Your Master System

Your master system is made up of those five elements that determine how you perceive everything that happens in your life. To understand it is a science and therefore governed by predictable laws and patterns. Your master system is important because it controls the way you feel and what you do every moment of your life.

Now when you understand the master system of others you will begin to tune in to the core of who they are and their systematic way of reasoning, be it your boss, spouse, child, co-worker, friend or relative. You will be able to know what drives them and understand why it is they behave the way they do and connect with them on a higher level.

Because of our individual perspective and conditioning we all evaluate what is happening to and around us differently and hence different things will be important people. We all have a way or a procedure that we go through that assists us in determining what things mean to us and what solutions we need to employ in almost every situation we may face in life.

Consider a situation in which you are making a presentation to a prospective buyer and the slides you have cued up won’t show because the projector won’t work. You continue with your presentation without them and when you are finished you say to yourself “I blew it”. But from the buyer’s perspective it was a great presentation. Why the difference in viewpoints? People react this way because when something bad happen they begin to crucify themselves and in some cases in a brutal way. At this point no matter what they do they would never be able to give a good presentation.

People who are successful in life or who have mastered anything tend to make superior evaluations in those areas of expertise. So people like Michael Jordan evaluate how a game is going and his opponents manner of playing to be able to play as well as he did. You see if there is someone who is doing better than you are in any area of life, it is because they have a superior way of evaluating what things mean and what they must do about it.

The challenge for us all will be to develop and take control of our ability to evaluate our lives and everything in it, so that we are consistently guided to make choices that will produce the results we desire. To be able to do this we must first understand the five elements of our master system:

The State You Are In
The mental and emotional state you are in when you are making an evaluation determines your response to what is happening to you. So if someone tells you that you are pretty or handsome, at certain times, when you are in a good sate, you will feel pretty or handsome. At other times, when you are not in a good or receptive state, the same compliment is made you will feel the opposite. It is very important, therefore, when making evaluations that your decisions about what things mean and what to do are made when you are in a very resourceful state of mind rather than a negative unresourceful state.

The Questions You Ask Yourself
When something happens in your life your brain begins to evaluate it by asking questions such as “What is going on? What does this situation mean? Will it cause me distress or pleasure? What actions can I take now to avoid, reduce or eliminate this distress and get some pleasure?” So if you were considering applying for a particular job, whether you apply or not is determined by your evaluations. The specific questions you ask yourself as you contemplate applying for the job will greatly affect your evaluations. If you ask yourself questions like “It would be fantastic if I get this job, wouldn’t it? I am more than qualified for this job aren’t I?” chances are you will feel more motivated to apply for it. But what if your questions were “what if I am not qualified enough? What if they don’t even bother to consider my application? What if after I go to an interview they reject me?” Chances are these kinds of questions will cause you to evaluate things in such a way you won’t even bother to apply.

Your Value System
As we go through life we all tend to value certain emotions more than others. We either want to experience pleasure or more away from distress and with this in mind we develop a ‘program’ for what means distress and what means pleasure. These programs are present in our value system. Consider this, you go through life associating pleasure to the idea of being successful, yet another person may associate great distress to the same idea because they have noticed that their successful family member and friends are very unhappy and in some cases committed suicide. The values you choose will mold each and every decision you make in life. All your decisions you make boils down to the level of clarity you have about what you value most within a particular situation.

Your Beliefs
A belief is a sense of certainty about something. Your beliefs are your sense of certainty about things in our lives. Things like how to feel and what to expect from life, from ourselves, and from people in general. You also have beliefs about what has to occur for us to feel that what you value is being satisfied. Your beliefs tend to control what you are willing to evaluate and also determines your expectations.

Your Experiences
Everything you have ever experienced real or imagined in your life is stored in your brain. These experiences form the reference point from which most of, if not all, your beliefs are developed and by which our decisions are guided. Whenever we are deciding what something means to us, we tend to compare it to something, usually a past experience. We all have a reservoir of experiences we can use when making decisions but which experience we employ will determine what meaning you get from any experience, how you truly feel about it, and ultimately what action you take.

