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Think Successfully & Take Action
Tracy
If there is one thing that I have learned in my 40+ years on this planet, it is that: Happiness is a choice. I am serious, It is VERY true! The choice is yours – You can choose to:
- let life’s circumstances get you down
or you can choose to: - be happy no matter what challenges life brings you overcome
What I find that most people do not know is the fact that happiness is already within each and every one of us. We, as a human race, are born to be naturally happy! I mean think about it for a moment; have you ever noticed how infectious the sound of a baby’s giggle is? Or, if someone is having a serious belly laugh, you know the kind I am talking about, they are laughing so hard their eyes are watering and they can not speak. Those two simple things, bring a smile to your face – if even for a moment. However, for some reason, as we get older, we loose sight of the happiness that resides inside us, we forget where to find that happiness within ourselves and, instead, allow outside forces to determine our happiness. Forces like, our job, a spouse, a sibling, money, cars, a house or other such tangible items. Do not get me wrong all of these things can bring a level of happiness into your life, BUT if your not first looking inside for your happiness then the happiness these materialistic items will bring will be short lived – shorter than even the warranty some come with.
So, with all that said, let me give you six tips that will enable you to discover your own happiness from within:
- When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Cliché, I know, however even the cliché can be oh so true. You do not have to let the troubles in your life and problems get you so down that you forgot the good that still resides in it – no matter how small it may seem. I mean lets face it, there will always be troubles, large and small, because no one is perfect, but YOU can choose your reaction to situations. Look at the positive side of things, even if that positive is nothing more then a lesson learned. At first it you might have work hard to see the good in people and circumstances, but it will be time well spent and it will turn your perspective from one of doom and gloom to one of possibilities.
- Find something you love to do and do it. Do you have a lifelong dream or desire? If so, start working toward it – NOW, even if you have to start doing it for free. Taking baby steps towards a dream or goal will help you feel like you’re accomplishing something. This feeling of accomplishment will fuel your drive and determination to reach that goal especially when it’s something you love to do. I loved to speak in public – so I contact every service organization in my town and in the surrounding towns to offer a free speech – some said “No.” However many said yes. I shared a message I was passionate about, help educate others on the topic and built my skills – soon I was getting paid for the same thing I was doing for free. Find your passion and go for it – it will fuel your desire, drive and happiness like nothing you can imagine!
- Do you have a gift or talent you’re not using? One reason so many people are unhappy is that they’re not doing what they’re called to do with their God-given talents. Each and every one of us has a purpose in life. You have natural gifts and talents to help you achieve your purpose, so use your gifts effectively! Here is a key – your talents are something you are naturally good at even if you have not honed them yet. Do you have some thing you have a ‘nack’ for? Then perhaps that is a natural talent you need to give some attention to. Also this usually links back to #2, and it is something that you enjoy doing (even if others thing you shouldn’t be doing it).
- When you’re feeling down, don’t wallow in your sorrows alone; do something about it. Call a friend who you know is positive and cheerful. Talk about your thoughts, and feelings, ten listen to their advice. So often, people allow themselves to go deeper and deeper into self-pity or depression because they think it has to be that way. The truth is, you don’t have to be sad and you should not be. You can decide to be happy. You just have to make up your minds to do so. Again, do not get me wrong – things will happen that make you sad, and at times you need to go through those feelings. The key phrase is “to go THROUGH” the feelings – not get mired down in them. A perfect example I remember back some years ago; I had a good friend whose girl friend left him. He was quite upset and asked if I would chat with him. Of course, happily I met him down at a local restaurant and we ate a good meal has some great discussions about his relationship and what potentially went wrong. But as the evening wore on he drink another drink, and another and another. He began to share his heartbreak story with anyone that would listen, wallowing in the feelings rather than coming out the other side. Of course the next morning, he was still along, heartbroken and now he had a hang over to boot. We tried again a few days later – this time at a place with no alcohol and I’m happy to say had came through his feelings much easier then with a little coaching and support he was back in the dating scene and met a wonderful young lady a couple months later.
- Think about all the things you have to be thankful for. Often we get so caught up in what is going wrong with our life that we forget to look at what is right and working. Pause, take a step back and review on your life as a whole. How far have you come from, say, six months to a year or even five years ago?
- Do you have children, family and/or friends to be thankful for? If they are like mine, they are not always everything we would like them to be, BUT imagining a life without them empty. So, be thankful that you have them in your life.
- Do you have a job? Okay maybe it is not your dream job, but in today’s economy, those of us who have a job should be thankful for it.
