Everyone makes mistakes and the busier you are, the more mistakes you will make. The only question is “How well and how effectively do you deal with the inevitable ups and downs of life?”

Here you will learn the difference between a positive and negative worldview. You will learn how to benefit from your mistakes and how to remain positive in the face of adversity.

Let the Light Shine In
This is achieved through the simple exercise of self-disclosure. For you to truly understand yourself, or to stop being troubled by things that may have happened in your past, you must be able to disclose yourself to at least one person. You have to be able to get those things off your chest. You must rid yourself of those thoughts and feelings by revealing them to someone who won’t make you feel guilty or ashamed for what has happened.

Using Stumbling Blocks as Stepping Stones
There are two ways to look at the world: the benevolent way or the malevolent way. People with a malevolent or negative worldview take a victim stance, seeing life as a continuous succession of problems and a process of unfairness and oppression. They don’t expect a lot and they don’t get much. When things go wrong, they shrug their shoulders and passively accept that this is the way life is and there isn’t anything they can do to make it better.

On the other hand, people with a benevolent or positive worldview see the world around them as filled with opportunities and possibilities. They believe that everything happens as part of a great process designed to make them successful and happy. They approach their lives, their work, and their relationships with optimism, cheerfulness, and a general attitude of positive expectations. They expect a lot and they are seldom disappointed.

Flex Your Mental Muscles
When you develop the skill of learning from your mistakes, you become the kind of person who welcomes obstacles and setbacks as opportunities to flex your mental muscles and move ahead. You look at problems as rungs on the ladder of success that you grab onto as you pull your way higher.

Two of the most common ways to deal with mistakes are invariably fatal to high achievement. The first common but misguided way to handle a mistake is the failure to accept it when it occurs. According to statistics, 70 percent of all decisions we make will be wrong. That’s an average. This means that some people will fail more than 70 percent of the time, and some people will fail less. It is hard to believe that most of the decisions we make could turn out to be wrong in some way. In fact, if this is the case, how can our society continue to function at all?

Cut Your Losses
The fact is that our society, our families, our companies, and our relationships continue to survive and thrive because intelligent people tend to cut their losses and minimize their mistakes. It is only when people refuse to accept that they have made a bad choice or decision-and prolong the consequences by sticking to that bad choice or decision-that mistakes become extremely expensive and hurtful.

Learn From Your Mistakes
The second common approach that people take with regard to their mistakes, one that hurts innumerable lives and careers, is the failure to use your mistakes to better yourself and to improve the quality of your mind and your thinking.

Learning from your mistakes is an essential skill that enables you to develop the resilience to be a master of change rather than a victim of change. The person who recognizes that he has made a mistake and changes direction the fastest is the one who will win in an age of increasing information, technology and competition.

By remaining fast on your feet, you will be able to out-play and out-position your competition. You will become a creator of circumstances rather than a creature of circumstances.

Action Exercises
Now, here are three steps you can take immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, imagine that your biggest problem or challenge in life has been sent to you at this moment to help you, to teach you something valuable. What could it be?

Second, be willing to cut your losses and walk away if you have made a mistake or a bad choice. Accept that you are not perfect, you can’t be right all the time, and then get on with your life.

Third, learn from every mistake you make. Write down every lesson it contains. Use your mistakes in the present as stepping stones to great success in the future.

———————–

The Golden Hour
By: Brian Tracy

You become what you think about most of the time. And the most important part of each day is what you think about at the beginning of that day.

Start Your Day Right
Take 30 minutes each morning to sit quietly and to reflect on your goals. You’ll find when you read the biographies and autobiographies of successful men and women that almost everyone of them began their upward trajectory to success when they begin getting up early in the morning and spending time with themselves.

Feed Your Mind With Positive Ideas
This is called the Golden Hour. The first hour sets the tone for the day. The things that you do in the first hour prepare your mind and set you up for the entire day. During the first thirty to sixty minutes, take time to think and review your plans for the future.

Use Your Quiet Time Effectively
Here are four things that you can do during that quiet time in the morning. Number one is to review your plans for accomplishing your goals and change your plans if necessary.

Number two is think of better ways to accomplish your goals. As an exercise, assume that the way you’re going about it is totally wrong and imagine going about it totally differently. What would you do different from what you’re doing right now?

Number three, reflect on the valuable lessons that you have learned and are learning as you move toward your goals.

Practice Daily Visualization
Number four, calmly visualize your goal as a reality. Close your eyes, relax, smile, and see your goal as though it were already a reality. Rewrite your major goals everyday in the present tense. Rewrite them as though they already existed. Write “I earn X dollars.” “I have a net worth of X.” “I weigh a certain number of pounds.” This exercise of writing and rewriting your goals everyday is one of the most powerful you will ever learn.

