Goals

"People who say that life is not worthwhile are really saying that they themselves have no personal goals which are worthwhile. Get yourself a goal worth working for. Better still, get yourself a project. Always have something ahead of you to "look forward to" - to work for and hope for."
Maxwell Maltz

Do you have a goal for 2009? Have you thought about what you want to accomplish next year? What are you going to do differently next year. What different results do you hop to get? Are you excited to get started working on your goal in the new year? I hope so. It will make your life worthwhile.

At the end of the year, my thoughts are always on reveiw and planning for next year. I determine worthwhile goals, and figure out how I will acheive them. We all need projects to be working on and to feel the satisfaction of having completed them. Nothing makes you feel good like knowing that you have reached a goal, especially if it was a difficult goal. Having a goal directs your thoughts and energies towards something tangible. It gives you something tangible to look forward to. It gives you a sense of purpose. It gives you something to hope for. Always have goals that you are working toward, and make all your actions move you closer to your goals.

For ideas about how to acheive true success, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Being Perfect

"The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself."
Anna Quindlen

Do you wish you were perfect? Perhaps you'd like to have the perfect body: longer legs, fewer wrinkles, smaller hands, or whatever you think would make you look more attractive. Perhaps you'd like to get rid of those annoying personality quirks which we all have that make other people shrug their shoulders and say "Oh well, that's just the way he/she is". You'd love to just get rid of all your faults. But if everyone became perfect, they would all become boring. It is your "faults" that make you unique and interesting to other people.

The truth about faults is that almost any fault can be turned around into a virtue. For example, if you are very verbal and sociable, this could be seen as a fault by a quiet person who thinks you're disturbing the peace and just wants to be left alone. It could be seen as a virtue by a person who is looking for someone else who is easy to talk intimately to or who will start a conversation with him easily. Almost all personality traits are like that. It all depends on who the other person is and what his needs are.

It is very important for you to just accept your personality traits as part of who you are. You can't change them, at least not without a great deal of work, so why not learn to enjoy them. If you talk to enough other people, you'll find others who enjoy them too. Begin the work of becoming yourself. Learn to love yourself, just the way you are.

For ideas about how to acheive true success, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Change

"To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring."
George Santayana

It is not a good idea to be attached to anything, as the only thing we can depend on is change. Everything changes, except death and taxes. We often think of being attached as being very fond of a particular object, but it also can refer to an idea or even a feeling. Whenever we love something so much we can't imagine living without it, we are attached to it too much.

It is much healthier to be interested in how things change, and especially to be always looking for whatever is good in the new things. Many times, like with the seasons, what you loved will come around again.

Enjoy the things you love while you have them, definately, but realize that they aren't going to last forever, and that's actually a good thing. Their passing leaves a space for other things to come along that have their own enjoyable aspects. It would be dull if there was no change in our life, because there would be nothing new to look forward to and explore the joys of.

For ideas about how to acheive true success, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Regret

"When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us."
Alexander Graham Bell

Frustration is not a pleasant feeling. We don't like to be thwarted in our actions. Anything that keeps us from doing what we think we need to do is resented and feared. We get angry. We regret that we could not finish our plans and thus achieve what we wanted to. We are stuck spinning our wheels because we don't know what to do next. Often it seems like there isn't anything that we can do to acheive our goal. We made our plans and pinned our hopes of success onto them, and without them we are lost.

When something unexpected happens that prevents us from following our plans, we get upset because it shows us that we are not in control of our world. We want everything to go the way we want it to, the way we planned it to. But the world doesn't work like that, and that's a good thing because we often have very limited vision and understanding of the best way to acheive something.

God knows better than we do. It tries to nudge us in the right direction. Unfortunately we are so attached to our plans that we don't even notice God's nudges. We are staring so regretfully at our failed plans that we don't notice the new and better opportunity to get what we want. Don't let that happen to you. Focus on your goals; and if your first plan doesn't work out, watch and wait for a better plan to come to you. It will.

For ideas about how to acheive true success, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Work

"If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven played music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well."
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Each of us is given our own unique set of talents. We are not all destined for glamorous work. The streets need to be swept, so God created some people who do that kind of work better than others, and better than other types of work. Society needs all kinds of workers to do all kinds of jobs.

If you are meant to be a streetsweeper, you can still do an exceptional job of it. You can still prove your talents to the whole world in a way that makes others sit up and notice. No matter what you do, you can always strive for beauty, excellence, and integrity in all your work. You can always do work that you can be proud of.

There are ways to make even the simplest of jobs special. One mentally handicapped bagger at a grocery store decided to make papers with inspirational quotes and put one in each person's grocery bag. Between that and his infectious smile, he was the most popular bagger in the store. All it takes is a love for your work and a little creativity.

What ways can you improve the work that you do? Can you do your work even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven played music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry? Can you do your work so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great ... who did his job well."?

For ideas about how to acheive true success, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Love

"Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy
to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning
the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement."

Are you happy to live with yourself all your life? Do you really enjoy being alone with yourself? Do you trust yourself to do the right thing under all circumstances? Most of us don't trust ourselves to behave the way we know we should, nor do we enjoy being alone with ourselves for any length of time. Most of us can think of endless things that they would like to improve about ourselves. We look at other people's best traits and wish we could be like them, typically being unaware of the whole picture of that person's life. We simply see ourselves as not being good enough.

That's an unfortunate way of seeing yourself. We don't appreciate how special we really are. We don't understand our powers to create our life just the way we want. We can indeed become a person that we would enjoy spending time alone with. All we need to do is to love ourself, just the way we are. Why is that so very difficult?

We need to recognize our capability to identify possiblities and turn them into actualities. We need to focus on the excitement of winning instead of on the fear of losing. We need to trust ourselves, and then to take action in order to fan the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement. We need to make the most of ourselves.

For ideas about how to become truly successful, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Christmas

"Christmas--that magic blanket that wraps itself about us, that something so intangible that it is like a fragrance. It may weave a spell of nostalgia. Christmas may be a day of feasting, or of prayer, but always it will be a day of remembrance--a day in which we think of everything we have ever loved."
Augusta E. Rundell

Merry Christmas...
Christmas is a very special holiday. We all have such fond memories of the Christmas's we had as children. It was always such a delightful mystery how you could hang up your stocking on Christmas Eve and it would be filled with goodies on Christmas morning. We couldn't wait to see what Santa had brought us. We loved decorating the Christmas tree and then watching the pile of presents under the tree grow bigger and bigger. Christmas really does weave a spell of nostalgia. Just the idea of Christmas makes us feel more loved and connected.

Christmas is a day of remembering all the things we have loved. It is a day of appreciating family and friends. It is even a day of reaching out to those unfortunate people who have neither, or who don't have the money to buy each other gifts or make a nice Christmas dinner.

We all have our own traditions or ways of celebrating Christmas, which helps to bring some continuity to our lives in a changing world. Even people who don't celebrate Christmas celebrate something else at this time. We all need a holiday in the middle of winter. We need this day of remembering all the things we love. We need that magic blanket to wrap around ourselves, and smell the perfume of Christmas love.

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Religion

"Just a hurried line...to tell a story which puts the contrast between *our* feast of the Nativity and all this ghastly Xmas racket at it's lowest. My brother heard a woman on a 'bus say, as the 'bus passed a church with a Crib outside it, Oh Lor'! They bring religion into everything. Look- they're dragging it even into Christmas now!
C S Lewis

Some people hate religion. They think it's a sin to talk about Christmas when not everyone beleives in Christ. They object to public displays of the manger scene. Personally I think that if you don't beleive in Christ, you don't have to celebrate Christmas. You can celebrate the holiday season in whatever way is more meaningful to you. That is no reason to prevent those who do beleive in Christ from celebrating his birthday.

People have forgotten what Christmas is about. Christmas was originally a celebration of Christ and that means a celebration of the values he stood up for. It is supposed to be a celebration of love and goodwill towards all people, and our planet. We tend to forget that in the rush of the obligations we feel we must perform because our friends and familys expect that of us. Buying a gift for someone becomes just an obligation we have to get done before Christmas instead of something that we really wanted to do because we found just the perfect thing that we know they'll love. We get so busy entertaining others that we forget to have some time for ourselves to enjoy the season.

