Tag Archives: subconscious programs

Old Habits Die Hard

#old habits die hrd

Intense conditioning and programming of habits under way!
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“The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.”
― Samuel Johnson

Old Habits Die Hard!

Norm was fresh out of the army.  For six years, it had been the ‘spit and polish’ routine, and “Yes Sir, No Sir” had been the way of life.  Now, all that was finished, Norm was back home for a while.  It felt good, having the chance to break away from all the routines and settle into the easier going life on the farm for a change.  Well, that was the intention. Old habits die hard!

The first day back, and his father decided to bring in a load of firewood.  While Norm and the other boys polished off breakfast, Dad put the chainsaws on the truck, along with a few crow bars and axes.

Breakfast over, the boys trooped out.  Suddenly Norm called out, “Hang on a minute,” and darted back into the house.  About a minute later, he reappeared, with a silly grin on his face.

“I don’t have to polish my boots for you bunch.” He said.  “Let’s go!”

#Old habits die hard!

“Some rules are nothing but old habits that people are afraid to change.”
― Therese Anne Fowler, Souvenir

We all have conditioning drilled into us.  Conditioning is habit – we all have habits and have had for many, many years.  Our lives run by habit and that’s generally OK.  Takes a lot of pressure off remembering what to do, like breathe, walk and so on.  Subconscious programs are developed when we learn and develop habits.  We may not even realise they are running, while they take control of our lives.  Maybe we’d like to change them, but old habits die hard.

#old habits die hard

A habit to change?
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Not all conditioning or habits are good, and some may need to be changed as we outgrow them.  We do outgrow habits and their subconscious programs.

Habits and subconscious programs are like railroad tracks.  Hard to get off, once you get onto those rails.

#old habits die hard

A program in motion
Image from wikipedia.org

Programs can fail or go wrong, without us realising until it has happened.  That’s when trouble hits and we find the program no longer serves us.

#Old habits die hard

Can someone please explain this to me?
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Getting off tracks and out of habits and programs can be a challenge.  Old habits die hard!

#old habits die hard

A bit of a challenge changing tracks the hard way.
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However, done correctly, changing an unwanted habit or program can be easy!

#old habits die hard

Changing habits should be this easy!
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You just need to install a new program.  Not all old habits die hard, after all!

“Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.”
― Jim Ryun

My Darling wife bought a new computer today.  A beautiful object, a work of art.  However, it’s useless.  It has no programs installed.  YET.  The program is in the box, ready to download.  Then, the computer will be ready to do the most amazing things for her.  With the new program installed.  Doing what SHE wants it to do.

#old habits die hard

Isn’t it lovely?
Image from zdnet.com

This is also how to change a habit you no longer want, a habit that is running as a subconscious program in your life.  Insert a different program into your computer.  Change your program!

#old habits die hard

One new program/habit coming up!
Image from www.mln.com.au

Yes, it can be done.  There is a program specifically designed to enable you to change habits, simply, quickly and without getting yourself off track and into trouble.  Creating a controlled environment around you, supportive, encouraging, and one that celebrates your successes and supports you into new habits and conscious programming of your mind and your life.  Old habits die hard, but only when you don’t know how to change them properly!

Click here to find out more about changing habits, and learning new ones that can make life so much better for you, in any way you desire.  And kick that old, unwanted habit to the kerb!

“A nail is driven out by another nail; habit is overcome by habit.”
― Desiderius Erasmus

If you found this post to be empowering, and supports you into changing old programs and unwanted habits, please share it with your friends and associates.  Reblog it so that other people can gain these benefits too.  They will be grateful you did.

Til next time, fair winds and full sails,

Ray Jamieson

 “Warren Buffett chuckled and said to me “I hope it’s not my bad habits”. Good Habits once established are just as hard to break as bad habits, and bad habits are easier to abandon today than tomorrow. So what are you going to do about it?”
― Lucas Remmerswaal, 13 Habits.com the Tale of Tortoise Buffett and Trader Hare

#old habits die hard

What a great New Habit!
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What would an empowered man do?

#What would an empowered man do

Empowered Man
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“The only thing that stands between a person and what they want in life is the will to try it and the faith to believe it is possible.”
― Rich DeVos

What would an empowered man do?

It’s easy to preach.  It’s easy to lecture.  It’s harder to live what you preach and lecture about.  It’s especially hard when Spirit or fate or the Gods on high decide to confront you with a problem straight out of the box you were preaching from!

The question is, when something like this happens, what would an empowered man do?

Now, an empowered man here refers to empowered women, children, teens, civic leaders, politicians, and anyone else you can think of.  It’s all of us, and I’m lumping us together under the term ‘man’.

The guy (or girl) comes home, tired and well and truly over the day, it’s been a tough one.  Their partner is frustrated as their day was tough too, the kids are noisy, but they just want to sit with a beer or wine and relax, let the day go and when they feel like it, come join the family.  But the kids want to play, their partner wants a hand in the kitchen, stuff is happening all around and this is not a time when they can opt out for a while.

#What would an empowered man do

Home at last!
Image from www.huffingtonpost.com

What would an empowered man do?

The question really should come back to “what is important in this life?” and start from there.  Attend to the first priorities and work outwards from there, once they have been attended to.

First priority?  There’s their partner standing there, tired and very frustrated with their day also.  This person committed to spend their life with them, and share the joys and hassles of their family forever.  WOW!  Number one priority?

#What would an empowered man do?  He would kiss this lady, tell her he loved her and block the world out for a while.  There’s a book called “The ten second kiss” that I have referred to in my seminars and it suggests that night and morning, and leaving for work and coming home from work is a powerful time for it, that you should kiss your spouse or partner for at least ten seconds.  At least twice a day, at those important times.

Why?  Because when you kiss someone for ten seconds with your full intention and attention on your kissing, it speaks volumes to them about your love for them, and it does them a world of good too.  Things like easing tension, frustration and giving the feeling to them that they are loved and supported in every way.  Sort of an antidote to a tiring and frustrating day.

What about the dinner on the stove?  What about the kids?  What about all the other distractions?

Take the pot off the heat – it’s only for 10 seconds!  Get the kids to time you – this is a powerful way for them to see and experience what love between their parents is and should be.  There is not much that cannot be put off for just ten seconds!

#What would an empowered man do

A great daily ritual
Image from karapearson.com

OK, that’s Priority 1 done.  Priority 2 should be a hug for the kids.  Big hug, acknowledgement for a moment, so they feel the love too, and it’s amazing how often that is enough for them for a time.  Time to enable you to handle the other issues that are demanding attention.  Perhaps you can be with the kids in a family way.  Grab a coffee or tea, sit with your spouse and children on the couch for a few minutes, have a family hug, right after your ten second kiss.  Take a few more minutes with all of you together, sharing your days.  Ask your spouse about their day, their ups and downs.  The same with the children, asking questions gets them present and takes their mind off concerns that drag energies down.  That also allows you to catch up on the urgent news and to plan the next few minutes of dealing with the other issues, such as the dinner that’s cooking, the chores to be done, homework and so on.

What would an empowered man do?  He’d first attend to his family and be nurtured by them, while he empowers them with his love and attention.  He’d make this a daily ritual.

Another scenario.  The empowered man (or woman) is at work and the boss yells at them, bawling them out over something, whether it’s valid or not.  The boss is a chump, loud mouthed and obnoxious.  The first reaction is to make a batch of ‘nose jam’ and spread it all over his face.

#What would an empowered man do

Not again!
Image from www.mccormicksys.com

What would an empowered man do?

First, is it OK to get angry?  Yes, and it’s natural to get angry at times.  The human body and most other species become angry if provoked.  It’s what happens next that matters.

We established a few blogs back that you cannot win an argument.  We learnt in another blog about how to empower people when they are angry or fearful, so that you can work with them rationally and come to a good resolution.

#What would an empowered man do

Empowerment Emotional Tone Scale

This image is the Empowerment Tone Scale.

(Click on this image to enlarge it!)

The angry person is down under the empowerment line.  The fearful or grieving person is lower still, near the bottom.  To relate with these people, you need to boost them and their emotional state up to the empowerment level at “interest”, near the top, even if only for a few seconds!  You do that with targeted questions, relevant to the topic, but ones they need to process a little.  That processing is the key to empowerment.  This is because for the mind to process a question, it needs to be in a constructive state, not destructive.  Asking a question raises the person’s emotional state.  It empowers the person you are asking the question of.

Back to our angry boss.  What would an empowered man do?

They would engage the boss with simple, relevant questions to establish the parameters of the situation.  They would go on to ask about the specifics.  Then they would ask the most powerful question framework “WHAT can WE do about THIS PROBLEM?”  This establishes the conflict as an issue separate to either of them, but a problem they can solve as a team.  A totally different scenario to when the boss walked in.

