Focus Your Energy on the Positive and What is Possible

When faced with any obstacle, change, challenge or roadblock, examine them just long enough to uncover the difficulty they present and immediately change your focus to look for what you can do to overcome them, prevail and turn them into opportunities. All challenges you encounter are possibilities and when managed properly, they will eventually become opportunities. Always look for what these challenges may have highlighted to you and focus your energies on the positive. This will allow you to very quickly discover the depths of your resolve and ability. You have unlimited potential and ability; believe it and you will most certainly begin to see it.

Whatever you think about and talk about, you bring about.

Allowing yourself to be overwhelmed by challenges or indulging in a pity party is not serving you, or is it? Are you benefiting from people feeling sorry for you or are you just using any obstacle or challenge as a convenient excuse, for not doing better or trying harder?

Action Idea: Look at the words you are using when describing any challenges or obstacles, you encounter. Are they focused on the positive progress you are making or are you harping on describing the gory details of how difficult things are? Until you change your focus away from the constant negative talk, about how difficult things are, and focus your energy on describing your amazing comeback, you will remain trapped in a spiral of tragedy and challenge.

Break your addiction to tragedy and turmoil

We seem to get so much attention when we are describing our challenges and difficulties. People line up to hear about hurts and failures and to stroke our hair and wipe our cheeks. They most certainly do not act the same way when you talk about your successes and victories. Until you break your addiction with tragedy and turmoil and you continue to get positive strokes from everyone around you every time you engage in a pity party, you will remain trapped in a life of average.

Action Idea: Make the choice today to finally start to focus your energy on the positive and celebrate your successes. If the people around you are not supporting your successes, but they are really supportive every time you encounter difficulties, then look to find people that are on a similar success journey to your own, to surround yourself with. They will be eager to support your victories and will inspire you with their own successes and victories.

You are the product of all the choices you make

The results you get to enjoy or not to enjoy in your life are all rooted in one single factor, namely the choices you make or fail to make each day. It may be difficult for you to accept that your current circumstances are the direct result of all the choices you’ve made, both good and bad; that the state of your health, business success or lack thereof, the type and quality of all your relationships and your bank balance, are all a result of your accumulated choices.

When you can see that all these choices that you have made until now, have added up to create all the challenges or successes, you are experiencing in your life right now. It becomes obvious that, by making better choices in the future, you will be able to create better outcomes. Use this awareness to help you to begin to positively change things. You are the product of all the choices you make, so from this moment , begin making different or better choices and you will see remarkable more positive results start to manifest in your life.

All progress requires change, though not all change results in progress.

The challenge you face, when mitigating or managing any challenge, is to decide on what the right choices are. As long as you keep doing things the way you have always done them, you will most certainly keep getting the same results. So in order to see different results, you must commit to do things differently and introduce a few positive changes into your life.

Will all the changes you make to the way you do things; bring about the results you desire, every time? Of course not! The secret, to get the best results from the changes you make to the way you do things, is to constantly review your progress and if any changes you’ve made are not delivering the desired results, then make a new or better choice. Keep improving, making positive changes until you see the progress you desire.

Action Idea: Every time you are faced with any choices from this moment on, learn and follow the steps listed below. By using this systematic approach, you will be better equipped to ensure that the choices and changes you make, in future, will deliver better results.

• Do not just accept that the path of least resistance is the right choice. Explore all avenues; the path of most resistance could be the best option, but your addiction with a quick fix solution, limits your options and keeps you making the wrong choices.
• Know your strengths and weaknesses; examine all the choices or options available to you. Always choose the option that is aligned with your strengths, you should never rely on your ability to improve your weaknesses as a solution to any challenge.
• If you are unable to align any of the available choices with your strengths, than identify someone else that has the necessary strengths and solicit their help and support to help and guide you.
• Build measurement criterion into the choice you make and measure your progress as often as possible, to assess whether the choice you have made is indeed delivering the outcome you require.

Support your choices by:                                                  

• Increasing the amount of time you invest into your personal growth.
• Scheduling time each day to invest in your personal growth and development.
• Commit to continually keep improving your skills every day.
• Make a real commitment to wake up every day a little wiser and more skilled than you were the previous day.
• Tackle difficult or challenging tasks with gusto..