Once you make a change in just one of these five elements of your master system it will dramatically affect how you think, feel and behave in different areas of your life concurrently. You will find that you won’t even consider certain evaluations anymore, certain questions you won’t ask, and you won’t accept certain beliefs anymore

Emotions - What is Your Negative Emotions Saying to You?

Every one of us has at sometime or another experienced what is called negative emotions. These emotions are seen by many as a signal that something is not the way it should be and hence a call to action. Your negative emotions are sending you a message but many of you have no idea what the message is and what it means. Each negative emotion has within it a positive message, which you must find.

There are ten basic negative emotions and each emotion has a message you must figure out if you want to live the life you desire. These ten negative emotions are:

1. Anger.

When you are angry you will feel anything from being irritated to being furious, upset or even total rage. The message anger is sending you is that some very important standard or present rule you have for your life has being trampled upon by someone, some event, or even by you. The solution is to recognize that you may be misinterpreting the situation completely. It could be that your anger exists because someone has violated your rules not knowing what’s important to you and the rules you have for yourself. Consider also that your rules or standards may not be the correct ones to have, despite how right you think and believe they are. It’s important also too ask yourself more empowering questions. So ask yourself “Over time is it really true that my friend really cares about me?” You can also ask, “ What is there for me to learn from this?” How do I let this person know how important these standards of mine are to me and in a manner that will make them want to come to my aid and not infringe on them in the future?

If you find yourself angry change how you think of the situation, it could be that whoever it is that made you angry did not know of your rules or that you underestimated the likelihood of an event happening. It could be that you did not effectively communicate what your true needs are or that you did not plan appropriately. You could start letting people know immediately know what your rules or needs are or being more detail and specific about your plans.

2. Frustration.

Frustration is defined as ‘being prevented from carrying out your plans or purpose’. In life there are many sources of frustration, generally however, frustration occurs when we feel like we are making the effort to accomplish something but we feel like we have too many hurdles in our way or no rewards are forthcoming. What this emotion is saying to you is that you believe you could be doing much better than you are presently.

Frustration is a signal that what you are presently doing is not working and you need to change your approach in order to get to your goal. It is signaling to you, your need to look at other alternatives.

The solution for frustration is to come up with new ideas of how to get the result you desire. Find someone who has what you want and mimic what they did to get it. If you can’t find someone then search for information elsewhere, in books, on television, library, on tapes, videos and even in counseling.

3. Discomfort.

These emotions tend not to be intense yet they irritate us and let us know that something is not what it should be. It could be that how you are looking at things is off, or maybe your actions are not producing the results you desire.

To solve the problem of discomfort you need to 1) be clear on what you want, 2) try a different approach and see if you can right away change the way you are feeling about the situation or the results you are getting, 3) change the state of mind you are presently in, choose a positive state of mind.

4. Hurt.

This is the premier emotion that seems to dominate our relationships both personal and professional. Whenever you feel hurt it is usually created by a sense of loss. It is common for people to lash out at others when they feel hurt. Yet the signal that feeling hurt is sending you is that we have an expectation that has not been met.

What you need to do is 1) take the time to re-evaluate what’s happening and ask yourself “Am I really feeling loss here or am I rushing to judgment or am I judging the situation too harshly?” 2) Understand the maybe it is that you have not lost anything, it could be that you need to loose you false perceptions that you are the target of hurt. It could be that they are unaware of the effects their actions on you and your life. 3) In a sensitive manner try to communicate your feeling of loss to whomever has hurt you. You can say to them “When you shout at me I feel like you don’t care and have a sense of loss. Can you tell me what’s happening?” By changing how you communicate and getting clarity on what’s happening what you’ll find is that the hurt ends to disappear quickly.

5. Fear

The fear emotion is one that includes feelings of concern, intense worry, anxiety, fright and even terror. When you feel fear what you are feeling is the anticipation that something that needs to be prepared for is going to happen soon. Many people try to deny their fear or choose to wallow in it. Never surrender to fear and make it bigger than it really is by focusing on the worst outcome, also do not pretend it doesn’t exist.