- What about your health, your home, or some of the more simplistic things we often take for granted – like the ability to see. Enabling you to read this very article. To hear the birds chirp “good morning,” to speak and say “I love you” to those special people in your life.
- When you’re feeling down, journal your thoughts and feelings. Often you’ll find that just getting your feelings down on paper will allow you to work through them, helping you to feel better about yourself and your beautiful life! Also, you might notice a trend if you journal regularly. I had a friend that I was coaching and as he reviewed his journaling entries, he noticed that entries made on the day he met with an old buddy of his were far more negative then any others. His friend was jaded by all the troubles in his life and was using my friend as a venting post to offload all his troubles on my friend. This was obviously having a negative impact on my friend, so he slowly spent less and less time with this negative influence and found he days remained far more positive. Later he let his friend know that he could not spend such time with him if he was going to be a “negative Nel.”
If you’ve been prone to look at life negatively, then you’ll have to put more effort into seeing and choosing happiness. But don’t let that stop you from being happy! You, too, can learn to be happy.
Practice the steps above and train yourself and your mind to focus intensely on the positives. Never ignore the realities when focusing on the positive. Rather choose to not wallow in the negative. When you feel a negative thought coming on, or your mind gravitates toward the negative, learn to recognize it, stop it in its tracks, and then turn your attention to the more positive aspects of the situation.
Starting from this moment onward, make the conscious choice to be happy!
Think Successfully & Take Action!
Tracy Brinkmann
Today’s Top Motivated Coach & Author of Success Atlas Programs
http://WriteYourSuccessStory.com
Anyone who has had to give a presentation, write an article, create a training session or even give a quick talk to some children can probably quickly recall sitting in a dankly lit room, behind a desk covered with research material, a glazed look upon your face as you gaze at the stack of information you so desperately want to pull into a first rate piece. You hope for some spark of genius, yet all you get is frustration and probably a headache. You try harder and harder to pull together the words, thoughts and phrases to articulate your message, but your brain gives you nothing to work with.
Well, fear no longer for those days are over. Today you are going to learn a technique that will pull out those ideas into a form that allows you to ‘see’ your message in a natural flow. Once your see your message, writing that speech or presentation will come far easier than you ever expected.
I use this technique over and over again to create articles like the one you are currently reading. The only downfall to this brain web or inspiration web as I prefer to call it is that I often get too many ideas and have to cut many of them out of the article I am writing. But that is ok, for that leaves me with plenty of ideas for the next article, all ready and waiting for me to call upon them in a moments notice. This even works for those times when you have only minutes before you have to stand before your audience.
So, let’s spinning a web of ideas.
The tools you will need to create your web are a pen, paper, and a timing device. Larger paper is better, but standard 8 ½ x 11 paper will do as well. In the center of this sheet of paper, write the topic of your presentation and draw a circle around your words.
Now take a few deep breathes, and stand up, yes that’s right, stand up. Hold your head high and look up at the ceiling. Throw your shoulders back, and puff out your chest proudly. And smile a really huge smile. The kind of smile you would see on the face of a child before opening that wonderfully wrapped present on their birthday or on Christmas morning. Feel those feelings, the excitement and the thrill of finding what is within the brightly colored wrapping. Breathe fully and deeply while doing this. Open your mind – remember that for now there are no rules, no limitations. This is the time for no-holds-barred idea creation.
Now, with those wonderfully energizing feelings pumping you up – set the timer for five minutes. Sit down, grab your pen, and begin to write. Write down every idea that comes to mind. Write fast; do not let your pen stop moving. Abbreviate so that you can get as many ideas down on your sheet as fast as possible. What you will find is that you will be writing one idea and BANG the next one hits, then, before you even can finish writing that idea down, BANG another, then another BANG, and so on. Write every thought that comes to mind, filling up your paper. Don’t be concerned with spelling, grammar or neatness. Make no judgments as you write during this five-minute period. Only record the thoughts as they come to you. Your end goal right now is a vast number of ideas and thoughts.
While you are writing, circle each idea, and connect related ideas/thoughts with lines or even arrows. Keep writing until the timer goes off. Then relax, sit back and review your inspiration web. Is it full of ideas? It should be. Did you make all the connections? If not, make those obvious connections now. As before use lines, arrows or whatever you are comfortable with.
