Category Archives: Goals

Live Every Single Today

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“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” ~ Apostle Paul, 2 Timothy 4:6-8

It’s important to live every single day without regret, with clear goals and with purpose

Bronnie Ware, an Australian palliative carer, wrote a book called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. In it, she describes the five most common wishes she heard from her soon-to-depart clients.

  • I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. Stringently adhering to cultural norms at the expense of your own passions will result in disappointment and bitterness.
  • I wish I hadn’t worked so hard. Time is non-refundable so if you spend it working, then you can’t spend it doing more meaningful things.
  • I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings. It is only by being open and honest about your thoughts and feelings can you form genuine bonds with other people.
  • I wish I’d stayed in touch with my friends. It is dispiriting to be disconnected from those who truly understand you and accept you as you are.
  • I wish I had let myself be happier. The expectations and opinions of others should not prevent you from being happy with who you are. Moreover, happiness can be found in the journey, not just the destination, which you often never reach.

Another regret heard most often is:

I wish I’d taken better care of my health.  Most people do not think about their health until they experience a health challenge.  And at that point, we  make promises to ourselves that if we get better we’ll do a better with our health and well-being. But, I t shouldn’t take a major health challenge to get us to prioritize and focus on our health, fitness and diet. Your body must be your major priority and should be cared for. Nourish it with healthy food, exercise it daily and get a sufficient amount of sleep. Small healthy habits every day will compound and make a big difference over the long-term.

Never give up on yourself

Life and how you live it everyday is a choice. It is your life. Choose consciously, choose wisely and choose honestly. Choose happiness and focus on what is good and positive. Always be grateful.

References:

  1. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/life-s-biggest-decisions/202106/the-6-most-common-regrets-people-experience
  2. https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2012/10/18/the-25-biggest-regrets-in-life-what-are-yours/?sh=63f5f3f6488

10 Rules of Success According to Oprah

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Oprah Winfrey is known as one of the most successful individuals globally and her estimated net worth is almost $3 billion! To her degree of success and power, it took a lot of perseverance and wisdom.

Here are the ten rules of success according to Oprah Winfrey.

  1. Rather than overwhelming yourself with the big picture, ask yourself what the next right move is. It’s easy to feel intimidated by everything on your plate, so instead of facing such an enormous proposition, take things one step at a time. Make the best next move you can, then make the next move, and then the next one, each time going as carefully and as thoughtfully as you can. Success isn’t one giant leap — it’s a series of baby steps. And, if you make one misstep, understand that your life and your career won’t be defined by that one mistake. You have more steps to take, and you’ll arrive at success eventually.
  2. When you see an opportunity, take it. Success has been a result of grace and blessings, but there’s also been opportunity. The key to being successful is to recognize when opportunity is in front of you and seize it.  “Luck is preparation meeting the moment of opportunity,”
  3. Forgive yourself for your past mistakes. You’re not the person you were five, ten, twenty, or more years ago. A lot of wisdom just comes with age, so don’t beat yourself up for youthful transgressions. You didn’t know any better — but you know better now! Look at those past mistakes as teachable opportunities, learn as much as you can from them, and then move forward.
  4. Never stop improving yourself. This means continually working on your personality, your skill set, and your network so that you are in the best possible position to make a difference. You always need to be improving if you want to get ahead. If people are saying that about you, take it as a compliment. You’re doing a lot, and others are noticing.
  5. Go as hard as you can. Recognize and take responsibility that you have control only over your own performance. You can’t control what others are doing. All you can do is the best you know how, all the time. It’s like a race: you just run hard until you read the finish line, and all you can do is make yourself run more quickly, not make your competition run more slowly. That’s what brings you success: building yourself up, not looking behind you to see where your competition is.
  6. Don’t just dream — believe. It’s OK to have big dreams for yourself; we all do. But if you’re going to be successful, you’ve got to do more than dream. You have to believe that the life you aspire to lead will one day be yours. Winfrey always knew that she would live a big, fulfilling life; she had that strong belief in what her future held. Do the same, and hold firmly to that belief, even in the most difficult of times, and you’re likely to get exactly where you want to be.
  7. Remember that people are more alike than they are different. We’re all seeking the same thing, We all want to reach our fullest potential. Sure, we all go about that in different ways, because we all have different skills and different passions, but at the end of the day, we all just want to be true to ourselves and be, the “truest expression” of ourselves.
  8. Find your purpose in life. If you’re going to be successful, you need to figure out why you’re here on Earth. Most entrepreneurs already feel like they know their purpose, but if you don’t, stop! Put everything on pause, take some time for genuine soul searching and self-reflection, and find your purpose. Find your why!
  9. Keep yourself grounded and centered. It’s easy to get lost in your work, and it’s easy to let your ego inflate, but if you keep your focus, stay compassionate, and always seek to understand and connect with others, you’ll improve your chances of success substantially.
  10. Try to remember that everything will be OK. If you’re aiming for big time success, you’ve got to be patient and take the long view. Yes, it’s natural to be a little scared, but never lose faith that everything will work out just fine.