To deal with your fearful feelings you need to 1) identify what it is you are fearful about and then think of what you must do to prepare yourself mentally 2) then decide what actions you need to take to handle the situation in the most satisfying way.

There are times, however, when we have done all we can do to prepare, but we still find ourselves fearful. At this point we must decide to have faith, with the knowledge that we have done everything we can to prepare for whatever it is we’re fearing and that most of the fears we have rarely come to past.


6. Guilt.

Guilt and similar emotions like remorse and regret is one of that most persons try to avoid. This is so because they are amongst the more painful of emotions to experience. What your guilt is telling you is that you have violated one of your own high standards or rules and you must take action right now to make sure you won’t violate that standard or rule again.

Many people try to handle their guilt by pretending it’s not there or just suppressing it all together. This, however, hardly works as the guilt doesn’t dissipate but comes back even stronger. At times you may have done something and the guilt you feel immobilizes you and you wallow in it with great remorse and end up feeling inferior for a very long time. This is not the message guilt is sending you, no, no it is their to guide you away from doing things that will lead to guilt.

Guilt is dealt with by 1) acknowledging the fact that you have violated a particular standard you have for yourself, 2) totally commit yourself to eliminating that behaviour once and for all 3) run through your mind how you would have handled the situation, where you would feel guilty, differently and hold on to the belief that it will never happen again. In the end you will realize that you can let go of the guilt.

7. Disappointment.

Whenever you feel disappointment you are actually feeling let down, or that you are about to totally miss out on something. If you were expecting more than you have gotten and end up feeling sad or defeated then you are experiencing disappointment.

Disappointment is try to tell you that an expectation you had is likely not to happen so now you need to change your expectations to make them appropriate for the situation and then set and go after a new goal right away.

The solution to disappointment is to 1) find what it is you can learn from the situation that can aid you in the long run to achieve that which you where seeking in the beginning 2) come up with a new goal that will inspire you much more than the last one and make it something you can move towards and make progress on right now 3) consider that you may be jumping to conclusions too soon, it could be that our disappointment is only a temporary challenge 4) develop more patience, maybe the situation is not over just yet. All you need is a more effective plan for achieving your goal 5) one powerful way to deal with disappointment is to develop a positive expectancy attitude about what will happen in the future, in spite of your past history.

8) Overwhelmed.

This happens whenever we see our world in such a way that we end up feeling like there’s too much going on or happening, than we can deal with.

The solution is 1) decide on what is the most important thing that you have doing right now that you need to focus on. 2) write down everything that is most important for you to accomplish and prioritize them 3) then begin to take on the first item on your list and do what you need to do to master it. Once you have mastered the first item you move on to the next one, master it and move on until you have completed the list. You will, as you go through the list, begin to feel in control and not overwhelmed. You will also realize that the problem is not permanent and that you can come up with solutions.

9) Inadequacy.

If you feel you are unable to do something you should be able to do you are likely to be feeling inadequacy or unworthy. If you are feeling this way it means that right now at this moment you don’t possess the level of skill necessary for the task. You need more information, tools, understanding and possibly strategies.

Conquering inadequacy requires that you 1) question your perceptions ask “am I expressing the right emotion for this situation?” “Do I really believe I’m inadequate or should I modify the way I perceive things 2) tell yourself that you are not ‘perfect’ and you will never be and don’t need to be. Commit yourself to improving this area 3) find someone who is more effective in the area where you feel inadequate, a role model, and mimic what they are doing or get them to coach you.

10). Loneliness.

This covers things that make you feel alone, separated or apart from others. It tells us that we need to connect with people. This connection should not be an intimate or sexual one for you are likely to end up feeling frustrated and lonely still.

Loneliness is handled by 1) recognizing that you can end loneliness by reaching out and connecting with someone 2) figure out the kind of connection you need e.g. whether a friendship or just someone who will listen to you 3) take action right now to reach out and connect with someone.