Take some time to remember the true meaning of Christmas. Although it is indeed a religious holiday, the reason for Christmas, Christ's message, is just as valid whether you believe in religion or not.

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Living

"One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon-instead of enjoying the roses blooming outside our windows today."

Dale Carnegie

Are you putting off living? Are you delaying your happiness? We all have dreams about the perfect life. I will be happier when... I get a new job, or I get the perfect relationship, or the kids have grown up and left home, or I win the lottery. We tend to think that something different has to happen before we can really enjoy our life. We forget that the good things in life happen when we start appreciating what we already have.

It is true that the roses blooming outside our windows today may not be perfect. They have thorns. But even with thorns, they are still beautiful, and that is what we need to focus our attention on. All we really have, all we really can be sure about, is the present. That's why we must be happy in the present. We can't ever be sure that the magical rose garden over the horizon will ever come to us, so it makes sense to just enjoy what we know that we have. Life is too short to spend it wishing that everything was different. We should be savoring our life right now, and there's always good things to savor if we look for them; because tomorrow might never come.

For ideas about how to be truly successful, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Work

"Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing."
Thomas Alva Edison

As a society, we are geared towards action. Yes, action is important but only if it is intelligent action. Most of us are running around doing those things we think are urgent and/or that other people want us to do, while the really important things that we want to do for ourselves get neglected and forgotten by the wayside. We climb up the ladder as fast as possible, only to find out that it is leaning against the wrong wall.

In order to accomplish or produce something significant, you need to do some analysis of why you want to do it, planning how you will find the resources necessary to acheive it, and how you will go about doing it, and finally putting real focused effort into producing what you want to. Working without a plan will be very inefficient and probably take much longer than it needs to. It will be tiring and unrewarding. To be successful, think carefully about what you want to do and how you will do it before you get started.

For ideas about how to be truly successful, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Anticipation

"An intense anticipation itself transforms possibility into reality; our desires being often but precursors of the things which we are capable of performing."
Samuel Smiles

What do you anticipate happening next year? If you are like most people, you probably anticipate your life continuing much the same as it did in the past under similar conditions. You probably feel that if we didn't have this great recession, your life would be much the same as it was last year. We tend to assume the future will be similar to the past, even in our legal system. That is why things don't change very much in most of our lives. Even when unanticipated things happen, we typically deal with them in the same ways that we're used to, and get back to our same lives.

What if we actively anticipated things that aren't happening right now? What if we expected to accomplish things that we really want but have never seen before? If we want something badly enough, we will find a way to acheive it. Intense anticipation itself transforms possibilities into reality. If we want it, we are capable of acheiving it. The only thing that ever gets in our way is our beleif that it won't happen, our expectation that we can't change the world. That and our subsequent failure to take action.

For ideas about how to acheive true success, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Intuition

"Fear is static that prevents me from hearing my intuition."
Hugh Prather

How well are you tuned into your intuition? Your intuition is always talking to you in it's still, small voice, but are you listening? Just as when you don't tune in precisely to the radio channel you are trying to listen to and you get static, you only hear the static of fear when you're not tuned precisely to the intuition channel. We continually think thoughts of fear, more than 45,000 negative fearful thoughts every day. No wonder it is so hard to hear and understand what our intuition is telling us.

Our fears and negativity are loud and insistent. They drown out our intuition, even if we know how to listen to it, which many of us don't. What's worse, they keep repeating themselves. Once you think a fearful thought, it is very difficult to dismiss it; it keeps coming back and saying "It gets even worse. Don't forget about ..." Intuition doesn't do that. If you miss it, it isn't likely to come back very soon, and certainly not in the same way. That's why it's important to be tuned into the intuition channel all the time. You don't want to miss an important message, because the static of your fear drowned it out.

For ideas about how to acheive true success, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Happiness

"Try to make at least one person happy every day. If you cannot do a kind deed, speak a kind word. If you cannot speak a kind word, think a kind thought. Count up, if you can, the treasure of happiness that you would dispense in a week, in a year, in a lifetime!"
Lawrence G. Lovasik

How many people have you made happy today. Since quantum physics says that we are all connected, it stands to reason that when you make another person happy, you are making yourself happier (assuming of course that making them happy does not directly conflict with your own goals). This is aside from the fact that when you make other people happier, they are more inclined to make you happy in return.

There are so many ways to make other people happy which do not require going against your own wishes. Maybe you can give them something that they really want but that you don't value too much yourself. Maybe you can spend some time with them. Maybe you can send a card or give them a phone call if you live a long way from them.

If you can't do a kind deed, then speak a kind word or even think a kind thought. Think positively of the person, and then tell them that. Everyone needs to be told that someone cares about them. That makes the person feel better about themselves, and when they do, they are more likely to spread the love and happiness around.

See yourself as a person who spreads happiness wherever you go. There is nothing any of us need more than happiness. The more we spread happiness, the more of it there will be to spread, and the better the world will be because we were there.

For ideas about how to acheive true success, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Happiness

"Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness."
Chuang-tzu

They say that happiness is like a butterfly; if you go chasing after it, it will elude you, but if you just sit and rest, it will alight gently on your shoulder. Do you yearn for happiness. Perhaps you beleive that if you just had more money, it would make you happy. Perhaps you beleive that if you just had a better relationship, it would make you happy. Perhaps you beleive that if you just had better health, it would make you happy. In all of this, you are saying that you beleive that happiness is something you don't have now, something that you need to do something before you can have it. You are chasing after happiness, and that is why it continues to elude you.

Happiness is the absence of striving for happiness. It is realizing that happiness comes from within. Happiness is something you already have, but you can't see it because you are too busy noticing what you don't have, whether it's more money, better relationships or better health. Once you start appreciating what you already have, focusing on the good things you have now instead of the things you wish you had, then you will find the happiness you seek.

For ideas about how to be truly successful, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Gift

"What you are is God's gift to you. What you make of yourself is your gift back to God."
Kelly Jeppesen

God has given unique strengths and challenges to everyone. This means that everyone is equally valuable, and that everyone needs to find his own way to express God's gift to him. Everyone needs to define his or her own mission or purpose in life, and this requires intimate self-knowledge. Sometimes it takes a long time to identify what your unique gifts are, and then how to use them.

God needs you just as much as you need God. James Ray tells a story about a small town that had an huge ugly rock pile in its town square. One man eventually decided to do something about it and worked and toiled, sweated, hauled, moved and shoveled the rocks until he had turned the town square into a beautiful rock garden. One day a tourist was visiting and happened to see the man working in the rock garden. He stopped and said "Young man, God has blessed you with a beautiful rock garden". The man replied "You're right sir, but you should have seen what it looked like when He had it all by Himself."

What you accomplish in this world, what you make of yourself, is your gift back to God. Utilizing the gifts God gave you is the best gift you could possibly give Him.

For ideas about how to acheive true success, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Mistakes

"A life spent in making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing."
George Bernard Shaw

Are you afraid of making mistakes? We are often so afraid of making mistakes that they don't make a decision about what to do. The are afraid that making the wrong decision will deprive us of what we want (whatever the right decision is supposed to bring us) . We have been taught to be careful that we don't make the wrong decision ("What if I make this choice and that happens?"). We feel we need to be perfect, and that we need to control the outcome of events ("What if it doesn't work out the way I plan?"). We feel that to make a mistake is an embarrassing failure. This petrifies us when we think about making a change or attempting a challenge.

We forget that not only are we, as humans, supposed to make mistakes, but that they are actually good for us. They teach us what doesn't work, and that helps us narrow down our list of things to try that might work. Thomas Edison made 10,000 "mistakes" while he was creating the light bulb. He commented "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." He was successful because he wasn't afraid of making mistakes.

Our lives are really like a big experiment where we are finding out what works and what doesn't. The most important thing of all is to get out there and take action. Yes, you may make a mistake, in fact you probably will. But that's okay as long as you learn what you can from it. Then you make any necessary adjustments in your plan, and keep going. There's nothing worse than sitting there, paralyzed by the fear of making mistakes, and letting life pass you by. They say that on your deathbed you will be regretting the things you didn't do, not the things you did (even if they proved to be mistakes).

