"What would you do if you knew you had only 6 months left to live?"

This is a question I ask my delegates on the Goal Setting section of my "Effective Service Manager" training programme. It provokes some interesting answers. Naturally, some people find it difficult to answer because it is hypothetical and also makes them consider things they would prefer not to think about. A common response is to list all the things they would like to do but had never got around to doing. The real question is, how do we know how long we have? It may be hypothetical, but don`t you owe it to yourself to live "Fearlessly" now, today? Rather than waiting for a real "Deadline" to shake you into action?

Bronnie Ware is an Australian nurse who spent several years working in palliative care, caring for patients in the last 12 weeks of their lives. She recorded their dying epiphanies in a blog called Inspiration and Chai, which gathered so much attention that she put her observations into a book called The Top 5 Regrets of the Dying

Ware writes of the phenomenal clarity of vision that people gain at the end of their lives, and how we might learn from their wisdom. "When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently," she says, "common themes surfaced again and again."

Here is the first of the top five regrets of the dying, as witnessed by Ware:

1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

"This was the most common regret of all. When people realise that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made. Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it."

So my question to you is, if not now, then when?

When are you going to follow your heart, pursue your dream and be who you were destined to be?

Watch this powerful video on a regular basis to help keep you on track and on purpose and please leave a comment or share this with others if you found it interesting:- 

How to Stop Worrying So Much and Be More Successful at Life!

I haven`t met many people who don`t suffer from the odd sleepless night or mild anxiety about some aspect of their lives which hasn`t yet happened. Worry is almost endemic in our culture. Isn`t it amazing how much time and energy we give to stuff we don`t want to happen? In my training programmes I encourage people to think about worry as "negative visualisation". In order to achieve our goals and tap into a brighter more empowering future, we simply need to take the physiological  feelings of worry and re-interpret them as feelings of excitement and thus create "positive visualisation". As someone once said, "Get your butterflies flying in formation!" Below is useful article by Mike Rogers on practical things to do to counter our worrying tendencies.

“I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.” - Mark Twain

In today's world, there are plenty of things to worry about and the list seems to grow everyday. There's war, the safety of the food we eat, nuclear accidents, car accidents, "Will our children be safe?" There's diseases, pollution, taxes, will we still have a job next year? The list goes on and on. There' a million and one things to worry about. Take your pick.

You want to be a worrier or a warrior? Take your pick.

I have plenty of friends who seem to worry constantly. The biggest thing they worry about is work. I think it is pretty safe to say that they are their own worse enemy. 

The funny thing is they think I don't worry about work or these other things at all. But I do worry! I am a "worrier" for certain. They just don't know! I think, up to a certain point, worrying is perfectly normal human behavior, and we all do it. But my friends think I don't worry because I've found a good way to control it and I'm glad I did. It's easy to do and just takes 3 minutes every morning. That's a better deal than worrying all day, right?

Many years ago, I used to worry so much that I wouldn't sleep well at night. The funny part is that I'd be worried about work! Think about that! I'm worried about work so much that I cannot sleep well. Then, the next morning I go to work and I'm tired. I'm so tired that I don't do a good job. So I worry so much about losing my job that I lose sleep and then, on the job, do a poor job because I'm sleepy because I didn't sleep well because I was worried about losing my job! What an idiot I was!

Doesn't make any sense, does it?

Worrying all the time is a proven cause of unhappiness and stress. Stress is a proven cause of a wide array of physical and mental illnesses and disorders. Life is rough enough as it is without our own thinking placing a heavier burden on our shoulders than we already have.

Think about it, is there any one of us who can do our best and achieve to our capacity - or even higher than that - when, in the back of our mind is this crawling negative fear - a worry - that binds us? Of course not.

So why do we do this to ourselves?

Today I want to give you two really good tips that can help you control your worrying. First off, I'd like to recommend that buy yourself a $1.00 pocket notebook and that you write down your top 5 or 10 goals first thing in the morning when you wake up everyday. Do it like religion or brushing your teeth.

Writing down your goals will help your subconscious mind to focus better on what is really important to you in your life and it will also allow the Law of Attraction to work in your favor. (There are several links at the bottom of this post to other articles with more details that you might enjoy reading).  

My notebooks so far this year with my most recent opened.

Here's how I do it: I wake up and sit down and think about what is really important to me. Do not cheat by looking at what you wrote the day before. Think. Really think about what is important for you and write it down. If you do this everyday and do not look at the previous day's goals, the things that are important to you and your life will naturally flow to the top. I used to write things about money and business as my top goals, but after doing this for so many years, I came to realize what is truly important in my life is not that. It is my family.

These are my recent top four goals (and I always add today's date at the end):

1) I am a wise and patient father and husband. I am a kind person.

2) Thank you god for all the wonderful things I have and am about to receive today.

3) All my loved ones are healthy and prosperous today.

4) I am a very successful businessman and 2012 is my best year so far. 2013 is even better!

Recently there are another 4 on the list, but those have to do with my work and financial goals. Everyone would be different, of course.

