A uniqie ability

Today I’m going to write a bit about abilities.
We all have something we are good at, and some we aren’t.
How do you know what to do with your life?

"Find all the things you suck at, and don’t do ‘em.
At some point you’ll only have the things left you are good at doing.
And then you know what to do with your life."

Another approach would be to reverse the process.
First, find out what you are good at, and then work on the other things.

I believe in development. But I also believe in a unique ability.
We all have one. But we do not all know what it is.
And that is the purpose of this article, to help you find that unique ability.

David Deida wrote in his book “The way of the superior man”;

Each of us is born with a potential unique ability that has four characteristics:

1) It is a superior ability that other people notice and value.
2) We love doing it, and want to do it as much as possible.
3) It is energizing both for us and others around us.
4) We keep getting better, never running out of possibilities for improvement.

These are the four characteristics of David Deida’s idea of superior ability.
I recommend that you spend a bit of time thinking of this. Especially if you are the slightest bit interested, in finding your life purpose.

This will not give you the answer to the question “what is my purpose”, but it will get you some of the way. When you realize your superior ability, and welcome it into your life, then when your are ready to start the progress of finding your purpose, you’ll already have travelled a great distance towards your goal.

Think about this.
If you really think this through, you may come to a realisation, which could be a turning point in your life.
I did.

Overcoming fears

“The way it works is, you do the thing you're scared shitless of, and you get the courage AFTER
you do it, not before you do it.” (“Archie Gates” in “Three kings”).

One thing is for sure when we are talking about courage. When you spend an amount of energy doing something you are afraid of, regardless of the outcome, the energy used on performing this particular action, transforms into self-esteem energy afterwards. Regardless of the result.

It is not the result, but the action itself that counts.
Sure, there are some actions better than others, and it is up to your decision skill, to determinate what action are best and most valuable in the current situation, but we’ll leave that to another time.

And basically that is all there is to it.
Look at it this way, if you are afraid of a certain thing, let’s say public speaking. Then the first step is to make a decision to actually overcoming your fear, and make a public speech (don’t go and make speech on national television or something else, that’ll make you blackout, start with a few people, at a birthday party or something).
First time you do it, you will probably shake all over the body and have a hard time concentrating, but afterwards (assuming you’re still alive…), you’ll have a feeling of overcoming both your fears and your mind. You’ll have a feeling of accomplishment, and I bet you’ll feel great, regardless of the outcome.
Remember the saying “What doesn’t kill you, will make you stronger”?
In terms of personal development, this is so very true. Unfortunately it doesn’t apply to all areas of life. Smoking and drinking for instance.

Then take your personal challenge a step up, make a speech in front of 20 instead of 10, and keep advancing…
After you’ve done 10-15-20 times, you won’t fear it anymore. Because you know you can and that it won’t kill you.

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Goalsetting for beginners. Part 2 - Habits.

This is part two of “Goalsettings for beginners”, please read part I, if you haven’t already done so.

In this article we’re going to talk about habits. Now that you know what your goals are, we want to make this journey towards reaching them, as easy as possible, don’t we? And to accomplish this, we’re, among other things, going to replace the bad habits with good ones.

When you are starting a project (and that is exactly what this is), you need to somehow track how far you are going, and in which direction.
It’s like, when you are saving money to buy a particular item, and then once in a while, you go and check your savings balance, just to see how you are doing.
And before the process is even started, you take a look at your budget too see how much you can spare every month, right…?
This is exactly what we are going to do here. For now we’ll concentrate on the “personal developing” goals.
You know your goals now. Last time we defined your goals. And did without any limitations
You’ll have to be completely honest to your self now. Where do you stand in comparison to where you would be when you reach your goals?

Checkpoints.
(Just a quick note, I sadly left out in the former article.)
For now we’ll use a weight loss example. Let’s assume my first goal is to loose 20 pounds. Then it would be pretty easy to track my progress along the way, right? All I had too was to get up on the weight once every week and write down the result on a piece of paper. But how would I know if I were keeping up with the schedule?
What I need to do is to create some checkpoints along the way, let’s assume that it is possible to loose 2 pounds a week, without starving. Then off course there is no need to set the deadline of my goal a year from now. Let’s say 25 weeks, assuming that the last 5 pounds will go away a bit slower than the first 15.
Now I now, that my checkpoints is to loose 2 pounds every week, and if I do this, then I will reach my goal in 4 moths give or take a few days.

