BEST BOOK FOR PERSONAL GROWTH: CHANGE YOUR HABITS- CHANGE YOUR LIFE- REVIEW PART-1

CHANGE YOUR HABITS: CHANGE YOUR LIFE-PART-1. You can start by doing little things in your life differently constantly and consistently, and over time results will show. This is how my coaching clients achieve incredible results: creating new habits and working towards their goals consistently and doing things that bring them closer to their goals every single day. BEST BOOK FOR PERSONAL GROWTH: CHANGE YOUR HABITS- CHANGE YOUR LIFE- REVIEW PART-1, It is possible! You can do it, and you deserve it!

“If you think you can you’re right, if you think you can’t you’re right” Henry Ford Look around you.

• What do you see?
• Look at your surroundings, the atmosphere, and the people around you. Think of your current life conditions: work, health, friends, people surrounding you. What do they look like? Are you happy with what you see? Now, look inside of you. How do you feel RIGHT NOW in this moment? Are you satisfied with your life? Are you longing for more?

Do you believe that you can be happy and successful?

• What is missing from your life that you need to call your life happy and/or successful?
• Why do some people seem to have everything and other people nothing?

Most people have no idea how they get what they get.

• They are looking for outside influences to happen by chance and change everything.
• They think life happens to them. Most of them have no idea that they can be in total control of their life every moment and every day of their lives. Sometimes they don’t even know what they want!

Q:” What would you do if you had enough time and money?”
A:” Man! That would be great! I would be happy!”
Q:” And what would ‘being happy’ look like to you?”
A:” I would do everything I want to do!”
Q:” And what is ‘everything you want to do?”
A:” Oh! Now you got me. I don’t even know!”

The true tragedy is that if they would only stop for one moment,

• Ask themselves what they want in life, write down their goals and start working towards them, they could make those miracles happen. And the results are fabulous!

Remember: You are leading the life that you have chosen! How?

• The good thing is that you can train your mind to give you only the things you want, and not the things that you don’t want! And it gets even better: you can learn how to deal with things that you can’t control more efficiently and less painfully.
• What I always subconsciously knew became a structured method using the tools and exercises of coaching. For the skeptics who think that all this is metaphysical nonsense, just look at the enormous progress science has made and how it can now prove many things that only 25 years ago could only be believed without being proven.

Your happiness depends on YOU, and nobody else!

• In this book, I want to introduce you to some proven tips, tricks, and exercises that can improve your life beyond your imagination if you practice them constantly and persistently. More good news: You don’t need to win the lottery to be happy!

You can start by doing little things in your life differently constantly and consistently, and over time results will show.

• This is how my coaching clients achieve incredible results: creating new habits and working towards their goals consistently and doing things that bring them closer to their goals every single day.  It is possible! You can do it;  deserve it,  you have to take ACTION!
• You have to start doing and practicing the exercises and introducing new habits into your life.

If you do the exercises in this book regularly and consistently, your life will change for the better!

• Experts in the field of success teachings, coaching and Neuro-linguistic Programming agree that it takes 21 to 30 days to implement a new habit. 30 days that can make a difference in your life. Do the ones that come easy to you. Download them and HAVE FUN!

 Rewrite your story

• “Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change” Wayne W. Dyer
• Seth says you are the writer, director, and main actor of your story. change it!  It doesn’t matter what happened in your past.

Your future is a clean sheet! You can reinvent yourself!

• Every day brings with it the opportunity to start a new life! You get to choose your identity at every moment!  It’s up to you to decide who you are going to be from this day on.

What are you going to do?

• If you DO some of the things suggested in this book, create new habits, and do just some of the many exercises that you will find here, things will start to shift. It’s not going to be easy and you will need discipline, patience, and persistence. They rewrote their story. Now it’s your turn. Make some effort and persist, persist, persist! Don’t give up! Fasten your seatbelts and have some fun!

Self-Discipline and Commitment

“It was the character that got us out of bed, the commitment that moved us into action and discipline that enabled us to follow through.” Zig Ziglar
“If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.” Napoleon Hill

Your way to success and happiness is deeply connected to your willpower and commitment.

• These character traits will decide whether you do what you said you would do and go through with it. If you train to be self-disciplined and have the will to succeed, you can do great things in your life. You can start training your self-discipline and willpower from this moment on! Self-discipline is like a muscle.
• The more you train it, the better you get. If your self-discipline is weak right now, start training it by setting yourself small, reachable goals. Write down the success you have and keep in mind that you don’t have limits only the ones you set for yourself.