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Language

"Language exerts hidden power, like a moon on the tides."
Alcaeus (fl. 611-580 BC) Greek poet, satirist

What kind of language do you use when you are talking about yourself? What kind to you use when you are talking about others? Our words have much more power than we realize. We casually make comments that devestate people, or make their day. It's important to make sure our brain is engaged before we put our mouth in gear.

Through your words that you excersise your creative power. It is how you create. The question is are you creating good things or bad things based on what you are saying. The human mind is a fertile ground for the seeds (ideas, feelings etc) that it has been prepared for. If the seeds of fear are planted in your mind, what will grow there, and what will it do to you?

In order to create good results in your life, it is important to pay attention to the words you use. Only say good things, both about yourself and about others. Saying bad things about others is really a sin against yourself for we are all one. Avoid gossip like the plague; never say anything about anyone that you would not say to their face. Your language excerts hidden power; so use it to your best advantage.

For ideas about how to be truly successful, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Instincts

"Follow your instincts. That's where true wisdom manifests itself."
Oprah Winfrey

Do you follow your instincts, or do you do what logic suggests? People often talk themselves out of success, out of doing what their instincts tell them that they really should. They ask "What if..." They think of all the possible problems that might come up, and whether they would be able to deal with them. They decide they're not capable. They start to wonder if it's worth it. They don't know how they're going to do it. So they don't.

We always are making choices. Sometimes your logic and your instincts tell you to do the same thing. But sometimes they disagree. The problem with doing as logic suggests is that you are limited to the methods, and imagined consequences, that your experience suggests.

Your instincts are Universe's way, with it's infinite experience, of advising you what is best for you. They are the Universe's way of guiding you towards success. They are where true wisdom manifests itself. Follow your instincts, not your logic.

For ideas about how to be truly successful, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

In the Mood

“I don't wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that.
Your mind must know it has got to get down to work. ”
Pearl S Buck

Do you wait until you are in the mood to work? Are you ever actually in the mood to work? Usually there are much more interesting diversions just waiting to distract us. It is easier to be in the mood to watch TV than it is to be in the mood to work. This is especially true if your work is not something you enjoy because you are very good at it. Some of us would rather do just about anything other than our work. Some of us prefer to put off doing our work for as long as possible.

If you wait until you feel like getting down to work, chances are you'll be waiting for a very long time. You need to take control and tell your mind that it is time to get working. You must simply decide to start working and commit to it. Just get started. Once you get started, it will be more and more easy to continue and before you know it, your work will be done. You'll feel much better when you have kept your promise to yourself to do what you know you should, and when you get your work finished promptly because you started promptly.

For ideas about how to be truly successful, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Escape

"I find it fascinating that most people plan their vacations with better care than they plan their lives. Perhaps that is because escape is easier than change."
Jim Rohn

Are you running away from your life situation? Most of us trudge drearily through our work, thanking God when it's Friday, and longing for it to be vacation time. We are only working so that we can get enough money to do fun things later. Not many people can say that they truly enjoy their work so much that they would do it for free. Not many people enjoy their work so much that they thank God when it's Monday and could skip their vacation time.

It is, of course, those few people who are the really successful ones. When you truly enjoy your work, it shows. You not only do a better job of it, but you persuade other people that you do, so that they will support you in it. Your life will be more meaningful when you take the time to determine what you really want to accomplish in life.

For those of us who don't truly enjoy our work, and probably don't know what kind of work we really would enjoy, we have relatively meaningless lives. We don't like the way we're living but, for whatever reason, aren't willing to work to change it. It could be that we're afraid to "rock the boat" by taking risks. We might think that this kind of life is all we're capable or deserving of.

So we plan our vacation and dream of escape. After all, first of all it's easy to see why we deserve our vacation, and second of all, it's a lot less risky to plan a vacation than to plan a life. Escape is easier than change. It's also a whole lot less rewarding.

For ideas about how to acheive true success, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Letting Go

"Sometimes you've got to let everything go - purge yourself. If you are unhappy with anything - whatever is bringing you down, get rid of it. Because you'll find that when you're free, your true creativity, your true self comes out."
Tina Turner

What are you holding onto, that's making you unhappy? Are you holding onto the beleif that you're fat, or not too bright, or not too loveable? My mother tends to be pessimistic and she told me "that's just the way I am". That is really an excuse to hold on to a self-image. Her ego has control of her mind and wants to preserve and enlarge itself in any way possible, even if it means keeping her feeling bad. She would rather be right than be happy. Do you know someone like that? Is that you?

Did you know that your thoughts and emotions are not you. You can actually let them go. You can cast them off forever. The truth is that you are like one of those great big statues of Buddha made of shining gold, that has been covered up with all the dirt and muck of the jungle. Once you get rid of the dirt and muck (all the thoughts and emotions that make you unhappy) the shining gold that is really you will be revealed in all its glory. It is when you are free of the muck that your true self shines through. Then your true creativity becomes accessible to you.

For ideas about how to acheive true success, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

What You Have

"To be upset over what you don't have is to waste what you do have."
Kim S. Keyes Jr

Do you fret over all the things that you don't have? Do you think it's unfair that your neighbor has a fancy new car and you're stuck driving a cheap used car with air conditioning that doesn't work? Do you wish that you had enough money to go on exotic vacations? Most of us do. Perhaps it starts with when we were little and we were constantly told that we can't have everything we want. Then we see other people who have it and think that it's unfair. What makes them so much better than me? We never learned that nothing makes them better than us except for the quality of their thoughts; and that is something we can always improve too.

The best way to improve our thoughts is to think about all the wonderful things that are already in our lives. Sure you might have a cheap, used car, but it works well enough to get you where you need to go. You don't have to sit waiting for a bus to come by that takes a long time and doesn't go directly to your destination. The truth is that you are lucky to have a car at all, and you know it. You just forget it when you see the fancy cars that some other people drive.

It's very important to appreciate the things that we do have. Everyone has all kinds of blessings in their life. It often helps to forget about other people and what they have. Don't compare yourself to them. Just look at the things in your life and how your life is made better by them. What if you didn't have them? Be grateful for all the good things in your life, and more will show up.

For ideas about how to be truly successful, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Destinations

"What you get by reaching your destination is not nearly as important as what you will become by reaching your destination."
-Zig Ziglar

We tend to define success by the things that a successful person has. We think "I will be successful when I have...". It could be a waterfront condo. It could be a spouse who picks up after themselves. It could be an Olympic gold medal. Or it could be something else. We think "I will be successful when..." It could be when I have landed on the moon. It could be when I write my novel and it gets published. It could be when I graduate from school. Or it could be something else. Whatever our goals are, we see success as something that we have or we do. We see success as being an end result. When we do this, or have that, then we will know that we have made it.

But we are missing the point. Real success is having the character and talents to do or have whatever it is that we want. Because even if that thing that we succeeded in getting is taken away, which it quite possibly will be, we will still be the kind of person who can get it again. Even if what we have done doesn't give us the results we want, we will still be the kind of person who can do it again and get better results next time. The kind of talent and character that allows us to duplicate our "successes" can only be derived from "succeeding" the first time. It can only be derived from reaching our destination.

It is not the destination that we have reached that is important. The really important thing is the person we have become in the act of reaching it. The better a person we become, the higher the peaks we can climb. Success is a process. It gets better and better.

For ideas about how to become truly successful, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Joy

"We find greatest joy, not in getting, but in expressing what we are...Men do not really live for honors or for pay; their gladness is not the taking and holding, but in doing, the striving, the building, the living. It is a higher joy to teach than to be taught. It is good to get justice, but better to do it; fun to have things but more to make them. The happy man is he who lives the life of love, not for the honors it may bring, but for the life itself."
R. J. Baughan

We are always talking about how happy we will be when we get..." That is bad, first of all because we are telling ourselves that we can only be happy at some time in the future, never today. But it also misses the point. Happiness is not about what we get. It is about who we are and what we do. If you stop to make a list about what really makes you happy in life, you will realize that most of those things are not material acquisitions, or even ones like the love of another person.