#What would an empowered man do

That’s better! All sorted now!
Image from www.act-now.ca

Does it work every time?  Of course not.  But it’s what an empowered person would do first, rather than inflame the issue with retaliation.

Of course, launching into strategies such as these without a reference point in place is going to be a challenge.  For some men, if they arrived home and without warning, took their wife and kissed her solidly for more than a few seconds, it would either frighten them or make them very suspicious.  After reading this blog, discuss it with your partner and adopt this practice of the ten second kiss morning and evening.  Make the family hug a ritual.  You’ll probably find it changes other areas of your life too.

With your boss, don’t wait until he’s furious before you try to empower him.  Use simple but relevant questions all the time to build his level of empowerment and you’ll find he is much less likely to explode if and when something does go wrong.  And at that time, he’ll respond better when you ask more questions, because you have conditioned the situation already.  It won’t be anything new!

What would an empowered man do, to become more empowered in the first place?  

How do you get to BE this way, without needing to re-read this blog when life serves you a rotten tomato?

Empowerment is not hard.  It’s simple, it’s strategic and it’s constant.  Constant implementing of daily success habits, morning and evening, practicing throughout the day and celebrating your successes at night.  It’s challenging yourself to be the best you can, and recording your efforts to be your best.  It’s dropping unproductive habits and replacing them with success habits that step you closer to your own goals every day.  It’s putting yourself in a state of mind that is empowered by the environment you create around you.  It’s choosing the people you associate with, the information and influences that go into your mind and surround you in your life.  One tiny step at a time, all the time.  It’s simple, and it’s constant. Click here to learn more about becoming Empowered and learning to use your EQ, as well as your IQ!

After a while, it becomes a habit and is the state of mind you unconsciously life in.

During the learning process, we pass through four stages of competency.  They are:

  1. Unconsciously incompetent – we don’t even know we are messing things up!
  2. Consciously incompetent – we know how bad we are at this new thing.
  3. Consciously competent – we know what to do but still need to focus to get it right.
  4. Unconsciously competent – it’s become a good, solid habit; no need to even think about it anymore; we do it unconsciously and get it right every time!

After a while, these new success habits that we practice daily, morning and evening, become a part of our subconscious program and we do them without thinking.  We LIVE them.

#What would an empowered man do

Words of a wise and empowered man
Image from wolflaguerra.wordpress.com

What would an empowered man do?  Subscribe to this program and share it amongst his family, friends and workmates, to empower them too…

If you feel this article has empowered and benefited you and you feel it could benefit the personal empowerment of other folks you know, please reblog it, share it with your friends and associates.  It might be the day you changed someone’s life for the better!

Til next time, fair winds and full sails,

Ray Jamieson

“Freedom begins the moment you realize someone else has been writing your story and it’s time you took the pen from his hand and started writing it yourself.”
― Bill Moyers

Please also refer to my other posts on Empowerment:

Financial Empowerment

Empowerment

Empowerment for Men

Empowerment for Women

Empowerment for Teens

Empowerment for Children

Personal Empowerment

 

 

Empowerment for Children

#Empowerment for Children

Happy, learning children
Image from www.cumc.com

Empowerment for Children

In Empowerment for Teens, we saw that the way children are raised has a huge effect on their behaviour as teens and then young adults.  This is found in the most basic of human instincts, the instinct of survival, one of the few a baby is born with, and is very relevant in #Empowerment for Children

To survive, a human being is programmed to do whatever it must.  As a baby has little conscious thought capability at birth, everything is trial, error and instinct.  Babies rely on mothers for feeding, nurturing, protection and survival.  Therefore keeping mother close is a survival instinct.  To do this, some babies cry, some laugh, some are cute and coy, some are funny little clowns.  All are survival strategies initially; the range of survival strategies expands as the baby grows.

A toddler cry baby doesn’t get much sympathy.  However, the baby can learn that a certain laugh, or a certain funny behaviour can get mother’s attention, so that becomes a strategy.  This might be the start of the ‘clown’ survival strategy.  Robin Williams claims this was his way of surviving school, where the bigger boys bullied him until he told jokes!  Now, it is his career!

With most young animals in a nest, if there is competition for food, the bully always wins.  The same with human babies – the instinct is to get in first and get the food to survive.  A bigger or more boisterous baby may become a bully as a survival strategy amongst smaller siblings.  A smaller one may realise that direct action against a bully would not work, but being sneaky and agile might – monkey like antics might become the survival strategy, or outright stealth, guile and theft.  Just as a survival strategy.

#Empowerment for Children

Feeding time – who’s going to get it?
Image from commons.wikimedia.org

However, we see these same strategies employed in adults!  This is because these survival strategies become embedded as “sub-personalities” in the mind and psyche of the child and remain embedded as the child grows up.  At one time they were all relevant as survival strategies; now, as adults many are redundant, but they remain.

Can we be sure of that? Are sub-personalities real?

Think of a young mother in an ordinary day and how many sub-personalities she operates with, just to make it through the day, from leaving bed in the morning, to bedtime at night.

Waking, she becomes a mother first, looking after the immediate needs of her children, feeding, clothing and getting them ready for school.  Then she becomes a taxi-driver to deliver them to school.  Then it’s onto the freeway in the car to drive to work, she’s a racing driver.  At work she becomes a dutiful employee, slightly subservient to her supervisor, but definitely superior to that jerk from the mail sorting room who tried to hit on her last week!  Hmmph!  Then she suddenly becomes mother again at lunch time with a call from the school that one of the children has fallen and scraped a knee, but it’s OK, the school nurse has bandaged it and it will be fine.  A text message from her husband, saying he’s thinking about her and how wonderful it was to cuddle up naked under the sheets last night.  She started reading the messages as a loving wife, but by the end of it, a nymph had emerged.  She looks up from the message and sees the other office workers looking at her and she becomes a blushing teenager!  Back to work and she becomes the dutiful employee again.  Time to go home and she enters rush hour traffic and she becomes the road rage Mama for half an hour.  Home at last, she becomes mother again.  Husband arrives home and she becomes wife for a moment as he kisses her, and then mother again as she prepares dinner and scolds the children for the noise they are making.  After dinner she becomes a school teacher while helping with homework.  Bedtime for the kids, she becomes a wife again and sits quietly with husband discussing the day.  Bedtime for her, she showers and slips into bed and the text message nymph of earlier in the day appears and for the next hour, she is none of the previous sub-personalities from throughout the day!

#Empowerment for Children

Herman’s Head Sub-Personalities
Image from www.sitcomsonline.com

Whew!  All those different sub-personalities and all appropriate at different times of the day, with different people, and different situations.  Definitely not appropriate to mix them up and when that does happen, disaster is not far away!

How are sub-personalities relevant to empowerment for children?

The baby we first looked at is developing sub-personalities as it grows older, in order to survive.  The empowered child, the well balanced and happy child will confidently move between sub-personalities almost unconsciously, provided we create and foster a supportive environment around them, making it safe for them to grow, explore and experience the world.

How do we make empowerment for children possible?

As parents, it is our responsibility to create the most supportive environment for our children to grow up in.  The best way to do that is for us to be fully empowered personally first – being the best parents and teachers we can be, for them to model as they grow.  Empowerment for Children comes after their parents learn empowerment for women and empowerment for men!

Children do not do as they are taught.  Children do as they are shown by example and that is why they model older children, rather than anonymous characters from text books!  As parents, we need to demonstrate what we want children to learn, and provide the environment where this learning is possible!

Enlightened educationalists will tell us that children learn best in a happy environment where they can experience what they are learning about.  Experiential learning has become a buzz word but really, children have been doing it for thousands of generations, learning through their childhood games.  We need to ensure those childhood games are possible, safe and that we can participate in them to the extent we need to, so that we can give guidance as and when the children need it.

#Empowerment for Children

Learning by playing
Image from lindaoconnell.blogspot.com

The best way for empowerment for children to be experienced is by parents reading to children.  If you have ever seen the rapt look on a child’s face as they explore a picture book with Mummy or Daddy, and the innocent questions that come from it, you will understand.  As the child grows, reading more mature story books opens the child’s mind to the wider world.  I remember my Dad reading “Treasure Island” to me, and another of our favourites, “Two years on Bardunyah Station”, an Australian outback cattle station where everything was larger than life.  Stories such as these allowed us to create magical images of what lay beyond and enthused us with the desire to get out and explore the world, to discover our own Treasure Islands and feel the vastness of the wide outdoors.  We were fortunate that we had empowered parents who understood this.

