#1 Build Motivation And Self-Confidence
Motivation is the power locked in your desire. When you want something badly enough you do all you can to get it. You can be so motivated that you are willing to risk your life for a potential outcome, like the mother who runs into a collapsing, burning building to rescue her child whom she knows to be trapped in there. She's totally motivated.
What are you so motivated for that you are willing to risk everything for it, willing to put everything on the line for it? We call this your core motivation.
Self-confidence tells us that we are capable of achieving what we feel motivated to achieve. If you doubt your ability to achieve something you block the power of your motivation to achieve it.
The attitude of self-confidence can be cultivated to allow your deepest power of motivation to carry you as far as you can go in the direction you desire.
When leaders or managers strive to ENFORCE higher performance, ignoring the team's spirit, they end up choking the flow of motivation, stifling the workers' drive to do and to give their best.
If a team leader tries to regulate, force, demand or threaten a team into high performance, his effort must prove to be as futile as attempting to force a flower to grow by pulling on its tender budding petals!
When leaders are very critical of their people they undermine the self-confidence of the team members. This diminishes the power of the team's motivation to achieve the leaders' aims, so it's counter productive to say the least.
When we relate to others in a way that discounts their value we attack their self-confidence. The attack cuts deeper the closer our relationship.
Ultimately we each need to take total responsibility for our own levels of self-confidence and motivation because we just can't count on others to always be there to support us in that way.
If you find one or more people on whom you really can rely on to support your self-confidence, you are most fortunate.
Team building in its highest form is all about creating a group of mutually supportive individuals who are committed to building one another up in the area of self-confidence.
Families are ideal systems for building-up self-confidence, but, unfortunately, many families fall short of fulfilling this ideal.
If leadership has one core feature it is to build-up both the motivation and the self-confidence of those she leads. The same applies to teachers. Your students will perform equal to their level of self-confidence and motivation every time.
The fact is, though, that no one can dampen your self-confidence and motivation without your cooperation. How we see other people is really just a reflection of how we see ourselves. If you see someone as treating you in a way that undermines your self-confidence what you are really looking at is a way that you undermine your own!
Look at how self-critical you are toward your self when you feel that someone else is treating you in a way that hurts your self-confidence. When you feel like lashing out or striking back because of how another seems to be relating to you, focus instead on no longer relating to your self in that way.
To build your self-confidence, pay close attention to your thinking. Thinking of failures is a sure way to deplete your power of self-confidence.
Think of yourself as capable. Think of yourself as powerful. Think of yourself as good and beautiful and true to your values think of yourself as being one with integrity and deserving all the good that you desire.
To build your motivation consider deeply what it is that you really, really care about; what you really, really want to accomplish, to contribute to, to become. Return to this target of contemplation again and again and gradually your power of motivation will grow.
As you contemplate what you really want to accomplish at the deepest level of your being, and align your thinking with self-confidence building, both your motivation and self-confidence will grow, taking you as far as you can go in the direction you really want to follow.
To make the greatest progress, practice this during letdowns, when it is easiest to lapse into self-doubt and insecurity, both of which sap motivation. Practicing when it is hardest to do so strengthens you the most.
#2 Lose Anxious Stress To Win Higher Success
It's ironic that we count on anxious stress to win higher success, when clearly looking at our stress reveals how inconsistent this choice is with our intentions.
To see this, really observe the influence of anxious states of stress upon you. See how they make you irritable and short-tempered with your loved ones, with your professional team, even with your clients.
See how the harder you drive yourself under the influence of anxious stress the nearer its build-up takes you to a self-humiliating emotional meltdown that undoes your relationship bridge-building the way a build up of pressure takes a volcano toward an eruption that can wipe out a village that took generations to construct.
See how your anxious stress generates a negative attitude from you directed toward your life and toward your work, causing you to see both as unpleasant, even painful, maybe heart-rending, if not heart breaking, causing you to dislike your life and work.
Our Attitudes Are Contagious
Our attitude radiates the way the sun radiates warmth and light. Those exposed to our attitude absorb and reflect it, the way that our bodies radiate warmth when exposed to the heat radiating from the summer sun. This means that your negative attitude toward your work that the degree of stress you carry triggers from you leads your team and your clients toward a negative attitude regarding your business.
Anxious stress causes us to be in conflict with ourselves, driving us to look down on ourselves with a negative attitude, causing others to do the same.
Simply observing our stress reveals, therefore, that no matter how hard we work on accomplishing our goals, our stress works against the accomplishment of our goals. We then encounter resistance to our efforts that seems mysteriously caused, and this just makes us all the more frustrated!
Observing the effects of our stress also reveals how it costs us our joy, because anxious stress is a form of unhappiness. To the extent that you are not enjoying yourself you are experiencing a sense of meaninglessness about it all. We never wonder, What's the point of it all while we feel great. We only question the meaning of going on from a state of emotional suffering. So to the degree that we live in anxious stress we rob from ourselves the sacred treasure of a meaningful life.