Because most of us only know conditional love, we need the love of another person as a way to validate our own self-worth. Almost all of us judge our worth by how much other people like us. The love of another person does not make us happy as much as it brings us relief. When it comes down to it, it is the act of loving another person that makes us feel happy and worthwhile, not having that other person love us. We only really appreciate this when we perform an altruistic act. Then we know that it's true.

It is the acts of loving, giving, and creating that make us truly happy. We were born to be the givers, not the receivers. We were born to be active, not passive. We were born to grow, to live our lives with enjoyment and enthusiasm. This is what makes us happy.

For ideas about how to be truly successful, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Goals

"Before you begin a thing remind yourself that difficulties and delays quite impossible to foresee are ahead. You can only see one thing clearly, and that is your goal. Form a mental vision of that and cling to it through thick and thin."
Kathleen Norris


Are you one of those people who, when faced with a decision to act on something, try to imagine all the possible difficulties and delays that could happen with either option and how to deal with them, and get so overwhelmed that they can't get started. This is a very ineffective way of trying to get things done. The truth is that you can't foresee what difficulties and delays are going to happen; if you knew what to expect in the future, life would be very easy but also extremely dull and boring. By focusing on bad things that might happen, you are actually attracting all the things you don't want to happen too.

It is much better to focus on the one thing that you do have control over; clarifying your goal and forming a mental vision of it. Although you don't know what the future will bring, you do know what you want to happen in the end. When you know what you want to happen, you will be better able to find solutions to problems that come up and you will be more aware of the resources for acheiving your goal that were in your environment all along. Never lose sight of your goal. When your eyes are on the sunlight, you don't notice the shadows.

For ideas about how to acheive true success, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Timing

"I learned that we can do anything, but we can't do everything.. at least not at the same time. So think of your priorities not in terms of what activities you do, but when you do them. Timing is everything."
Dan Millman

Are you good at prioritizing, or do you just feel overwhelmed at all the things you thnk you need to do. How do you make decisions about what activities you need to do now, what activities you need to do later, and what activities you really don't need to do at all? The first thing you need to do is to determine what is important to you. What do you value? What do you value most of all, that you would be really unhappy if it were missing in your life. What is your mission, your purpose in life? What are your goals? Until you can answer all of these questions, prioritizing your activities is going to be very hard because you won't have a benchmark to judge their importance against.

Once you have determined what your priorities are, what actions are most important for you to take, then you need to determine when to take them. After you get rid of the unimportant activities in your life, you'll have much more room to fit in the important ones. Which of those have to be done right now or they will lose their value? Which of them can be done later and still be worthwhile? How worthwhile will they be tomorrow, or next week, or next month, or next year? Make sure you do the most important and urgent activities first. Then do things based on how much value they will lose over time. Once you've identified priorities, timing is everything.

For ideas about how to acheive true success, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Excuses

"Some men have thousands of reasons why they cannot do what they want to,
when all they need is one reason why they can."
Martha Graham

Are you good at coming up with excuses why something won't work. You probably don't see them as excuses, but as explanations. You think you're just facing reality. "The economy is really bad after all, the reports from the media prove that, so I can't possibly sell enough products to make the amount of money I want to."

Of course, the reports from the media don't give you the whole story. You will never hear from them about the people whose businesses are actually improving this year, or about those people who made their fortune during the Great Depression. And you certainly won't hear on the mainstream media about how they did that. The way they did that is by finding at the one reason why they could succeed. They saw the opportunities that the other people didn't see because they thought the situation was hopeless and that there was nothing to do but pull back and wait for it to pass.

This is, of course, just one example of how people find excuses not to succeed. But it happens in all areas of our life. We find excuses whenever we blame outside circumstances for our lack of success. It's always the fault of something else (the economy in our example). Most of us have a great difficulty admitting that we are responsible for everything that happens to us. But that is the reality. Even when something happens that we don't like, we can improve our situation simply by changing our attitude and perception about it, and thereby our reactions.

All we need is one reason to succeed. All we need is one reason why we can. The one reason why we can succeed when everyone around us is failing is because we know we are responsible for everything that happens to us, and that we always have control over what happens, or at the least over how we react to it. The best reason why we can succeed is that we beleive in our ability to cope with any situation, no matter how bad it seems at first.

For ideas about how to acheive true success, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

A Great Life

No life ever grows great until it is focused, dedicated, and disciplined
Henry Emerson Fosdick

You can't accomplish anything great unless you focus all your energies on it. If there are 10 rosebuds on a branch and they all share the available nutrients, water etc, they are all going to be fairly small. But if you only have one rosebud on a branch because you've got rid of all the others, then it gets all the available nutrients, water etc and grows to be much bigger and better. If you have 10 projects going on at the same time, then each of them will share in your available energy, time, and resources, and they are all going to turn out okay. But if you only have one project and it gets all of your energy, time etc, it will turn out to be something special.

If your life is not dedicated to one major purpose, then you won't be able to focus your time, energy and resources on that one thing. If your life is not disciplined, you will always be running around trying to respond to every little thing that life gives you and none of those projects will turn out to be very good or satisfying to you.

The only way to accomplish something great is to dedicate your life to a single purpose, focus on one project that fullfills that purpose, and be disciplined enough not to get distracted by anything else.

For ideas about how to acheive true success, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Plans

"Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success."
Stephen A. Brennan

It is not enough just to have a goal. We might have a goal to get to Hollywood, but unless we have a plan, (ie a map, a driving route and a vehicle), we aren't going to get there. It is not so much necessary to be able to see all the way there, but we do need to know what direction to point ourselves in. Just like with a car driving in the dark, the further we move forward the more unseen parts of the road become visible. We can drive all the way across the country even though we can only see a few hundred feet ahead of ourselves. All we have to do is to stay on the road, headed in the right direction.

It is true that plans are tricky. Even the best of plans get waylaid, because unforseen circumstances are always happening. Sometimes it feels like just as soon as you've made a plan, you need to change it. Some people say that it's not the actual plan that's important, it is the process of planning. It is the action of thinking about how you might reach your goals, that helps you to actually reach them. But you have to beleive that you have a good plan now, and you have to act on it now, even if it needs to be altered later. You can't wait until you have it perfect, because it never will be.

Once you've established a goal, you must plan how you will acheive it. You must beleive that your plan will work, based on your present information, and you must act on it quickly and vigorously. If you have to change it later, beleive in your new plan and start acting on that one. Keep moving forward. That is how you will be successful.

For ideas about how to acheive true success, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Gratitude

"Develop an attitude of gratitude, and give thanks for everything that happens to you, knowing that every step forward is a step toward achieving something bigger and better than your current situation."
Brian Tracy

Are you really grateful for everything you have. As I have said before, most of us take for granted most of the blessings God has given us. We tend to only pay attention to what we do not yet have. That just leads to frustration, anger, disappointment, jealousy and other negative emotions.

Are you really grateful for everything that happens to you? That can be difficult when something tragic happens, like you lose your job or someone close to you dies. It requires that we look at the event in a completely different way. Losing your job is scary, but at the same time, it does free you to find a more satisfying or better paying job or maybe it forces you to get a better understanding of what you have to offer others or learn how to live on less money. The death of someone close to you is very sad, but at the same time it may inspire you to do something great in memory of that person, or to remember all the good times you had with them or to understand better the importance of your relationships.

Whatever happens, whether it seems good or bad at the time, is moving you forward. It is enabling you to acheive something bigger or better than your current situation. Everything that happens is something to be grateful for, even if we can only see the value of it in our lives in retrospect. We also need to be grateful for everything that is in our lives already for it too is helping us move forward. And it is only when we are grateful for what we already have that God, or other people for that matter, will be inclined to give us even more. Always be grateful.

For ideas about how to be truly successful, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Loss of Life

"Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways."
Stephen Vincent Benet

Do you really live your life. So many of us drag ourselves around, dealing with emergencies and doing our chores all day long. We go to work because we have to make money, not because we actually enjoy our work. We do whatever we think other people want us to do just to please them, and not the things that we ourselves would have chosen. Our lives lose their meaning.