Achieving the outcomes you want in your life is always about making the right choices and having the discipline, to sometimes do things that are difficult or unpleasant. When you learn to focus on the outcome you desire and all the benefits this outcome will bring, you don’t seem to notice the short-term discomfort that you may encounter along the way and you have the willpower to do the things that seem tough.

If you are unhappy with the outcomes you’ve been experiencing in your life up until now, then some or all of the choices you have been making, are not aligned with what you want. You need to start making different or better choices, which will start to deliver better outcomes or which will deliver on your expectations.

The definition of insanity is “repeating the same behaviour day after day and expecting different results”. Commit to make some meaningful choices today and stop expecting the path of least resistance to deliver on your dreams. If the path of least resistance has kept you trapped in mediocrity, until now, have the courage to change and to try something new, give the path of most resistance a try, this time.

Until you decide to make a few different and possibly even some difficult choices and you commit to begin doing things that may at first feel uncomfortable or difficult, you will remain trapped in an unfulfilling and empty life. When you make the choice to do things differently and to do things that at first may appear difficult, you are effectively using your willpower to begin forming new success habits that will deliver on your dreams.

After applying your willpower to carry out these daily tasks for around 90 days, these very tasks that felt uncomfortable and were unpleasant, will now become your new habit set and will simply be how you do things. Research has shown that any repeated behaviour will become an entrenched habit after about 90 days. If you want to change the results you are enjoying, then you must commit to use your willpower to create a new set of success habits that will support the success you desire.

Author: Andrew Horton Motivational Speakers

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

Is There Really Such A Thing as a Bad Day?

We give events a positive or negative charge, based on how we choose to view them. When I am having the worst day of my life, someone else is having the best day ever. Am I really experiencing the worst day possible or am I just looking at my world and my reality and allowing myself to see things negatively? Now ask yourself that question again “Is it possible to ever have a BAD day”?

Although everything that happens in our world is in effect only an event, how we choose to perceive and respond to these events is always a choice. The choices you make from this moment forward are creating your future, one good or bad choice at a time. Are you going to allow yourself to continue to make negative choices, where you see everything as being “IN” your way or are you going to begin to make a few better choices, where you create a vision of your future and you begin to see everything as being “ON” your way to the success you desire.

If you continue to see everything as being “IN” your way, you create a negative environment for yourself, where you spend your life looking for ways to get through your day, week and life. When you make the better choice, you have a vision and you see everything as something that contributes to your future success, everything is “ON” your way, you open up numerous possibilities for yourself and you are constantly searching for ways to get as much as possible “FROM” every event that occurs in your life.

When you are on the path to creating the success you desire, you will encounter a number of events or challenges, which will retard or delay your progress. These events, or challenges that will cross your path, may slow you down, they may delay you, but when viewed differently they are merely events, which you can choose to either see as challenges or as opportunities to learn and grow. The way how you view any event that comes your way is always a choice.

In many cases these changes or challenges highlight opportunities that may have remained hidden from you, had they not crossed your path. If you lived on a planet where everything was rosy and went according to expectations all the time, there would be very little opportunity for learning and growth. You would become complacent and trapped in delusion, never stretching your mind or exploring the limits of your potential.

 

Commit to make this small shift in the way you think. Where you previously had an unrealistic expectation, where you expected things to always run according to plan and that you would never encounter any challenges. Create a far more realistic perspective from this moment on and accept that challenge and change are an integral and very necessary part of the journey to success. In addition view these challenges and changes as the potential catalyst, which will unlock opportunities that may have remained hidden from you had you not encountered the challenge or change.

When you make this small shift, where you accept that life is a blend of both positive and negative experiences, you actually accelerate your achievement and you get to remove unnecessary anguish from your life. It is such a liberating and empowering experience to accept that life is filled with both positive and negative events and that any challenge you may face, is not unique to you, it is all just part of your success journey. We need to experience the negative side of life to help us grow and expand. This also acts as a barometer against which you get to measure your positive performance.

Stress is a mental illusion that you create in your mind, an interpretation or perception of circumstances in your environment. To constantly improve and grow, you need stress and challenge, as these awaken your greater potential, forcing you to raise your game and making you rise to the level of performance, you desire and deserve. Stress and challenge are merely catalysts, albeit sometimes unwelcome, which awakens the latent excellence that is dormant within all of you.