Stop Looking From Anxious Stress
When we pay too little attention to what is going on inside of us, we confuse what we are doing to ourselves with what life and other people seem to be doing to us. For instance, we feel attacked by life when we are unconsciously attacking ourselves by carrying our stress into life.
To the extent that we insist on living under the gun of anxious stress, we make our life, our work and all the people with whom we interact seem like our underminers; we then go on the attack because we feel attacked.
As we pay closer attention to how our stressful feelings function we discover that looking at our work, our life and the people in our life from the perspective of an anxiously stressful state pits us against ourselves, our lives and the people in our lives on whom we most rely.
As we look within for the real cause of our stress we notice that contemplating a worrisome future possibility generates it. It has nothing to do with the present. It is a product of worrying that we are not doing enough, or others are not doing enough for us, or life is not doing enough for us, to ensure that we avoid some frightening destination.
But that dark and dismal destination is not real. It is but a figment of our imagination, and we are using it to stress ourselves right out of this present moment where everything is really alright.
Beyond this, by envisioning a fearful outcome the self-sabotaging patterns caused by anxious stress can turn that vision into a self-fulfilling prophecy!
So what to do? How to lose stress to win higher success? First, realize that your anxious state of stress is not caused by anything going wrong in your past, present or future, but rather, your anxious state of stress causes you to see everything wrong!
A common event that triggers anxious stress is something occurring that forces you to turn your attention away from a task you are bent on completing. All this or any other delay, deviation or distraction amounts to is a kind of speed bump in the road of life. If you push ahead harder the bump hits you harder. If you ease up and slow down you roll smoothly over the bump without the slightest jar.
To see, enjoy and feel grateful for how everything and everyone is really going right for you stop counting on anxious stress to make things right! Counting on stress to help you attain a higher level is like grabbing onto a lead weight to lift you off the bottom of the sea!
Change How You Relate To Stress
Instead of counting on the discomfort of stress to support you, examine it with suspicion, as you would relate to someone you know to be a crook who offers to carry your wallet for you.
Remind yourself that you don't want anxious stress. You might tell yourself, This is not the state I want to live in. But don't make the common mistake of thinking you need to change or control some situation or some person exterior to yourself to be stress-free.
Catch yourself the moment you are about to habitually blame any outer condition or person or future possibility for the anxiety you feel. Don't point to this or to that to justify your stress. That would just keep you in it. You only see this or that person or condition as a threat because you are looking from a stressed out perspective.
Finally, to leave stress take some deep, calming breaths; slow down; ease up. Relax your body, your pace and your tone of voice to express calm. Think about inner peace and feeling totally secure within. Pay close attention to your thinking and resist the temptation to mentally dwell on stress producing thoughts.
As you put these stress-buster tips into practice, instead of heading toward a humiliating, self-sabotaging meltdown, you will see your stress gently melting away and your life, your work, your attitudes and your relationships all looking up.
#3 Wise Risk Taking
Taking life's risks is beautifully conveyed through the success secret portrayed by the classic image, called The Fool.
Envision a cheerful young man dancing in a care-free manner toward the edge of a cliff. As he is about to step off the edge, he is not looking down. He is looking up.
Obviously he is called a fool because he seems to be acting so impractically. But aren't all of the world's greatest successes risk takers who were labeled fools by someone? It seems that he is engaging in recklessness, but look more closely.
Aren't we all always dancing at the edge of a cliff? The reality is that anything can happen at any time, and the wisest and happiest among us learn how to deal with this fact of life in an attitude of faith rather than fear.
This fool seems to understand the success secret of faith. Why is this a success secret? It's a secret because so few people understand it. It represents a principle of success because our lives go in the direction of our attention. The more one worries the worse things seem to get.
Our emotional states have a definite impact upon our fate. An emotionally disturbed, chaotic state radiates a chaotic energy into the environment. That is why you can feel when someone is very angry, depressed or anxious. Our emotional states radiate.
Chaotic emotional states like anxiety influence circumstances toward chaos and influence relationships toward conflict. Murphy's law kicks in.
The fool in our image appears serene, confident, and expectant of a good outcome. He seems to anticipate rising rather than falling. His attention is directed upward!
Risk For A Richer Life
Caving into the fear of risk taking keeps us trapped in circumstances that feel increasingly confining and stagnant. Risk taking not only expands our possibilities, it can make life more interesting.
Some risks are foolhardy. Others, though, are necessary. You know when you have to take a risk. Those who wait for the perfect opportunity wait forever, paralyzed by uncertainty.
Sometimes risk is thrust upon us, like when we go through a radical change in our lives without initiating it. We lose a client, a job, a loved one, a home and feel over-exposed to risk we did not ask for.
Sometimes we take a risk and sometimes risk is thrust upon us.
It's nice to know that there is a definite foundation on which we can rely for making the most of a risky situation. That foundation is the authentic state of emotional security. When your faith in yourself and in your life is strong enough, you are ready to successfully risk.