#Empowerment for Children

Reading to your child is empowering for them
edu101.hubpages.com

When the children do get outdoors, be there with them!  Children’s school sports days are a great place for them to show off to Mum and Dad, if they are sporting by nature.  Music recitals or dance classes are other great ways to participate in your children’s activities if they have come to love the arts.  Whether or not they are the best doesn’t matter, as long as you demonstrate your involvement, and show encouragement for their efforts!

#Empowerment for Children

School sports day
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Is it OK for a child to fail?

Empowerment for Children can only happen when the child learns to fall over and stand up to try again!  So many are nursed through childhood that when they reach teens and Mum and Dad can’t keep an eye on them every waking moment, that the first obstacle they come across flummoxes them!  They need to learn from setbacks; learn to power on despite them and because of them, learning from the mistakes and picking up the lessons!  Only in this way do they become ‘battle hardened’ for the sometimes hostile environments they will face as teens and young adults.

#Empowerment for Children

Ooops! Here comes a lesson!
Image from liketreesplanted.com

However, of critical importance is where Mummy and Daddy are when they fall, and how THEY react to their child’s failures!  Empowerment for children happens when they learn from parents that it’s not the failure that matters, it’s getting the lesson and starting over that is important!  If parents are critical of poor school results, poor sporting results or music recitals, then the child learns that it’s a hard world and their parents are just another part of it.  If instead Parents are there to encourage and teach success habits, they learn that mistakes and failings are only stepping stones to success!  They learn what we demonstrate!

This is important in another way too, because as parents we fail sometimes too, and our children know it!  They recognise in us the mistakes we make, and if we judge them harshly for their mistakes, that is what they have learned to do with us.  They become the most critical and unforgiving teenagers unless they learn the truth about mistakes – they are just part of the lifelong education system we are all enrolled in!

Empowerment for our children is directly proportional to the amount of personal empowerment we, as adult parents have.  When WE are empowered, we can empower others, especially our children.  Personal development and empowerment work for us is how we can best empower our children, and lead by example on their march into their teens and adulthood.  Click HERE to become a more Empowered Parent now!

If you feel this post has contributed to empowerment for children, please share and reblog amongst your friends and associates.  So many parents are crying out for empowerment for children, but don’t realise that it is within reach.  Your sharing may change the life of another – everyone deserves personal empowerment and this could be the day you make a difference!

Til next time, fair winds and full sails,

Ray Jamieson

Please also refer to my other posts on Empowerment:

Empowerment through Emotional Intelligence

Financial Empowerment

Empowerment

Empowerment for Men

Empowerment for Women

Empowerment for Teens

Personal Empowerment

What would an empowered man do?

 

Empowerment for Teens

#Empowerment for teens

Moving on up!
Image from everydaylife.globalpost.com

Empowerment for Teens

#Empowerment for teens

The fugitives
Image from www.dvdmg.com

In the movies, you see the police chasing the fugitives and the wily old detective says something like “to catch them, we need to understand what drives them”…  Big game hunters say something similar, even now when hunting with a camera for shots for National Geographic, they need to understand what motivates their targets before they can film them.  Do you see the pattern?

No, we are not hunting for teenagers.  We know where they are, mostly.…  But why?  Why are teenagers, just like teenagers?  What drives a teenager to behave as a teenager?

No, it’s not a trick question.  In answering it, we can understand and find #empowerment for teens and teach them how they can be happier teens.  To do this, we need to go way back into human evolution, thousands of generations.  Back when achieving and surviving your teens was a bit like reaching pension age.  The world was a savage place, survival was not guaranteed and there was no social security when things got tough.

Early humans were programmed to survive and to continue their species, in a very hostile environment where man was not the supreme predator.  Understanding the human program is the key to understanding teenagers and children, and to helping them make it safely into adulthood!

What is this “human program”?

The human program is to:

  • Survive
  • Explore
  • Experience
  • Identify
  • Procreate
  • Leave a legacy

Understanding this programming enables both teens and parents to understand how the most appropriate Empowerment for Teens can be achieved, especially in the modern world.

Looking at the programs one by one, we can see how they apply, and match behaviours according to the inbuilt human programming.

Survive

#Empowerment for teens

Fight or flight!
www.lookandlearn.com

We are born into an alien world, helpless, without language, unable to walk or feed ourselves, totally reliant on someone else to protect and nurture us and teach us to survive.

That is a scary deal!  Different people/babies react in different ways.  Some are demanding and scream until Mother comes to cuddle, feed them or give them attention.  That is how they survive, by demanding attention.  Others are cute and use being cute to keep Mother close by, to nurture, cuddle and feed their little ‘cutey pie’.  Yet others are funny, laughing and playful and their antics keep mother close by because it’s fun for her too, to feed, cuddle and nurture her little ‘clown’.  And so our babies find ways to survive.

All through our lives, we find ways to survive.  Those can become sub-personalities, but more on this in our next blog on ‘Empowerment for Children’.  Suffice to say, we adopt sub-personalities as survival strategies as we grow older.

Explore

#Empowerment for teens

Young Explorers
Image from www.prime-movies.net

Can’t keep kids at home?  Of course not!  Since they learned they had wriggly things called fingers that they could see and control, each child has been an explorer.  Some do it through books, some through TV, some on computers and some just run wild!  It’s their nature!  The young mind grows fastest in its formative years because as part of the survival process, they have to learn what’s going on around them!  Their curiosity is natural and healthy!

They explore the world they have discovered.  That is how man pushed out of Africa’s Olduvai Gorge and populated the world.  It’s why Columbus sailed west across the Atlantic in three tiny sailing ships and discovered the New World.  It’s why the Pilgrims settled in North America.  It’s why Captain Cook sailed around the world three times – it’s what he did – he was an explorer.  It’s why my family emigrated to Australia a hundred years ago!

Experience

Why do any of us do what we do?  We are experience creating machines!  Our eyes are the most powerful visual sensory units ever – the most incredible telescopes are still not as versatile as the human eye.  Our ears hear and interpret sounds across a vast range and translate them into a language we communicate with.  Our skin is the largest sensory organ.  Our nose is a delicate smelling tool and our tongue’s taste buds can send us over the moon from exquisite food delicacies.  Deeper within, we have senses that intuit and compute on a level beyond consciousness to bring our world alive in another way.

This is just what an astronomer does with a new telescope, a racing driver does with a new car, and a sailor does with a new yacht!  As a teenager, given new awareness of and freedom with this amazing situation called life and a fabulous body to explore it with, wouldn’t you want to find out how far you can take it?  How amazing an experience you could create?

Identify

#Empowerment for teens

Teens together
From www.digitaltrends.com

As babies, we experience life through our mothers, not as individuals until time has passed and we begin to exercise control over our body.  Mother is still close but we learn that we can safely venture away a little.  As years pass, we venture further, finally heading off to school, joining a class of children the same age, doing the same classroom exercises.

As teens, classroom shackles are lessened; we have freedom to explore.  Freedom to meet and form groups of our choosing, not classrooms chosen for us.  This is where friendships, group associations and identities begin to form.  This is where young people begin to search for others like them, who think and feel the way they do, who they feel safe expressing their fears and doubts and joys and delights with.  Mum and Dad are always giving us rules to follow; teachers have other rules; where can we be free, together?  This is where we see the gangs as well as special interest groups form.  Some play football, some are cheerleaders, some play chess, some hang out in the mall and pick on little kids for their pocket money.  Identities are formed, sometimes directly aligned with our survival sub-personalities from infancy.

Procreate

#Empowerment for teens

Teen romance
asp.cumc.columbia.edu

Possibly the next most powerful force after survival is procreation, the program for the species to reproduce and ensure its survival.  It is the nature of life to procreate.  Life will always find a way.

With human beings, this program is set to explode as the body reaches the stage when it is physically mature enough to reproduce – based on a situation that humans faced many thousands of years ago, when old age could be anything beyond teenage years!  In those days, with a very short life expectancy, reproduction had to begin as early as possible and happen often, because mortality was high and more children were needed to ensure there were enough who lived for survival of the tribe.

Now, the tribe would rather the teenagers waited until they were married before this process happens.  The program says otherwise; it screams it loudly and urgently to the teens and won’t take no for an answer!

Leave a legacy

#Empowerment for teens

Graffiti?
By erinsingleton.wordpress.com

Some of the most fascinating art ever done is cave art from thousands of years ago, notably the Painted Caves in France.  This is early man leaving a legacy.  So why are we surprised when kids tag trains and walls with spray cans of paint?  We venerate one form as art but vilify the other!  The reality is that it is a program, just as much as it was for Leonardo to paint the Mona Lisa, Michelangelo the Sistine Chapel, for Bill Gates to create Microsoft and the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, and for so many of us to want to write a book.  It’s a legacy.

