Success is more than economic gains, titles, and degrees. Planning for success is about mapping out all the aspects of your life. Similar to a map, you need to define the following details: origin, destination, vehicle, backpack, landmarks, and route.

Origin: Who you are

A map has a starting point. Your origin is who you are right now. Most people when asked to introduce themselves would say, “Hi, I’m Jean and I am a 17-year old, senior highschool student.” It does not tell you about who Jean is; it only tells you her present preoccupation. To gain insights about yourself, you need to look closely at your beliefs, values, and principles aside from your economic, professional, cultural, and civil status. Moreover, you can also reflect on your experiences to give you insights on your good and not-so-good traits, skills, knowledge, strengths, and weaknesses. Upon introspection, Jean realized that she was highly motivated, generous, service-oriented, but impatient. Her inclination was in the biological-medical field. Furthermore, she believed that life must serve a purpose, and that wars were destructive to human dignity.

Destination: A vision of who you want to be

“Who do want to be?” this is your vision. Now it is important that you know yourself so that you would have a clearer idea of who you want to be; and the things you want to change whether they are attitudes, habits, or points of view. If you hardly know yourself, then your vision and targets for the future would also be unclear. Your destination should cover all the aspects of your being: the physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual. Continuing Jean’s story, after she defined her beliefs, values, and principles in life, she decided that she wanted to have a life dedicated in serving her fellowmen.

Vehicle: Your Mission

A vehicle is the means by which you can reach your destination. It can be analogized to your mission or vocation in life. To a great extent, your mission would depend on what you know about yourself. Bases on Jean’s self-assessment, she decided that she was suited to become a doctor, and that she wanted to become one. Her chosen vocation was a medical doctor. Describing her vision-mission fully: it was to live a life dedicated to serving her fellowmen as a doctor in conflict-areas.

Travel Bag: Your knowledge, skills, and attitude

Food, drinks, medicines, and other traveling necessities are contained in a bag. Applying this concept to your life map, you also bring with you certain knowledge, skills, and attitudes. These determine your competence and help you in attaining your vision. Given such, there is a need for you to assess what knowledge, skills, and attitudes you have at present and what you need to gain along the way. This two-fold assessment will give you insights on your landmarks or measures of success. Jean realized that she needed to gain professional knowledge and skills on medicine so that she could become a doctor. She knew that she was a bit impatient with people so she realized that this was something she wanted to change.

Landmarks and Route: S.M.A.R.T. objectives

Landmarks confirm if you are on the right track while the route determines the travel time. Thus, in planning out your life, you also need to have landmarks and a route. These landmarks are your measures of success. These measures must be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time bound. Thus you cannot set two major landmarks such as earning a master’s degree and a doctorate degree within a period of three years, since the minimum number of years to complete a master’s degree is two years. Going back to Jean as an example, she identified the following landmarks in her life map: completing a bachelor’s degree in biology by the age of 21; completing medicine by the age of 27; earning her specialization in infectious diseases by the age of 30; getting deployed in local public hospitals of their town by the age of 32; and serving as doctor in war-torn areas by the age of 35.

Anticipate Turns, Detours, and Potholes

The purpose of your life map is to minimize hasty and spur-of-the-moment decisions that can make you lose your way. But oftentimes our plans are modified along the way due to some inconveniences, delays, and other situations beyond our control. Like in any path, there are turns, detours, and potholes thus; we must anticipate them and adjust accordingly.

One of the major challenges we face in the 21st century is handling the amount of choices we have. It’s very complex. When you have hundreds of things to choose from you tend to hesitate and being clueless what direction to go. You do not know for sure what would be the best to do, what activity would give you the most satisfaction or what would you really love to do.

That’s one major reason why people never finish what they started. Their interest dies away before they would accomplish something. You have to be more focused on what you do, because there are more destructive patterns to get you out of the track than was before. And this is a fairly “new” phenomenon in our society. There are so many other excitements out there, why should you keep doing whatever you started to do? Let’s do something else, something fun. We can finish this later.