Actually, writing these things down is not my original idea. It is the method of success in life and business for many extremely wealthy people and the basis for a best-selling book by Brian Tracey (Goals: How to get everything you want faster than you ever though possible). May I suggest that you do yourself a great favor and read that book and apply some of the simple rules to your life? 

By the way, one of my dearest friends read this book and later I asked him about it. He said that he does write down his goals in his iPhone. Folks, the advice of millionaires say to buy a handy pocket notebook. It is extremely difficult for any computer or hand held device to be faster than a pen and paper. Why ignore the advice of these people who have succeeded and are rich for the $1.00 it costs to buy a pocket notebook? 

Also, I find that having a handy pocket notebook is great for lowering stress in that I never forget anything. Anytime I have a good idea or something that I must remember to do, I jot it down. It's so much faster with a pen and paper than any electrical device could ever be!

The second good piece of advice I have for those of you who find yourself in a serious pinch whereby you are worrying so much that it has engulfed your entire being is to realize that your brain can only think about one thing at a time. Seriously. It's true. The human brain can only process information about one thing at a time.

There will be people now who think I am wrong about this, but I am not. Just because you can multi-task at work doesn't mean that your brain can think about more than one thing at once. It cannot. Your brain can switch back and forth quite quickly so that the skilled person can multi-task but that doesn't mean that the brain can focus on more than one matter at any given moment.

Here. Let me prove it to you. Here is a sentence. Read it and them repeat it over and over in your head. You will see that, as you are repeating it, you are unable to think about anything else, unless you switch off the repetition. Here is the sentence:

"I am a positive and hard working person and today is the best day so far this year and tomorrow is going to be even better!"

Read it and memorize it. Now, repeat it over and over in your head. Do it many times. 

See? Your mind can only focus on one problem at a time. This is why constant worry is so dangerous. Because if you are only worrying, you will begin to make things worse as you will focus your entire being on that worry. It is a vicious cycle.

Stop it right now!

Anytime of the day, if you catch yourself starting to worry, stop. Take a phrase like the one I have given you above and repeat it in your head over and over until the worrying goes away. If the worrying (or panic) comes back, then start up the phrase and repeat again until the fear and worrying subside.

Some astute readers will recognize what I have written here as a form of meditation, chanting, or prayer. Call it what you want, it will help you to defeat the worrying that is destroying your health and your life. 

I hope that, if you start to worry, that you'll try these these two simple exercises that will help you set your mind free and help you to relax. They've helped me greatly. I know they will help you too.

Source: Mike Rogers

"Fake it till you make it!"

You can create confidence and overcome fears by changing your physiology. By changing your body postures and practicing "Power Poses" even for a few minutes you can enhance your confidence levels and your results by a significant factor. In this presentation, Amy Cuddy explains how small changes can produce big outcomes. Brilliant stuff!

you`ve ever had pre interview or pre presentation nerves that have ruined your performance, this will help enormously.

Key Quote

Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.
Norman Vincent Peale

"Everyone has limits - not everyone accepts them!!"

The ultimate in Fearless Living! Congratulations to Felix Baumgartner!

7 Laws of Fearless Living

Don't believe what the spiritual sharks and clever carnival hustlers tell you about fearless living -- they lie. But you already sense the truth of this, or you wouldn't still be looking for ways to escape those everyday fears that stalk your happiness like a lion does the unwary gazelle.

The deepest parts of you know that if freedom from fear was as easy as "creating a new reality" for yourself, then you would already be the fearless person you know in your heart that you're meant to be. It's just not that easy... which brings us to a great liberating truth, an insight you must prove to yourself before you can know its power to dismantle any fear.

When it comes to the fearless life, the divine gives nothing freely... save to those who freely give themselves to discovering the truth about their own fearless selves. The good news is that this supreme confidence and calm already lives within you, needing only your realization of its unshakable presence in order to empower you with the fearlessness you seek.

The following seven laws are like a golden invitation to your own coronation. To "open" each one and receive its royal instruction about how to live free of fear, you need do only one thing: Ask sincerely that you might understand its secret message, and then, when the answer comes,welcome those insights as long-lost friends -- for that is exactly what they are. They will do the rest for you.

1. When you know that what you're looking for is what you already are -- and not what you may become -- you stand on the threshold of fearless living.
2. No psychological fear exists without negative imagination.
3. When it comes to fear, the feel is real... but the "why" is a lie.
4. You cannot change one thing about times past or the fears that belong to old regrets, but you can be in a different relationship with what is happening to you right now -- and that changes everything!
5. Nothing in the universe can stop you from letting go and starting over.
6. Your experience of any moment -- good or bad, calm or conflicted -- is a direct reflection of your understanding about it. This means that the only thing that frightens you about any event is what you've yet to understand about yourself.
7. The universe itself is actually set up for you to succeed with realizing the fearless life, which means that you are made for whatever happens to you!