Take a break, ten to fifteen minutes is a good period of time. During this break get away from your idea sheet, and take your mind off of it completely. Then come back and look at the page. By now a few main idea threads will become obvious on your web of lines or arrows. Identify three to five ideas (five maximum for the best audience retention) that you want to cover. Highlight or color-code them so they stand out on the page. Now you have your topic and primary talking points. Your lines and arrows will guide you in your flow from one speaking point to another. I guarantee by this point your piece is taking direction in your head and you will be quite ready to begin putting it to paper.
Use this inspiration web technique anytime that you need to give birth to some creative ideas. This technique will work not only on coming up with speaking points for your main topic; it will work in problem solving, product enhancement and innovation as well.
Think Successfully and Take Action!
Tracy Brinkmann
Today’s Top Motivated Coach & Author of Success Atlas Programs
http://WriteYourSuccessStory.com
http://SuccessAtlas.com
“If you’re serious about becoming a wealthy, powerful, sophisticated, healthy, influential, cultured and unique individual, keep a journal. Don’t trust your memory. When you listen to something valuable, write it down. When you come across something important, write it down.” – Jim Rohn
While sitting listening to the 2004 Jim Rohn 3 day Leadership conference in Anaheim California, Jim Rohm made that a quote and I guess the time was right because it stuck with me that time. I have tried journaling in the past but was never able to remain consistent with it. However, these days I regularly journal my thoughts, ideas, events, emotions, etc successfully. Keeping a journal helps me see where I have been; where I’m going and if I need to adjust my course along the way. It helps me see those times when emotion was getting the better of me.
Where journaling really has proved to be its weight and gold is in idea generation. Whenever I get an idea no matter how large or small I write it down. If I don’t have my journal handy (which isn’t very often) I would grab a piece of paper and write down the idea and put it in my pocket then transfer it to my journal later. These days, I keep one of those little digital voice recorders with me and when I get an idea or a thought I pick it up and click ‘REC’ and save the idea.
If you start recording your ideas the moment you get them, whether via paper/pen or digitally you will begin to get more and more ideas. Trust me I speak from experience. A short bit after I started my journal and voice recorder techniques the ideas began to flow like water.
In my next blog post I am going to to give you yet another way to prompt ideas for presentations, articles, books, product or whatever you might need it for. Check back tomorrow, read the new post, give it a try and let me know how it works out of for you.
Think Successfully & Take Action!
Tracy Brinkmann
Today’s Top Motivated Coach & Author of Success Atlas Products
Many readers of my blogs, articles and eBooks are business people either in corporations or in their own business, many are sales people and still others are in network marketing. All these have a common thread. At one time or another, often MANY times over – they are called upon to present information to an audience. Whether that audience is one or one thousand, one thing that your audience will appreciate from you is focus. It does not matter whether your audience is live in living color, reading your website, or like you right now, reading this blog post. Each an every one of them will appreciate you getting focus so they can get the most out of the time they invest in ‘listening’ to you. Give them the value they deserve by focusing on them. In order for you to focus in on them via your subject you will need the following three things:
- A Message
- An objective
- Knowledge of your audience
1 – Message – sit down and write a single sentence that states what you want your audience to remember. Make sure it is simple. Make sure it is clear. This will become your overriding message and theme of your presentation, article or blog post. Your message needs to be repeated throughout your presentation at least six times and most importantly driven home at the end of the speech. Weave it throughout your talk like a binding thread to insure your audience remembers this message.
2 – Objective – Going into your presentation you should know the answers to questions like; do you want to motivate your audience? Entertain them? Inform them? Gather input or sell a product? Sit down and answer this question – I want the audience to…
3 – Audience – In previous posts, audios and books I have stressed the benefits on knowing your audience. Why are they interested in this topic? After all, how you motivate a group of college students to save for their future will be far different then how you motivate a group of thirty-something business professionals that are parents. So be sure to relate your message to their needs and issues. Be sure to communicate to them how the action you want them to take will benefit them.
Gaining this focus early on in the creation of your presentation will guide you as you prepare the material. Then you are ready to prepare your material. By knowing these three essential pieces of information your information and its presentation will begin to take a life and flow in a way that makes sense. But if you attempt to write the speech without this information you WILL struggle harder for not only what you should share but the manner in which you should share it. You will risk spending time on talking points that are irrelevant and you will loose your audience. Give them what they want, give them what they need and stay focused.
Think Successfully & Take Action!
Tracy Brinkmann
Today’s Top Motivated Coach & Author of Success Atlas Programs
http://WriteYourSuccessStory.com
http://SuccessAtlas.com
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