The Quality of Your Life Depends on the Quality of Your Identity

We live in a world that is constantly changing.  If you take a look around, you’ll see that there is virtually nothing that stays exactly the same.  With all of these changes surrounding us, we feel a need for certainty.  We want something to stay the same, something that we can depend on.  In order for this to happen, this thing that is constant must be something that you can control.  It is your identity.  We all feel a need for our identity to stay the same.  If someone view himself as very very conservative and someone asks him to do something that is completely radical, he might say, “Oh no, I couldn’t do that. It’s just not me!”  Someone’s identity is based off of his comfort zone.  If someone expands their comfort zone, his identity will also expand.

Tony Robbins once likened one’s identity with temperature.  Let’s assume that your temperature is normally 78 degrees.  Now remember, this 78 degrees is your comfort zone or identity.  If you one day perform at 72 degrees, the heaters will kick in!  They’ll say, “You’re a 78 degreer, not a 72!  Come on now, lets do better!” You will be motivated to get back to where you were before.  Now, some people might deliberately lower their “temperature” in order to feel “safe”.  If they lower their standard to 68 degrees and they perform at 72 degrees, then they might be happy with themselves, however, the air conditioning will kick on and start to lower their performance back down to 68 degrees.

But! If one was to deliberately raise his standard (by stretching his comfort zone and raising his identity of himself) then the heaters will kick in more often until he normally does perform at his new standard.  And do you want to know what the fastest way to change your identity is? Change your state! Change your emotions right now by changing your physiology.  Change how you walk, talk, interact with others.  This will change your identity. 

Once we begin to expect more from ourselves and raise our own standards, we will achieve more, pursue our dreams, and find more joy in life!  Does that sound like a good deal?

Why You Don’t Always Get What You Want

There are many successful people out there who seem to have it all. They seem to always get what they want.  What is the difference between them and the rest of the population?  What makes all of their dreams come true while you sit there wishing?  Well, among other things, it is persistence.  They decide on what they want to do, do it, and keep going until completion.  Sounds easy right?  Actually, every single one of us is born with natural persistence as a baby.  If we did not persist, would we be walking right now?  Would we have kept putting one foot in front of the other while we repeatedly fell to the floor.  As a baby, we never walked before and really had no idea if we were even capable of it or not.  All we had to go off of was that we saw other people walking, so we thought that we should be able to also.  Well we definitely had the right idea, but somewhere along the way some of us lost it.  We come to the conclusion that we, unlike other people who are demonstrating it, are unable to do something.  This type of thinking greatly limits our potential and blocks us from even seeing opportunities!

On the other hand, some of us retained that knowledge that we were born with and knew that we could do anything that anyone else was doing if we tried hard enough and stuck with it long enough.  For example, Henry Ford decided one day that he was going to build a V8 engine.  Now, at this point in time, everyone thought that it was physically impossible to build a V8 engine.  So, when he went up to a few of his employees and told them to build this engine for him, they bluntly told him, “It is impossible; we cannot do it.”  Mr. Ford replied back, “I am paying you a large sum of money to build this engine for me.  Now don’t tell me what is or isn’t possible, just do it” (not exact quote).  So, the men worked on it for a few months and then went back to Mr. Ford. “We have tried everything you said… a V8 engine is just not possible!”  Well Henry would not accept that, and inevitably, a few months later the engine had been produced.  We all have dreams, and we all have willpower.  It is the combination of desire and willpower that makes us persist.  It is through this combination that most great achievements are made.

Now, most of us have had periods in our life when things just got so bad that we just wanted to throw in the towel and say “that’s it”.  Most of the time we are walking along on our journey of life making progress, but sometimes we just stop, look around, and sit down for a while.  We think that when we sit down we will regenerate and be able to keep going later on.  However, this actually just makes us feel like the trip is longer and harder than we originally thought.  When we sit, we make no progress and we worry more.  Yet, when we finally get the strength to get back up to our feet, stretch a little bit, and start walking once again, we usually find that what we were looking for was just a couple blocks farther.

So the next time you seem to be faced with defeat, just keep going.  See the outcome that you want in your mind, feel the emotions that go along with that wonderful outcome, and just keep going.  You will find your second wind, a new source of energy that will propel you forward – you just have to get over that hump first and you will roll the rest of the way there with outstanding persistence.  This is the core principle to getting everything you want.

Use Expectations to Your Advantage

Each and every one of us has a definite and unique perception of reality.  We use these perceptions to form beliefs, habits, chronic thoughts, and expectations.  Right now, let’s focus on expectations.

The general rule of thumb is this:  What we get out of life is in direct proportion to what we expect to get.  So, it stands to reason that if we expect more out of our life, our friends and family, and ourselves, then we will receive more of what we want.  What we really need to focus on, though, is to expect more out of ourselves.