Fasten Your Seatbelt
Your life will start to take off at such a speed that you’ll have to put on your seatbelt. Remember, the starting point for achieving financial success is the development of an attitude of unshakable confidence in yourself and in your ability to reach your goals. Everything we’ve talked about is a way of building up and developing your belief system until you finally reach the point where you are absolutely convinced that nothing can stop you from achieving what you set out to achieve.

Everything Counts
No one starts out with this kind of an attitude, but you can develop it using the law of accumulation. Everything counts. No efforts are ever lost. Every extraordinary accomplishment in the result of thousands of ordinary accomplishments that no one recognizes or appreciates. The greatest challenge of all is for you to concentrate your thinking single-mindedly on your goal and by the law of attraction, you will, you must inevitably draw into your life the people, circumstances and opportunities you need to achieve your goals.

Become A Living Magnet
Once you’ve mastered yourself and your thinking, you will become a living magnet for ideas and opportunities to become wealthy. It’s worked for me and for every successful person I know. It will work for you if you’ll begin today, now, this very minute, to think and talk about your dreams and goals as though they were already a reality. When you change your thinking, you will change your life. You will put yourself firmly on the road to financial independence.

Action Exercises
Now, here are two things you can do every single day to keep your mind focused on your financial goals:

First, get up every morning a little bit earlier and plan your day in advance. Take some time to think about your goals and how you can best achieve them. This sets the tone for the whole day.

Second, reflect on the valuable lessons you are learning each day as you work toward your goals. Be prepared to correct your course and adjust your actions. Be absolutely convinced that you are moving rapidly toward your goals, no matter what happens temporarily on the outside. Just hang in there!

• Change what I can
• Find the best in what I cannot change
• Focus on changing my reactions to situations when I cannot change the situation itself
• Reward myself for sticking with a situation until I get the job done, so to speak

Everyone makes mistakes and the busier you are, the more mistakes you will make.

The only question is, “How well and how effectively do you deal with the inevitable ups and downs of life?”

Using Stumbling Blocks as Stepping Stones

There are two ways (to put it simply) to look at the world: the benevolent way or the malevolent way. People with a malevolent or negative worldview take a victim stance, seeing life as a continuous succession of problems and a process of unfairness and oppression. They don’t expect a lot and they don’t get much. When things go wrong, they shrug their shoulders and passively accept that this is the way life is and there isn’t anything they can do to make it better.

On the other hand, people with a benevolent or positive worldview see the world around them as filled with opportunities and possibilities. They believe that everything happens as part of a great process designed to make them successful and happy. They approach their lives, their work, and their relationships with optimism, cheerfulness, and a general attitude of positive expectations. They expect a lot and they are seldom disappointed.

Flex Your Mental Muscles

When you develop the skill of learning from your mistakes, you become the kind of person who welcomes obstacles and setbacks as opportunities to flex your mental muscles and move ahead. You look at problems as rungs on the ladder of success that you grab onto as you pull your way higher.

Two of the most common ways to deal with mistakes are invariably fatal to high achievement. The first common but misguided way to handle a mistake is the failure to accept it when it occurs. According to statistics, 70 percent of all decisions we make will be wrong. That’s an average. This means that some people will fail more than 70 percent of the time, and some people will fail less. It is hard to believe that most of the decisions we make could turn out to be wrong in some way. In fact, if this is the case, how can our society continue to function at all?

Cut Your Losses

The fact is that our society, our families, and our relationships continue to survive and thrive because intelligent people tend to cut their losses and minimize their mistakes. It is only when people refuse to accept that they have made a bad choice or decision—and prolong the consequences by sticking to that bad choice or decision—that mistakes become extremely expensive and hurtful.

Learn From Your Mistakes

The second common approach that people take with regard to their mistakes, one that hurts innumerable lives and careers, is the failure to use your mistakes to better yourself and to improve the quality of your mind and your thinking.

Learning from your mistakes is an essential skill that enables you to develop the resilience to be a master of change rather than a victim of change. The person who recognizes that he has made a mistake and changes direction the fastest is the one who will win in an age of increasing information, technology and competition.

By remaining fast on your feet, you will be able to out-play and out-position your competition. You will become a creator of circumstances rather than a creature of circumstances.

One of the most powerful personal programming activities you can engage in is positive self-talk. Be your own cheerleader and talk to yourself positively all of the time.

Think About Your Dreams

As it happens, the average person talks to himself in a negative way. As much as 94 percent of your inner dialogue tends to be about the things you fear, your worries, the people you’re angry at, your problems, your concerns and so on. You have to consciously keep your words, your inner dialogue, consistent with what you wish to accomplish.