We are born with a burning question:  “Why are we here?”  How else will anyone ever know we were here?  Our legacy has some answers.

How does this relate to Empowerment for Teens?

Whilst this blog is not a teen operating manual, it gives insight into behavioural drives that motivate and provide empowerment for teens.  It’s handy for parents to understand, as well as for teens.  Teens want to understand themselves, because in their search for ways to survive, explore, experience, identify, procreate and leave a legacy, they want to understand other teens too.  Empowerment for teens through these inbuilt programs is a subconscious, impatient driver and motivator.  If teens were more conscious of it, and if education became better targeted in these areas, they could control it better and empowerment for teens could be managed, even harnessed!  Currently, motivators for teen behaviours are at best a mystery for many parents, as well as the teens!

How to provide empowerment for teens

#Empowerment for teens

Family fun outings
From www.telegraph.co.uk

The key to this is understanding the motivators and providing opportunities for them to occur naturally, without threatening the teenagers’ development.  When these ancient programs developed, two main skills required were to hunt and to fight.  Now, many are in school or university til mid twenties and neither of those skills are called upon.  We are programs screaming around in a body with nowhere to express ourselves!

With survival not really an issue, exploration, experiences and identity become the primary drivers for early teens.  Providing suitable safe opportunities for these enables curious teens to develop in ways that will enable them to have a safe and fun journey through their world, and take the pressure off for the next two programs to begin – that of procreation and leaving a legacy.  Education enables them to identify and form bonds with the groups most suitable for them.  Without the pressures of survival, they can take their time to decide to procreate when they have prepared for it.

Taking a giant leap forward to look at Maslow’s hierarchy, we can see that ‘self actualisation’ is at the top.  Effectively this is delaying the “leaving a legacy” until the other drives have been satisfied – suggesting that it is a more naturally occurring process after teen years, provided all other drives are satisfied.

The practical application of Empowerment for Teens 

#Empowerment for teens

Family discussion over dinner
fromdiploma2dreamjob.com

When working with and searching for real empowerment for teens, look at what stage they are at and what program is driving them.  When you know they want to explore and experience, don’t lock them in a bland room with homework.  Find a way to give them experiences that satisfy their drives, as well as provide an environment that brings their homework and education alive.  Enable them to meet and experience wider groups of people and cultures to enable them to choose the identities they relate to, but from a much wider range of options.  Don’t force choices from a narrow range of options or they will rebel in their need to explore and survive.

Educational experiences with cultures and expressions outside the norm of daily life will provide healthy empowerment for teens and an enthusiasm for more of what life has to offer.  When youth and enthusiasm meet, the other barnacles of life such as arguing with parents, chores and homework become insignificant issues that no longer represent limits to their freedom.  Rather, they see them as part of their freedom, opportunities and way of life.

This creates healthy relationships in which communication is usually much better.  Issues such as procreation – boyfriends and girlfriends, sex education, career and life directions can actually become interesting family discussions.  When family remain friends, identities are also more closely fostered and often less radically chosen.

However, remember that generalities are generally wrong.  Expect that teens will always surprise everyone, including themselves!

To assist with providing discipline that is not parental, but rather self guided and self consolidating success habits, a program of daily encouragement, teaching goalsetting, affirmations, rewarding achievement, journalling thoughts and feelings and raising awareness of emotions and the daily lessons of life is vital and incredibly powerful.  Such a program is Life Change 90.  Click HERE to begin your Personal Empowerment Program NOW!

If you feel this post has contributed to empowerment for teens, please share and reblog amongst your friends and associates.  So many are crying out for empowerment for teens, but don’t realise that it is within reach.  Your sharing may change the life of another – everyone deserves personal empowerment and this could be the day you make a difference!

Til next time, fair winds and full sails,

Ray Jamieson

Please also refer to my related posts on Empowerment:

Empowerment through Emotional intelligence

Financial Empowerment

Empowerment for Children

Empowerment

Empowerment for Men

Empowerment for Women

Personal Empowerment

What would an empowered man do?

 

Empowerment for Women

#Empowerment for women

Empowered!
Image from laracatone.com

 

Empowerment for Women

“There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” ~Anais Nin – See more at: http://livingempowered.areavoices.com/2010/10/top-25-empowerment-quotations-for-women/#sthash.xjr8fBtb.dpuf
“There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” ~Anais Nin – See more at: http://livingempowered.areavoices.com/2010/10/top-25-empowerment-quotations-for-women/#sthash.xjr8fBtb.dpuf
“There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” ~Anais Nin – See more at: http://livingempowered.areavoices.com/2010/10/top-25-empowerment-quotations-for-women/#sthash.xjr8fBtb.dpuf

“There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” ~Anais Nin

In a previous era, women had neither the right to vote, nor the right to complain.  Most women from before 200 years ago were treated like servants or objects.  The wealthy classes in western civilizations held their women in higher esteem but they still had significantly less voice than their male counterparts.  Even those who were loved, cherished and respected by their husbands were still second class citizens in the broader community, with neither voting power nor political influence.  Their goals had to be pursued through subtleties and relationship influence. There was no #empowerment for women.

#Empowerment for women

Empowerment?
Image from chersonandmolschky.com

In eastern civilisations and cultures, even today women still have limited rights, even where they have voting powers.  Many cultures and religions do not allow their women to have an education.  They insist on them being totally covered while in public.  They are strictly forbidden communication with other men and their movements within their communities is also restricted.  There is a huge rallying cry in the Middle East right now about whether or not women should legally be allowed the right to drive motor cars!

Empowerment for women throughout history.

If we look back thousands of years, Mother Earth was The Goddess and many societies were matriarchal.  Rather than the patriarchal societies which most of the world has now, women were at the head, especially in religious and community leadership.  The men were the hunters and muscle, while the women were the nurturers and spiritual and community leaders.  Some words in common use now attest to this, words such as Amazon – referring to a tribe of female warriors, Gaia, a Mother Earth deity worshipped by many, and the Gods of mythology, Athena, Aphrodite and more.  Women had great influence in Egyptian societies from time to time, ruling equally with their Pharaohs and even without them.  The Iroquois Confederacy or League created an American Indian ‘constitution’ called The Great Binding Law of Peace dating from about 1000 AD but unwritten until the late 1800s.  This enshrined women in governing roles of the society and is a powerful document to read and assimilate.  Ken Carey wrote about it in some chapters of “Return of the Bird Tribes”.

#Empowerment for women

Indian Artifact
www.webwinds.com

However, in Christian societies, the patriarchal model was adopted from the dark and middle ages and we now see the Pope as the head of the Catholic Church.  Women are not even allowed to be priests, despite their once traditional roles as Priestesses!  The great exception from this rule was established by the various Queens of England and consolidated by the current Queen Elizabeth, with a continual reign of over 60 years.

Empowerment for women in the modern era.

Back on the home front, in our modern day-to-day communities, women still face a “glass ceiling” in the workplace, lower wages for the same employment roles and a smaller proportion of women in management.  They are publicly lauded as having equality in everything and various anti-discrimination bodies are set up around the world and even within the organisation of the United Nations.  However, should a woman ‘make it to the top’, it is headline news because of the rarity of the event.  Many men still feel threatened by having to work for a woman boss!

#Empowerment for women

Burning a Bra
uncyclopedia.wikia.com

In the mad rush for equality and empowerment for women through the 1960s and beyond where ‘burning the bra’ became the standard for the liberationists.  Unfortunately, women created a rod for their own backs in many ways.  Rather than celebrating their differences, many tried to ignore them and claim total equality where in truth, women and men have differences in areas of strength and weakness.  Had the push for equality of status been along these lines, perhaps the male segment of the population may not have felt so threatened and either openly or covertly tried to crush the movement.  As it is, covert discrimination still exists.  It will exist for another couple of generations, regardless of the progress of any anti-discrimination laws.

In the home, we see a huge proportion of single parent families, many women who are divorced single parents, raising their children alone.  In many cases it is because they became personally empowered and escaped a toxic relationship.  Others are because of desertion by their husbands.  Fewer men are single parents and then it is often because of the loss of the mother through some tragedy, as in divorce court outcomes, more often than not custody has been given to the mother.

This suggests a societal situation that women are less empowered in general than men.  Certainly women have less outright power.  However, there is another way of looking at it.