There are so many people who, when they were younger, wanted to much.  Some of them wanted to become lawyers, doctors, teachers, parents, or anything else.  Many of them have achieved this, but therein lies the problem.  They have already achieved it, therefore there is no need to progress further.  So many of us had or have dreams, but when we look back, we are regretful that life did not turn out as we planned it to.  What happened?  Well, we settled for less than we wanted.  We let life slip by us in a blink of an eye while we just stood there and watched… and where are we now?  We very well might be living a comfortable life, but is that the life we really wanted?  Is a comfortable life an exciting life filled with adventures, mysteries, excitement, and risks?  Did you get the life you dreamed about when you were a little younger, and are you, at this moment, where you would like to be in your life?  If not then let’s take action and expect to have a better life. Really expect it!  Countless people have proven that virtually anything is possible, so what’s stopping you from having the life you really want?  Is it your beliefs, expectations, habits, fear of failure, or something else entirely?  Figure out what it is, ask yourself what action steps you can take to get there, expect that you will get there, and take action!  If you do not take action, your situation could be likened to the mad who told the fire pit to produce fire, and then he’ll add the wood. What you put into your life will be in direct proportion to what you get out of it, so work towards your ideal life, expect to get there, and later you will be looking back in marvel wondering why you let yourself settle for so much less for so long…

Until next time,
Sean Golden

How to Have Excitement

I was talking to one of my friends today and she told me, "I wish I had more excitement in my life."  As she told me this I thought to myself: A lot of people want more excitement in their life, so what is stopping them?  My friend then told me, "It's always the same old, same old."  Then it hit me!  It was not that her life needed to change, it was that she needed to change her attitude about life!

Most people just have the same day over and over again.  This is boring!  In order for your life to get more exciting, you need to change how you behave; you need to behave like your true self!  However, when some people try to do this, they feal some sort of fear.  They feel uncomfortable and end up not having the "couage" to act in public like they do with their friends.  However, this feeling is misleading.  Physiologically, fear and excitement occur in the exact same place in your body.  Your mind confuses excitement with fear and vice-versa.  The feeling that you are actually experiencing when you try something new is excitement!  Just remember that the next time you want to step out of your comfort zone.

Your comfort zone is one thing that holds many people back from living their dreams, and I'll cover that in my next post.

How to Put What You Read and Know into Action

Now you know that you must use what you read or else it is useless.  However, some people ask me how they can put what they read into action if they are either...

• Anxious
• Have misperceptions
• Have limiting beliefs
• Are intimidated
• Feel as if what they are trying to accomplish is not possible just because of who they are.

How can you change all of these negative thoughts?  With confidence!  Confident people know that they can achieve anything that is possible.  What is the difference between a confident person and a person without confidence?  Well, an easy way to tell is by looking at their body language.  A confident person will smile more, most of the time be very friendly, and will have good posture.  A not confident person will tend to avoid eye contact, might be shy, and might slouch the shoulders.

What makes someone confident?  It's all about their attitude of mind.  A confident person knows that whatever is thrown at them, they will be able to handle it.  As the book Unstoppable Confidence put it, 

"Confidence is vital because it is the difference that

makes the difference. When people consistently take action and make the appropriate course

corrections, they get massive result and achieve all their goals. However, if they lack that same

confidence, they will stay stuck. It would be no different if they had no dreams or goals at all. After

all, what’s the point if they don’t pursue them?"

Have the courage to change yourself to who you really are and you will not believes the results that you will get!

Stop to Smell the Roses

If you haven't read the last post, make sure you read it before you read this one.

Now that you are going to focus on improving your life, you must first realize something else if you are actually going to benefit from your action.

Have you ever seen or heard of someone who seemingly had it all.  A nice house, car, wife, family, money, etc...  And have you ever notice that the average level of happiness from these people is usually not much higher than the average person?  Why is this?  If they have so much, why are they not so much happier?  Well, they do not stop to smell the roses!  Most people start improving their lives because they want their life to be better so that they can be happier, but if they never stop to enjoy what they are gaining from their life, then they will not actually be happier.

So, today's lesson is that in your journey of self-improvement (the journey of becoming your true self) you have to realize that you need to stop and smell the roses every once in a while.  You have to be grateful and excited about the progress you are making in relation to your life and celebrate it!  This will also give you motivation to keep going!

In a nutshell:

1. Put everything you read into action!  What you do not use will not benefit you
2. When you have put it into action, congradulate yourself for doing so!  You are making small steps towards becomming your true self, the person that you want to be, and having a fantastic life!  Gratitude = happiness.

How to Use This Site

You can read every self-improvement out there, but there is no guarantee that you will gain even a drop of wisdom from it.  The only way to improve yourself is through action, that is what this site is all about.  If you read everything on this site but fail to actually use it in your life, you will not benefit from it.  In order to improve yourself from this site, you must do the following:

• Think about how you can use the material that you are reading about
• Write down specific points that you think will be good to remember later (if you do not write, you may not remember the information that you want to use)
• Put what you read into action, in spite of your fears, beliefs, or perceptions

If you practice these simple steps, you will realize.... how much your life is improving from this point on.  If you follow and put into action exactly what you read, you will notice an awesome improvement in your life.

What good is having knowledge if you do not use it.  That is no better off than the person who has not knowledge.