If you were told that the reason why you aren’t more successful is just that your attitude isn’t positive enough you’d probably think they are oversimplifying. However, there is a popular school of professional coaching based around the concept of positive attitude and positive affirmations to achieve professional and personal success. How much truth is there on that kind of teachings? Positive People Get Promoted It’s not easy to deny the fact that people who are successful are often positive and sure of themselves. The reasons for this are two-fold: Nobody likes working with a naysayer that darkens the day with its sole, negative presence, and managers often notice (and promote) people who aren’t scared to blow their own trumpet and seem genuinely happy to be working for your company. In other areas of life being positive also has natural advantages: Who would you prefer as a romantic interest, somebody who is happy to be there and sure of himself or herself, or somebody who is trying to hide in a corner and grumbles about everything? Being positive, without a doubt, has its advantages. But You Need To Work For It Too However, smiling and being sure of yourself won’t get you anywhere without hard work and dedication, and any lifestyle guru or professional coach that forgets to talk about the effort required to actually make changes on your life is not going to be very helpful. Working 10hr a day is of course much easier If you genuinely enjoy your job and know the rewards that will come from all that work, but you’ll still need to do your best. Of course, being positive about your skills and your life goes a long way towards motivating you to do your best, but there’s no reward without work. There’s No Easy and Quick Way to Success… But being positive sure helps. While positive attitude is almost a must have for success, it doesn’t mean that the moment you start smiling more you’ll suddenly will get promoted. Anybody promising you quick and easy ways to getting rich (or married, or promoted) is actually trying to sell you the myth of positive thinking, without any regards for your actual success. If you are interested in learning more about the power of positive affirmations and positive attitude you should seek out the services of a professional lifestyle coach who can clearly explain how to leverage this positive energy to increase your chances of success.

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Struggling a little bit with keeping your 2012 New Year’sResolutions? Yeah, me too! Let me share an epiphany with you. Just yesterday, a good friendinformed me he had discovered Tony Robbins. In case you’ve been living in Siberia the past three decades,Anthony “Tony” Robbins is an internationally famous Americanself-help author and motivational speaker who has written severalbooks and produced numerous videos on personal achievement andself-growth. He has taken his message of Life Transforming Lessonsaround the globe and is ranked by Harvard Business School as one ofthe country’s top business gurus. In checking out Tony Robbins, my friend stumbled across Robbins’protocol for the use of Affirmations to make changes in your life.Merriam-Webster defines an affirmation as simply “a positiveassertion.” That doesn’t sound all that impressive until you realize thatscholars and religious leaders have been using affirmations forcenturies. The earliest awareness of the power of positive thinkingcomes from the Greek sage and philosopher Epictetus, who in thefirst century A.D. said, “The thing that upsets people is not somuch what happens but what they think about what happens.” Here’s what my friend did. He wrote down eight things that hewanted to change about himself and his life. He took that piece ofpaper and put it in the drawer of his night stand. Every morning, he takes out that piece of paper and reads hisaffirmations. He has found that by doing so, his writtenaffirmations guide his thoughts and actions throughout the day.Furthermore, he believes that through this simple act, he ischanging both himself and his life. Here are some simple rules to help you if you want to playalong. Affirmations must be stated in the positive. “I want to lose 10pounds” becomes “I now weigh 140 lbs.” which would be 10 poundslighter. Affirmations are more effective if you include your name. “I aman excellent writer,” is stated as “I, Cord, am an excellentwriter.” Sorry, couldn’t help myself. Affirmations must be stated in the present tense. “I, Mary, willbecome vibrantly healthy,” becomes “I, Mary, am vibrantlyhealthy.” Your affirmations must be specific. “I, Bob, am now wealthier,”changes to “I, Bob, am generating $2,000 a week in passiveincome.” Finally, you need to add the word “now” to make youraffirmations more immediate. “I, Susan, deserve a lovingrelationship,” becomes “I, Susan, deserve a loving relationship,now!” If your positive affirmation is too big a leap from where youare now, your mind might object. To counteract this you can changethe verb to an ongoing action, rather than a completed one. You can also give yourself permission to succeed and ” perhaps,more importantly ” forgive yourself for any past failures you mayhave had in a specific area, such as weight loss. Those who believe in and use affirmations have a saying ” “TheUniverse is a big Yes.” The premise is that the Universe doesn’tevaluate what you say. Its job is to automatically give you more ofwhatever it is you say you deserve. If you habitually say, “I’m a penniless loser!” The Universesays, “Okay, let’s give him some more of that.” On the other hand, if you say, “I’m a successful entrepreneurnow!” You get, “Okay, let’s give him more of that.” In a nutshell, that’s the principle behind positiveaffirmations. Give it a shot ” I am.