Author: Andrew Horton Motivational Speakers

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

 

Positive change only Brings Good

An optimistic attitude is the first tool you need in your arsenal, when tackling any change or challenge in your life. Optimism or lack thereof is a choice and only you can decide how you want to embrace these very necessary choices about the attitude you choose to project to everyone around you. A positive attitude is always the wisest choice when tackling or anticipating any change.

Action Idea: Use the questions below to help you to view any challenge or change from a far more positive standpoint.  These questions will help you to shift your mind set and allow you to create a far more positive attitude, around the changes or challenges; you are beginning to experience in your life.

Ask yourself these “What If” questions below:

· What if I believe these changes are only going to make my life better?

· What if these changes are the universe just preparing me for my amazing future?

· What if the challenges I am facing right now are the best wake-up call I have ever had?

By viewing all the changes you are now experiencing or will experience in the future, in a far more positive fashion, you make accepting and embracing them, far easier to manage. All positive changes or new habits that you choose to introduce into your life will also become more effective and deliver far better results, when you operate with a genuine positive attitude. Once you have established your new success habit set and you consistently project a positive attitude, you will have created a strong foundation for dealing with change from an empowered position. This will allow you to rewire your brain to automatically think more optimistically and instead of looking for all the difficulties, you will focus your energy on discovering opportunities.

Make the shift in the way you view any challenge or change, try to keep your mind focused only on the positive outcome you know awaits you. This positive mind-set will allow you to change your perspective, highlighting concepts and opportunities, which may have remained hidden from you, had you allowed any challenge or change to overwhelm you.

Positive change only Brings Good

You have the choice to either allow change to control you and dictate the direction of your life, which will invite loads of negative, uninvited challenge into your life or you can choose a positive attitude in which you know that all change and challenge is fleeting and part of the success journey. Choosing to allow change or challenge to overwhelm you, will create an untenable situation, which is difficult to manage and will cause you a huge amount of unnecessary stress. The better alternative would be to expect change and challenge, plan for it and thus invite change into your life that is expected and manageable.

Action Idea: Have the foresight and courage to invest the time to slow down, stop and look at your world. What has changed or is changing? Change has become as certain today, as both death and taxes were in the previous century, so closing your eyes and pretending that change is not happening, is as effective as standing in the path of an approaching tornado and trying to blow it away with your breath.

The more accurately you are able to predict any current or future changes, the more equipped you will be to create a vision for the future, which you can turn into an avalanche of super achievement. Visionaries like Mark Zuckerberg, Richard Branson, and Donald Trump are leaders in their perspective industries because they are able to predict trends and changes. Accurately predicting and exploiting any future trends or changes will completely revolutionise the way your future will turn out.

From this moment forward choose to open your eyes and begin to look at your world differently, know things are changing all the time. Now making discovering and utilising all the changes part of your new success habit set.

Daily Success Habits:

· Allocate time each week to look at your environment, actively looking for change.

· Explore all change and look for opportunities.

· Choose to be more disciplined.

· Take persistent action daily

· Allocate your available time more effectively

· Measure your progress as often as possible

Positive changes are obviously far more desirable than negative changes. Research shows that it is far easier to adjust to positive change than to negative change,. If you choose not to plan for and to introduce positive change into your life, negative change will most certainly turn up, due to neglect. The disciplines that are required to bring about positive change are very easy to do, but unfortunately they are also very easy not to do.

Choosing not to carry out the success habits as described above, which will promote your long term sustainable success and simply allowing circumstances to dictate how your future will turn out, is very naïve. After reading this article, you now have the privilege of awareness.  You now know that you possess the power to create the future you desire by design.

·   What are you waiting for?

·  What will it take to start developing this process in your life and for you to begin making positive change happen for you?

Designing your future by design, anticipating and planning for challenge and change, does not mean that you will not encounter any challenges along the way. Nothing meaningful has ever been achieved without encountering and overcoming change or challenge. On your path to the future of your dreams, plan for change and challenge, expect change and challenges and accept that you will have to manage change and overcome all challenges that may come your way.