Well, surely it isn’t that simple with all goals.

If my goal were to be better at speaking in public, then it’s a bit harder to track and to evaluate my progress… well, that’s doesn’t mean it is impossible.

What I should do in that case is to create another type of tracking. Let’s say, that right now I am able to give a speech in front of two people, if there were three, then I’t would be almost impossible, to even say hello. Then let’s say my goal is to speak in front of 100 people within a year. Now I am able to define some checkpoints. One could be “in three months from now, I am able to give a five min. long speech in front of 10 people.”

As always it is important to get these things down on paper. I would recommend a journal, dedicated to personal development.

Environments.
You need to understand that your environment has a great deal to say when you are breaking habits. If I had a lot of junk food and several candies in my house, then it wouldn’t be very difficult for me, when I was vulnerable, having a bad day or whatever, to go absolute crazy, and eat everything I could find.
Therefore, what I would need to do now, is to replace all unhealthy food with healthy ones. Instead of chocolate and candy, go and buy lots fruit and low sugar candies.
Instead of frozen ready to cook fast-food, I could spend a day once a week, cooking, packing and freezing healthy ready to cook meals.
Instead of hanging out on McDonalds, I could join weight watchers. Got the point?

Alternative habits.
So back to the real deal.
Now we shall define you bad habits, and do something about them.
I want you to do this now. Take a piece of paper and write as the title your very first goal. Draw a line, dividing the paper in two. Write BAD / GOOD.
Below BAD, you must write any bad habits concerning this goal, you could imagine. Do a brainstorm. Foe example, if we stay with the example above, a bad habit could be “eating to much junk-food” or “always using the escalator, when one is available”.
Get going now.

Okay. Fantastic. Next step is to take each and every bad habit, and replace it with a good one.
On the top of my list is “too much junk food”, what could be done here. To find a suitable replacement, again I need complete honesty. To kill a weed, you need to tare it up by its roots.
I need to find the source of why I do eat too much junk food. It isn’t because it tastes good, cause it rarely does, at least not when compared to “real” food. So it must be because I find myself hungry at times, where I either have nothing else to cook, or simply because I am too lazy too cook, after a hard day of work.
A replacement candidate would be, “always have fruit at home” or “use one day a week to cook healthy fast food, and freeze it”.

Now do this: take each item on your list, and find an alternative. An alternative, there, besides help you quit the bad habit, also helps you get a step closer to your goal. Every day. Do this NOW.

Great. Now you have a list of every one of your bad habits, and what to replace it with. It should look like this:



You’ll need to do this with all of your goals. Take time to do this today. Don’t procrastinate it. If you aren’t able to this right now, then do it tonight when the kids are sleeping or whatever keeps you from doing it now.
Off course it would be overwhelming to replace every one of your habits by sunrise tomorrow, therefore, what you need to do, is take one at the time. Maybe you are able to kill two each day, or perhaps you’ll need a week for each one of them. I have no way of knowing this, only you do, so take your time, but only as much as needed. Eliminate each and every one of them, starting right now.

Keep up with your progress.
You don’t need to hang these pieces of paper up everywhere in your house. Just keep them in a safe place. And make a commitment to yourself, right now, that you once a week, will keep track of your progress. A great way of doing this is to write a journal. Write one section about what you have accomplished in the last week, and what you have learned from you mistakes, and then write one section about what you are going to do next week. Sunday would be a good day to this I assume.

Motivation and willpower.
Here at the end, I will just leave a quick note about motivation.
When you are going to change your habits, the first period of time will always be difficult, at some point you’ll be tempted to go back to your old habits. In the very beginning your motivation will give you an abundance of willpower, but willpower is like adrenalin. It will only give you a boost, at some point it will run out, and then you’ll only have your motivation until it is reloaded again, so to speak.
This is why the whole thing about environmental changes is so very important. It helps you keep on track, to make it easier for you to move forward, rather than take one step back.

I really hope that this will get you a bit closer to reaching your goals, and if you have any comments, dont hesitate, leave a comment.

Until next time… enjoy your life, you’ll never experience anything longer than that. Have fun.

