Taking charge of your future entails undertaking and assessing risk. It involves facing a myriad of challenges and setbacks while forging the road ahead towards your goals. We often stumble through challenges, and somehow, we find a way to overcome turmoil. However, once we reach our goals, we rarely take the time to reflect and remember the challenges that we faced. We need to be able to ask the tough questions, such as what caused the setback? or how did we react when it happened? or, most importantly, how could we avoid a similar situation in the future?
My Success Principles are designed to empower you and give you the tools you need to build strength and find your inherent greatness.
Become Self-Aware
Think of the trials in your past, and allow yourself to experience how you felt when confronted with negative events. What was your thinking pattern? What was your emotional reaction? Carefully observe your reactions nonjudgmentally. What were the feelings and sensations you experienced during a period of high stress? Reflecting on your reactions and coping mechanisms will allow you to understand yourself better, so you can find helpful techniques that can literally change the way your brain works and reacts when faced with strife.
Develop Self-Confidence
When facing great challenges, we tend to focus on all of the negative feelings from previous experiences. We have a predisposition to remember what went wrong rather than the things that went well. Focusing on your failures affects your self-esteem, and a great way to dispel your negativity bias is to retrain your brain to recall the simple successes in life.
Start a “success journal” listing small and large victories as they happen so you can revisit them when you feel stressed and overwhelmed. Create an affirmation and visualization for each goal you have and practice it on a daily basis. This will recondition your subconscious to accept what’s possible, as if it has already happened, allowing you to see opportunities that you would otherwise ignore.
Change Your Outlook and Cultivate Your Relationships
Part of changing your paradigm is accepting the circumstances that cannot be changed and coming to the realization that you can still be optimistic. Avoid seeing crises and stressful events as unbearable problems. Take daily steps—no matter how small—to move closer towards your dreams.
Be inspired and become an inspiration to others.
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Take the time, unfailingly, to engage in relaxing activities with family and friends. Focus on living by your highest standards so you can become a role model for others while allowing others to inspire you.
Take the time to understand your reactions against adversity. Learn to dissipate tension and negative feelings and let my Success Principles help you build strength and resilience so you can withstand the worst storms ahead.
As the beloved originator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul® series, Jack Canfield fostered the emergence of inspirational anthologies as a genre—and watched it grow to a billion dollar market. As the driving force behind the development and delivery of over 100 million books sold through the Chicken Soup for the Soul® franchise, Jack Canfield is uniquely qualified to talk about success. Jack is America’s #1 Success Coach and wrote the life-changing book The Success Principles: How to Get From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be and speaks around the world on this subject. Follow Jack at www.jackcanfield.com and sign up for his free resources today!
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*Image courtesy of xJason.Rogersx.