The hardest, most difficult changes or challenges will eventually bring a gift to your life. Sometimes the gift will be obvious and sometimes it will take a while for you to “appreciate how the change or challenge has benefitted you”.  Try to remind yourself of this guiding truth, when you try to deal with the change or challenges that you may be facing in your life right now or that may cross your path in the future.

Author: Andrew Horton Motivational Speakers

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

Discover What Makes You Unique and you will Unlock the Super Achiever in You

I know that you have made the choice to do things differently this year. You are no longer going to accept unsatisfying results, where you feel like you are putting in the long hours, but nothing ever seems to change. It is now time to unleash your magnificence and to awaken that achiever who stares back at you from the mirror each day, light the fire of inspiration and desire under your feet and pull the trigger on your potential. You are an important part of this amazing world and a contributive being, with so much to offer and no matter where you are right now; you can achieve anything if you unlock your inner most belief.

Your level of self-belief and the conversations you have with yourself has a tremendous impact on the outcomes you will enjoy in your life. You are the creator of your future, you write the script of your life with every thought you think, word you speak and action you take or fail to take. The more self-belief, self-worth and love you have for yourself, the more prosperity and success you will achieve. You can never truly believe in your-self or have a complete understanding of your real value, unless you conduct a real in-depth audit of your strengths, weaknesses, skills, abilities, opportunities and threats.  

Before you begin crucial process of formulating a plan for creating the future that is aligned with your concept of success and your vision for the future, you must first have the courage and foresight to conduct an audit of your current assets and liabilities.

Action Idea: Select five to ten people that you trust and that are secure enough to offer you honest feedback and meaningful input. Ask them to offer you honest answers to the following questions

·         What distinct advantages or strengths do you think I have?

·         What weaknesses do you see me exhibit?

·         Where do you think I have unique leverage or gearing?

·         What skills do you think I am lacking?

·         What knowledge do you think I need to acquire?

·         What weaknesses do you believe I have and how can I reduce their effect on my future outcomes?

·         Who can I get to help me in the areas where I have weaknesses?  

·         What potential hazards do you think lie ahead?

·         What opportunities can you see that I am missing?

Collate all the answers you receive and try to see the pattern that will emerge from these interviews. Use this information and feedback as a starting point for uncovering your strengths, weaknesses and potential threats and opportunities. Armed with this information now answer the above questions yourself. As you go through this process you will gradually develop a crystal picture of your magnificence and understand challenges you may be facing . Work on improving your strengths, get people to assist you with your weaknesses, prepare for any opportunities and manage any threats you may be facing. You can never start on any journey toward success, unless you know what you have available to you right now and what skills, abilities or knowledge you wil need to acquire along the way.

This is always the starting point when you want to formulate a plan to perform a turnaround on your life. Before you can take the first step toward making positive changes, you must first assess where you stand. Explore all your current assets and liabilities. Explore any strengths and unforeseen or underdeveloped opportunities.  Take a real hard look at any weaknesses and identify where the most damaging threats are coming from. This assessment is very effective and necessary to perform a successful turnaround on your life and works as an effective starting point to accelerate your life toward becoming a super achiever.

After conducting this self-audit you will have positioned yourself to play to your strengths and avoid your weaknesses. History has shown that we are far more likely to succeed, when we use our innate strengths and unique talents to the maximum. The secret to apply this simple, yet very effective strategy is to do enough due diligence on your skill sets, to discover your significant areas of advantage. The time invested into discovering and improving your unique strengths and talents will be well worth the effort and will offer significant returns over time.

Knowing your weaknesses allows you to build a plan that will allow you to work around those limiting traits. You can do this either by improving, avoiding or getting people with those strengths to assist you in those specific areas. This knowledge will help you thrive and avoid very expensive and painful setbacks.

There are many opportunities surrounding us all the time. Unless you are constantly looking for them they may go unnoticed. Be vigilant and always be on the lookout for the advantages or opportunities that may be staring you in the face.

Invest time into discovering where the landmines or threats are lying hidden, before you enter the battlefield of becoming a super achiever. It is seldom the lack of opportunities that will slow or stop your progress toward becoming a super achiever. It is rather the constant barrage of unplanned and unforeseen challenges that may cross your path. Do not allow your lack of threat assessment to catch you off guard. Challenges are inevitable, so expect them, plan for them and never allow them to overwhelm you.