People who really live their life know why they're here. They have a clear sense of their life's purpose, and everything they do supports that. Thay have no chores because they can see the larger picture of why they need to do those tasks. They enjoy their work so much they would do it for free. They only do what pleases other people when it pleases them too. They proactively deal with things before they become emergencies because they're forward thinking.

They say that people on their deathbed typically regret the things they didn't do much more than anything they did do. Most of us aren't doing enough of what we really want to do, of the things that support our purpose in life, of the things that make us happy. When the meaning of our life is lost, when we drag ourselves through life not caring about the things we do, then that is like a slow death. Find your purpose; find out what makes you happy, and spend your time doing it. Live your life!

For ideas about how to acheive true success, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Happiness

The happiest heart that ever beat was in some quiet breast that found the common daylight sweet, and left to Heaven the rest.
John Vance Cheney

Gratitude is so important. We take so much for granted in our lives. As the song goes "You don't know what you've got till it's gone". We tend to define what we want as those things that aren't already in our lives. We focus on what we are lacking. We often don't even pay any attention to many of the blessings in our lives. On Thanksgiving, many of us bake a huge turkey dinner for our extended family as just a ritual we go through, never really appreciating just how lucky we are to be able to do that. We don't realize what a blessing it is to not be hungry every day.

How often do we stop and think about how lucky we are to be living in our own home, or even our own apartment (and one that is clean and well-built at that)? How often do we stop and appreciate the freedom to attend the church of our choosing without having to worry about bombs etc? Part of the problem is that most of us have no idea how the rest of the world lives. We don't know how lucky we are compared to others. We think everyone lives the way we do.

Even to breathe easily is a blessing. So is the ability to the ability to walk, or just to get outside in the sunshine. Just to be alive and well is a blessing, but how many of us truly appreciate that?

To appreciate all the blessings that surround even the poorest of us, is the key to happiness. If we can understand just how sweet the common daylight is (how much of a blessing it is), and expect (learn to trust)the Universe to keep bringing us more wonderful things, we will find true joy, and that is the key to real success.

For ideas about how to acheive true success, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Fun

"Fun is fundamental. There is no way around it. You absolutely must have fun. Without fun, there is no enthusiasm. Without enthusiasm, there is no energy. Without energy, there are only shades of gray."
Doug Hall

What is fun, anyway. To me, fun is proving to yourself that you can do something that you didn't think you could do before. It is surprising yourself with your own capabilities. It is discovering new things about yourself. How much fun do you have in your own life?

What motivates you to do things, to have the energy to get up and go and accomplish something new and exciting? It is the desire to prove to yourself that you can do it. It is the desire to have fun. It is the desire to grow. Life is always encouraging you towards growth.

What gives you enthusiasm and excitement? It is the chance to prove to yourself that you are capable of doing more than you thought you could. It is the desire to show yourself what a wonderful person you are becoming. It is the desire to prove to yourself that you are growing.

If you are to accomplish anything significant in life, you must have fun. You must enjoy doing it; even the parts of it that would normally just be dull or annoying must be fun because they help you move ever onwards towards you goal. Put more fun in your life. Search out fun things. Prove to yourself that you are capable of greatness.

For ideas about how to acheive true success, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Nobility

"The truth is that there is nothing noble in being superior to somebody else. The only real nobility is in being superior to your former self."
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our ego is always searching for a way that we can be superior to someone else. That is the only way it can live and grow, and it is terrified of death. That is why we would rather be "right" than happy. We defend our beleifs to the end, even when they are not supportive to our own happiness. We make up reasons why we must be better than others, even if they are as trivial as our skin color. There was a fascinating lesson with striking results that a teacher did once by seperating the class into two groups based on eye color and saying that brown eyed people were better for a period of time, and then saying that blue eyed people were better for a period of time. My ego loves to hear that I am better than you, and any reason will do. But there is no nobility in that stance.

Since we are all children of God, none of us are better than the others, any more than blue eyed people are actually better than brown eyed people. We all have our strengths and weaknesses, and we're much more alike than we are different. So there's no point in comparing yourself with someone else "for there will always be greater and lesser people than yourself" (from Desiderata)in any given trait.

The only relevant person to compare yourself to is yourself, as you were in the past. The only relevant measurement of success, or acheivement or even happiness, is whether you are better now than you used to be, in whatever way you are measuring. To have improved upon yourself is the only real nobility.

For ideas about how to acheive true success, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Enthusiasm

"Apathy can be overcome by enthusiasm, and enthusiasm can only be aroused by two things: first, an ideal, with takes the imagination by storm, and second, a definite intelligible plan for carrying that ideal into practice."
Arnold Joseph Toynbee

Are you apathetic. I beleive apathy is a result of depression, and depression has been shown to be the result of a thought that one is powerless to change the world. Scientists have been able to induce depression in animals just by preventing them from being able to control their environment. As someone who has suffered depression most of my life, I know that apathy is as much a major component of it as feeling sad is.

Apathy can only be overcome by enthusiasm. Enthusiasm, of course, comes from the realization that you do have the power to change your environment. This comes from knowing what you want to change your environment into, and knowing (or at least having a plan) how you will be able to do that.

You must know exactly what you want. You must be so clear about what you want that you get excited about it because you can imagine it actually happening. Most importantly you can imagine how wonderful you will feel when it comes. That spurs your desire for it.

Finally you must have a definite intelligable plan for reaching that ideal. Otherwise you have just a wish for something. You won't take action until you can think of a good action to take in order to move towards your goal. Sometimes you won't see the whole road but at least you'll find a way to get started. The more action you take, the more enthusiastic you'll be because you'll be able to see your progress.

Banish apathy. Generate some enthusiasm for your goals. Make them crystal clear. Then figure out a plan of action to get you started,and you're on your way.

For ideas about how to be truly successful, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Stumble Upon Something

"Keep on going, and the chances are that you will stumble on something,
perhaps when you are least expecting it. I never heard of anyone ever
stumbling on something sitting down."
Charles Kettering

This is one of the biggest reasons why it is so important to be taking action towards your goal, and to keep taking action until you finally acheive your goal. If you wait until you know the perfect action to take, then you will never get started. That's called procrastination.

It is unrealistic to expect that we will know exactly what to do before we actually do anything. Nobody does. As we know, the most important thing is just to get started, as soon as we have a clear enough understanding of the situation to think of a way that we just might be able to move towards our goal.

The first step of a journey is always the hardest. The truth is that once you are out there doing things, making mistakes and learning from them, then you will be stumbling upon things that will help clarify the next step you should take, or even that make clear what the pathway ahead will be like. You will be noticing things that you didn't notice before. You will feel more and more confident that you are moving towards your goal. You just can't get all of this from just sitting there and visualizing success. There's no substitute for action. Keep going and watch out for the things you'll be stumbling upon.

For ideas about how to be truly successful, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Decisions

"It doesn't matter which side of the fence you get off on sometimes. What matters most is getting off. You cannot make progress without making decisions."
Jim Rohn

Do you have a hard time making decisions? Are you afraid of making the wrong decision? Many people are. As one person commented" I feel like the proverbial donkey between two bales of hay- unable to decide which one I want, and, in the meantime, starving to death" But by not choosing, we are choosing to deprive ourselves of what makes life a delicious feast.

Our fear of making the wrong decision is tied closely to our fear of making mistakes. It comes from our need to be perfect and our need to control the outcome of the events in our lives. We need to look at making decisions differently. We need to understand that there is always something to gain, no matter which decision you make.

Regardless of which decision you make, there will be opportunities to experience life in a new way, to learn and grow, to find out who you are and who you would really like to be and what you would like to do. Even if you choose to stay in the position you are in now, you can still take advantages of opportunities in that position that you didn't see before. There is no such thing as a situation that has absolutely nothing good in it and can't be improved.

The most important thing is that you make a decision. Know that you can't go wrong. Even if your decision leads to problematic circumstances, you can always make a new decision to change them into something better. If your decision leads to wonderful circumstances, however, just think of how much better you'll feel.

