Making Time For The Important
By Jacklyn | July 3, 2008
By Steve Pavlina.
Too often our important-but-not-urgent tasks get put on the back burner… and never make it to the front burner. When you get busy with urgent tasks, you may feel pressured to finish those first before you can justify doing anything less urgent. But then when you finally catch a break, you may decide you need some downtime to rest and regenerate, so those not-urgent-and-not-important tasks fill in the time before the next outbreak of urgency. This pattern can continue for years with the important tasks always seeming just a few days away, but somehow they never reach the action phase.
These important tasks include things like setting goals, planning your future, finding a new relationship, learning new skills, improving your diet, beginning a new exercise program, starting a home-based business, or breaking an addiction. In the short-term they may not produce much benefit, but you can bet they’ll make a huge difference in the long run. Read the rest of this entry »
Tag:Goal Setting, Personal Development, Time Management
Topics: Goals Setting, Time Management, Personal Development | 1 Comment »
How to Achieve Your Goals with Healthy Habits
By Jacklyn | June 16, 2008
By Leo Babauta.
We’ve all faced the disappointment and guilt that comes from setting a goal and giving up on it after a couple of weeks. Sustaining motivation for a long-term goal is hard to achieve, and yet the best goals can usually only be accomplished in a few months or even years.
Here’s the solution: Focus instead on creating a new habit that will lead to achieving your goal.
Want to run a marathon? First create the habit of running every day. Want to get out of debt and start saving? Create the habit of brown bagging it to work, or watching DVDs instead of going to the movies, or whatever change will lead to saving money for you.
By focusing not on what you have to achieve over the course of the next year, but instead on what you are doing each day, you are focusing on something achievable. That little daily change will add up to a huge change, over time … and you’ll be surprised at how far you’ve come in no time. Little grains of sand can add up to a mountain over time.
I used this philosophy of habit changes to run a marathon, to change my diet and lose weight, to write a novel, to quit smoking, to become organized and productive, to double my income, reduce my debt and start saving, and to begin training for an Olympic triathlon this year. It works, if you focus on changing habits.
Now, changing your habits isn’t easy — I won’t lie to you — but it’s achievable, especially if you start small. Don’t try to change the world with your first habit change … take baby steps at first. I started by just trying to run a mile — and by the end of the year, I could run more than 20 miles.
How do you change your habits? Focus on one habit at a time, and follow these steps:
1. Positive changes. If you’re trying to change a negative habit (quit smoking), replace it with a positive habit (running for stress relief, for example).
2. Take on a 30-day challenge. Tell yourself that you’re going to do this habit every day, at the same time every day, for 30 straight days without fail. Once you’re past that 30-day mark, the habit will become much easier. If you fail, do not beat yourself up. Start again on a new 30-day challenge. Practice until you succeed.
3. Commit yourself completely. Don’t just tell yourself that you might or should do this. Tell the world that DEFINITELY will do this. Put yourself into this 100 percent. Tell everyone you know. Email them. Put it on your blog. Post it up at your home and work place. This positive public pressure will help motivate you.
4. Set up rewards. It’s best to reward yourself often the first week, and then reward yourself every week for that first month. Make sure these are good rewards, that will help motivate you to stay on track.
5. Plan to beat your urges. It’s best to start out by monitoring your urges, so you become more aware of them. Track them for a couple days, putting a tally mark in a small notebook every time you get an urge. Write out a plan, before you get the urges, with strategies to beat them. We all have urges to quit — how will you overcome it? What helps me most are deep breathing and drinking water. You can get through an urge — it will pass.
6. Track and report your progress. Keep a log or journal or chart so that you can see your progress over time. I used a running log for my marathon training, and a quit meter when I quit smoking. It’s very motivating to see how far you’ve come. Also, if you can join an online group and report your progress each day, or email family and friends on your progress, that will help motivate you.
Most important of all: Always stay positive. I learned the habit of monitoring my thoughts, and if I saw any negative thoughts (”I want to stop!”) I would squash it like a little bug, and replace it with a positive thought (”I can do this!”). It works amazingly. This is the best tip ever. If you think negative thoughts, you will definitely fail. But if you always think positive, you will definitely succeed.
Tag:Motivation, Personal Devolpment, Positive AttitudeTopics: Motivation, Positive Attitude, Personal Development | 3 Comments »
Who I Am Makes A Difference
By Jacklyn | May 28, 2008
An inspiring story that leaves a legacy..
Tag:Affirmations, Gratitude, InspirationTopics: Affirmations, Gratitude, Inspiration | 5 Comments »
Our Deepest Fear by Maryanne Williamson
By Jacklyn | May 26, 2008
From the book “A Return to Love”
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine, as children do.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It’s not just in some of us; it’s all of us.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
Topics: Quotes, Inspiration, Personal Development | No Comments »
Eagle Parable James Aggrey
By Jacklyn | May 25, 2008
Once a man found a young eagle in a forest and took it home and put it in his barnyard. The eagle ate the chicken feed and behaved just as chickens do. One day a naturalist friend noticed it and asked the owner why the eagle, king of all birds, confined with the chickens, “Since I have given chicken feed and trained it to be a chicken, it has never learned to fly,” answered the man. “Still,” insisted the naturalist, “it has heart of an eagle and certainly it can be taught to fly.”
The two agreed to find out whether it was possible. The naturalist took the eagle and said
“You belong to the sky and not the earth. Stretch forth your wings and fly”. The eagle was confused and refused to make an attempt. The second day the naturalist took the eagle to the roof and urged the eagle again. But the eagle was afraid and jumped down for the chicken feed. On the third day the naturalist took it to the top of a mountain. He held the eagle high above him and said. “You are an eagle. You belong to the sky as well as the earth. Stretch forth your wings and fly.”
The eagle slowly looked around, up to the sky and down to the barnyard. The naturalist lifted him further up, and the eagle started trembling, slowly he stretched his wings and with a triumphant cry, he soared away into the heavens.
… from A Return To Love, Marianne Williamson so eloquently states: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our Light, not our Darkness that most frightens us.” We are all eagles. Once we have flown, we can never go back to live like a chicken. It is not a delusion to think we can fly; it is a delusion to think we can’t. Manage your fear of greatness and then … stretch forth your wings and fly toward the dreams that are awaiting you.
Tag:Eagle Parable, Inspiration, James Aggrey, Marianne WilliamsonTopics: Motivation, Inspiration, Personal Development | No Comments »