What is your word worth?

• Take your commitments seriously! To avoid this, you have to become aware of what is important to you and act in line with your values.

A commitment is a choice! Only make commitments that you really want.

• That can mean fewer commitments and more “NOs”. If you commit keep your commitment whatever it takes. Give them the importance and value that they deserve and be aware of the consequences of not keeping them. Time to take action!

In what areas are you lacking self-discipline at the moment?

Be completely honest.

• What benefits will you obtain if you had more self-discipline? What will be your first step towards reaching your goal?
• Write down your plan of action in small steps. Give yourself deadlines.
• How will you know you’ve reached your goal of having more self-discipline in _______?

Take full responsibility for your life!

• “Peak performance begins with your taking complete responsibility for your life and everything that happens to you.” Brian Tracy
• “Most people do not want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.” Sigmund Freud
• There is only one person that’s responsible for your life and that is YOU! Not your boss, not your spouse, not your parents, not your friends, not your clients, not the economy, not the weather.
• YOU! The day we stop blaming others for everything that happens in our life, everything changes!

Taking responsibility for your life is taking charge of your life and becoming the protagonist of it.

• It doesn’t matter what happens to you in your life; it matters what attitude you adopt. And the attitude you adopt is your choice!

If you blame your life situation on others, what has to happen to make your life better?

• All of the others have to change! And that my friend I tell you, is not going to happen. If you are the protagonist, YOU have the power to change the things that you don’t like in your life! You are in control of your thoughts, actions, and feelings.
• You are in control of your words, the series you watch on TV, and the people you spend your time with. If you don’t like your results, change your input – your thoughts, emotions, and expectations. Stop reacting to others and start responding.

The reaction is automatic. Responding is consciously choosing your response.

• You take your life into your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame – Erica Jong

The person with a “victim mentality” only reacts, is always innocent, and constantly blames others for his or her life situation,

• while using the past as justification and putting their hopes on a future that will miraculously bring solutions to problems or a change in others who are causing the troubles.
• The protagonist knows that he or she is responsible, chooses adequate behavior, and holds himself accountable. He uses the past as a valuable experience from which to learn, lives in the present where he sees constant opportunities for change, and decides and goes after his future goals.

The most important question is:

• “Who will you choose to be by your actions when life presents you with these circumstances?”
• Gandhi said it very nicely: “They can’t take away our self-respect if we don’t give it to them.”

Ask yourself the following questions: Who are you blaming for your life situation right now?

• (Your partner? boss? parents? friends?) What would happen if you stopped blaming others for what happens to you in your life?
• What would happen if you would stop being a victim of the circumstances?
• Is it comfortable for you to be the victim? benefits does it have for you to be a victim?
• What would happen if you stopped suffering in your life and took the decision to change it? would you change?
• Where could you start?
• How would you start?
• Action Step:
• Write down five things that you can do in the coming week to start changing the course and start taking charge of your life.

 Choices and Decisions

• “Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Maybe you have heard that your life is the result of the decisions you made. How do you feel about that? Is this true for you? It’s important that from now on, you are aware of the power you have over your life by making decisions!
• Every decision, every choice has an important influence on your life.  Start making better choices. Remember that you choose your thoughts and even your feelings.

YOUR ATTITUDE + YOUR DECISIONS = YOUR LIFE

The most important thing is how we RESPOND to what happens to us in our lives. And that is a CHOICE!

• Do you want to be healthier?
• Make better choices about food and exercise.
• Do you want to be more successful?
• Make better decisions about who you surround yourself with, what you read, and what you watch.
• There are no excuses!
• Questions to ask yourself:
• What decisions could you make today to start to change?
• Will you choose to be more flexible? More positive? Healthier? Happier?

Choose your thoughts

• “The universe changes; our life is what our thoughts make it.” Marcus Aurelius
• “You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you.” James Allen
• If you want to improve your life, the first thing you have to do is improve your thoughts.
• By controlling your thoughts, ultimately you control your life and your destiny. So observe your thoughts now and then.
• Peace Pilgrim‘s quote “If you realized how powerful your thoughts are, you would never think a negative thought.” says it all: don’t get stuck in negative thoughts.

Think positive! A positively thinking person is not a dreamer, who thinks there are no problems in life.

• Positive thinking is to see reality as it is, accept it, and make the best of it. Train your mind to concentrate only on positive, creative, and inspiring thoughts.
• Your thoughts are energy and the energy follows the thought. Thoughts create emotions, which create behavior, which create actions, and those actions have consequences in your daily life.