For ideas about how to be truly successful, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Greatness

"The secret of greatness is simple: do better work than any other man in your field - and keep on doing it."
Wilfred A. Peterson

We all would like to be great. We often think there must be some reason why people become great that has to do with their character, or intelligence, or resources. But none of these are the determining factor. Many people have become great when they started with nothing. They became great just because they did better work than anyone else in their field, and they never gave up. They had the burning desire to succeed.

How do you do better work than any other man in your field? It comes down largely to being clear about exactly what kind of work you want to accomplish, and determining the best way to do that, often through trial and error. If you really want to do great work, you will find a way. If you keep focusing on your goal of providing your best work to as many people as possible, you will get to the point when you expect to do that. This will give you the persistance you need to not quit when obstacles and roadblocks happen, which they will.

We all have the ability to be great. People do great things because they convince themselves that they can do better work than their competition. People do great things because they never give up trying. You too can be a great success, as long as you dream big and never give up.

For ideas about how to be truly successful, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Mistakes

"When you make a mistake, don't look back at it long. Take the reason of the thing into your mind and then look forward. Mistakes are lessons of wisdom. The past cannot be changed. The future is yet in your power."
Hugh White

When you make a mistake do you analyze what you possibly could have done wrong and why you may have done it? Do you ponder over all the possibilities of why it could have happened? Do you study it? The mistake you're making is to look back at it, and focus on it. You are essentially focusing on all the bad things that could happen, so that, according to the Law of Attraction, that's what you'll have more of.

When you make a mistake, what you need to do is quickly learn the lesson from it, forgive yourself, and then forget about it. Quickly identify what didn't work (and why, if that's clear) but avoid ruminating on it for a long time. All you really need to learn is how to avoid making the same mistake next time. Don't run around being upset that you did something. That's a waste of time and energy because the past is over with. Nobody can change the past, no matter how much they'd like to.

You need to forgive yourself. Mistakes aren't the end of the world.We all make mistakes, as long as we are living and growing, and are out there taking action. We're supposed to make mistakes, that's how we learn. That's how we attain wisdom.

The future is yet in your power. Learn the lessons from your mistakes and use them wisely. Then just let your mistakes go. There is no more reason to think about them, or to beat yourself up over them.

For ideas about how to be truly successful, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Time

"Until we can manage TIME, we can manage nothing else."
Peter F. Drucker

How well do you manage time? Do you try to do everything yourself, even those tasks that you aren't very good at? Do you multitask? Neither of these things are good time management.

Think about how much money you could make in an hour. If you had a job doing what you're doing, how much would they pay you? Let's say you figure you were worth 10$ an hour. If you had to go and mow the lawn, you could hire some neighborhood kid to do that for maybe 7$ an hour. If you do it yourself, then you are are essentially wasting 3$ an hour (the difference between the value of your best activity and the value of mowing the lawn). Obviously, when looked at this way, it would be better to hire someone to mow the lawn while you spend your time doing what you do best. And that neighborhood kid might to a better job of mowing the lawn than you could have.

Most of us think that we can get more done by trying to do several different things at the same time. But research shows that we actually get less done that way because we aren't concentrating on any one thing well enough to do a good job of it. It is much more constructive to do one thing at a time whenever possible. It is better to do one thing really well than to do ten in a sloppy, half-hearted way.

It is crucial to learn good time management strategies. Time is the only resource we have that is finite. We can get more learning, acquire more energy, find more opportunities. But we can never get more time. We can only make better use of the time we do have.

For ideas about how to be truly successful, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Problems

"We are continually faced with great opportunities which are brilliantly disguised as unsolvable problems."
Margaret Mead

When was the last time you were stuck with a problem? You probably tried to analyze how it happened. You wondered what you did to cause the problem, or what you should have done differently. You may have thought "Why does this always have to happen to me?" You probably got pretty frustrated, and quit. That's how most people look at problems. But there is another way to look at them. It's a matter of attitude.

You could choose to see problems as opportunities to learn, grow, and succeed. You could realize that problems are there to teach you first of all what you want (which is the opposite of the problem) and also help you find a way to get there. Problems are there to help you, not to hinder you. But you may not even see the opportunities for you if you view all those annoying events as something to be avoided whenever possible. Be grateful for your problems. See them as challenges which you can win with the right attitude. Don't give up. Choose to see your problems as a blessing in disguise.

For ideas about how to be truly successful, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Luck

"Luck? I don't know anything about luck. I've never banked on it
and I'm afraid of people who do. Luck to me is something else:
Hard work - and realizing what is opportunity and what isn't."
Lucille Ball

Do you feel like a lucky person? Or perhaps an unlucky person? What is luck anyway? We've been brought up with superstitions like "if a black cat crosses your path, you'll have bad luck". Can that really be true? If you win the lottery, did that happen because you were lucky? Or was it just chance?

Luck is about being aware, and making associations. Nothing happens in our lives by chance. The person with good luck is simply the person with good success habits. First of all, you need to have a goal and work hard towards it. You won't get anywhere unless you take action. If you always focus on your goal, then you will acquire a good idea of the actions you need to take in order to get to it.

Of course, a lot of taking the right actions involves being aware of what is going on around you, and especially the opportunities that present themselves. If you are aware, you will know what opportunities to choose, because you will know what is most important to you. If you are out there taking action, you will gain a better understanding of what is necessary in order for you to reach your goal. You will learn, from making mistakes, what opportunities are most likely to work out. And you will be more likely to be around when those opportunitys do show up.

Don't rely on luck. Luck is just taking action and thus becoming better prepared for when a great opportunity presents itself. It is being aware of those great opportunitys when they show up, and working to take advantage of them. Luck is what happens when you do the things necessary for success.

For ideas about how to be truly successful, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Confidence

"In all thy undertakings, let a reasonable assurance animate thy endeavors; if thou despairest of success, thou shalt not succeed."

Akhenaton (d. c.1354 BC)
Egyptian king

Nothing is more valuable than self-confidence. You must beleive that you can succeed. Even if you don't have the talent or know-how, if you think you can succeed, then you convince other people that you can succeed too. If you are trying to succeed at something that requires the help of others, which most big goals do, that can make all the difference.

Even if you are trying to do something you could do by yourself, self-confidence gives you the courage to attempt what you want to do. Success is next to impossible if you don't take action to get what you want. If you don't expect success, then you may not try in the first place; but even if you do you will quit at the first setback, and setbacks are likely to happen in any endeavour. Success requires perseverence, and perseverence requires confidence that you will eventually reach your goal.

Be bold. Be confident. Convince others you can do whatever it takes to get the job done. Go for what you want. Believe that you can reach your goals. That's your assurance of success.

For ideas about how to be truly successful, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Obstacles

"We are built to conquer environment, solve problems, achieve goals, and we find no real satisfaction or happiness in life without obstacles to conquer and goals to achieve."
Maxwell Maltz

What do you really enjoy? Chances are that it's not sitting around doing nothing. Personally, I think that being bored is the single worst thing that could happen to me. I am bored when I am not doing anything, and that means I am not learning and I am not growing.

If I never have obstacles to conquer or problems to solve, then I never learn that I have the ability to conquer obstacles or solve problems, and so I become afraid of what might happen in my world. If I never acheive goals, I never learn that I can get what I want, so I become frustrated. Frustration and fear just make us miserable. We know, at some level, that we are wasting our precious lives when we are not taking action. We know that we aren't living up to our potential. We aren't getting anything accomplished, so we never get to be proud of ourselves. We never learn about who we really are, let alone about who we really want to be.

We are not meant to sit around doing nothing. The Universe is pushing us to grow to reach our full potential. We are only happy or satisfied when we are going along with that push towards growth. We must conquer obstacles and acheive goals. This is what gives our lives meaning.

For ideas about how to acheive true success, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Happiness

Most people are searching for happiness. They're looking for it. They're trying to find it in someone or something outside of themselves.That's a fundemental mistake. Happiness is something that you are, and it comes from the way you think."
Wayne W(alter) Dyer

Do you look for happiness in outside things? Do you think that owning a waterfront condo in a gorgeous location, or a mansion next to a world-class golf course, will make you happy? Maybe it's having a cook and a maid. Or it's winning the lottery. Hey, we all want to win the lottery, don't we. So often, we think that if we could only have everything we want, that we would be happy. But life doesn't work like that. Many people we admire, who have all the riches and fame anyone could want, are miserable. You can't buy happiness at any price.