Source:  https://moneyinc.com/10-rules-success-according-oprah-winfrey/

Building Wealth ‘One Brick at a Time’

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“Rome wasn’t built in a day, but they were laying bricks every hour.” – James Clear

Laying bricks systematically to build a city works similarly well for building wealth. Building wealth is a slow systematic process of investing over the long term and compounding returns over time for most savers and investors. Successfully building wealth is not an overnight success.

“Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems [habits] are best for making progress.” ~ James Clear

Be a Dreamer and Pursue Your Dreams

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If you’re not pursuing and building your dreams, you’ll spend your entire life working to pursue and build someone else’s.

The greatest accomplishments and historic achievements started as dreams and visions that motivated the dreamer or visionary to shape their thoughts, beliefs and actions into a powerful reality.

From the planes we fly, the cars we drive and the sporting events we stream, passionate dreamers and visionaries like Thomas A. Edison and Elon Musk have developed all the things we enjoy and take for granted today.

“All successful people, men and women, are big dreamers. They imagine what their future could be, ideal in every respect, and then they work every day toward their distant vision, that goal or purpose.”– Brian Tracy

Thought of the Day

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“You are never too old to set another goal, or to dream a new dream.” ~ C.S. Lewis

The legendary Alexander the Great, king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia, lived only to the young age of 32, but he built a great empire. During his 13 year reign, he conquered the eastern Mediterranean, Egypt, the Middle East, and parts of Asia in a remarkably short period of time.

You don’t need to match Alexander the Great’s accomplishments, but think intently about what you want out of life. And, once you do, focus on your burning desire in life and chase it with all your energy.

We never know when our journey will come to an end.

Hope is a Way of Thinking…a Super Power

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Hope is a feeling of expectation, a desire or wish for a certain thing to happen.

According to psychologist and renowned hope researcher Charles R. Snyder et al. (1991) hope is a positive cognitive state based on a sense of successful goal-directed determination and planning to meet these goals.

“Hope is not an emotion; it’s a way of thinking or a cognitive process.” Brené Brown

In other words, hope is like a snap-shot of a person’s current goal-directed thinking, highlighting the motivated pursuit of goals and the expectation that those goals can be achieved.

Hope helps us remain committed to our goals and motivated to take action towards achieving. Hope gives people a reason to continue fighting and believing that their current circumstances will improve, despite the unpredictable nature of human existence.

As psychologist and renowned hope researcher Charles Snyder et al. (2002, p. 269) stated so eloquently:

A rainbow is a prism that sends shards of multicolored light in various directions. It lifts our spirits and makes us think of what is possible. Hope is the same – a personal rainbow of the mind.

While some approaches conceptualize hope in the realm of being, that is acknowledging hope during illness and within palliative care; Snyder et al (1991) emphasized the relevance of hope in the context of doing – that is the capacity to achieve goals.

According to Snyder’s Hope Theory (Snyder, Irving, & Anderson, 1991), hopefulness is a life-sustaining human strength comprised of three distinct but related components:

  1. Goals Thinking – the clear conceptualization of valuable goals.
  2. Pathways Thinking – the capacity to develop specific strategies to reach those goals.
  3. Agency Thinking – the ability to initiate and sustain the motivation for using those strategies.

Hope does not necessarily fade in the face of adversity; in fact hope often endures despite poverty, war and famine. While no one is exempt from experiencing challenging life events, hope fosters an orientation to life that allows a grounded and optimistic outlook even in the most challenging of circumstances.

Practicing optimism has much in common with hope. Both are concerned with a positive future orientation and both assume that good things will generally occur in one’s life.

The difference is that optimism is a positive attitude about a future event that is probable and likely to occur: the optimist expects that life will work out well and as expected (Scheier & Carver, 1993).

On the other hand, being hopeful is regarded as more realistic than optimistism.

The hopeful individual recognizes that life may not always work out as planned, yet maintains positive expectancy directed toward possible outcomes that hold personal significance (Miceli & Castelfranchi, 2002)

Hope is more than just a state of mind; it is an action-oriented strength.

References:

  1. https://positivepsychology.com/hope-therapy/

C.R. Snyder was a fellow of the APA in the divisions of teaching, social and personality, clinical, and health. He worked as the director of the Clinical Psychology Program at the University of Kansas and was  the editor of the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology. Snyder passed away in 2006.

The biblical definition of hope is “confident expectation.” Hope means “a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen” and it is a cognitive processes or way of thinking.

“Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” ~ 1 Thessalonians 5:16–18 (NIV)

Thoughts of the Day

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Gratitude is a Super Power!

Gratitude is a choice, not just a feeling. You must choose to live a life in gratitude and therefore gratitude is an attitude and virtue. Gratitude is a virtue you choose to live your life by.

“Gratitude is not only the greatest of all virtues but the parent of all the others.” Cicero (106-43bc), Roman Philosopher

Angeles Arrien wrote: “The practice of offering gratitude bestows many benefits. Anger, arrogance, and jealousy melt in its embrace. Fear and defensiveness dissolve. Gratitude diminishes barriers to love and evokes happiness, keeping alive what has meaning for us.”