If we consider a relationship where domestic violence is occurring, in most cases it is the woman who is the victim.  The male is the aggressor.  However, bullying behaviour, and that is what it is, mostly occurs because of a lack of empowerment of the bully.  If this bully was a self confident person, with high self esteem and a feeling of security within themselves and about their lives in general, there would be no inclination to be a bully, or to try to overpower or exert their will by force on another person, spouse, partner or otherwise.  Therefore, who is the person with a lack of empowerment?

Will empowerment for women change the issues of the glass ceiling and domestic violence?

#Empowerment for women

Glass ceiling
www.globaltoynews.com

On a very personal level, empowerment for women will provide women with a greater sense of self esteem and confidence in daily living.  That is vital.  It will provide the strength women need to break down the barriers of societies everywhere, in all cultures, religions and countries, at every level of communities, to really enjoy the benefits of equality of relationships and genuinely shared, happy lives.

Empowerment for women will still threaten some men.  That is an issue that will not go away any time soon. While ever patriarchal models are cemented in place, there will be opponents to the progress of women directly in community, national, corporate and global leadership.

How can personal empowerment for women be gained?

What can an ordinary woman, with little interest in politics or other leadership roles outside her family, what can she do to gain this empowerment for women?  It’s always the little things that matter.  Just as a house is made from thousands of bricks, so is empowerment, self confidence and self esteem.  It’s the little success habits that build the character of a person, male or female, to give them empowerment in all circumstances.

Empowerment for women does not mean they are to become all powerful and domineering.  Rather, it means that as an empowered person, they have the core strength of character to refuse to accept disempowering behaviour and attitudes from others!  A critical distinction.

Can empowerment for women be misunderstood?

If you find you have to force, cajole, bully or manipulate people to get things done, you do not have empowerment; you are a bully or manipulator.  If people flock to your leadership and are eager to assist you, then you have empowerment.  That should be your goal.

At times, some women will take it too far.  As a guy who was raised by a father who was chivalrous and respected and doted on his wife/my mother, I have at times opened doors for women without asking because it was the chivalrous thing to do.  I have been told rather rudely, to perform certain almost gymnastic feats on myself for my efforts.  I paid a compliment to a lady once on the incredible colours of her dress and the rebuke was “What the hell do YOU want?”  Those women were not empowered – rather, they were suffering the same insecurities that a bully character has and that is precisely what they need to evolve beyond.

Confidence is built on repeated experiences of success.  A program that delivers repeated experiences of success, through daily pats on the back, affirmations of your self worth, consolidation and recognition of your achievements and teaches goalsetting as a way of life, is a vital and necessary component of any intention to gain empowerment for women and men.  Finding your lesson from each day, acknowledging your successes of each day, gaining awareness of and control over your moods and emotions each day, breaking through the 0ld conditioning and patterns, learning to receive love as well as give it, these are critical to personal empowerment and are all built into the Life Change 90 program, designed especially for personal empowerment.  Begin your journey to becoming a more Empowered Woman here, NOW!

How will you know when you have ‘got’ empowerment for women?

I was once told by a woman that the absolute worst thing that can happen is to arrive at a function and find that another woman is wearing the same dress!  An empowered woman will not be concerned.  In fact, she will have the confidence and self assuredness to make everyone think the other lady was trying to copy her, but doing a terrible job!  That is empowerment!  That level of self confidence, that ability to walk into a room and know you created waves and not be concerned about it, that is empowerment for women.  It is way beyond how you look, what you wear or weigh.  Empowerment transcends.

#Empowerment for women

An Empowered Woman
winthem.blogspot.com

However, we are not trying to empower just one woman to be a figurehead.  Empowerment for women is a global phenomenon that most people wish for.  Referring back to the Empowerment Tone Scale in a previous post, you can see that the personal empowerment of EACH woman is a small step toward empowerment for ALL women and only in this way can empowerment for women be gained.

More empowerment to you!

If you feel this post has contributed to empowerment for women, please share and reblog amongst your friends and associates.  So many people are crying out for empowerment, yet don’t understand that it is within easy reach.  Perhaps your sharing will change the life of another – everyone deserves personal empowerment and this could be the day you make a difference!

Til next time, fair winds and full sails,

Ray Jamieson

“I do not wish [women] to have power over men; but over themselves.” ~Mary Wollstonecraft

Please also refer to my related posts on Empowerment:

Empowerment through Emotional Intelligence

Empowered by Love

Financial Empowerment

Empowerment

Empowerment for Men

Empowerment for Teens

Empowerment for Children

Personal Empowerment

What would an empowered man do?

 

Empowerment for women

Image from edelomahony.com

How to win an argument

How to win an argument

“A man convinced against his will, is of the same opinion still!”  Benjamin Franklin

#How to win an argument

You really want to win this argument?
Courtesy of www.theguardian.com

How to win an argument?

YOU CAN’T!

What happens when you beat someone down into agreeing with you, just for the sake of stopping the argument?

Losers don’t get mad, they get even!  That’s right; you just make enemies for the future!

So, #how to win an argument, really?

You must understand what goes on in someone’s mind while they are having an argument, or when they are angry or upset or afraid, and learn to work with it, harness their emotional state, so they can be better people and work through the issue.  Only then, do you learn how to win an argument.  And it’s not by winning the argument!

What DOES go on in someone’s mind while they are angry?

To understand this, you need to understand a little basic psychology – it will only take about a minute.

When someone is angry, fearful, upset, sad, depressed, terrified or even just bored, their mind is not in a state where rational thought is possible for them.  All they can do is react to stimuli.  That’s right, like an animal!  They are operating from the reactionary part of their mind, the old animal part, the part that was there when we were a species living in caves, frightened of the dark and sabre toothed tigers.  We HAD to react, to survive.  In effect, this part of the brain is survival territory, where the only instincts are fight, or flight!

How is this valuable, when all you want to know is how to win an argument?

#How to win an argument

blub, blub, blub…
Courtesy of www.stthomasblog.com

If you picture someone who is in one of these states, imagine that they are underwater.  You have to raise them up, so they can breathe, hear your question and respond.  Underwater, all they can do is thrash about, trying to survive.

How do you raise the mind up from those depths?

Ask it a question.  It really IS that simple.

Not any question.  “How’s the weather down there?” might not get the right response.

But if you are arguing with someone, or they want to argue with you, here’s a question that will work:

“HOW can WE sort THIS out?”

There is a VERY specific structure to this question.

An argument has two sides, both adversarial, against each other.  “You did it!”  “I did not!”  And never the twain shall meet, because they are both down in that animal survival instinct area.

But when you ask “HOW can WE sort THIS out?” you have triggered something that the mind is programmed to respond to.  The first part is WE.

#How to win an argument

WE are sorting THIS out!
Image from www.last.fm

Rather than adversarial combatants, you have just grouped yourself with them on a team of two, against THIS, the subject of the argument.  You introduced a third-party to the discussion, and put yourself on-side with them, against this third-party.  That third-party, the issue, is now a problem you work on solving, together!

And you asked a processing question, HOW.  The mind cannot process while down in those depths, so it comes up – sometimes only for a moment, but it comes up to process, into a state of mind where it IS rational, where it CAN respond intelligently, and think about a genuine answer to your question.  However fleeting, you got their mind up to where it can process.

What is THIS part of the mind?

This is where the emotions of interest, exploring, asking, and leading up to enthusiasm, happiness and bliss are found.  This is where people get enjoyment out of creating, communicating, playing, enjoying doing things.  And the lower levels of this, around interest and asking, is where you raised the level of their state of mind to by asking a question.

It may almost immediately seem to sink into the depths again.  Be encouraged that you got it to move the first time.  Try again.  Ask “WHAT can WE do to fix THIS up?”  And again:  “HOW can WE resolve THIS ISSUE?”

Their mind is now processing all those questions, the more you ask them, up to a point of course, the more they need to process them.  However, the mind can’t be in two places at once.  It can’t remain angry about THIS ISSUE while processing questions about it, and their anger will subside enough for a rational, if still heated discussion to take place.

Key point 1:  How to win an argument is not how to win an argument, but how to raise the emotional tone of the person’s mind so that you can communicate with them, rather than just get reactions from them.  Do this by asking HOW, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN to get them processing.

#How to win an argument

All in this together!
Image from suvendubabu.blogspot.com

Key point 2:  How to win an argument is not how to win an argument, but how to work with the other person to resolve an issue.  When you put WE into your question, you join forces with them.

Key point 3:  How to win an argument is not how to win an argument, but how to stop being the focus of their anger, and put the focus on the issue!  Play the issue, not the person.  Make the issue the protagonist, to recipient of their energy, not you.

Where to from here?