Stay committed to your personal growth and constantly look for ways to improve and expand. Have the courage to take daily inspired action and you will eventually break out of the rut and take your life to the next level of super achievement.

Author: Andrew Horton Motivational Speakers

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

Do you Know what you Really Want or are you Chasing an Illusion?

Are you are finishing another year where you feel like you have worked really hard, put in long hours, but nothing has changed at all? You feel frustrated and disillusioned, wondering what it will take for you to finally start to see results in your life. The goals you dreamt about achieving this year are no closer, today than they were 11 months ago. Is it time to finally resign yourself to your lot in life and to accept that you are trapped in mediocrity and no matter how hard you try, you will just remain stuck on the hamster wheel of discontentment?

Nothing could be further from the truth, the reason that you go from one year to the next, achieving very little, trapped in a life that you feel you cannot change, is that you are approaching each year unequipped to make any real progress at all. People spend six months planning a wedding, down to the finest detail, yet when it comes time to plan for their future, they are unable to find any time at all.

If you finally want things to change next year, then you need to change the way you do things. Instead of charging into next year blindly, with no real plan or strategy and only a vague picture of what you want to achieve, make a different choice this time around and set at a minimum of 40 hours aside, over the next few weeks to work on creating your plan. This is time that you will schedule into your dairy today, to work on your plan. Nothing short of a third world war or major catastrophe can get in the way of your commitment to use this time exclusively for creating a plan for your life.   

The place to start when you are creating the plan for your life is to first look at your definition of success. Are you sure that the dream you are chasing is really what you want or is it just an illusion that society or someone else has planted in your head? Until you discover what you really want, you are chasing after a dream that has no real meaning to you and discovering why you are travelling in that direction will be impossible.

Action Idea: One idea that has proven very successful to unlock this concept, which may be hidden really deep inside you, is to create an I Want list. Sit in front of someone and let them ask you the question “What do you really want?” Let them keep asking you this question for about five to ten minutes. Record your answers on an audio recording device. As you examine your list you will see that, at first your answers are routine and not very deep at all, as the exercise continues, you will find that your true answers begin to emerge and your real desires are expressed. This is a really valuable exercise and will help you to answer this crucial question, “What does Success Mean To You?”  

The next step is to assess your abilities, attributes, strengths, weaknesses, interests and traits. This audit is essential if you want to ride on the front of the wave of all the possibilities that you have available to you. Until you conduct this self-audit, where you carefully assess all the areas of your life, identifying areas that are able to support your ambition to become more, you identify any areas that may require improvement and you discover the areas where you have weaknesses, you are flying blind and will just continue spinning your wheels.

Action Idea: A great way to start this benchmarking exercise is to arrange to spend a weekend away with family members or key associates and dust off the cobwebs of your childhood memories. Go back to your childhood and remember what you really enjoyed and wanted most as a child.

Now explore your interests and hobbies, what do you really enjoy doing after work or when you have any free time? What are these interests and hobbies telling you about what you love to do, can you incorporate more of what you love to do into your career?

Now explore your strengths, weaknesses, abilities and attributes. Ask people around you for feedback on how they perceive your strengths, weaknesses, abilities and attributes. Armed with this information, introspect and see where your real strengths and weaknesses lie. This information will allow you to begin playing to your strengths and getting people to support you with your weaknesses.   

Now that you have a starting point, where you know what success means to you, you have a better understanding about what you really want and you understand your strengths and weaknesses. This information is all you need, to begin the process of building your plan, which will transform your life and allow you to finally begin realising all your goals.

Author: Andrew Horton Time Management Training

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

                                                                                                                                 

Who Deserves the most effort and Attention in your Life?

When you strive to give this person as much attention as possible, you dedicate a portion of your time every day, exclusively to them and you worker harder on them than on anyone or anything else, everything in your life will improve. This person I am referring to is you. When you make the decision to make a lifetime invest into your own on-going self-development, where you work harder on yourself than on anything else, you transform and become a better contributor in all areas of your life.

You become a better employee, entrepreneur, spouse, friend, business partner, contributor to society, etc. The list just goes on and on. What are you waiting for; commit to give the gift of your self-development to the world and you will see everything in your world positively change. As you travel the satisfying, fulfilling path of your on-going self-development, continual growth and never ending improvement, where you strive to wake up every day, just a little better than you were the day before, you are setting a foundation for unlocking unlimited possibilities and opportunities.