Goalsetting for beginners

 What are goals and why define them?

We all know what goals are, but why are they of such importance?
When you make a shopping list, you do that, because you want to make sure, that you return from the supermarket with the right groceries.

See this as making a shopping list, you want to make sure that you get what you want.
Life is like a big supermarket, and this is your shopping list…


And that’s why it’s so very important to write them down on a sheet of paper.
The answer my friends, is blowing in the wind. No seriously, the answer is commitment to your goals and to get you to keep moving towards achieving them…

Preparation.
What you need for this first step, is some sheets of paper, 5 pieces should do.
And get a marker or pen of some kind.

How to define your goals:
I will post some examples while we go, so you have an idea of what to do.

I’ve decided to write this as a step-by-step guide; the idea is that you should write your goals down while reading this.
So go find some blank pieces of paper and a pen. NOW.

Personal Development:
First we are going to define your goals. So what I want you to do now, is to take a blank piece of paper. Write Personal Development as the title.
Next, use a couple of minutes to write down some things you would like to change in your life.
Write at least 9-12 things.
Note, that you should not write things concerning your financial situation, neither that you want a new car or similar.
Get going RIGHT NOW.

Finance and career:
Fantastic job. Now we are going to define what you really would like in terms of career and finance.
It’s the same process as before. Define 9-12 financial goals on a blank piece of paper. Title it financial goals
Get started now.



Material things:
Well, there is nothing wrong about being a bit materialistic some times.
And help yourself now, please.
Imagine you are an 8 year old kid, with 30 minutes in toysRus. Take everything you can.
Don’t be shy, whatever you would like. GO!

Fantastic. Now, let’s move on to step 3.
Right now you probably have a lot of goals on these three sheets of paper.
Let’s narrow it down a bit.
Take the first sheet, the one with Personal development in the top.

We are going to sort all of these goals.
Pick the three things there are most important for you, and put a circle around each one of them.

Do this with every one of the three papers.

Now. Take a new piece of paper, as a title you should write something like “My Goals” and this particular date next year.
Then start copying the three most important goals, from each piece of paper, to the new one.

Now you should have something like this in front of you: (The xx.xxx.xxxx is the date)



Almost done…

This is actually one of the most important steps.
You’ll need to associate some feelings to every goal.

Take a look at your list, take the first goal, in my case “Be better to speak in public”, you’ll need to put words on the feelings you’ll have, if you had already reached you goal, ex. “…if I had my new car today, I would feel free, because it could take me anywhere I would like to go, and I would fell happy and in control when I were driving in it.”

Do this with everyone of the nine goals on your list, there is no need for you to write this down. Just do it inside your head!

The next and final step is to hang it somewhere, choose a place, where you will see it every morning.
The refrigerator is a good place.

Now, every morning, before you go to work or what you do, take five minutes, look at the list, say out aloud, every goal, and how you would feel if you already had achieved it.
This is a very good way to start you day, and it will help you to keep on track.

If you feel like, do it once more in evening before going to sleep, or even a third time in the middle of the day.

Congratulations. You have a list of nine goals to achieve within a year.
If you follow the directions and keep on track nothing is impossible.
Remember it is not important how far you get everyday, the most important things is that you keep moving, constantly and in the right direction.

Enjoy life, and achieve your goals. Please.

Gategori: Personal Growth

Rules...?

A lot of these self-help gurus out there, claim that you, by listening to their cd’s and audio, can change your whole life, in as little as 30 days or less.

When you start to work on yourself and your personality, it is important to understand, that you are not a new person before next dawn. These things takes time. But we do change all the time. Small changes. The key is to control these changes and to make sure that you are moving in the right direction.

Just remember that this is a life long journey, and try to enjoy it all the way…

I will in the following try to slighty touch these subjects; you could, if you like, call the some sort of guidance rules:

· Accept the situation, the way it is.

· Take responsibility.

· Go to work on youself, not others.

· Create or build a self image that you like.

· There is no such thing as failure.

· Hang around people who already are successfully.

· Know the difference between short- and long term satisfaction.

· Keep growing.


Accept the situation the way it is:

To change something, or to make a difference, you have to look at the realities.How else, should you know what to change?

Take a craftsman, he is building a garage, he got 15 square feet to build at, but back home, he made a sketch of a garage measuring 10x20 feet.