And that’s where you damage your self-esteem and self confidence. There is NO accomplishments, NO results, the job is NOT done. Can you be proud of yourself? Of course NOT. Did you achieve something? You did NOT.

When you start something you’d better finish it otherwise your opinion of yourself will be hurt.

And that’s what self-esteem is: YOUR OPINION, YOUR FEELINGS, YOUR APPRAISAL and YOUR EVALUATION of yourself.

Self-esteem is your approach toward the “attacks” of reality.

What is high self-esteem?

When you feel great, happy and satisfied about yourself you have healthy, high self-esteem. When you love and respect yourself, when you feel confident to achieve anything you wish to achieve you have high self-esteem. When you have tons of energy and smiling a lot you have high self-esteem. The more tasks you accomplish the higher the level of your self-esteem is going to be.

What is low self-esteem?

Basically the opposite. When you do not feel good, happy and satisfied about yourself. Low self-esteem comes from not loving and respecting yourself. When you think you are not worth of love, respect and happiness you have low self-esteem. When you are focusing on your weaknesses instead of your strengths you develop low self-esteem.

Feeling good about yourself is essential to overcome the obstacles in your life, to be more active and energetic to face challenges on a daily basis. When you love and respect yourself you radiate that positive energy toward people who you interact with. You will more likely to have positive feedback from them if they feel that you are confident and you have high self-esteem.

Developing self-esteem is crucial to your well-being. To live an active, happy, fun life you have to work on your self-esteem. It’s not easy and change does not happen overnight. If you set slightly challenging, but achievable goals you can move toward accomplishing them. Once you finish them would give you the satisfaction, the feeling that you did something great, something of value. And then you can relax, enjoy life and can get ready for your next challenge.

I am going to ask you to something very weird right now. First of all, I want you to listen to your thoughts. Now tell me, what thoughts fill your head? Would you label them as positive, or negative?

Now let’s say you are walking down the street with these thoughts. Do you think anyone who would meet you would be able to tell you what’s on your mind?

The answer to number one is up to you. But, the answer number two can be pretty generic. Although people will not be able to tell you exactly what you think, they will more or less have an idea of how you are feeling.

Here’s another question. When you enter a party filled with friends, do they all fall silent as if something terrible had happened? Or does everybody there perk up as if waiting for something exciting to happen?

You know what? The answer to all these depends on your frame of mind.

Thoughts are very powerful. They affect your general attitude. The attitude you carry reflects on your appearance, too – unless, of course, you are a great actor.

And it doesn’t end there. Your attitude can also affect people around you.

The type of attitude you carry depends on you. It can be either positive or negative.

Positive thoughts have a filling effect. They are admittedly invigorating. Plus, the people around the person carrying positive thoughts are usually energized by this type of attitude.

Negative thoughts on the other hand have a sapping effect on other people. Aside from making you look gloomy and sad, negative thoughts can turn a festive gathering into a funeral wake.

A positive attitude attracts people, while a negative attitude repels them. People tend to shy away from those who carry a negative attitude.

We can also define attitude as the way of looking at the world. If you choose to focus on the negative things in the world, more or less you have a negative attitude brewing up. However, if you choose to focus on the positive things, you are more likely carry a positive attitude.

You have much to gain from a very positive attitude. For one, studies have shown that a positive attitude promotes better health. Those with this kind of attitude also have more friends. projecting a positive attitude also helps one to handle stress and problems better than those who have a negative attitude.

A positive attitude begins with a healthy self-image. If you will love the way you are and are satisfied, confident, and self-assured, you also make others are around feel the same way.

A negative attitude, on the other hand, has, of course, an opposite effect. So, carrying a negative attitude has a twofold drawback. You feel bad about yourself, and you make others feel the same way.