The Most Powerful Antidote

Psychologists have proven that the words, “I can do it,” are the antidote to the fear of failure that often holds you back from trying. Repeat these words over and over to yourself whenever you feel fearful or doubtful about anything that you want to attempt. Say very enthusiastically to yourself, “I can do it, I can do it, I can do it!” When you start saying, “I can do it, I can do it,” you drive that message deep into your subconscious mind. This message lowers your fears and builds your self-confidence.

Feed Your Mind Continually

Feed your mind from morning to night with words, pictures, information and ideas consistent with your goals for success. Develop the habit of thinking positively and confidently about all things in your life. Read stories, books and articles about other successful people. Think about how you could achieve what they have achieved. Visualize yourself, imagine, fantasize, pretend in your mind that you are like the kind of people that you admire and respect.

Select A Role Model

Psychologists have proven that role models are essential for magnetizing your mind with the qualities and characteristics that you wish to develop in yourself. Pick a person that you admire. Whenever you face any kind of difficult situation, ask yourself, how would this person act in this situation? What would this person do? How would this person behave? You’ll find that when you think about how someone you admire might behave, your own thinking becomes better and you tend to act at your very best.

The mark of the superior thinker is his or her ability to accurately predict the consequences of doing or not doing something. The potential consequences of any task or activity are the key determinants of how important it really is to you and to your company. This way of evaluating the significance of a task is how you determine what your next frog really is.

Long Time Perspective

Doctor Edward Banfield of Harvard University, after more than 50 years of research, concluded that “long-time perspective” is the most accurate single predictor of upward social and economic mobility in America. Long time perspective turns out to be more important than family background, education, race, intelligence, connections or virtually any other single factor in determining your success in life and at work.

Your attitude toward time, your “time horizon,” has an enormous impact on your behavior and your choices. People who take the long view of their lives and careers always seem to make much better decisions about their time and activities than people who give very little thought to the future.

Think About Your Future

Successful people have a clear future orientation. They think five, ten and twenty years out into the future. They analyze their choices and behaviors in the present to make sure that they are consistent with the long-term future that they desire.

In your work, having a clear idea of what is really important to you in the long-term makes it much easier for you to make better decisions about your priorities in the short-term.

Determine The Consequences

By definition, something that is important has long-term potential consequences. Something that is unimportant has few or no long-term potential consequences. Before starting on anything, you should always ask yourself, “What are the potential consequences of doing or not doing this task?”

The clearer you are about your future intentions, the greater influence that clarity will have on what you do in the moment. With a clear long-term vision, you are much more capable of evaluating an activity in the present and to assure that it is consistent with where you truly want to end up.

Make it a Top Priority

If there is a task or activity with large potential positive consequences, make it a top priority and get started on it immediately. If there is something that can have large potential negative consequences if it is not done quickly and well, that becomes a top priority as well. Whatever your frog is, resolve to gulp it down first thing.

Keep Motivated

Motivation requires motive. The greater the positive potential impact that an action or behavior of yours can have on your life, once you define it clearly, the more motivated you will be to overcome procrastination and get it done quickly.

Thinking continually about the potential consequences of your choices, decisions and behaviors is one of the very best ways to determine you true priorities in your work and personal life.

Action Exercises

Review your list of tasks, activities and projects regularly. Continually ask yourself, “Which one project or activity, if I did it in an excellent and timely fashion, would have the greatest positive impact on my life?”

Whatever it is that can help you the most, set it as a goal, make a plan to achieve it and go to work on your plan immediately. Remember the wonderful words of Goethe, “Just begin and the mind grows heated; continue, and the task will be completed!”

There is a definite link between happiness and success in this sense. The happier you are, the more successful you are likely to be.

Are you ready to accept the greatest gift I or perhaps anyone else has ever given you?

Today I’m going to offer you some magic words that have the power to change your life. I know that’s an incredible promise, and if you are skeptical I wouldn’t blame you. But I can assure you the magic words I will give you, if used, will bring you a lifetime of happiness and nothing less!

First, a brief background.

As long as I can remember I’ve been intrigued by the mystery of how to achieve happiness. Some would even say I’ve been obsessed by it.

Why? I have always wanted to become a happy, positive person myself.

What intrigued me was this simple observation. Nearly everyone I’ve ever met, including many a friend, is sad and unhappy most all the time. Indeed, the most popular conversation amongst all people I’ve been with consists of complaints and negativity about life, which doesn’t necessarily exclude me.

Think about your own life. I’d bet the truly happy people you could point to are few and far between. If you’ve known more than a handful of such people, I feel you have been truly blessed.

Individuals who are happy, optimistic, positive and self-confident are definitely the rarest of humans.

Does happiness come from achievements? Or special events in life?

Clearly, happiness does not come from business success. Material possessions. A certain amount of money in the bank. A terrific family. Or even a super romantic relationship.

I’ve witnessed millionaires with every blessing imaginable who are depressed and unhappy, and on the other hand a few individuals who have almost nothing resembling the above who are happy, content, and optimistic.