Repeat this behaviour for 365 days, can you imagine how you will improve over the next year, or better still, imagine if you stayed committed to this process for the rest of your life. What possibilities would open up to you, if you stayed committed to a lifetime of on-going and never ending improvement. The greatest benefit that would flow to you would not be in what you would get, but rather in what you will become. As you become more, you will inevitably attract more. Resources and people that were previously out of reach will actually begin to seek you out, opportunities that were either hidden from you or too massive to tackle before will become possible and within your reach.

Everything you will get in the future or have got, up to now, is directly proportional to whom you are. Your level of self-development is the barometer that determines your homeostasis or maximum level of achievement. The reason most lottery winners, lose or squander their large windfalls within 18 months after winning huge sums of money, is simply because they are thrust out of harmony with their own level of self-development. They are thrust into a place where they have resources that exceed their ability to manage them and so within a very short space of time they bring themselves back in line with whom they are. It is very difficult to keep anything that is not obtained through personal development and growth.

Your income will very seldom, exceed your personal development. Even if your income increases beyond your level of personal development, due to a lucky break, it will very quickly return to a point of balance, unless you become the person that deserves that level of income. Everything in your life will always return to balance over time, if you want to keep growing any part of your life, you must continually ensure that your level of personal development is growing in equal proportion.

If you want to keep attracting more into your life, you must stay committed to becoming more. Ensure that you have a plan for your on-going personal development, include time in your schedule every day to devote to your personal development, measure you performance daily and over time develop a new success habit set that includes daily personal development. This commitment and devotion will see your life magically transform into one of meaning and satisfaction.

Author: Andrew Horton Time Management Training

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

Happiness is not an Outside Job

Have you invested time into creating a clear vision for the future? Until you do this your life will continue to fly past in a blur of dissatisfaction, where you continue to see everything in your life, as being in your way. You will live in a place where you are constantly looking for ways to get through your day, week or month. When you have a clear vision or mission, everything you look at changes, you no longer see everything as being in your way; you see the same events as crucial milestones on your way to living the life of your dreams. You now look at every experience as an opportunity to learn and grow and you see everything as an integral part of your success journey. The same event that you previously would have seen as being in your way now evolves into a developmental milestone on your way to the life of your dreams.

This shift helps you to be happy and content with what you have, while you grow into the type of person you need to be, to attract the success you desire. Happiness is not an accident, or something you hope will show up if certain external factors are present, nor is it something you wish for, it is something you are. Expect, accept and design happiness and joy into every facet of your life. When you have a desire to be happy and you choose to be content and satisfied with who you are, what you have and where you are and you know that you are on a journey that will eventually deliver the success you desire; it is easy to feel joy and happiness.

Stop believing that you will become happy when you achieve an outcome or reach a destination on your success journey. Destinations and goals that you achieve offer only limited satisfaction in the moment. Most, if not all destinations or goals realised, very quickly turn into an ant-climax. So if you are expecting any destination to bring you happiness, you are setting yourself up for a life of disappointment. I know this sounds like a cliché, you have heard a million times, but real happiness and joy comes from enjoying the journey. As soon as you have a clear vision and you make the shift, where you see everything as being on your way and you view every event, both negative and positive, which crosses your path, as an opportunity to gain or learn something. You have equipped yourself to live a life of meaning and contentment.

Stop postponing your happiness for the future and accept that happiness can never depend on anything outside of yourself. Happiness, joy and contentment is an internal job, it is something you are right now. It is impossible to be 100 % ecstatic and happy every waking moment of every day, but if you learn the art of looking at events as opportunities for growth and learning, rather than obstacles that limit and restrict you, causing you overwhelm. You equip yourself with a happiness toolkit, which will allow you to see the same event that would have caused you huge distress before, in a completely different light. As you change the way you see everything in your life, the things you look at will change.

Accept that you are the source of your happiness and that all your contentment and happiness comes from within. Stay focused on your vision and see each event that comes your way, for what it is, merely an opportunity to learn and grow, never allowing anything to overwhelm you and you have learnt a new skill for creating contentment and joy in your life.

Author: Andrew Horton Motivational Speaker

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za