Now to these seven laws, let's add three additional facts that will help prove the possibility of a fearless life. Taken alone, each of the following statements supplies insight into the seemingly impenetrable darkness that surrounds any fear. Taken altogether, these bright new facts reveal a whole new understanding that penetrates fear's protective shell, dispelling both the feared and the fearful at once. The light that remains is freedom.

We can either spend our lives struggling to protect ourselves from our fears -- which is the general existence of the unconscious masses -- or we can learn how to use our lives to discover that, in reality, there is no self to fear, and that the shaky world perceived by this shadow-self is but its own unreal shadow. The good news is that it's possible to learn so much about the nature of fear that one day, it simply runs out of ways to make you believe in its shaking.

No fact is frightening unless it runs into conflict with what you want. When this happens, the fear is not in the event, but in you -- who have decided that in order to feel secure, life must jump through your hoop. The fear you feel is in your hoop, not in the fact that life may have jumped unexpectedly.

Last but by no means least of these fear-busting ideas is this final fact and implied action: It is in your power to discover that who you really are has nothing to fear, but that you make yourself fearful each time you look outside of yourself for some power to make you feel fearless.

Source: Guy Finley

Key Quote:

Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free. 
Jim Morrison 

Lighten Up!

The Power of Belief - Never Give Up!

Never believe and accept limitations placed upon you by others. There will always be lots of people telling what you can and can`t do, what you are supposed to do given your age, condition, gender etc. It`s all irrelevant. What really matters is what you believe. What you want to achieve.Never give up on your dream.

Quote of the day

When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hang on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn. 
Harriet Beecher Stowe 

Positive Thinking: How to Change Your Future

Want to be more successful? Change the way you view the world by adopting these 10 beliefs.

If there were only one thing that I could communicate to readers, it would be this all-important observation:

The results that you get in business (and in life) are simply a byproduct of your beliefs.

Human beings all live in a cycle, in which beliefs and results are inextricably linked.  Here's how it works:

• Your beliefs determine how you feel about each situation, because those beliefs tell you what each situation means.
• Your emotions (and attitude) determine how well (or badly) you'll perform in any given situation.
• Your performance, naturally enough, is directly connected to your results. Though there may be other factors in play, it's only your performance over which you have control.
• Finally, your performance reinforces your beliefs, in either a negative or positive way.

The following diagram encapsulates this process:

Expectations vs. Reality

To illustrate how this works, I'll use an example from the world of sales.

Imagine a salesman who must do cold calling to build up a sales pipeline. This salesman has a deeply held belief that "if, first thing in the morning, I get 10 rejections in a row, it means I'm going to have a bad day and not make any sales."

The moment that salesman approaches that "10 rejection" threshold, he begins to adopt an apprehensive attitude, wondering whether the 10 rejections will "prove" that he's going to have a bad day.

He begins to feel fear and defensiveness, which immediately creep into his voice. He starts thinking about his "bad day" rather than listening to the customer. His apprehensiveness virtually guarantees that he'll get the (ominous) 10th rejection--at which point his emotional state (which is already low) will plummet further.

The sales rep is now absolutely sure that he's going to have a bad day. His despair makes him even less effective.  After a few hours, he stops cold calling, having "proven" his belief. And then, the next day, he starts the process again, worried about those all-important "10 rejections."

In other words, his beliefs are creating a future of failure.

Hanging On to Bad Beliefs

You'd be surprised how many people hang on to beliefs that create failure--without realizing that their beliefs are just as unrealistic as the "10 rejections" superstition. I couldn't possibly go through the entire list, but here are three that I hear a lot:

• Mondays are always depressing
• The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer.
• Life sucks, and then you die.

The absolute worst example I ever saw was a guy at a nearby lake who was fishing with his shirt off. He had a tattoo on his shoulder that read "Born Loser." True story.

Anyway, I don't want to belabor the point. What's important here is to adopt beliefs that create a brighter and better future.

With that in mind, here are 10 beliefs that, in my view, consistently create positive emotions, better performance, and much better results:This is essential, because just as lousy beliefs put you into a descending cycle--where failure becomes ever easier--powerful beliefs can put you into an ascending cycle, where success becomes easier.

• I always act with a purpose.
• I take responsibility for my results.
• I stretch myself past my limits daily.
• I don't wait for perfection; instead, I act now.
• I learn more from my failures than my successes.
• I take my job seriously, but I do not take myself too seriously.
• I use rejection to renew my humility and sharpen my objectivity.
• I use both negative and positive feedback to keep on target.
• I am careful about what I put into my mind and body.
• I seek out people who are similarly motivated to improve themselves.

I wish I could say that I thought of all of the above myself, but the cycle described above and the "success beliefs" that follow are actually based on a life-changing conversation I had with the legendary Art Mortell, author of "The Courage to Fail"

Source: Geoffrey James

Quote of the Day

What we can or cannot do, what we consider possible or impossible, is rarely a function of our true capability. It is more likely a function of our beliefs about who we are. 
Tony Robbins 

Laughter is the best medicine