Why It's Really Okay to Mess Up....

If you've already broken your New Year's resolutions, don't sweat it: Every setback contains its own reward.

 

By Martha Beck
O, The Oprah Magazine | From the April 2012 issue of O, The Oprah Magazine

Read more: http://www.oprah.com/spirit/What-to-Do-When-You-Mess-Up-Break-Your-Resolutions#ixzz1pi9cEcXV

Overcoming your Career Challenges and Creating the Journey of Your Dreams

What you tell yourself affects the way you behave. So if you think negative thoughts, you will behave in a way that confirms them. For example, if you think career fairs are a waste of time, you will avoid them. If you think instead that you might make some useful contacts, you will go.

Now changing your negative thoughts to positive ones does require a conscious effort not to get caught up in negative automatic thoughts. Here are some tips to keep you focused on your positives:

1. Notice when you are having these negative automatic thoughts. Understand your triggers as it will help you to minimize them or prepare to replace them.
2. Get yourself to stop the negative thoughts. Either by something simple as saying “stop” or placing a rubber band on your wrist and snapping it when you have the negative thought.
3. Replace the negative thoughts with positive ones about the same topic.
4. Get support from friends or family that are good at being positive.
5. Praise yourself for your little and big successes and do not engage in negative thoughts or punishing yourself when things don’t go well-take something positive from the situation — a learning lesson perhaps — that will keep you going forward.

Start today on facing the career issues that you have been avoiding and begin on a path where nothing is impossible and you let positive thoughts, not fear, define your future.

Game Changers....

What are the game changers for you? "Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody is willing to die." But what does that have to do with game-changers? Everything!

Many people say that they want to see a radical change in their finances or they want a healthier lifestyle- they want more income, increased savings, or want to improve themselves through proper diet and more physical activity but the strange thing is that many are unwilling to change their vision, themselves, their processes, their expectations or their attitudes.

The stage is set for success for those who are willing to step out of their comfort zone. I'm not saying you have to "go to heaven", oh no. But if you want to experience some success, a great deal of success, or extraordinary success, decide just how uncomfortable you are willing to become-stretch that vision, push your own envelope, and remember to surround yourself with people who are already where you want to be.

Here's to your great success!

Identifying Self-Limiting Beliefs

Years of self-limiting beliefs may be sabotaging you without your realizing it. These beliefs reveal themselves in patterns that keep coming up again and again in your life. For example, you attract the wrong kind of romantic partner: “I can't attract a good man because I always fall for losers just like my Aunt Milly.” Limiting beliefs are often so ingrained that they may seem to be at the heart of who you are, the very core of your being.

Self-limitingbeliefs hold you back from most personal and spiritual growth. You may harbor a fear of failure, a fear of never finding Mr. Right, or the fear of success. Perhaps you have engaged in self-sabotage, working hard to achieve something only to undermine your hard work with persistent, self-defeating inner criticism. Or perhaps you have always equated success with “no pain, no gain.” With the Law of Attraction, you can have success and abundance and you do not have to suffer to achieve it. You do have to recognize and release self-limiting beliefs.

If you feel stuck or trapped, set goals for various areas of your life — spiritual, health, family, work, personal. List specific reasons that keep you from reaching your goals, and include what has stopped you in the past. Know that you have the power to release even the most ingrained beliefs and turn them around into affirmations of unlimited potential.

FEAR IS A CHOICE....

Fear is a choice although it often doesn’t feel that way when we are experiencing it. It’s created by our thoughts. Some fears are necessary as they are anthropologically related to are ability to sense danger and react, but most fears are not related to real danger, but a created one
that stops us from achieving our full potential.

Sadly, often in our society we receive messages that support living in fear–just watch the news or the media in general. However, if you accept that FEAR IS A CHOICE, you will have control
of it rather than it having control of you.

Pay Close Attention For the Meaning of the Words....

To listen fully means to pay close attention to what is being said beneath the words. You listen not only to the 'music, but to the essence of the person speaking. You listen not only for what someone knows, but for what he or she is. Ears operate at the speed of sound, which is far slower than the speed of light the eyes take in. Generative listening is the art of developing deeper silences in yourself, so you can slow our mind’s hearing to your ears’ natural speed, and hear beneath the words to their meaning. - Peter Senge

Are you listening fully?

Barriers to Effective Communication

Barriers to Effective Communication

Knowing the barriers to effective communication is the first step in learning how to improve your communication skills. Although there are many kinds of barriers to communication, most are characterized by not being present to what's being said, or simply by not listening. So what is it that keeps people from listening and being present in a conversation? Here are some possible causes:

• Rehearsing what to say next - When you're too busy and too focused on preparing your response to what the other person is saying, you aren't being fully present to what's being said at precisely that moment.

• Being overemotional - Allowing defensiveness, fear, anger, love, disgust, or resentment to take control. Emotions are going to show up all the time, it's only when they overwhelm us that they become barriers to effective communication.

• Being distracted - by happenings in the environment: too noisy, too cold, too hot, etc. The more we pay attention to a distracting noise, the less attention we pay to the conversation at hand. It just takes practice to block distractions and remain focused on the conversation.

• Wearing a Mask - Pretending to be someone you are not. We go through life putting on masks to suit the needs of the moment. If we need to please someone, we put on our people pleaser mask. When we pretend that we are happy with everything other people are doing, we don't express anything that may be seen "not nice". We don't express ourselves freely, we fail to communicate.

• Having an agenda - When you have a hidden agenda it's unlikely you'll be able to stay focused on what the other person is saying. Most likely you'll be too busy thinking of how to convince them about something - or of ways to ask them for something, to be actually listening to what they're saying. You may argue that most people have an agenda, and you'd be right about that. One of the main reasons we communicate is to get something we want, either through control, manipulation or just influence. Having an agenda becomes a problem when you become too focused on fulfilling it; when you remain too attached to getting your way.

• Prejudging and Filtering -This consists of using our personal frame of reference to process any information we get. Our frame of reference consist of ideas, conclusions, experiences, preconceptions, values and beliefs that we have about life.

Actually, overcoming communication barriers is simpler than you think. Of all the barriers to effective communication, the one that causes the most problems is not paying attention. So, if you do nothing else to get rid of these barriers, do this: on an ongoing basis, take aside some time to do some mindfulness exercises. You will notice that you're going to start paying more attention to conversations, to people, and to life in general. This will go a long way towards helping you really connect with people.

As you overcome each and every one of these barriers to effective communication, you'll be able to enjoy closer and more authentic relationships with others in your life. You'll connect with people in ways you hadn't anticipated. But more importantly, you'll feel at ease in practically any situation, confident that you'll be able to handle it.