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Vol. 7 No. 5, September-October 2005 IN THIS ISSUE =================================================== "To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming
is the only end of life." =================================================== SELF-HELP BOOKS USED TO TREAT MILD ANXIETY AND DEPRESSION Britain's National Institute for Clinical Excellence has endorsed a new program referred to as "bibliotheray" or guided self-help for patients with mild to moderate depression or anxiety. Under this program physicians are urged to prescribe self-help books before resorting to antidepressants. ACTION STEPS =================================================== Self-esteem represents the foundation for self-effectiveness in all areas of our lives--may you be a leader, spouse or parent. In other words, if you feel good about yourself, you will be able to feel good about others, which in turn will enable you to build positive relationships and help you to succeed faster. A QUICK CHECK-UP FROM THE NECK-UP Let's start with two quick methods to check your self-esteem. First, how do you respond internally to mistakes? If you mess up, do you berate yourself by saying such things as, "You dummy, you will never. . .," or "You can never do anything right," etc? If you respond to mistakes in this fashion your self-esteem is in pretty bad shape. Second question: how you kid others, especially the people who are most important in your life, such as your spouse, children, and employees. When you interact with them, do you habitually look for their strengths, highlighting those by complimenting, stroking, and catching them doing things right, and letting them know about that? Or do you continually "build them down" by focusing your mental energies on catching them messing up or by zeroing in on their weaknesses and teasing them about those? If you tend to build others down then your self-esteem is on the skids and you need to pay extra close attention to what follows. In this issue I will share the secret to success; discuss the importance of accepting 100 percent responsibility for your life; and teach you how to use positive affirmations. In the next eNewsletter I will provide you with seven specific steps you can take to help you act like a winner. TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE SECRET TO SUCCESS Many people spend a great deal of time looking for the secret to success. The irony is that there is such a thing, that it has been around since the beginning of time, that it is totally free, and that it is relatively easy to learn. That secret, which Earl Nightingale popularized several decades ago, as the "strangest secret," is this: Your thoughts govern your behavior and all you have to do to change your behavior is change the way you think! You've been told that you are what you eat. The more correct statement is that you are what you think you are, most of the time, because your self-image controls your life. You can check the validity of this axiom by asking whether you would have volunteered to sail around the earth during the time of Columbus. Or would you instead have been more conservative since you knew that you would have fallen off when you got to the end? There is another way to look at this. What did you just do? Perhaps you picked up a glass and had a sip to drink. I think that you would agree that that is a voluntary action. Before you can execute such an action you must think about it. Now we have affirmed that thoughts lead to actions. What if you repeat an action over and over again for about 21 days or longer? You will have a habit. And of course all of your habits represent your behavior. So, if you want to change your behavior, all you have to do is change what you put into your mind. What I am saying is that psycho, your mind, controls soma, your body. But you knew that already. Think of the last time you worked hard at getting something right. Maybe it was making a difficult shot while golfing. After missing it, you exclaimed, "I knew I was going to miss that shot!" And that indeed is what you did, because the body simply executes what the mind tells it. ACCEPT 100 PERCENT RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR LIFE To build your self-esteem you must recognize that life is somewhat like a game in which you are on the playing field every minute of the day. You are the player, the coach, and the umpire all in one. In this game you have control of the here and now, no control of the past, and just a little control of the future. You also must recognize that just as in a game, you don't have to play, but you want to play because it is so much fun. In fact, I would like you to recognize that you really have to do only one thing in life, and that is to die. Everything else is your choice! At this point you might be saying that that is not true. After all you have to go to work you have to pay taxes, and so on. Do you? No, you don't! You want or choose to do these things because you do not like the alternatives. You want to go to work because you are rewarded with money that can be readily exchanged for the things that you need to survive, like food, shelter, and medical care, and the things that bring you joy, like a new automobile, or a vacation. You choose to pay your taxes because you don't want to pay the price of not doing so. This is not just an issue of semantics, but rather a question of whether you conduct your life as an "external" or an "internal." Externals blame everything on something or someone else. They attribute their failure to poor parents, little education, bad luck or anyone else they can point a finger at. Internals, on the other hand, recognize that they are in charge, and that it is not luck, karma, or their astrological signs that will determine whether they succeed in life. Instead, internals live by the belief that: If it is to be, it is up to me." I have been challenged on this point in my success funshops. Participants have said that that is easy for me to say. After all, they say, you have a Ph.D., are the president of your own company, have lots of experience, and are successful. If you are thinking along the same lines, I would like to quickly take away that crutch before you rely too heavily on it. Although I do not want to take up too much space by sharing my entire career with you, let me just tell you that I started my career after I completed an 8th grade education in Germany. I began working full time at age 14 as an apprentice steward in the German merchant marine, working 10 to 14 hours per day, 7 days a week on a ship that returned to home port after four months. No, I did not have wealthy parents either. In fact, they lost virtually everything in World War II. This meant that I had to pay for my own education--by working two or three part-time jobs. Given that English is my second language, I have no reservation that you can do as well as I have. Indeed, you can do better! It simply is a question of whether you are willing to pay the price. USE POSITIVE AFFIRMATIONS The mind, or more precisely, the subconscious, is analogous to a computer which is governed by "GIGO"--"garbage in, garbage out." Just like a computer your subconscious reads the instructions you provide it to control your behavior. Henry Ford I said it best: "If you think you can or can't, you're always right." The way to resolve this dilemma is to program your subconscious with positive messages or affirmations such as "I can run two miles in under 20 minutes" or "I will weigh my ideal body weight by the end of the year." If you are presented with a disconfirmation of a positive message i.e., you mess up or don't succeed at something then you must learn to treat that incidence as an exception. This can be accomplished by telling yourself, "This is not like me", or "I made a mistake this time, and I know that I will succeed the next time." The secret to programming your subconscious is to recognize that it cannot distinguish right from wrong, it simply records everything you "feed" it. So it behooves you to feed your subconscious positive affirmations. I recommend that you do that, even if initially you have to "fool" yourself. Those positive affirmations, right or wrong, will in the long run become your reality and will ultimately govern your behavior and your success. In the next issue of this eNewsletter I will present you with seven specific strategies that will enable you to "act like a winner." Source: Based in part on Chapter 3 of my book, Make it a Winning Life:
Success Strategies for Life, Love and Business, Achievement Publishers.
Take advantage of my special offer that follows. LOOKING FOR ONE-OF-A-KIND SPECIAL INEXPENSIVE GIFT FOR THE HOLIDAYS? Click here. =================================================== Hearing a knock on the pearly gates, St. Peter asked, "Who is there?" The answer, delivered in a sweet melodious voice, was "It is I." St. Peter turned to one of the angels in waiting and exclaimed: "Oh no, not another English teacher!" =================================================== Only one full day seminar left this year which maybe open to you, especially if you are employed by a Fortune 1000 company which is a member of the Institute of Management Studies (IMS). Contact the Chairperson for additional information. Winning Management: Building a Peak Performance Workplace =================================================== =================================================== If this was forwarded to you and you would like to receive your own
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