If you want to have a positive attitude, you have to feature healthy thoughts. This is probably very hard to do nowadays since, all around us, the media feeds us nothing but negative thoughts. A study shows that for every 14 things a parent says to his or her child, only one is positive. This is truly a saddening thought.

If you want a healthier outlook in life, you need to think happy thoughts, and you have to hear positive things as well. So, what can you do? Well, for starters, you could see a funny movie, you could play with children, spend some time telling jokes with friends. All these activities fill you with positive stimuli, which in turn promotes positive attitude.

Although it is impossible to keep ourselves from the negative things around us, you can still carry a positive attitude by focusing on the good things, the positive things in life.

And this positive attitude you now carry can be of benefit to other people. Sometimes when other people feel down, the thing people mostly do is try to give them advice. But sometimes, all they need is somebody to sit by them, and listen to them. If you have a positive attitude you may be able to cheer them up without even having to say anything.

If positive attitude is really great, why do people choose to adopt a negative attitude instead? One who carries a negative attitude may be actually sending a signal for attention. Before you get me wrong, feeling sad, angry, or gloomy is not wrong itself. But dwelling on these thoughts for far too long is not healthy either. There is a time to mourn.

As always, if you are beset by troubles, even in your darkest hour, focus on the good things in life, you will always have hope. Problems become something you can overcome.

You do not have much to lose by adopting a healthy, positive attitude. Studies show that such an attitude actually retards aging, makes you healthier, helps you develop a better stress coping mechanism, and has a very positive effect on all the people you meet every day. So, what’s not to like about a positive attitude? Adopt one today.

Separating Yourself From Your Ego

By Solace Swanson

Your ego is both inspiring and full of deceit, on the surface it appears to be helping you, it gives you small boosts of gratification when you succeed and that helps keep you going, however on the flip side it is also one of the biggest hindrances you will face in life. You see your ego just wants you to be safe, to have fun and to be the best, however what it doesn’t realize is that failure can be a good thing. In fact, your ego hates failure, it loathes nothing more, and this is where most people go wrong in their career, health and relationships.

Your ego hates failure so much that it puts up protective barriers against it, it makes you feel bad when you aren’t the best looking, smartest, most charming guy around. It is the reason why fat people hate going to the gym, often the fear of other people judging them and their ego being damaged because of that holds them back from going. It is also the reason many weightlifters lift heavier weights than they should, they get an ego boost from these bigger weights and feel good because of it, even if they are damaging their body when they can’t lift them with the right form.

Consequently this also applies to attracting women, your ego doesn’t like you failing, being rejected or making a fool of yourself, so you play it safe, you do safe things that nobody around will see or notice, and you try to blend in with all the other codes picking up women. You Never rise above the rest because your ego tells you public humiliation is bad.

To separate yourself from your ego is a liberating experience, you can freely do what you like without worrying about prejudice, about others judging what you do, about girls or guys thinking bad about you for screwing up. In fact, if you dump your ego entirely you will see massive gains in every area of life, for you will no longer be trying to pick up women to prove to your friends how much of a cool dude you are, but rather talking to women to give them a fun night out and amuse yourself, not impress others.

So how do you go about removing this ego? We’ll for a start over the next week keep listening to your thoughts, if you catch yourself thinking about whether someone else likes you or not stop! Just cut that thought out and attempt to never think it again. If you catch yourself comparing yourself to others then stop! don’t ever think like that, and if you ever think of doing something then think “no maybe x will think I’m stupid”, ignore that thought and do it anyway.

Separating yourself from your ego means separating yourself from comparisons with others, don’t compare how many girls you’ve had/muscle size/your salary to other guys, don’t care about what others think of you, and especially don’t stop doing what you want to do because someone else may not like it.

It’s hard because we’ve been brought up a society that values comparisons, we have charts and graphs showing school performances, we have IQ tests, we have salaries for various jobs and comparisons between multiple positions. In fact most of many people’s existences is based around comparing themselves to others and only feeling good when they are better than other people. If you ever feel good because you’re better at something than someone else, stop it! Everyone always has someone better and worse than them, and comparing yourself to others will only deter you from your real goals.