What, then, is the secret to happiness?

I’ve pursued my own happiness with diligence. Below, I’m going to reveal the most important lessons I’ve learned…………

I submit that all happiness is a result of our self-talk. Our internal dialogue is the key. It’s all in the words we use.

It matters not what happens to us in life, but in the words we use silently to “frame” it in our minds.

Our emotional state–happiness, depression, anger, joy, etc.–follows from the words we use with ourselves.

The subconscious mind, which is many times more powerful than our conscious mind, gives off signals which are translated into human emotions.

You may have read the profound poem which illustrates this point so well:

“Two men looked through prison bars. One saw the night, and one saw the stars.”

We humans can be happy even in a prison, or in poverty, if we learn how to talk to our subconscious.

Think for a moment about the incredible implications.

Of course, I’m not alone in discovering the amazing power of the silent words we use in our self-talk.

Numerous studies have been made which link self-talk with not only our emotions, but also with measurable physiological effects in our bodies. Your heart rate, blood pressure, muscle tension and level of stress are all impacted, or even controlled by, your self-talk. Meditation based upon self-talk and its effects on the body has undergone years of study. So has the effects of self-hypnosis, also based on the impact of words upon us. Neuro-Linguistic Programming has shown us many of the effects of positive self-talk as well as the important role of physiology on our emotional state.

The most important ‘copy’ you will ever write is that which you create and print each day on your own subconscious.

The words you say silently to yourself as well as out loud to others result in all your emotions.

I’m going to present you with new alternatives. New magic words and other tips which I use in my own life.

The most powerful phrase I’ve ever used I just so happen to hear a few months ago on the Larry King T.V. program during his interview with the old skool comedienne Carol Burnett. Carol was talking lovingly about her late daughter Carrie and what an inspiration she was, even while suffering from lung and brain cancer, for she lived each day to the maximum. She was known for using this seven-word phrase herself and teaching it to all her friends and contacts in their self-talk:

“Today I’m going to love my life.”

These words impacted me so much I tried them. Then I added them to my own favorite self-talk phrases.

The impact of this very simple phrase has been astonishing.

Try it yourself right now. Say it silently………..and now say it out loud.

“Today I’m going to love my life.”

You will be delighted with how you feel, especially when you use these words upon rising in the morning. Even if you are experiencing some frustrations, disappointments or even tragedies, as we all do in life, use these words. You don’t even have to believe them when you say them, as your subconscious will integrate and use them anyway.

Even if you are experiencing, e.g., continuous unemployment, bad breath, business or financial setbacks, a family crisis, major relationship issues, an IRS audit, a serious disease, ‘stank-azz crotch’, or even crippling injury, use these 7 magic words.

Trust me. You’ll be surprised, even overwhelmed with the power of these 7 words.

Once again:

“Today I’m going to love my life”

Other helpful tips

– Meditate once or twice a day for 20 minutes. This powerful exercise will make a huge difference. A good book on the topic is The Relaxation Response by Dr. Herbert Benson.

– Physiology is also important. The experts say the way you use your body can account for 54% of your emotions. Committing yourself to daily exercise is a great start.

– Breathe deeply through your nose, exhale through your mouth. Do this for at least two minutes.

– Walk, ‘ride’, skate or swim at least 30-60 minutes 4 times a week.

– Smile as often as possible. Practice in front of a mirror, even if it seems silly and pathetic. You’ll be amazed when you begin to feel better about yourself and will be thrilled and delighted with how much better all your surrounding relationships will be.

– Avoid negativity and drama like the plague. Spend as much time as possible with positive, cheerful, enthusiastic people. Happiness is contagious, which can actually help those who have a bitter outlook on life. [*waves hand, reluctantly*]

Common phrases make a big difference to your emotional state. The words you say out loud to others also have as strong an influence on your emotions as your silent self-talk. Your spoken words have a cumulative effect on your subconscious. When you use negative words and phrases they drag you down as well as the person to whom you are speaking.

When people ask you how you are, avoid these common responses:

– I’ve been better
– Not bad
– Do you really want to know?
– How much time do you have?
– Fair to middlin’
– So-so
– I’m O.K.
– Comme ci, comme ca

Often such replies are just bad habits.

So, here is my normal reply and what I recommend to you.

When people ask, “Audiomind, how are you?”, I say:

“It just keeps getting better and B-E-T-T-E-R!”

At first it may feel a bit odd when you say it, but persevere and it will become a habit. You ARE dedicated to the relentless pursuit of excellence, are you not?

Achieving happiness is the best example I know of the one powerful attribute that only humans possess………..our ability to choose.

Happiness is a choice. And so is misery and unhappiness……..so which do you choose?

I’d be pleased to hear from you about your own personal happiness journey and of what value this short writing has been to you………..