If you learn to use this language pattern in your everyday communications, you will have many fewer arguments.  #How to win an argument will no longer be an issue – this is a negotiation technique superior to anything else out there, because it prevents the argument happening!  When you find a discussion descending into those depths, your adept use of questions will quickly bring it back up and resolve the issue, whilst you maintain your relationship…

Think back – how many times would this have solved a problem, or prevented an argument for you?

To learn this way of thinking, and to create your own supportive environment around you to encourage this to become your natural language, it’s worth looking at a structured program to assist you to develop it.  Check out this blog.

Or check out the Life Changing program here.

If you know other people who want to know how to win an argument, or who you feel would find this post valuable, please reblog it or share it with them.  Let’s add some more value to this world!

Til next time, fair winds and full sails!

Ray

“We can not solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them” ― Albert Einstein

Commitment Phobia

#Commitment Phobia

image from news.cision.com

“The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor.” Vince Lombardi

What is Commitment Phobia?

You know THAT GOAL you set?  Yes, that one.  How serious are you about it?  How committed are you?

Pretty serious?  Fairly committed?  Really serious?  Fair dinkum?  Really….?

OK, no more stories – give me a number.

On a scale of 1-100, how committed are you to achieving THAT GOAL?

No reasons, no stories.  Just give me the number.

Is your number 100?

Congratulations, you ARE totally committed!

Is it less than 100?  If so, why bother with that goal?

Do you have what is called Commitment Phobia?

“If you deny yourself commitment, what can you do with your life?”  Harvey Fierstein

If your car broke down on the side of the road and someone stopped and offered to help, but you said, “OK, but can I finish this carton of beer first?” what do you think their response would be?

Something like:  “Well, if you are not serious about getting home, then I see no reason to put myself out to help you!”

It’s a bit like that with goalsetting, the Universe, and the “Laws of Attraction”…

The guy kneeled beside his bed and prayed:  “Lord, please help me to win the lottery”.  He prayed for hours, night after night.

After a while, God must have become frustrated with him…  The loud voice boomed:

“At least you could help me to help you.  How about buying a ticket?”

Are you giving yourself EVERY chance to win, to succeed at your goalsetting?  Or are you asking your God, Angels, Guides or whoever you pray to, to do all the work for you?  It doesn’t work that way.  You have to at least have the ticket, to play the game and have a chance of winning!  Spectators don’t win games, only the players in the arena get to stand on the podium!

#Commitment Phobia

Let me think about this a bit more!
Courtesy of www.inspirationalexaminer.com

Commitment Phobia is a funny term.  It is often used to refer to guys who want to ‘play the field’ and not tie themselves down to any one lady.  (Trust me guys, when you get it right, commitment to THE lady is INCREDIBLE!)

However, commitment is a vital part of life, and anything less than total commitment to the task at hand can get us into a lot of trouble!

As a child, I worked with my Dad on our farm.  One day we were using a large steel rope to drag logs around.  Dad’s words were profound and powerful to me as a 9 year old.  I still find they apply every single day!  He said:

“Get a good, strong grip on that rope, like you were going to choke it!  If you don’t give it everything, it will twist out of your hands and hurt you!”

WOW!  How often has THAT happened?  The wire rope could have been that incredible person you met, who you let slip by because you didn’t call them back, or you didn’t think you were good enough….  It could be that job opportunity that went begging because you didn’t get your application in on time because of the weekend BBQ, or you were late to the interview.  Perhaps it was the great job you lost, because you got lazy in it and someone passed you by on the corporate ladder.  Ouch, every time!

How committed were you to all these things, or did you have a form of #commitment phobia standing in your way.  Did you get complacent?  Did you let self-doubt give you commitment phobia?  If it’s important enough, what would you NOT do, to succeed at something that meant everything for you?

#Commitment Phobia

Row, or stay all at sea!
futuresteve.wordpress.com

For those who believed in the inevitability of the ‘middle aged spread’ and other aging myths, who have let their bodies go a little, how serious are you about your health?  Again, give me a number, 1-100.  Anything less than 100, I have to ask, why?  You only get one chance per lifetime to have a healthy body.  Just ask those folks who have been stricken with some crazy and challenging illness that they struggle with daily, just to stay alive!  If you asked them how committed they are, with their last remaining ounce of energy they would bop you.  They don’t have commitment phobia – they cannot afford it!

Neither can you!

Commitment Phobia is a creeping disease.

You begin with a rush of enthusiasm, but it wanes after a while.  Then you begin to find excuses.  Then you realise that it no longer matters, or you tell yourself it doesn’t matter.

#Commitment Phobia

Mother and toddler – love them always.
tipstoahealthy-relationship.blogspot.com

I worked with a guy called Michael who reached a whopping 350 pounds weight, 160 kilograms.  He changed jobs 3 times because he couldn’t physically do the work, before he had his wake-up call.  I asked him why it took severe diabetes and his doctor warning him that he was liable to drop dead at any moment, to stop and rethink his life.  He said that it just crept up on him, a few pounds at a time, and he just kept buying bigger clothes, cars and getting easier jobs until one day, a bicycle shop owner next door to his workplace smiled at him when he walked in the door.  He asked him why he smiled, and he was told that it was almost impossible for him to buy a bicycle to fit him, so what else was he looking for in there…..!  OUCH!  Off to the doctor!

He became committed.  He committed to his life, to his wife and to his toddler daughter…  Within 2 years, he was riding in triathlons, in what is called the “Clydesdales” class, the class dedicated to men over 200 pounds or 90 kilograms weight.  He has since completed a Hawaii Iron Man and has a trophy cabinet to be proud of.  And he has no commitment phobia!  He cannot afford it – diabetes is there, waiting to pounce on him any time he wavers.

#Commitment Phobia

Triathletes at work!
www.picstopin.com

Do you have commitment phobia?

Think about your goals and dreams.  Give yourself a number on them.  If it is less than 100, ask yourself seriously, why you set THAT GOAL.  If it really IS a serious goal or a critical issue for you, then there is a way to get totally committed and shake off that commitment phobia.

Find a way to be passionate about your goals!

Michael thought of his wife and baby girl, and got passionate about life again.  What will make YOU passionate about YOUR goals?  In the Life Change 90 program, you learn about finding your passion, and about redefining your goals so that you live and breathe them and you are excited to get out of bed for them each day.  It takes that sort of passion to guarantee success in achieving your goals.

New Years Resolutions usually have only an 8% success rate, and average goals get as low as 3% success, with partial success around 15%.

If it’s important to you, an 8% chance of success is not good enough.  It MUST be a total commitment, or nothing at all – put your time into something else….

Why is passion vital to overcome commitment phobia?

#Commitment Phobia

www.ankurbakhshi.info
Goethe’s famous quote on Commitment

Because if there is a solid and compelling enough reason for WHY, you WILL find a HOW to achieve that goal.  When failure is just not an option, then you will find a way.

Passion is a powerful driver, but it also pays to work smart, too!  Banging your head against a wall, no matter how passionate you are, will still give you a headache!  Having a success formula to plug into and a supportive environment to work in while going for your dreams is a huge bonus for those with passion.  It gets the goal a lot faster too.  Get your Success Formula HERE NOW!

“Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes; but no plans” Peter F Drucker quotes 

To overcome commitment phobia, check out these blogs, on Systemizing Personal Development and Success Habits.  Leave commitment phobia behind and make your next year your best year yet!

Til next time, fair winds and full sails,

Ray

 

Self Confidence

Self confidence – a function of knowing what you are doing, knowing that you are good at doing it, and knowing the task will be successful.  It’s in your own knowing that you will succeed.

“Believe you can and you’re halfway there.” ― Theodore Roosevelt
#Self Confidence

Of course I can fly!
upwithlifecoaching.com

Recently I wrote about Self Esteem; it has much in common with Self Confidence, but there are significant differences.

Self Esteem is feeling good about you.

Self Confidence is feeling good about your ability to perform in a given situation and knowing you can handle it.

I once gave a talk to a large group and a question around Self Confidence came up.  When asked how it was I could talk so easily in front of so many people, my reply caused a ripple of laughter.  I said “If you were the nursing mothers association, and I was giving a talk on breast feeding, I wouldn’t feel quite so confident!”

When you look at it, I’d have been talking on a subject I knew next to nothing about, to a group of people who were the acknowledged experts.  Both of these are key areas of potential failure – failing because I knew so little, and then being called out by people who knew so much.

Did I have a self confidence problem because I knew I’d fail if I was talking to a Nursing Mothers group?  No, not at all, because I knew I was already good at what I did when in my chosen environment.  I had a confidence benchmark, because I already knew I could speak confidently on my own topics.  It’s not my place to lecture people in their areas of specialty.

“Success is most often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable.” ― Coco Chanel, Believing in Ourselves: The Wisdom of Women

From there, we can look at how to gain self confidence.  How do you develop self confidence?

