You must take the first step to win any race. The first step will take some effort and maybe some pain. But after that, everything you have to do is real life movement. Once you’re moving you must keep moving.
Create a definite plan for carrying out your desires and begin at once, whether you’re ready or not, to put your plan into action.
If you can get up the courage to begin, you have the courage to succeed. You can only fail if you fail to start.
Winning starts with beginning!
©2002 MotivationMentor@aol.com
August 13, 2009
This weekend I got to spend time with a lot of my family. It was wonderful to be able to catch up with one another and find out about the new twists and turns that life has brought into each of our lives. One of the things that stood out for me was a conversation with one of my young cousins.
She is preparing to go off to college in the next few days and made a comment that she wanted to get a hair weave before leaving for school. This statement really surprised me because the implication was that she didn’t believe she was beautiful enough with her own hair. Now let me be clear, I’m not trying to pull one of those “Baby, you’re beautiful on the inside so that makes you beautiful on the outside” comments that Mothers are famous for telling their girls. No, this young lady is truly beautiful; she looks like a famous pop music singer. So the fact that she saw herself as needing some type of dramatic “enhancement” was baffling to me. It made me concerned about how my own daughter will one day see herself, despite that fact that she too is a beautiful girl.
The whole experience made me think about my days as a teen and a Twenty-something. I remember experimenting with fake hair, fake nails, and even a fake eye color. I thought that these things added to my beauty. Wait, that’s not true, at the time I didn’t see myself as beautiful, so I tried those things hoping that they would MAKE me beautiful. It has taken some time and reprogramming my mindset to no longer accept the fashion industries standard of beauty as the only or even the most important one that exists. It also required an upgrade to my confidence level to appreciate who and what I see in the mirror. Now that I’m in my Thirties I can appreciate the unique beauty that is mine. And, at times I will even look in the mirror and sing to myself, “You are so beautiful to me…!”
Back to my cousin. When I thought about what she wanted to do it reminded me of a magnificent rose. What if the rose thought, “This shade of red isn’t pretty enough. I need to get some paint and paint myself Crayola red.” Of course that is absurd, the rose doesn’t doubt it’s exceptional appeal, nor would the majority of us want to smell and admire a painted rose. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not speaking against using make-up or coloring our hair. Those little tweaks can be provide much needed pick me ups and help to accentuate our most exquisite features as women. However, when we let ourselves get to a point where we are dependent on them, and feel as though we are inadequate and unappealing without them, we really have a problem. When a beautiful young girl with a “celebrity face and figure” sees herself and thinks “this isn’t good enough,” then something is wrong.
I don’t know if my cousin will end up getting the weave added to her hair or not. But I do hope that either way, she looks at her reflection and knows that whether her hair cascades down her back or whether it barley skims her neck that she truly is beautiful on the inside and that is what magnifies her external beauty. It turns out Mama was right all along!
August 10, 2009
If you are not aware of certain critical things, then it’s very likely that you are sabotaging your own efforts at achieving success on your terms.
Continue August 7, 2009
We must be true to ourselves by living our lives as we choose and honoring the differences that exist between our mom’s and us.
Continue August 7, 2009
Do you still use a rotary phone, or have a Beta VCR and a black & white TV in your family room? Are you still wearing sky high bangs and Jordache jeans? Most likely the answer is NO! When it comes to fashion and electronics most of us make it a priority to upgrade to the best that we can afford. My cell phone company offers a discount on cell phones after you’ve had your phone for 2 years so customers can take advantage of the latest technology and gadgets. Why is this appealing to me and many others? We want to make sure that what we are using is the fastest, most user-friendly, most reliable, most attractive thing available. That leads me to wonder, why we don’t have the same desires for ourselves.
We need to regularly upgrade the operating system in our computers to receive the highest level of performance from them. Likewise, it is imperative that we improve the operating system that is our mind in order to benefit from the highest level of performance. To put it plainly, we need to upgrade our mindsets! What worked well there and then, may no longer work here and now. I often saw examples of this concept in the workplace. We had a practice of manually running several reports on a weekly basis. This process was very time consuming and full of opportunities for human error. Then, some of our systems and programs were updated, and therefore had the ability to automatically generate the reports. But, despite this advancement, employees continued to manually generate these reports. When asked why they continued to do it that way, they responded “That’s the way we’ve always done it.” What area in your mindset needs to be upgraded?
I attended a workshop with Jack Canfield this weekend that focused on success principles. During the workshop, he did a demonstration to show how much control our thoughts, a.k.a. self-talk, have over our physical reality. Jack had a volunteer hold his arm straight out, so that it made a 90 degree angle from his body. Then he pushed on the volunteer’s arm to see the baseline level of resistance, which was very strong, so the arm was hard to push down. Then Jack told him to think of something that made him feel bad, thoughts like “That was a stupid thing to do. No wonder you didn’t get that promotion.” Then, he tried to push down on the arm again. This time his arm went down easily when it was pushed. Next, Jack repeated the process except with a positive thought about a success that made him feel good. The arm went back to being strong and difficult to push down. The purpose of me sharing this with you is to demonstrate the enormous power that our thoughts (self-talk), have on every aspect of our lives, even down to our physical state.
Now that we know the significance of focusing on the positive and not the negative, focusing on the solution and not the problem, what are we supposed to do about it? One thing we can do is to be very clear on what we want in our lives, careers, relationships, finances, etc. Then, we should keep those thoughts in the forefront of our minds. Another critical component is to surround yourself with people, ideas and things that empower and uplift you. This helps you to stay in a place of generating solutions and attracting opportunities. The problem with allowing pessimistic people into your inner circle is that negative people focus on the negative things. Before you know it they are spewing their unconstructive thoughts on you, so that you can carry them around. Please remember that like attracts like. What do you want to attract into your life? Peace and Joy, or Hurt and Anger?
At times, I have found myself feeling stale and stagnant. Those were the moments when I took my focus off of what I wanted for myself and was only looking at the things that were not going according to plan. In those moments, I’ve realized that something’s gotta give, or else! That’s the time for an upgrade, so I immerse myself in resources and environments that assist me with the necessary changes. Wouldn’t it be cool if we could subscribe to a plan that let us know we were eligible for a “New in 2” for our mindsets?
If you know that it’s time for you to upgrade your mindset, here is my challenge to you. Write down ALL of the negative thoughts (negative self-talk) you have in a given day. For example, “They won’t give me the raise I deserve; that’s why I’ll never get out of debt. Everyone in my family is big, that’s why I can’t lose this weight. All men are _________. I know they’re going to lay me off next. Etc, etc etc.”
- Create a list of how it’s benefiting you to hold onto these thoughts. (I know it sounds odd that something so terrible could be beneficial at all. But, we only do things that serve us on some level.) For example:
I get to blame my problems on other people/circumstances.
I don’t have to commit to changing things.
I get to sing the blues with my friends, so we have a reason to bond.
- Write down a list of how you would be benefited by releasing these thoughts. For instance:
I can take control over my environment.
I will be able to look for the solutions, rather than dwell on the problems.
If you’d like to share what you discovered, I’d love to hear from you! I’m here to help.
August 7, 2009
How do you view the arrival of a new season? Not just in weather, but new seasons in your life as well?
Continue August 7, 2009