Set goals for yourself, and don’t build them upon what others have done Every person is unique and has their own take on life. Do what you want to do, if getting to 60KG from 50KG is your goal, awesome, that’s a great goal, if your goal is to be bigger than the kid down the road its not so great. Others can still serve as inspiration of course (I know I want to be as big as Arnie someday), but don’t feel let down if you’re not there yet, just keep going, working on that goal and continue getting there. Negative emotions from not bulking up or loosing fat fast enough will only deter you from what you really want and when you hit a plateau your ego will probably put you off all-together.

Your ego can keep you going when the going is easy, but that’s all it will do. For when you hit a stale point your ego will feel the drain from lack of success and cause you to give up hope, even if you are only 10% away from your goal. When the going gets tough you need to learn to put your ego aside and be able to tap into your intelligence, which will help you get over those speed-bumps in life and be the man you really want to be.

Your ego is based on emotions, not logic, hence why it is so hard to control. But you will realize over time that it becomes easier and easier the more you ignore it when it’s holding you back and start using your logic and intelligence instead. The question is, do you want instant ego satisfying gratification, or to endure a slight bit of ego pain for huge lifelong improvements?

About the Author: Do you make these mistakes with Women? 10 Things Women REALLY want but will never tell.

Source: www.isnare.com

Permanent Link: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=223087&ca=Self+Help

Have you had that experience when all of a sudden you just had this huge hunch that something is about to happen, and to your surprise, that intuition was eventually translated to reality?

When you feel strongly about something without logical basis to it, that’s called intuition. It comes in three impressions: clairvoyance or “the third eye”, sensing clearly and feeling through listening.

Clairvoyance is when your eye goes beyond what it can see. This is when you know what is happening somewhere.

Sensing clearly is basically what we refer to as “hunch” or “gut feel.” This is the time when you are overwhelmed with a feeling and you can’t explain it and all you can say is “I just know.”

On the other hand, feeling through listening or clairaudience is being able to “listen” between the lines. Intuition also happens at times when a certain sound, whatever it is - be it a car’s honk or a bird’s twitting - ushers in an intense feeling.

They say only a number of people are gifted with intuition. Astrologers even insist that people born under the Scorpio or Pisces signs are naturally intuitive it almost borders on E.S.P. But studies have been sprouting left and right that proclaim that anyone can develop intuition.

Why the need to develop intuition, you ask? Why not let your emotional and psychological state as it is? First and foremost, intuition promotes good communication. It makes you more sensitive to the people around you; it often keeps you from hurting those you love because you are intuitive enough to understand them. Intuition also makes you far more creative than ever. Intuition means releasing more creative juices for any means of expression. Lastly, intuition has a healing power. This healing power is not in the physical sense, but in delving deep into your soul to eradicate some negative energy buried in it.

With that being said, are you ready to develop your intuition? Here are some ways to unlock this gift:

1. Hypnosis

Oh yes, get yourself hypnotized. Hypnosis is not limited to watching a pendulum move back and forth. Perform self-hypnosis or you can avail of hypnotic programs that can strengthen your intuition.

2. Meditation

Meditating means finding peace in yourself. If your mind and heart are cluttered with too many baggage and hurt, you wouldn’t be able to quiet down that part of you that could eventually initiate intuition. There are so many ways to meditate: take a yoga class, or just simply practice some breathing that could bring you straight to Zen.

3. Think positive!

A worry-free, fear-free state could do so much to improve your intuitive ability. By staying positive, you attract good energy that would be able to easily recognize imminent feelings and events.

4. Just let go.

What does this mean? If you are on the brink of making a huge decision, let go of all the inhibitions and head to a quiet place where you could find out where the letting go has brought you. Sometimes you just have to listen to the voice within you, and that voice wouldn’t come out unless you let go.