All these ten emotions have within them positive messages and a signal that we must take action to change the situation. Use this list, review it as often as you can and keep looking for the positive messages that each signal is sending you and the corresponding solution you can employ in the future.

How to Establish Patterns of Excellence: The Seven day mental Challenge

If you want to launch your life into the next level you must first realize that to get to where you want to go the same pattern of thinking that got you to where you are now will no longer work. Many of you resist change because you believe that what are currently doing is working just fine getting you to the success you now enjoy. This is great if you are satisfied with you success but reality dictates that you will need a new way of thinking if you want to experience a new level of professional and personal success.

To do this you must take control of what our mind is focusing on by breaking through the barriers of our fears. You cannot allow your mind to be affected and controlled by those momentary problems that pop up from time to time these patterns must be broken permanently. Once this is done you replace the old patterns with a commitment to focus on, seek out solutions and revel in the process. You need to establish patterns of excellence.

It is important that we pay attention to and notice when we are about to engage in a negative pattern and not get caught up in it, nor dwell on it nor crucify ourselves about it. What you must do is too simply break the pattern as quickly as it occurs or as we find them and place new empowering patterns in their place.

How then do you break these patterns when they arise? Here is a very simple plan to do just that and also help you to condition the new empowering patterns of excellence and make them permanent.

1) Decide what it is you really want.
2) Find plenty of reasons why you must change now.
3) Disrupt the limiting pattern

To disrupt the limiting patterns the most effective way to do it is to spend some time focusing on taking conscious control of your thoughts. Call it a “Mental Cleanse” as it is about erasing the destructive and negative patterns of thinking and feeling that we have developed through years of reacting emotionally and in an undisciplined mental manner. So do a mental cleanse, take the Seven day mental Challenge.

The Seven day Mental Challenge
Criteria 1
For the next seven days commit yourself to taking full control of all your mental and emotional faculties by deciding right now that you will not indulge in or dwell on any unresourceful thoughts or emotions for seven consecutive days. This also applies to the words that come out of your mouth and the internal conversations you have with yourself.

Make no mistake, for most of you this will not be easy and you will be surprise to find out just how often you engage in negative thinking.



Criteria 2
Should you find yourself beginning to indulge in negative thoughts, you must immediately focus on more positive and resourceful way of being in spite of the situation and what may be happening to you at that moment. To help you with this I suggest that you ask yourself what I call “Solution Questions” like “What’s good about this situation?” “What needs to be changed?” One thing I do when faced with negative thoughts is to think about and focus on the way I would like things to be. I do this to the point where I would begin to see the end result I envision. I do not fool myself as if the situation will just disappear no, no, no, I focus on the end result I desire because it puts me in a resourceful state.

Another thing you can do is to set yourself up for an empowering and resourceful way of thinking for the day. You do this by asking yourself certain empowering questions like “What am I thankful about in my life?” “What makes me excited about my life?” “What makes me happy about my life?” The questions you use should be designed to help you experience joy, happiness, gratitude, love, appreciation and excitement each day. Do the same thing in the evenings by asking yourself about the day that has passed. Questions like “What did I do today that made my life better?” “What did I learn today?” You can come up with you own positive questions.

Criteria 3
Focus entirely on solutions and not on the problems that arise. So when a hurdle pops on seek out the solution immediately before it gets too big to handle quickly.

Criteria 4
Should you fall off the boat and find yourself indulging in negative thoughts or feelings, don’t worry yourself too much. Just make a change quickly, find the solution. If however your negative thoughts or feelings linger for too long say three minutes then you have to start the challenge all over again the following morning. Remember this is a seven-day challenge so if you go six days without holding a negative thought and on the seventh day you have a persistent negative thought you must start the process all over again.

The criterion for the challenge is simple but it will not be easy for most you must however persist until you nail it. You should not at any time engage in this seven-day challenge if you are harbouring any doubts about being totally committed to it. You must be certain that you are willing to live by and stick to it for the seven days. If you do not begin with a total commitment in mind you will not make it to the seventh day.