Firstly, look for what you are good at.  Doesn’t need to be a major skill set, start small, regardless of whether you are actually a master at something.  Can you tie your shoelaces?  OK.  Can you tie them in a perfectly even bow?  Great.

#Self Confidence

I can tie my shoelaces!
Image from marriagehelp.com

Look at what you have just said about yourself.  You have manual dexterity and an eye for detail.  Where else can you apply those skill sets?

This is the beauty of understanding yourself and getting a little tutoring in self development – your lessons teach you that being good in one area automatically means you are good at other things too – you don’t need to go try everything out to learn that!  You can be CONFIDENT about it, without ever doing it!

The key to self confidence: because you can do one thing well, it means you can also do other things well!  Your skills and abilities are transferable between tasks and challenges.

I hear the Nay-Sayers:  “But there are things I am hopeless at!  Can’t I feel bad about not being good at something?”

That’s your choice, but I’m not going there.  You see, there are things I’m hopeless at too.  Keep me away from a filing cabinet – you don’t want me filing for you!  Not my skillset.  I could lose every important document you ever had in quick time.  But I wouldn’t feel bad about it; because I know it’s not my thing.  I have a filing system arranged for me here, and instructions on what to do with it.  The main file I use is called, wait for it:  DATA ENTRY REQUIRED!  And not by me!  My self confidence doesn’t get dented just because I know I can’t file papers.  Other people can, so they do it.  I don’t.  It’s that simple!  I am no rocket scientist and that doesn’t concern me either.  Nor am I a botanist, although I love looking at flowers.  I just look; it’s close enough and safer for the plants.

#Self Confidence

Filing? What, me?
www.1staccessservices.co.uk

See the emerging picture?  Leave the things alone that you don’t have to do, or are not good at.  Find someone who can handle what you can’t.  But pour your heart and soul into what you can do well and feel great about it.  Another secret to self confidence, let the good feelings about what you do well, the self confidence feelings, overflow into the rest of your life!

Here is a classic example of a downward spiral in self confidence.

Billy is at work and messes up a contract.

#Self Confidence

YOU BLEW IT!
www.ehow.com

The boss bawls him out over it and the whole of the office hears it.  The people he supervises now wonder about him and he feels their eyes boring into him.  The end of the day comes and he escapes to the sanctuary of home, where he reluctantly tells his wife about his humiliation.  She is all comforting and makes him a nice dinner, then they put the kids to bed and she says “Come to bed and make love with me….!”

Up to that point, he was starting to recover, but now, he has to perform again and his mind suddenly goes back to the session with the boss, and he has already been humiliated once today, over his work performance!  He pours himself another drink and decides to watch TV instead.  One humiliation a day is enough for our Billy!  Bad move, Billy!

Self confidence can spiral both ways.

#Self Confidence

I GOT THE CONTRACT!
2findtrueluv.blogspot.com

Billy could have thought about all the things he was good at, and perhaps considered that his boss was also having a bad day and that was why the loud voices, rather than the regular quiet discussion over the contract.  He could have decided that one mistake doesn’t a failure make, told his wife about it and celebrated with her that he was thinking of a way to regain that contract next day.  After an evening of loving and nurturing with his wife, and a great sleep afterwards, he could go into work next day with enthusiasm and inspiration to pick up the phone and win that contract back…

The lesson from this is that our attitude and the self development environment we create around ourselves plays a huge part in our self confidence.  If we choose to be in an environment where goals are set each day, where our achievements are celebrated every day, where positive self talk is the norm, and where we review and reflect on our day every evening with a view to setting up tomorrow for success also, then an occasional flop is only going to create a great campfire story, rather than a downward spiral into depression.  Creating this type of environment is actually a choice you can make at any time.  If you choose not to surround yourself with positivity and celebrations of your successes, what ARE you choosing as your environment?

If your self confidence is important to you, then creating an environment that fosters self confidence is critical for you.

How do you create such an environment, which builds and multiplies your self confidence?

Start your Self Confidence Boost Program HERE NOW!

Check out this page on Success Habits and perhaps the recent blogs on Self Esteem and Self Development Tips.  They will show you the way to a whole new world to live in, one where you get to be King or Queen – which ever you choose!

Til next time, fair winds and full sails!

Ray

Self Esteem

“If you make friends with yourself you will never be alone.” ― Maxwell Maltz
#Self Esteem

Yep, that’s me!
Courtesy of www.blisstree.com

My last blog on Self Development Tips was from the Life Change 90 Blogsite.  I promised to follow on with how to create great Self Esteem and here it is, the two ways to develop Self Esteem.

Self Esteem

There are really only two ways to develop a feeling of high self esteem, unless you were born into a naturally nurturing environment, where you were brought up to feel good about yourself from early childhood.  If that is you, then congratulations – spread the goodwill, if not, these are the other two ways.

The first way to build high self esteem.

As a teenage guy, I had all the insecurities that most other teenage guys had, and I had a few more that many didn’t have!  I lived miles from town, had little social interaction outside of school, was taller than all my classmates and a lot bigger, although I was fit and strong without being overweight.  I always came top of my class right through school and was a champion athlete; I was ridiculed heaps for these – mostly by those who envied those attributes.  However, the ridicule struck, and stuck, went to the bone.

At the ripe old age of 18 years, I asked one of my mates, one of the ones who had a queue of girlfriends, why he had luck with the girls and I had none.  Wasn’t I good looking enough?

His answer, coming from the heart of the true friend he was to me, stayed with me for the next 15 years.  He said:  “You are a ruggedly handsome looking sort of guy.  Don’t worry, it will happen…..!”

In that instant, I associated ruggedly handsome with being unlucky in love, a poor communicator with women, and everything else negative that I was experiencing.  I suddenly realised how much I didn’t like being ‘ruggedly handsome’…

Life went on.  I left the family farm I grew up on and bought my own, married, had a son, divorced, lost a business, started another, became very successful at making people wealthy after rescuing them and their businesses from the stock market disaster in 1987.  Life was great, I was powering, had money, everything, but despite all this I still didn’t like me.

In 1989, I began some self development work on me.  I had to – I was a machine at work, ruthlessly despatching banks to the scrap-heap in getting better deals for my clients, hard-nosed negotiations, precision calculations, strategies, but utterly devoid of fun or interest in life and living.  I was great at what I did, but at living, I sucked badly.

In this self development program, something triggered a switch in me.  I took stock of what I had achieved, what I was doing and what I was capable of.  I looked at the amazing people around me, people who considered us to be friends, people who respected me, and it started to do things to me, in my head, stuff I had never felt before.  I was successful, I had so much credibility with the people I worked with, I mixed with globally significant figures in business and was developing a significant business profile in my own right.

I had an epiphany.  I got out of bed one morning after a period of these unsettling thoughts and emotions (what were they?) and when I looked in the mirror, it was like I looked at a different person.  I suddenly said “You’re OK!  I’m OK!”

I suddenly realised that what my dear friend said all those years ago was absolutely wrong for me.  It was just his well-meaning words at the time, trying to ease the concerns of his good mate, who wasn’t getting lucky with the girls.  That wasn’t me.  If it was back then, it certainly wasn’t now.  In that instant, I got to like me, like what I was, what I did, what I stood for and I started to feel again, starting with feeling good about me!

The epiphany came about because I had been forced, by this self development work, to start looking at and taking stock of my life and coming to realise that I was actually an OK guy, doing some great stuff!

This was the hard way to develop self esteem.  It might just as easily have gone the other way – if I didn’t like what I found in my stocktake, it might have gone very differently.

#Self Esteem

This was me – without the dress!
courtesy of pregoandtheloon.wordpress.com

But there is an easier way.

The second way to guarantee high self esteem.

In the 1960’s, a guy called Maxwell Maltz is reported to have said at the launch of one of his books, ‘confidence and self esteem is built from repeated experiences of success’.

Therefore, if you consciously place yourself in situations where you will, or are likely to have repeated experiences of success, then your self esteem and confidence will grow.  It must grow!  The trick is knowing where that place is!

The reality is that it’s not hard.  The concept of goalsetting within a self development program is what is required.  Creating an environment that nurtures and supports you, with affirmations in the environment, daily counting of successes, setting them up as little goals in the morning and checking them off each evening, checking your moods each day, learning to be aware of them and finally to anticipate and set them consciously, all of these elements build to a powerful self esteem, based on actual successes and personal growth within you.

#Self Esteem

This was REALLY me!
Courtesy of www.lifedaily.com

You can build self esteem accidentally like I did, and hope that after some time (I took 15 years!) you will realise you are OK too, and you always were.  Or you can step into a framework that does it all for you.  It’s possible.  Check out this blog on why you should systemize personal development, or even here, about why bother with personal development.