5. Never expect.

After letting go of the inhibitions and all those things that stop you from thinking and feeling clearly, never expect for an answer right away. Never expect that the “hunch” would fall on your lap immediately. Give it a little time then you’d just get surprised that — wham! — now you have your answer.

6. Believe in your first impressions.

When you see someone for the first time and think that he is a bit too arrogant for your taste, chances are that impression actually holds true. Most of the time, first impressions are brought by intuition.

7. Stay happy!

See? All you need to be intuitive is to stay happy! Happiness attracts immense power and such power includes intuition. In tapping your intuition, your motivation must be happiness and contentment. Given that premise, intuition will fall to you easily.

Intuition is helpful, because sometimes it leads you to something that cannot be achieved otherwise. A lot of lives have been saved by intuition alone. Decisions are easier done if armed by this gift. Develop intuition now and reap benefits you have never imagined.

Childhood years are the best times to learn. Somehow, a person’s comprehension is at its peak during childhood. Parents should take advantage of these learning years to ingrain the values of life in their children.

If you’re a parent, teach them positive habits so that they will know and see the beauty that life has to offer. Make them enthusiastic about life. Instill into their hearts and minds all the wonders and magnificence of being alive by living life to its fullest in a positive way.

There’s a startling difference between children learning through self-discovery, and children learning through self-discovery with proper guidance. The first things that children learn are usually the things that stay with them and mold formative years until they reach adulthood.

Let us suppose you let your children learn through self-discovery. To a certain extent, self-discovery is good since it develops full independence and self-reliance. However, the learning process might be slow. In a sense, it is like a trial and error experience for children. They have to segregate the good from the bad, the right from the wrong, what they like and what they don’t. It is most likely that what they will like are the ones that come easy to them or the ones that they enjoy the most. And the ones that they enjoy the most might not necessarily be the good ones. Without proper guidance, what they like and enjoy the most might actually be hurting them although they are not aware of it. Perhaps later, if they find out that they picked the wrong choices, it may be too late.

With self-discovery through proper guidance, you will be able to leave room for them to develop independence and self-reliance. At the same time, show them what is right and what is wrong. Explain to them why. If possible, cite instances or examples based on true-to-life events to make them more convincing and realistic. The more realistic they are, the more easily the children are convinced. Likewise, try teaching them in a friendly and humorous atmosphere. Children are more attentive and eager to learn when all (both teachers and students) are in an easy mood. You will know and feel their eagerness to learn through the sparkle in their eyes and by the way they answer your questions. You can be sure that what they learn from you is acceptable to them and will stay with them. That is why, as a parent, you must show enthusiasm in life to your children.

There’s a third method of making children learn. That is through proper guidance leaving negligible room for self-discovery. But there are drawbacks. You take away from them the benefits of self-reliance and independence. The guidance you devote to them may be good and well intended, but they must not rely on you on almost everything they do. They become decision-dependent on you. There are instances wherein this type of guidance might be worse than giving no guidance at all.

There are parents who underwent hardships during their childhood, strived, and became successful financially. Although they are financially in the position to guide and assist their children to a better life, they prefer that their children undergo the same difficult experience they underwent during their younger years. Their reason: so that their children will value and experience the same things they went through. This may be applicable to stubborn and rebellious youngsters, but not to disciplined ones. Why must their sons and daughters repeat the same difficulties? There’s no reason to. This is like punishing the innocent. Instead of repeating the experience, they should learn from it. Life is too short to repeat unsavory experiences.

One of the best ways to broaden your children’s knowledge about life is by traveling. The world - its varied people, places, and cultures - has a lot of information to offer. It is perhaps as important as the conventional classroom. If you are financially able, traveling is one of the best educational experiences you can give your children. Look for exhibits or world fairs, and take your children there. Books are the next best things. It’s traveling by reading.

Fill your children with thoughts of self-importance, confidence, and positive attitude so that there will be no room for negative thinking. More importantly, fill their world with laughter, love, and understanding. You‘ll never go wrong.