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Positive Affirmations Imagine waking up every day and being able to direct the powers of your mind towards success, happiness and achievement.  Anyone can do this! You have to want to “step outside the box”, stretch your limited mind and change the way you think!  One tool that will help you to do this successfully is learning the techniques of positive affirmations.  This is a way to create a new and positive life and incredibly, it is free! What is a positive affirmation? It is a word or phrase that evokes a positive state in a person. It is creating positive thoughts to improve the circumstances of your life.  With affirmations, you state your intentions and desires. Sometimes people think of positive affirmations as Mantras. But mantras are different. Mantra is a religious or mystical poem originating from the Sanskrit language.  Mantra comes from the Sanskrit root “man” meaning to think and “tra” meaning to liberate. Put together, it literally means to liberate from thought. A mantra is said as a chant to empty the mind of thought.  On the other hand, positive affirmations want to put the mind to use! Positive Affirmations became popular in the 1930?s with Napoleon Hill, author of Think and Grow Rich.  Further writings were in 1962, when Catherine Ponder authored The Dynamic Laws of Prosperity which outlined a universal set of laws to govern happiness and prosperity.  Law of Command, one of the laws, states that it is our divine right to command and affirm our value and worth.  This is done through verbal “commands” each and every day. The act of affirming your value and worth has a profound effect on your body chemistry. You can actually train your mind to be positive. The study of neuro biology confirms that the wiring or grouping of certain brain cells can have an impact on our behavior.  Grouping of like brain cells activate our learned behavior.  For example, singing, talking, clapping and running are all learned behavior that relies on the firing of certain brain cells. Before we are born, your brain develops the ability to wire brain circuits so your body will be able to pump blood, breathe, swallow and make use of the senses. Our body uses its senses to collect data and react to it. Does this smell good? Is the burner hot? This data is collected and sent to the subconscious mind.  This is where positive affirmations come into play.  If data is sent to the subconscious mind that is wrong or incorrect, then our mind must step in to correct the situation. For example, as a child you learn to love ice cream. Your grandfather always bought you an ice cream cone at the fair and you associate great, warm, memories of eating that ice cream cone. As an adult, you still want to eat that ice cream cone but realize that it is probably not healthy and will make you gain weight. You reprogram your brain to not crave that ice cream cone. You tell yourself that it is not good for you and reprogram the data that goes to your subconscious mind. This is a positive affirmation at work! The mind is a very powerful tool. We see many examples of this everyday from sugar cravings to even the repeat cycle of abuse.  As a child, the data sent to the subconscious mind was that the actions of the adult were okay because they were an adult. It takes placing new data in the brain to change the behavior. How do you place this new data in the brain? There are many techniques to positive affirmations. Affirmations should be positive words that are repeated, stating your intentions and desires.  They should evoke positive mental images and should affirm in the present tense not the future tense. Some examples are: I am healthy and happy! I am in good health. I am making work satisfying and enjoyable. I am achieving my full potential. I am successfully losing weight. Have fun with this. Repeat the affirmations often and with fervor.  These thoughts will help improve the circumstances of your life. As Dr. Joyce Brothers stated “Success is a state of mind. If you want success, start thinking of yourself as successful”. Not only start thinking of yourself as a success but positively affirm this thought and send your subconscious mind this message. This will enhance your personal power to connect to the universe.