If the craftsman won’t accept realities, and start building anyway, his project will fail (well, nor exactly, but more on that later…)

The same applies when you are going to change something in your life, or something about your personality, if you don’t know (or wont accept) the situation as it is right now, you will find that the road to success will be harder and longer than needed.
If you have the map, and know your destination, but have no clue what so ever, of where you are right now, it will be quite difficult to end up at the right destination.
Either you could find out where you are on the map right now, or you could just start walking, but chances are big, that you are going in the wrong direction.
So therefore, first priority must be to find you exact location, and be true to yourself.
Only then will you be able to move yourself in the right direction on the path of life…

Take Responsibility:

When you know where you are, and where you won’t to go, take responsibility for your own life. No one else is going to do this for you. You are the ONLY person who really cares about you.
And you are the only person, who can make these changes you want to make.
Accept that this is you life, and this is where you are now.
Make a commitment to yourself, about what you want to change, and that you are going to move in the right direction. Every day. It really doesn’t matter how fast you are going to be there, the only thing that matter, is that you are moving a bit closer every day.

Go to work on yourself, not others.

It is so much more easy to change one person, than it is to change the whole world.

Therefore you need to focus on working on you, and not others.
Thereby not said, that you shouldn’t pass on what you learn on you way, just try to remember your goals, and set yourself first.

Build an inner photo of a perfect you, and keep moving towards it:

Later, on this blog, I will write an article to cover this subject in more details, but I will slightly touch the subject now.
It all depends on setting goals. This is a technique where you will visualize youself as you would like to be, on all areas. Body, mind, finance and socially. When you have created this image in your mind, you’ll be able to see it infront of you, when times get rough, or when you have doubts about your path…
You could compare it to IKEA furniture. Inside the box is a lot of pieces, and a step by step guide telling you what to do. But sometime, you just need to know what it should look like, when finished.
This is what your self image is all about. Knowing what you are moving towards.
But in the near future I’ll write an article explaining what to do in details.

There is no such thing as failure:

Remember the story about the craftsman. Well all he has to do, to eliminate failure in this particular case, is to take a step back, look at the situation and learn something from it. Then suddenly it isn’t a failure anymore, but a success. In this case he could easily learn, to be more prepared, and visit the building grounds and measure, before going back home and start drawing. This will save him a lot of work in the future.
If you eliminate failure from your inner dictionary, you have are already taken a giant leap towards your goals. It is so much more easier to do things and take some changes when you know you can’t fail.
Think about, and from now on, everytime something didn’t work out as planned, learn from it.
Next you could ask yourself: “If I know I couldn’t fail, what would I do”?

Hang with people who already have success, and are as you want to be:

If you spend some time with those who are as you would like to be, then after a while, you’ll start thinking like those.Take and old married couple for instance. They are actually starting to look like eachother, both in looks and in their way of thinking. There are a longer scientific explanation for these things, we wont go so far today, but the point is, that people have effect on each other.
Both negative and positive, by the way.
So it might be appropriate, to mention, that while you should focus on, spending time with creative, energetic and fun people, try at the same time, to eliminate anyone with a negative influence. Don’t worry, it will happen automaticly over time, but why slow the process…

Learn to know the difference between short and long term effects:

Imagine that you are going to eat a whole plate of chocolate. The short term effect, is that it gives you some kind of satisfaction. It tastes good. It melts on the tounge. Delicius.

But after the whole plate, and maybe even a couple of haour later, your enercetic niveau are falling, you starting to feel tired, your bloodsugar is going low.
If you ate a plate of chocolate every day, imagine now, what lang term effect this would have on you, on lets say a year from now…
Not good right.
If you consider these three effects on your body, mind, healt and so on, evertime you are going to do something (not only eating), then you’ll probaply find, that a lot of your actions, may have a nice short term effect, but what about the long term effect of your actions?

Keep growing:

This part almost speaks for itself.
Try to move a bit closer to your destination every day.
As I wrote a bit earlier, it really doesn’t matter how fast you are moving, as long as you are moving. And in the right direction offcourse.
Try to learn something new everyday, and learn from your mistakes, and thereby eliminating failure from your life.

Keep on going, and have fun. Enjoy life...