Twenty years on, much has evolved to enable you to consciously choose the outcomes that I stumbled upon, and fortunately landed in a good place.  Some folks from those times didn’t make it and unfortunately ended up well away from where they wanted to be.  As teens, we admired and envied some of our mates but now, I see that much of what we envied got those guys into serious trouble fitting into and creating a life of success.

There are better ways.  And they all require good self esteem!

If you enjoyed this blog and value the message, please share it and reblog it.  Who knows what a difference it could make in someone else’s life!  To start your new life, with a healthy dose of Self Esteem, start HERE!

Til next time, fair winds and full sails.

Ray

“You can always find the sun within yourself if you will only search.” ― Maxwell Maltz

Self Development why bother?

Self Development - why bother

stressguide101.blogspot.com
Turn your own light on!

Self Development why bother? 

“For the best return on your money, pour your purse into your head.” ― Benjamin Franklin

Have you ever wanted more?  More of anything?  For any reason?

Have you ever considered why that was?

It is human nature for people to be explorers, inventors, creators or to wish they were.  It’s a human evolutionary trait and has ensured the survival of the species so far, and enshrined man as the top species on the planet, by way of adaptation, versatility with living environments, and ability to either change to suit an environment, or change the environment to suit man.

Whilst you might not think that this affects you, it’s the same drive that makes you want to stretch just that little bit, be that little bit better, score a little higher, to want more.

As children, we wanted to impress Mummy and Daddy and how good we were at anything we did.  At school, we either strove to be the best in class or on the athletics field, or were envious of those who excelled.  We paid homage to the top athletes, the highest achievers in any competition, and if we were shown to be failures at any time, it was a time of derision, and sometimes shame for us.

This is the human evolutionary program, and it has a lot to do with the Darwinian theories.  The law of the jungle, the fittest and best survive and thrive to ensure continuity of the species.

Self Development - why bother

Law of the jungle – those most suited will survive!
www.incrediblesnaps.com

“Man is not going to wait passively for millions of years before evolution offers him a better brain.” ― Corneliu E Giurgea

So, Self Development why bother?  How does it relate to you, now?

The feelings of frustration you experience from time to time are tied in with this.  Those feelings of frustration are telling you that you are not winning, that you are not good enough to succeed at this challenge, and you need to become better.  It’s that evolutionary programming at work, pushing you to learn more, so you can be more and do more and achieve more.

That’s not to say that you are being forced into continual retraining.  It’s just a reminder to you, gently, that you need to keep up to date with your skills.

However, look at where your frustration occurs.  Does this suggest something to you?

If you are continually frustrated in a particular area of your life, let’s use relationships as an example, the frustration is urging you to develop more in that area of life.  If your relationships are difficult to begin, short-lived, painful, end badly and leave scars, you don’t really need to be told that there is probably something you have yet to learn in the relationships field.

Self Development - why bother

Sources of knowledge
collegepals.org

It’s not a call to become the guru of self development – just a call to perhaps pick up a book at the library and see if you can get some tips.

Self development why bother with growth and learning when so many people seem to get by just fine, and they seem like perfect morons to me?

That’s true too.  There are those people who appear to wander through this world, totally ignorant of everything around them and yet they seem to manage.  It’s all relative to your desired place in your world and your community.  Is THAT how you want to be perceived by the people around you?  Or would you rather some respect when you speak?

There are times in life when we decide to stretch a little, perhaps getting married, asking the question, daring to invite or allow another person into your life.  Perhaps it’s starting a business, taking your idea to the market place and asking people to trust you enough to do business with you.  Perhaps buying a house, and asking the bank to respect you enough to assist you with a home loan.

It’s times like these that you really don’t want to be seen as the village idiot.  It’s a great reason to want to try to be more than you are, to reach your potential.

But it’s not the only reason!

Self development why bother to aim even higher?

There IS so much more!  We are each born with gifts that are in some ways, unique to us.  Look at the people who come to mind when you think of greatness?

Think of great authors, perhaps Wilbur Smith, Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, Shakespeare, F Scott Fitzgerald, J K Rowling, Stephen King, Edgar Allen Poe and so on.

Think of great minds, and Einstein comes to mind, along with Leonardo Da Vinci, Marie Curie, Faraday, Bell, Marconi, Isaac Newton, and Edwin Hubble.

Sports people?  There are so many; First four-minute mile went to Roger Bannister in 1954 and is a perfect example.  He inspired John Landy to become the second to achieve the feat on 21st June 1954, only 6 weeks after Bannister on 6th of May, 1954.  Since then, many have achieved the feat, inspired by these achievements.  Not only did they prove it was possible, they could probably be credited with the start of sports science, the study of what the human body can possibly achieve.

That led to the development of sciences of the mind, because it was soon realised that attitude was almost as important as physical ability when it came to achievements of physical prowess.

Which brings us back to the starting point!

Self development why bother?

Because it opens new worlds up to us, for a tiny outlay of time and energy, the results and returns can be multiplied many times over.

Knowing how someone achieved something else means you can learn from their efforts, trials and mistakes, and go straight to a winning strategy.  Knowing what mental state to be in for a specific task can mean success or failure at that task – why wouldn’t you want to know that?  Knowing how to win the love, admiration and lifelong affections of someone you admire, surely that is worth stretching yourself a little to learn?  Knowing how to be the best partner, lover, breadwinner, parent or whatever it is you desire in your life, that is why we bother!

Self Development why bother?

Self Development - why bother

The world at your fingertips! healthyshouts.blogspot.com

Because we have to earn our place at the tables in this world.  We have a choice – earn that place at the table or get the crumbs left by those who did!

The great thing about self development is that not many do actually bother, making it easy pickings for the rest of us!  So many are content with the crumbs, perhaps because they have never looked up and realised where they fell from.  However, you are reading this now, so you know about the seats available at the table, and you also probably know that this could be a first step towards taking one.

There are people who will read this, perhaps in desperation and or frustration, who have some sort of physical or health challenges and who have asked the question:  Self Development why bother? and decided it wasn’t worth it.  I say to you, no, you don’t need to be a Roger Bannister, but look at what he REALLY did!  He proved that more could be had and done, and inspired millions of people to strive for me, and who ultimately went on to create better lives for themselves, and for so many others.  Who could you be an inspiration for?

Look at your frustration – we discussed it earlier.  Perhaps you still have a gift to discover, that will ease your frustration.  No, I can’t and neither can anyone else give you a shortcut to it and tell you what it is or how to do it.  That’s up to you – it’s called personal development, your own journey of self discovery.  The truth is that the longest journey most of us will ever make is the journey to discover our true potential!  If you are wondering whether it is worth it, ask yourself if you have unexplored potential yet to be shown to the world, or even to yourself.  Are you sitting on a gift that you don’t yet know about?  You can begin or continue your Self Development journey by CLICKING HERE NOW!

Self development why bother?

Because it’s worth it.  You owe at least this much to yourself and your family!  Welcome aboard!

If you wish to explore Self Development further, it’s easy to make a start.  Look at this blog for a way to put a little self development into each day, to create better results as you progress and ultimately bring out the full potential of you!

If you answered YES to the question of Self Development why bother?, the next blog will have the HOW of this subject, some powerful tips on what you can do from where you are, to make a start and start making a difference!

The Entrepreneur’s Credo

I do not choose to be a common man, 

It is my right to be uncommon … if I can, 

I seek opportunity … not security. 

I do not wish to be a kept citizen. 

Humbled and dulled by having the 

State look after me. 

I want to take the calculated risk; 

To dream and to build. 

To fail and to succeed. 

I refuse to barter incentive for a dole; 

I prefer the challenges of life 

To the guaranteed existence; 

The thrill of fulfillment 

To the stale calm of Utopia. 

I will not trade freedom for beneficence 

Nor my dignity for a handout 

I will never cower before any master 

Nor bend to any threat. 

It is my heritage to stand erect. 

Proud and unafraid; 

To think and act for myself, 

To enjoy the benefit of my creations 

And to face the world boldly and say: 

This, with God’s help, I have done 

All this is what it means 

To be an Entrepreneur.

― Thomas Paine, Common Sense

If you feel this blog has value to you, maybe it has value to others!  Please share and reblog it.  Who knows who might find a reason in here to make changes in their life too!  After all, that’s what friends are for…!

If “The Entrepreneurs Credo” has inspired you to make a start on your Self Development Journey, CLICK HERE to begin, now!

Til next time, fair winds and full sails!

Ray Jamieson

See you there!

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