Your attitude needs to be that however things turn out, you feel confident that you and your family will be alright. Once you begin worrying about the outcome, you are looking down, not up, and your life is heading in the direction of your attention.
The reality is that failure and loss are really nothing but perspectives that turn out to be an optical illusion. When the bottom drops out, look up, and all you will see is your ceiling flying up, meaning that your upper limits are flying away.
In this universe of relativity if you go down long enough you find yourself going up. Start descending through the earth and don't stop and you will eventually find yourself flying up away from the surface you just penetrated.
The key to taking life's risks successfully is getting into the secure frame of mind. Being in a state of emotional security gives you the leverage to insure a secure, though perhaps exciting, ride. You have to be unattached, emotionally, to the outcome.
Now there are times when NOT taking a risk is too risky, like when you can sense that your current position is truly unsustainable, and the least risky choice is to take a chance on something else that at least may work out.
Taking this kind of risk means embracing rather than resisting your fear. The fear of change needs to be accepted when the consequences of remaining where you are prove even more threatening.
To clearly assess the facts in any situation requires calm. When you feel nervous, pressured or insecure your ability to think clearly and, more importantly, to intuitively feel clearly, becomes blurred.
Put off panic for as long as you can. Calm down, examine the facts and open your heart and mind to a feeling and a knowing of the wise course of action. Sometimes risk is necessary. Sometimes it is just fun and adds to the spice of life. Sometimes it's thrust upon you.
It's really always present though, and only a foundation of internal faith or trust in the goodness of life no matter what happens sustains us. This is the success secret for taking life's risks.
#4 How To Succeed Despite Self-Doubt
You have to proceed THROUGH the self-critical voices in your head that tell you that you are not good enough to succeed at what you pursue.
If you "keep on pushing" you will find that the real great joy in life comes from giving your all for all you really want. It is giving not getting that defines a truly fulfilling life.
But those negative, self-denigrating voices in our head would prevent us from giving our all. They would prevent us from trying at all, as if achieving the goal was all that really mattered.
But it's the bold, heroic journey that gives life its true riches.
We catch those self-depricating, inspiration-negating voices the way we catch an illness, from environments where "germs" of negativity abound.
We imagine ourselves as inadequate and then feel dismayed, insecure, discouraged. If we permit this imaginary dream of inadequacy to rule us, we give up before we really start.
By forging ahead anyway, against the "headwinds" of the inner voices of self-doubt in your head, you conquer dread and find yourself succeeding.
The longer and more continuously you push forward toward accomplishing your goal, the more you grow in your ability to be successful, and the more progress you make toward your goal.
It's easy to be intimidated by mental scenes of disappointment and difficulty. It's easy to imagine oneself as not good enough.
But such thoughts prove to be not constructive in the least. A way to lose them is to choose to continue doing your best to reach your goal and trusting that your best is enough.
As long as you continue working on achieving what you want to achieve you are making progress toward your goal.
Sometimes we fear that we should be doing more, or doing something else, something beyond our power to do, and begin to worry about failure. We may lock ourselves in indecision by endlessly wondering about what to do instead of doing what we can in the now.
If we heed our dread, we do less than we could, or do nothing at all. That's when we begin feeling really stuck.
But we have within us a stream of intuitive guidance that leads us along our true path. That stream is always available, leading us along the path of natural order development.
Natural order development refers to the organic process of goal achievement. Wherever you are, there is a next step for you to take. If you try to skip that step, you build upon a weak and faulty foundation. You will not be able to sustain the progress you make for long, before you find yourself tumbling back down to where you were.
Just as a flower's growth must advance step-by-step, in order, for it to blossom, so must we progress step-by-step for our goal to blossom. Just as a flower cannot bloom before it buds, we cannot succeed at least not for long by skipping any step along the way.
When you feel most insecure you may fear that your best efforts are too meager to matter. But consistently and persistently taking small steps gradually frees you from the hold of insecurity and leads you to your goal.
Insecurity would have you stop working on your goals because success is too doubtful. By following your sense of the next natural order step for you to take, though, your inner guidance grows stronger and the power of fear grows weaker.
Sometimes the best that you can do is to work on releasing your insecurity. As you do this, you release yourself to move forward more fully and freely.
To release your insecurity, let it flow through you without resistance. Relax to it. Observe your feelings. Breathe. Gradually your insecurity will wane and fade, and you'll find inspiration welling up in its place.
Just the practice of trusting that what you are doing to achieve your goal is enough is in and of itself a great way to release yourself for higher goal achievement.
When you feel tempted to criticize yourself, to worry that your work is inadequate, to doubt the value of your best effort, see if you can let that go and simply focus on the inner, intuitive, inspirational voice or feeling that guides your next best step.
Taking one step at a time, in line with where you want to go, despite the insecurities and self-doubts that would thwart your efforts, liberates you from fear and leads you to success.
Continue working for your goal. Succeed despite self-doubt. Build up momentum by consistently directing your time and effort into purposeful work aimed at what you want to accomplish.
In this way you grow more and more powerful, focused, determined and successful and experience the great joy of giving your all.