Yet happiness is available to everyone, even those who financially have nothing. Lots of very poor people are very happy. This is because your happiness does not depend on what you have. It depends on the way you think. It depends on your attitude towards the world. Looking for happiness outside ourselves is a waste of time. We were meant to be happy. Happiness is our natural state of mind. The only reason that we don't feel happy is that we have got in our own way.

We want other things instead of appreciating the things we have. Life is full of blessings. Small children are very aware of that. They see the world in a state of wonder and awe. But we have forgotten.

We think that the approval of other people will make us happy. We think we will be happy if our spouse did more work around the house (or if we had a spouse). But things don't work out that. way. People resent knowing that you will only be happy if they changed their behavior in some way. They resist doing it. If you date somone for the first time and they pick up that you are imagining what "our children" are going to be like, they are likely to run. People don't want that kind of responsibility, at least until they have made up their own mind that they want the same thing that you want. The best thing to do is to just appreciate the person's good points and then they will decide on their own that they want to please you.

You can't find happiness outside yourself. Change the way you see the world that you already have so that you feel good about it.

For ideas about how to be truly successful, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Problems

"We are continually faced with great opportunities which are brilliantly disguised as unsolvable problems."
Margaret Mead

When was the last time you were stuck with a problem? You probably tried to analyze how it happened. You wondered what you did to cause the problem, or what you should have done differently. You may have thought "Why does this always have to happen to me?" You probably got pretty frustrated, and quit. That's how most people look at problems. But there is another way to look at them. It's a matter of attitude.

You could choose to see problems as opportunities to learn, grow, and succeed. You could realize that problems are there to teach you first of all what you want (which is the opposite of the problem) and also help you find a way to get there. Problems are there to help you, not to hinder you. But you may not even see the opportunities for you if you view all those annoying events as something to be avoided whenever possible. Be grateful for your problems. See them as challenges which you can win with the right attitude. Don't give up. Choose to see your problems as a blessing in disguise.

For ideas about how to be truly successful, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Finding What You Want

"Let your hook be always cast. In the pool where you least expect it, will be fish."
Ovid

Many people cast their hook in a pool, and then, when there are no fish biting, give up and decide that fishing doesn't work for them. It doesn't occur to them that maybe they just picked a pool where there are no fish, and if they tried the next one over, it might be teeming with hungry fish. I'm not talking literally just about fishing here, the same idea applies in many areas, from marketing and sales to finding a mate. Whenever you are searching for something, whether it's customers or fish or a soul-mate, you must search in as many different places as possible, and you must keep doing so until you find what you were looking for.

Life has a way of always surprising us (which is good because it keeps us always interested to find out what will happen next). Situations usually don't go the way you planned. Things are often not where you expected to find them. If you really want something, then you have to go out and look for it in every place it could possibly be. You never know which of those places it could be hiding in, unless you look there.

For ideas about how to be truly successful, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Change

"Change. It has the power to uplift, to heal, to stimulate, surprise, open new doors, bring fresh experience and create excitement in life. Certainly it is worth the risk."
Leo Buscaglia

Many of us are frightened of change. We assume that change means that the things that we love in our lives will disappear and be replaced by things we don't like much. This is just an assumption. What it really boils down to is that your ego is scared of losing itself, since it is defined by those things that have been around you in the past. Your ego will do anything it can to keep itself intact, and to keep you the way you have been in the past. It is terrified of change because to the ego, change means death.

But there is another way to look at change. It may be that the things in our life that we hate will disappear and be replaced by things that we enjoy or love. That is equally likely to happen. Change is frequently a good thing. It indicates that we are growing and nothing is more exciting than that. At the very worst, it teaches us valuable skills for adapting and coping. At it's best, it opens up whole new worlds of exploration and growth for us. It can heal us of our dis-ease. It can give our life new meaning and new purpose. Change is definately worth the risk.

For ideas about how to be truly successful, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Worry

"Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy."
Dr. (Felice) Leo(nardo) Buscaglia

Do you worry about what the future will bring? Are you worried about the economy and about whether you'll have enough money to retire on? Are you worried that we'll have a depression like the one in the "30's? Are you worried about not being able to pay the mortgage and losing your house? Most of us are. But being worried about all these things is not going to stop them from happening. Because of the Law of Attraction, it is actually going to make them more likely to happen.

Worrying is like having faith that terrible things are going to happen. It happens because your ego is projecting bad things that happened in the past out in to the future. But in reality, the future is like an empty book, just waiting for you to write upon it. Nobody can foretell the future, least of all your ego.

If you focus all your energy on thinking about a bad future, you are ignoring all the good things about right now. And right now is the only time that is real, the only time that matters. The only true joy of life happens in the present. And if you are not paying attention to the good things in life, to the present, then you are missing out on what is really important in life; which is to feel joy.

For ideas about how to be truly successful, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Election

Well, finally the big day is here. America has a new president. Admittedly, this guy is wading into an enormous mess, and it would be completely unreasonable to expect him to wave some sort of magic wand and make it go away by next year. Nobody could do that. Chances are that things are going to stay uncomfortable for all of us for perhaps years to come.

What I have been continually reminded of in the days leading up to the election is that ultimately it doesn't matter who wins because they aren't going to make all your problems go away. The only person who can do that is you. It is up to you to take charge of your life. It is up to you to become wealthy. It is up to you to do the things you need to do to protect yourself from the recession. You are responsible for your life, not some politician. And you have the power to make it all happen, just as long as you believe in yourself.

For ideas about how to be truly successful, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Money

"Money is not my god or my devil. It s a form of energy that tends to make us more of who we already are, whether it's greedy or loving"
Dan Millman

If you won a million dollars tomorrow, do you think you will be a changed person? Now that you can buy anything you want, will you want different things? Probably not. We've all heard that "the love of money is the root of all evil". We have all heard that people with a lot of money are selfish. But that's not true.

If you suddenly had all the money you could use, wouldn't you use it to buy what you already wanted to buy. You would use it to produce more of the things you value, or perhaps to get rid of things you don't want. If you valued education, for ex, you might want to use it to build schools in Afghanistan. If you valued art, you might want to use it to support the arts in some way. If you valued white supremacy, you might want to use it to put black people down (and this is the kind of place where perhaps money got its bad reputation). The point is that when you have a lot of money, it tends to illuminate your values and make them very clear to the world. It tends to make you more of who you already are.

Another problem with our ideas about money is that we tend to see it as the solution to all our problems so we become desperate to have it. Sometimes we will compromise all our goodness in order to get it. In this way, the love of money often really is the root of evil. Look at all the scams out there, for example. We haven't learned yet that we all have the capability to attract money while doing things that are good for other people too. We don't need to compromise who we are. We need to know the powerful and good person we really are and celebrate that.

For ideas about how to be truly successful, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Health

"The first wealth is health."
Ralph Waldo Emerson

What would you say is the very most important area of your life? You'd probably think of whatever area you were lacking in. People with no money think that finances are the most important part of life. People with money but no freinds would disagree; they would think that relationships are the most important part of life. But the truth is that the most important part of life is really your health.

If you are sick or in pain all the time, it is really difficult to enjoy anything else. We are aware of nothing more than the state of our physical body. We think about it all the time, since it is always with us no matter where we go. And it turns out that your attitude about almost every subject is influenced by your attitude about your body. When your body feels good, and you feel good about your body, then you will feel good about the rest of your world.

It is a snowball effect. If you feel good physically, you will feel better about the world around you, and enjoy it more. If you feel good about the world around you and enjoy it more, you will feel better physically. Disease is really dis-ease. Do whatever it takes to get your body to feel its best. Your most important wealth is your health.

For ideas about how to be truly successful, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

"It is easy to get everything you want, provided you first learn to do without the things you cannot get"
Elbert Hubbard

We know from the Law of Attraction that we can get everything we want. The biggest reason that we don't get everything we want is because we beleive that we cannot get it. We play the lottery, but we don't really beleive we have any chance of winning it. The odds are too high. We cope with this by telling ourselves that it won't be the end of the world if we don't win the lottery. We can manage without it. We are talking ourselves into doing without the things that we want but don't think we can get. We should, perhaps, be doing this more often. It would force us to be more grateful for what we already have.