The payoffs of sticking to the seven-day challenge are likely to be many but at least three things are like to happen to you. Firstly you will become more aware of the way in which you consistently look at things and the mental outlook that may be hampering your growth. Secondly it will cause you to begin to seek out much more empowering ways to deal with situations and emotions which in turn will give you a confidence boost as you become a solutions person. Thirdly once new habits and ways of thinking are formed, you will begin to create a bigger vision of and for yourself.

When you commit and follow through with the challenge you will be breaking away from those disempowering habits that have imprisoned you. Never be a slave to your emotions nor your environment. By controlling your responses to events and your emotions you will find that new ideas, solution and expectation will suddenly appear, it will be easier to be calm, creative, and engage in consistent action.

Now, bear in mind that it’s possible to do this challenge and it’s going to be hard for most of you so commit to it totally. You are one who has to make it work if you desire new patterns of excellence. In the long run this may turn out to be the catalyst that causes you to begin to consistently have a positive focus forming a life long habit. You should use the Seven-Day Mental Challenge as often as you can to ensure that you continually establish patterns of excellence.

Goals: How You Create a Fulfilling Future

Let me ask you a question, “What is your vision for your future?” Can you truthfully answer and if you can, is it one that will draw you to it like a magnet even through those tough times. Many people in life know what it is they should do, but they never do it. Why? One reason is that they lack the drive that only a fulfilling future can provide. It’s time to burst out our box and begin to dream at a top level, to think up crazy and unusual possibilities and maybe you will find something that can take your life to a level you never dreamed of.

To create a fulfilling future and live the kind of life we desire for ourselves we must have potent goals. You will never find the drive you need if your goals are not exciting. Once you find your goals exciting, they will keep you up late at night and get you up in the mornings raring to go, they will inspire you to effectively use your innate resources and everything you can find within your reach to bring them to reality.

When people say that they don’t have any or that setting goals is a waste of time, what they don’t understand is that according to how our minds work it is always going after something even if it is just to reduce the anxiety you feel day to day or to increase the joy we feel some days. Every one of us has goals it’s just that we are all not consciously directing the use of our resources to achieving them. For many people their goals are to ‘get by in life’ or what is called survival goals, these kind of goals will never give you the power to tap into the reserve of creativity and unlimited potential within you to design the life you want.

To tap into the unlimited possibilities that lie within us we must find a goal big enough and strong enough to cause us to go outside our limits and find our true potential. Keep in mind that where you are now in life is in no way a reflection of your innate potential, it is merely about the quality and size of the goals upon which you are presently focusing.

Once you set large goals they will appear impossible for you to achieve. An important step in goal setting is to find a goal big enough to inspire us. Your goals must be something that will make you let your power show. In order to achieve whatever seemingly impossible goals we have and be inspired during the process we must put aside those limiting beliefs we have about ourselves, and what is possible for us to achieve.

When you set your goals you are taking the first step in turning the dream into reality and creating a fulfilling future. Once you truly set a goal, providence will comes to your aid working with your own intensely emotional thoughts to create your ideal situation. You therefore are able to design the life you want through the thoughts you continually put out each second of your life.

Do you realize that all the commodities, technological product, and other developments we now enjoy once existed only in the minds of the people who created them. The light bulb started out as an idea in Thomas Edison’s mind other products alike the airplane, computers, the internet, websites, search engines were all just crazy thoughts in someone’s mind. All of these inventions and development were created and brought into existence amidst beliefs that said it could not be done. What if the Wright brothers had listened to the naysayers, we all would not be able to travel by plane now. So no matter how crazy your goals seem to be to other or even to you it is possible to achieve them.

You may be thinking all this so far is too philosophical and is for other people, setting goals you think really doesn’t change anything nor cause thoughts to become real. Well let me be frank here, setting a goal is not and can never be the be all and end all of the process, no, no. Any goal you set for yourself must be immediately followed by a plan of how you are going to achieve it and then all out consistent and persistent action directed toward it’s attainment. A simple process, but hard one to execute for many.