THOUGHT EMOTION BEHAVIOR ACTION

• Your thoughts depend on your beliefs about life.  If you change your beliefs, you will get new results!
• Practice a thought often enough so that it becomes a belief, and your behavior and actions will follow its lead. For instance, if you constantly worry about not having enough money, you’ll create behaviors based on fear. You’ll play smaller. You’ll try to hang on to the money you have versus playing to win.
• Action Step:
• Try to have no negative thoughts for 48 hours. Block them from the first moment and substitute them with positive thoughts of love, peace, and compassion. Even if it seems difficult at the beginning, hang in there. It gets easier. Then try this for 5 days, and finally a week. What has changed in your life since you started thinking positively?

 What do you believe?

• “These then are my last words to you. Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.” William James
• “The outer conditions of a person’s life will always be found to reflect their inner beliefs” James Allen
• What do you believe? You create what you believe and your world is only your interpretation of reality.

Our perception is only an approximation of reality.

• Each one of us sees the world through the lenses of our own beliefs. Does this sound like hocus-pocus to you? 
• Studies on these subjects out there show how powerful our thoughts and beliefs are! It’s the conscious and unconscious information that we accept as true.
• Robert Dilts defines beliefs as judgments and assessments about ourselves, others, and the world around us.

A belief is a habitual thought pattern.

• Beliefs are like a self-fulfilling prophecy. They work like this: your beliefs influence your emotions, your emotions influence your actions and your actions influence your RESULTS!

I want you to realize that life doesn’t just happen to you!

• It’s a reflection of your beliefs, thoughts, and expectations. If you want to change your life you have to first change your patterns of thinking.
• Nobody can impose your beliefs on you. Believing in yourself is an attitude. It’s a choice! Remember what Henry Ford said! If you think that you won’t make it, For many decades it was thought impossible that man could run a mile under four minutes. There were even scientific papers and studies on the subject.

• One can’t be totally happy as there is always something that goes wrong.
• Life is tough.
• Showing emotions is for weak people.
• I’m helpless and have no control over my life.
• I don’t deserve it.
• Nobody loves me.
• I can’t.

It’s impossible.

•  I create my destiny.
•  Nobody can hurt me if I don’t allow it.
• Life is great!
• Everything happens for a reason.
• I can do it!
• Everything is going to be all right.
  What do I believe to be true about myself?  are my beliefs concerning money? What are my beliefs concerning my relationships? are my beliefs about my body?

To change a belief follow this exercise and say to yourself:

1) This is only my belief about reality. That doesn’t mean that it is the reality.
3) Create emotions that are opposite to the belief.
4) Imagine the opposite.
5) Be aware that the belief is only an idea that you have about reality and not reality itself.
6) For just 10 minutes a day ignore what seems to be real and act as if your wish has come true.

(See yourself spending money, being healthy, more successful, etc.)

Alternative exercise:

1) Write down the limiting belief.
2) Remember the sequence: belief – emotion – action – result.

3) To get a different result – in what way do you need to act?
4) How do you need to feel to act differently and get a different result?
5) What do you need to believe to feel differently, act differently, and get a different result?

 The Importance of your Attitude

• “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances”-Victor Frankl
• Your Attitude is crucial for your happiness! It can change your way of seeing things dramatically and also your way of facing them.
• You will suffer less in life if you accept the rules of the game. Life is made up of laughter and tears, light and shadow. You have to accept the bad moments by changing your way of looking at them.
• Everything that happens to you is a challenge and an opportunity at the same time. Look at the positive side of things in life even in the worst situations. I’ll tell you again: it’s not what happens in your life that’s important; it’s how you respond to what happens to you that makes your life!

Life is a chain of moments some happy, some sad and it depends on you to make the best of every one of those moments.

• Did your wife leave you?
• Losing your job might open new doors.
• Many years ago all of the successful teachers and positive thinkers described it this way: “If life gives you a lemon, add sugar to it, and make lemonade out of it”. Younger readers might say that “If life gives you a lemon, ask for some salt and Tequila”.

• You get the point, don’t you?
• Allow yourself to make mistakes and learn from them.
• Admit that there are things you don’t know.
• Dare to ask for help and let other people help you.
• Action Step: Think of a negative situation and turn it around.