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Do you feel like you are always talking yourself out of success? As soon as you start to set goals for yourself, do you suddenly have nagging thoughts about how you aren’t up to the task or how you simply aren’t qualified to carry it through? If you have ever experienced either situation, you need to change the way you respond to your inner dialogue. Instead of obeying your negative commands, you can use positive affirmations to counter the negativity and overcome nearly all anxious thoughts. Setting Goals and Sticking to Them with Positive Affirmations Are you initially filled with excitement when you first set goals for yourself? Are these thoughts then followed by self-doubt and self-defeating thoughts that stop you in your tracks before you even get started? It can be difficult to make the most of your life when you are constantly talking yourself out of being a success. It can be frustrating and discouraging to have these thoughts constantly plaguing you. Many of us, in fact, don’t even realize we have them! All we know is that we don’t have the confidence to stick to our plans and reach our goals. But there’s another way! Using positive affirmations is an effective way to set goals and ensure that you stick to them, even if you have never been able to do this before. The way this works is that you decide what goal is important to you, and then you plan the logistics of how you are going to attain this goal. When self-doubt starts kicking in, you will respond with affirmations that prove your success without surrendering to the negative pressure. Since you’re reading this blog post, it’s clear that you’re no quitter and you’re certainly not a failure, so start believing in yourself! Re-Programming Your Mind Affirmations are essentially positive statements that re-program your mind for the positive. The moment you have a self-defeating thought, you are able to counter the negative with a motivating statement. An example of a positive affirmation is: “I am worthy of great success,” or “I see myself in the winner’s circle.” What this does is replace negativity with thoughts that will help you move toward your goals instead of further away from them. Positive affirmations are easier to implement than you might think. You may not be aware of the severity of the negative dialogue currently within your mind. However, once you begin with positive affirmations, you will suddenly realize that you are self-sabotaging the goals you set for yourself from the minute that you make them. This process can open your eyes to exactly how much this inner conversation has been interfering with your life. You’ll feel hopeful that you can now set goals and surpass them. Through positive affirmations you will be able to easily set long and short term goals for yourself. And when you use positive affirmations, you’ll have accessible tools to help you push yourself further than ever before. Learning to quiet negativity with positive thoughts is a great move toward setting and attaining future goals with ease.

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…They really do work! Good News! Finally, there is scientific research to back up what psychologists and therapists have been saying for years; acting on what makes people happy has a powerful effect on their lives. In other words, the pursuit of happiness doesn’t happen to people because they are just lucky; on the contrary, bliss occurs by actively monitoring your current thoughts and actively practicing new ones. One way to accomplish this is by affirming daily positive thinking. The practice of positive affirmations was hilariously satirized by the SNL T.V. skit known as “Daily Affirmations with Stuart Smalley”. Smalley was played by actor/comedian Al Franken who sat in front of a mirror reciting phrases like “I’m Good Enough, and Smart Enough and Doggone it People Like Me”! Along with Franken and the SNL gang of writers, the practices of Positive Psychology recently gained a boost from Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky. Lyubomirsky, a research psychologist at the University of  California at Riverside, published the results of her study on the brain and happiness in her book entitled, The How of Happiness.  She essentially came up with the brain-pie diagram that illustrates how 50% of our happiness relates to genetics, 10% to environment, leaving 40% to what we do and how we think.  This 40% is not only a significant chunk but also reinforcement for those currently practicing their positive daily affirmations! So, for those of you who want to get on board and up your happiness quotient,  you can take a cue from Stuart.  Write down some phrases that resonate with how you would like to feel and act; then repeat, repeat, repeat ! Because as Stuart always says, “Practice makes perfect and doggone it I’m worthy”!