Gratitude is recognizing the fact that everything good that happens in your life is a gift. Not something we’re entitled to, or should expect, but actually a very sweet gift.

“The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.” – Oprah Winfrey

“Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance.” ~Eckart Toll

“Success is the sum of small efforts repeated day in and day out.”– Robert Collier

“Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.” -William Jennings Bryan

“Minimalism isn’t about removing the things you love. It’s about removing the things that distract you from the things you love.” ~Joshua Becker Over

“In every season of our life, we’re tempted to focus on our present burdens and miss the opportunities and blessings.

We love it when we receive the blessing, the promotion, the new house, the baby, but with the blessing comes new burdens, responsibilities, payments, cares.

Rather than enjoy where we are on the way to where we’re going, we get so caught up in the challenges that we miss the beauty of this moment.

You could be in one of the best seasons of your life, but you don’t realize it because you’re focused on the struggles, on what you don’t like, on what’s taking so long.

At some point you have to put your foot down and say, “This is the day the Lord has made”, and I will not allow my burdens to steal my joy, my peace and my enjoyment of my blessings.

Change your perspective and attitude. Shift your focus from life’s burdens to the blessings and opportunities, from what’s wrong to what’s right, from what you don’t have to what you have.

Make the most of abundant joy and peace every day.

“Being grateful all the time isn’t easy. But it’s when you least feel thankful that you are most in need of what gratitude can give you: perspective. Gratitude can transform any situation. It alters your vibration, moving you from negative energy to positive. It’s the quickest, easiest most powerful way to effect change in your life — this I know for sure.” ~ Oprah Winfrey

References:

  1. https://www.joelosteen.com/en-US/inspiration/todays-word/2021/03/21/20/06/Todays%20Blessings

Major Definite Purpose

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“A man without a definite major purpose is as helpless as a ship without a compass.” – Napoleon Hill

Napoleon Hill emphasized in his book “Think and Grow Rich” that the first step of learning how to “Think and Grow Rich” is figuring out what you desire more than anything else – and then coming up with a plan to act on it.

Hill puts a great importance on individuals deciding on a definite major purpose. Yet, it’s not unheard of for people to get stuck on this first step.

In fact, the #1 question that most ask is: “How do I determine what my definite major purpose is? I just don’t know what it is I want to do!”

It is said widely that ninety-five percent of the people of the world drift through life aimlessly without definite purposes for their lives.

Psychological reason for having a definite purpose in life implies that one’s actions are determined by the thoughts of one’s mind. Therefore, if you deliberately hold your definite purpose in your mind with the expectation of it realization, this will permeate your subconscious mind to the point where it will automatically influence the actions needed to achieve your definite purpose.

Once you determine your definite purpose, make sure that it is well-defined. You must write it down and place it where you can see it as soon as you open your eyes in the morning and the last thing that you see before you close your eyes at night.

What is your Life’s Mission? What is the number one purpose in your life? Why are you here? What are the most important accomplishments you desire? And what are you willing to give in return for them? 

What one great thing would you dare to dream if you knew you could not fail, asks Brian Tracy?

“If you could be absolutely guaranteed of successfully achieving any goal, large or small, short term or long term, what one goal would it be?  Whatever you answer to this question, if you can write it down, you can probably achieve it.  From then on, the only question you should ask is, ‘How?’  The only real limit is how badly you want it and how long you are willing to work toward it.” Brian Tracy

Once you know your bigger purpose, it’s easier to figure out your next actions.  And, when you know your bigger purpose, it can help you funnel your time, talent, energy, and effort into something that really matters to you.

Definite Purpose:

If you cannot see the end of the journey, you cannot plot the course to that destination.

Thus, it’s essential to determine “The one goal that is most important to you at the moment. It is usually the one goal that will help you to achieve more of your other goals than anything else you can accomplish,” Tracy writes. In his, “6 Attributes of Your Major Definite Purpose,” Tracy writes:

  1. Your major definite purpose must be something that you personally really want, excites you and makes you happy.
  2. Your major definite purpose must be clear and specific.  You must be able to define it in words and must be able to write it down.
  3. Your major definite purpose must be measurable and quantifiable.
  4. Your major definite purpose must be both believable and achievable.
  5. Your major definite purpose should have a reasonable probability of success.
  6. Your major definite purpose must be in harmony with your other goals and aligned with your values.

“Decide now what you desire from life and what you have to give in return.”

To achieve success, you have know exactly what you want and what you are willing to give-up in return….success and achievement are a two-way street.

References:

  1. https://sourcesofinsight.com/major-definite-purpose/
  2. https://www.mavericonsulting.com/news/2018/12/14/what-is-definiteness-of-purpose-and-why-is-it-so-importantnbsp
  3. https://thinkandgrowrichinstitute.com/definite-major-purpose/

Since 1937, over 120 million copies of Think & Grow Rich have been sold, and it’s the #1 book most people who have successfully built wealth credit with their success.

Thought of the Day

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It’s a lot harder to get somewhere in life if you don’t know where you want to go…no Definiteness of Purpose.

Take some time and think about what you really want in life. When you know, the wind will start blowing.

Thought of the Day

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“You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.” — Winston Churchill