it’s over when you fail but that’s hardly the case. All success stories, world-changers and come-back stories share one thing in common, failure. All the greats have failed. You have to use the lessons of failure as an opportunity to spring forward. Use your failure to learn what didn’t work, then start over. Go stronger and bolder than you’ve gone before. Failure is a great motivator to get it right and to surpass previous attempts.

Source

7 Ways to Beat Procrastination and Start Taking Action Today!

With the advent of the Internet, smartphones, and Wi-Fi, low productivity has become one of the most prevalent diseases across the globe. It will be a long battle to regain our attention control, and I recommend you to take baby steps during the process.
Below are 7 simple ways to help you beat procrastination so you finally take action on the goals you have set.

1 No More "Someday I will... "
Recognize that the best time to take action is 10 years ago, the next best time is now.
Stop living in the delusion that you have millions days in the future to pursue something your heart desires.
If there's something that you really want to do - whether it's to start a blog teaching people your cooking expertise, or making the phone call and ask your crush out, or giving a surprise visit to your parents whom you haven't seen for a year - you've got to plan when you are going to do it.
Time doesn't wait.
According to Bronnie Ware, author of the bestselling book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, the number one thing people regret is that "I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me."
Procrastination may be a short-term relief, but it's not going to get you anywhere.
Choose the pain of discipline over the pain of regret.

2 Take Massive Imperfect Courageous Action
Forget about perfectionism, just aim for the "85% good enough" standard and get it out there.
Your life-changing products or services aren't going to change a single life until you push it out to the market.
Your relentless studying and reading won't do humanity any good until you go out and implement the wisdom.
Your genius ideas aren't going to turn into a billion dollar business until you pitch it in the Shark Tank.
The key to success, especially entrepreneurial success, is your speed of execution.
Results come from nothing but massive imperfect courageous actions, not affirmations, visualizations or meditations.

3 Action Leads To Motivation
Do you think you need motivation first before you can take action?
Do you believe you need to wait for the "perfect moment or timing" before you can take action?
Do you trust yourself that you are good enough to at least start taking action?
In the self-help world, many people fall into the thinking trap that they need to "prepare more" before they can really initiate the task they want, whether it's about starting a conversation with a lady, starting an online business, or starting to workout.
Sadly, these preparations often become excuses for them not to take action.
The truth is motivation comes when you take that scary action.
If you're willing to force yourself to "do that thing" for just 5 minutes, you'll be surprised that action is easier than you thought and you'll be motivated to continue taking action and make some real progress.

4 Plan Your Day the Night Before
You never want to wake up not knowing exactly how the next 16 hours will be.
Planning should always happen the night before, so that the moment you open your eyes, you are in automation mode and you don't need to spend extra thoughts to craft out your day.
Before you know it, you're already spending your first 2 hours doing the one big thing of the day that will yield you 80% of the progress.

5 Stop Multitasking
Science has proven that our brain is incapable of multitasking.
All we are doing is reacting to that stimulus, switching our attention to a different task, finishing the unimportant stuff, coming back to the original task having no idea where we are at, spending extra time & energy to get back into flow.
CNN World has reported that switching tasks make you dumber than being stoned, because our IQ drops by 10 points when we switch tasks while our IQ drops by 5 points when we smoke marijuana.
Don't want to be an idiot?
Time to cut off all the emails, phone calls, Facebook, app notifications, news updates, or chit-chat with your colleagues while you work!

6 Chunk Things into Baby Steps
I am annoyed by this cliché but it's true: You eat an elephant one bite at a time.
One main reason we procrastinate is because we feel it's too difficult, too long and too much to do it.
Big goals are fantastic, but when it comes to action, you want to make them seem as easy as possible.
So chunk them into mini segments so that the pleasure of completion outweighs the pain of taking action.

7 Reward & Celebrate
Nothing pisses your brain off more than enduring some painful discipline for a long time and not getting rewarded at the end of the process!
You've got to reward yourself kindly at the end so that you anchor massive pleasure to the beautiful moment of task completion.
Pet yourself on the back so that when you start another boring, mundane, yet significant campaign, you can motivate yourself to finish it as soon as possible and arrive at the end of the pleasurable tunnel!
I'm going to reward myself now, how about you?

Source