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Anxiety is part of human life it is part of our biological and psychological make up as it is a way to warn us of danger or threat. However, the body and brain are so complex and connected so strongly that sometimes anxiety can take over and we lose control. To maintain a balance between anxiety and understanding can be hard for some, as past experiences and actions can throw this fine balance off if you let it. Coping with anxiety requires one thing and that is changing the way you think about it as anxiety can be hard to overcome as our behaviours dictate our thoughts and our thoughts dictate our behaviours. For this reason anxiety is easily perpetuated as soon as negative and unproductive thoughts or behaviours set in. To combat anxiety think of it like the flu, it is something horrible but it is only temporary and if you feed it the right medicine and gives it the right conditions and keep a positive attitude it will get better over time. Anxiety is fuelled by ‘bugs’ just like flu is. Negativity, living in the past and closed mindedness are the bugs that keep anxiety alive, however change these and you will feel instantly better. If you think sick, you’ll be sick. So, by changing the way you look at anxiety and your life the sooner you can combat that illness. Anxiety is undermined by many and negative reactions in both your body and mind can be ignored and written off as anxiety, overlooking the fact that it is something that can consume your life to such an extent you get trapped into a life of unhappiness and fear. With this, anxiety can be forgotten as something that can be fixed, you just have to want to. Anxiety give rise to fear and phobias, and fear and phobias give rise to anxiety in a vicious circle. Even though it can seem daunting we have to realise the only way to get over our fears is to face them head on, face to face. The first step to doing this is understanding what anxiety is, so research it and visit your doctor for advice and consultation as they can give you advice and maybe a course of treatment for such things as panic attacks. Panic attacks are a common symptom and outcome of anxiety and they can manifest themselves in numerous way. The most common is a strong physical reaction that is shown and felt by heart palpitations, dizziness, hot and cold sweats and shortness of breath. Panic attacks are something that can happen all of a sudden and without warning even in situations that you may not consciously deem as dangerous or a threat to yourself. It is this type of physical and mental reaction that teaches the body and mind to associate certain experiences with danger and this leads us to fear certain things in life in an irrational way. This can be anything from applying for jobs, shopping with friends, driving on the motorway, staying alone in your home, flying on an aeroplane or eating in public. There are many ways we can stop this happening however. What holds us back and what lets anxiety take over is the feeling of powerlessness and a severe worry of what other people think about us. But this is a false belief, anxiety is something we can control, if we learn to react in one way we can learn to react in another, with this in mind you can begin to take those positive steps to beat that anxiety.

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Everyone talks about the power of positive thinking, but many people do not realize just how important a positive attitude is to professional success. We all recognize the importance of positive affirmations to personal growth and healthy relationships, but many people do not understand that the power of those positive affirmations extends far beyond one’s personal life into his or her professional life as well. Whether you are in business for yourself or working for someone else, having a positive attitude can be a real boon to your long-term success. If you are one of those people moving through life always concerned that the worse will happen, chances are you will be right, and bad things will continue to happen to you. Until you turn your attitude around, using a combination of positive affirmations and other psychological and personal coaching techniques, you will be held back from the success that you deserve. You have probably noticed a common element in those who are most successful, in business and in life. These achievers and successful people tend to be enthusiastic and eager, in all aspects of their lives. This enthusiasm is infectious, and it tends to rub off on all those people with whom the successful person has contact. A positive attitude, and the ability to turn that attitude into results is essential to motivating employees to do better, getting the best from suppliers, and working with peers, both in business and personally. As you can see, a positive attitude is a valuable asset, no matter what your place in the working world. This means that you should get into the habit of doing regular positive affirmations. Making positive affirmations a habit is a great way to change your world view and help yourself be more successful. It is never too early to start this cycle of positive affirmations, and even those in entry level jobs can benefit from a positive attitude. Even if your job seems insignificant and meaningless, it is important to display a positive attitude, and not let negativity creep in to steal your enthusiasm. Remember that some of the most successful CEO’s and business owners started at the bottom and worked their way up. It real is possible to work your way up from the mailroom to the corner office, but without positive affirmations and a winning attitude, this move will not be possible. Regular positive affirmations are even more important for those people running their own businesses. Running a business is never easy, but it is important to remember that those around you, from employees to suppliers to competitors, pick up on your attitude, and use at as a cue. If you are constantly complaining about the business and its lack of growth, your employees will be less than inspired. If, on the other hand, you are constantly providing positive affirmations to your employees, even in the toughest of times, they will see your enthusiasm, learn from it, and use it as a cue to work harder and help the business grow and prosper. It really does all boil down to attitude; a positive attitude and positive affirmations can help your business in ways too numerous to mention.

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