If you do succeed in talking yourself out of missing those things that you don't think you can get anyway, what is left? It will be those things that you wanted and expected to get. Of course it will also be those things that you didn't want but expected to get but hopefully you can get rid of those somehow. But that's how you get everything you want. There is a wisdom in being happy with what you already have, because it makes you expect to get more good things. It raises your expectations, which in turn makes you get more of what you want (perhaps even winning that lottery).

For ideas about how to be truly successful, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

The Future

"The future does not belong to those who are content with today, apathetic toward common problems and their fellow man alike, timid and fearful in the face of bold projects and new ideas. Rather, it will belong to those who can blend passion, reason and courage in a personal commitment to the ideals of American society."
Robert Francis Kennedy

People who are content with today are happy living in the gilded cage of their comfort zone. People who are apathetic towards their fellow man and the problems they share, are not motivated to accomplish anything significant. People who are timid and fearful in the face of bold projects and new ideas are not going to take any risks; they aren't going to try anything new. All those characteristics add up to people who will not change the world. They will live in the past.

A person who is going to change the world must be committed to it. They must be passionate enough to step out of their comfort zone. They must be courageous enough to risk doing something new and different. And they must have the intelligence and wisdom to know that to do, and come up with a plan of how they are going to do it.
These are the people who will change the world. These are the people who the future belongs to. Will you be one of them?

For ideas about how to be truly successful, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Forgiveness

"When you hold resentment toward another, you are bound to that person or condition by an emotional link that is stronger than steel. Forgiveness is the only way to dissolve that link and get free."
Catherine Ponder

How many people do you resent? How often have you resented some situation that happened to you? So many of us do it all the time. When you feel any strong emotion about another person, you have bonded to them. When you feel good about them, then you will want that bondage. But when you feel bad about them, you want to be as far away from them as possible.

When we resent having to do something for someone, for example, we complain about it to whoever will listen long after it's already happened. We keep reminding ourselves of it over and over. We can't forget that person. We can't let go. We can't let bygones be bygones. Our emotions have bound us to them. This happens so often in so many ways that we don't even realize that we are doing it. We don't know that we can just let go. And we do that by forgiving.

In the case of us resenting having to do something for someone, the first person to forgive is ourselves for not excersising our right to say "no". Then we need to forgive the person for making the request of us in the first place. Forgiving is hard. It is just as hard to forgive ourselves as it is to forgive them. But the rewards are enormous.

Start practising foregiveness now. It does not mean that you condone what the person did or that you will tolerate it in the future. It just means letting go. You don't do it for them. You do it for yourself, to be free of the negative emotions that they are invoking in you.

For ideas about how to be truly successful, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Goals

"The victory of success is half won when one gains the habit of setting goals and achieving them. Even the most tedious chore will become endurable as you parade through each day convinced that every task, no matter how menial or boring, brings you closer to fulfilling your dreams."
Og Mandino

Do you feel that you are obligated to do things even though they are boring or tedious and you just don't like doing them? Perhaps the most prevalent example of that is going to work. "Thank God it's Friday! Now I can have some fun". How many of us can honestly say we look forward to going to work every morning? Probably not many. But the reason for this is because the work you are doing has little or nothing to do with your own values and your own goals in life, or because you haven't made that connection yet. Perhaps you don't even know what your own values and your own goals in life are.

We all know that the most financially successful people are the ones who have found a way to make money doing the things they enjoy most, the ones that support their values and their goals. If you really can't imagine how to do this, then the next best thing is to figure out how you can use your present job to support at least one of your values or goals. Look at your job differently. Maybe you can do things in a slightly different way, one that is more meaningful for you.

Consider the story of the mentally handicapped person who had a job bagging groceries at a grocery store. He decided to find inspirational quotes and slip them into people's bags. Between that, and his ever-present smile, he soon became by far the most popular bagger there. Even the most menial of jobs can be made better by the way you approach it.

Practise setting goals and acheiving them by making everything you do move you closer to your goal. Life is a lot more fun that way.

For ideas about how to be truly successful, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Continuing

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts."
Sir Winston Churchill

This is one reason why it is not satisfying to treat success as the destination we want to finally arrive at. We might say to ourselves I'll be successful when I have a waterfront condo in a resort area". But even if we do get to that point, first of all our success could be taken away (we might lose money in our investments for ex) or more likely we will find something else that we want even more and lose interest in our waterfront condo as we concentrate on acquiring the new thing. Success is a journey, not a destination. You never arrive. You are always moving.

Fortunately for us, failures are not final either. You can always get back up from your failures and try something new. If you have learned from your failures, you will have a better idea of what might work next time. There always is a next time. It just takes motivation, the intense desire to reach your goal, for us to have the courage to continue. We must expect failures and realize that they are not the end of the world. Life goes on. The pursuit of your goal must go on too. Never give up just because you've failed. Learn as much as possible about what went wrong, dust yourself off, get back on your horse and keep riding.

For ideas about how to be truly successful, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Perfection

Aim for success, not perfection. Never give up your right to be wrong, because then you will lose the ability to learn new things and move forward with your life. Remember that fear always lurks behind perfectionism. Confronting your fears and allowing yourself the right to be human can, paradoxically, make yourself a happier and more productive person."
Dr. David M. Burns

Are you a perfectionist? So many people want to get everything right before they even start. Fear does lurk behind perfectionism. People think that if they don't get something perfect the first time, then other people will laugh at them and think they can't do anything properly. They are afraid of making a mistake or falling on their face. They are afraid of public embarrassment.

The truth is that making mistakes is part of being human. Everyone makes mistakes. If they didn't, they would have no way of learning what to do better next time. They would never improve. They would never grow. Mistakes are actually your friend. They are an important and necessary part of success. It is wise to expect them and plan for learning from them. Other people, if they notice your mistakes, will probably be just glad that it wasn't them who made them. They're not thinking about critisising you.

You don't have to get everything perfect. Nobody does. The important thing is to just get started, and learn from your mistakes along the way. The more you learn from your mistakes the better you will do next time. And you will be well on the way towards success.

For ideas about how to be truly successful, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

What do We Live For?

"What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other"
George Eliot

What do you live for? I think most of us struggle between our own selfish needs and a real urge to help others. It is a struggle because we can't be really happy unless we look after our own needs and desires, which frequently conflict with what other people want, or expect, of us. We want what we want, not what other people want. We know how unsatisfying it feels to do what someone else wants that goes against what we want. That's the thing. We end up feeling resentful of others who "make" us do things we don't want to do. And chances are, we're not going to do a very good job of it anyway. They aren't going to be happy with it.

Yet we do want to help other people. Perhaps what we need is to find a way to do that without sacrificing our own needs and desires in the process. It turns out that the only time you can help other people is when you can think about the person and feel good at the same time. It is when you can expect the other person to succeed at whatever it is that they want to acheive because you beleive that they can do it. The truth is that helping other people helps ourselves too. We live to make life less difficult for each other. Helping others makes us feel good about ourself. But only when we aren't sacrificing what we want in order to give them what they want.

For ideas about how to be truly successful, visit
http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Sacrifice

"The important thing is to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become."
Charles Dubois

Do you think that you could sacrifice what you are? Most of us have a lot of difficulty imagining ourselves as different from what we already are. Our ego does everything it can to keep us the same, because it knows that if we sacrifice what we are it means sacrificing the ego. Our ego is terrified of death. That is why we argue with people over stupid little things even if it means that we will be miserable afterwards. We would rather be right than be happy. That is also why we get jealous of people who have more than us. Our ego can't stand the idea of anyone else being better than us.

So what could you become? What would you like to become? If we could sacrifice what we are, that opens the door to change. And there are no restrictions on who we could change into, just as long as we beleive that it is possible. We can be anyone we want, as long as we have faith that we can be that way. Think of the possibilities. What character traits have you always admired in others and wished you could be like that too. You can be like that too; just as long as you beleive that you can change, just as long as you can sacrifice what you are for what you could become.

For ideas about how to be truly successful, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com