Perspective is everything

“The optimist sees the doughnut, the pessimist sees the hole.”- Oscar Wilde

• Put things into perspective! The closer you are to the problem and the more in front of it, the less you see. Step back and get a more global view of it.
• Understand how you feel faced with the problem and evaluate the real importance of it. Even seeing the problem as a challenge will be helpful!
• Every negative experience in your life has something good in its search for it! If you get into the habit of always searching for the good in every situation you will change the quality of your life drastically.

Can you feel the difference? Here are some more examples of re-framing:

• Your vision of the world and your perspective “decide” if something is “good” or “bad”. What may be a great tragedy to you could be a wake-up call for me to take my life into my hands and thrive.
• In coaching, we use what is called “Re-framing” to change the perspective that a client has an event. One of my favorites is changing “Failure” to “Feedback” or “Learning experience”.

Have patience and never give up!

• “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time” Thomas Alva Edison
• “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” Winston Churchill
• There is great virtue in never giving up.

The top two habits that will decide between success and failure, between real change and staying in the same places are patience and perseverance.

• If your plans don’t work out see it as a temporary defeat, and not as a permanent failure. Come up with a new plan and try again. This is the point at which most people give up: They lack patience and persistence in working out new plans!

Don’t confuse this with persistently pursuing a plan that doesn’t work!

• If something doesn’t work…change it! Persistence means persistence toward achieving your goal.

Don’t throw your goal away at the first sign of misfortune or opposition.

• Think of Thomas Edison and his ten thousand attempts to make the light bulb. Fail towards success like he did! Persistence is a state of mind.

Cultivate it. If you fall, get up, shake off the dust, and keep on moving towards your goal.

The habit of persistence is built as follows:

• 1. Have a clear goal and the burning desire to achieve it.
• 2. Make a clear plan and act on it with daily action steps.
• 3. Be immune to all negative and discouraging influences.
• 4. Have a support system of one or more people who will encourage you to
  follow through with your actions and to pursue your goals.

Learn the “Edison Mentality”- “I failed myself to success”

• Thomas Alva Edison “It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.”
• Theodore Roosevelt Let’s talk about failure! This subject is so important and yet so misunderstood! Paulo Coelho hits the spot when he says “There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.”

The fear of failure is the number one dream killer, but why?

• Why are we so afraid of failure? can’t we see it like Napoleon Hill who indicated that “Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit?” Or in other words, how would our lives change if we could see failure exactly as Napoleon Hill did?

Why not see it as a learning experience that is necessary for growth and which provides us with information and motivation?

• What would happen if you could fully embrace the idea that in reality failure is a sign that points towards progress?
• Learn the “Edison Mentality”. Edison himself said things like “I failed myself to success” or “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” This is what enabled him to bring many of his inventions to us.

The man just didn’t give up! Accept your mistakes as feedback and learn from them!

• How did you learn to walk? By falling many times and always getting up again. Unfortunately, somewhere along the road, you picked up the idea that failure is something terrible.

NOW is the time to change your mentality towards failure!

• At the end of the day, it comes down to this: Success is the result of the right decisions. Right decisions are the result of experience, and experience is the result of wrong decisions.

Here is a story of a famous “failure” that literally failed his way to success:

• This is the story of Abraham Lincoln, a man we would not exactly characterize as a failure, would we?
• Lost job, 1832
• Defeated for the legislature, 1832
• Failed in business, 1833
• Elected to the legislature, 1834
• Sweetheart (Ann Rutledge) died, 1835
• Had nervous breakdown, 1836
• Defeated for nomination for Congress, 1843
• Lost re-nomination, 1848
• Defeated for Senate, 1854
• Rejected for Land Officer, 1849
• Defeated for Speaker, 1838
• Again defeated for Senate, 1858 Elected President, 1860
• Defeated for nomination for Vice-President, 1856

Change Your Habits: Change Your Life 

• And here are some other famous failures: Michael Jordan: cut from his high school basketball team.
• Steven Spielberg: rejected from film school three times.
• Walt Disney: fired by the editor of a newspaper for lacking ideas and imagination.
• Albert Einstein: He learned to speak at a late age and performed poorly in school.
• John Gresham: the first novel was rejected by sixteen agents and twelve publishing houses.
• Stephen King: his first book “Carrie” was rejected 30 times. He threw it in the trash. His wife retrieved it from the trash and encouraged him to try again.
• Oprah Winfrey: fired from her television reporting job as “not suitable for television.”
• The Beatles: told by a record company that they have “no future in show business”.
  What did you learn from it? and what was the positive you got out of it?

BOOK SUMMARY OF “CHANGE YOUR HABITS, CHANGE YOUR LIFE” PART 3