Why then do people not set goals? What’s preventing from doing so? Many of you have read all the self help books, many with special chapters on goal setting so you have an idea of what goal setting can do for you. Chances are you do not have well clarified goals about the end results you would like to create in you life. What may have halted many of you is that you have a subconscious fear of being disappointed. For many people when they have set goals in the past and failed to attain them, the pain of the disappointment and the fear of it happening again in the future cause them to stop setting goals. These folks are afraid to set goals with any high expectation of them coming to past least they do not and they end up being devastated. Then there are those people who will set a goal and crucify themselves by staking their own existence and joy on being able to achieve them even though the attainment of the goal may be beyond their control.

It must be said here that just because you set yourself a goal means that you will achieve it, for life has a way of presenting to you, as you head towards your goal, other worthwhile and better goals. At times like this you may just decide to go with one of them because they inspire more. At times if you fail to achieve your goals you end up achieving your life’s goals (your real goals). A friend of mine once had a goal of being a physiotherapist; she applied and was accepted into a university studying physiotherapy. She flunked out after her second year and had taken a job as a customer service/marketing agent. You will not find a happier person alive, she loves her job to the point where she eat sleeps and walks it. When she speaks about her job I feel like I would want to do it.

It is also prudent to realize that when you are in pursuit of your goals that life goes on. The sun will rise and set at about the same time each day, flowers will bloom, seasons will come and go, the children will grow up. All these things will happen whether we achieve our goals or not. So it is important to know that achieving the goal can never be the only thing that matters in your like, it is also the quality of life you live whilst pursuing it.

There are many people who see goal setting as something for some day in the future when something else has happened, like achieving something. After that has happened then they will set and seek their goals, after that has happen they will be able to enjoy their life. These people are going through life putting off their joy and happiness. Goals are great to have but we must also work to live every day to it’s fullest. So instead of seeing your success or failure in life in terms of your ability to achieve a particular goal. It is necessary to know that it’s the direction that you are heading which is far, more important than the results. For we may achieve the goals we are pursuing and much much more if we continue to head in the right direction. Missing your dream may lead you to your future.

This does not mean that if you are pursuing your goals and you come upon some initial failure or frustration that you should just stop chasing you goals and try another one. You will never achieve a goal by being interested in it’s achievement, you simply must be totally committed to it. You must be persistent. Persistence determines who will win. The key to achieving goals is the resolving to commit to being constant and consistent in your actions towards the goal.

Far too often many people are too fearful that they will fail and because of this they never begin to pursue a goal. Many still give up far too soon after they start pursing their goal. They may have been on the right track going in the right direction to achieve what they want but because it’s not happening fast enough they quit, if only they had the patience and the persistence. Change your approach if you have to as is necessary but never give up on your ultimate goal.

So what are you going to do now in order to take your dreams to the realm of reality? Get a sheet of paper and for each major area of your life (e.g. career, relationships, money, adventure) write down what your dreams are. Ask yourself constantly “What kind of life would I want if I could have it the way I wanted?” “What would I go after if failure was not a possibility?” Now when doing this you must do a couple of thing 1) put off you need to know just how you are going to achieve them 2) never doubt your capability nor question it. You have to be in a state of mind where you have pure faith and the expectation that you can create anything you wanted.

Next you are going to put a time line on each of your major goals be it one year, or ten years write it down. Once again do not worry about how you are going to do it nor whether the time line is long enough. It is your commitment to achieving your goal that is important.

Now that you have your goals and have stet your time line you now have to choose your top one-year goal and write down all your reasons why your are committed to achieving this goal in the time line you have specified. Write down as many reasons as you can think of and make them strong enough so that they can move you, give you the drive and get you excited at a deeper level about the process.

It’s important at this point to make sure you look on your goals day in and day out. Display them where you can see them every day, be it on a sheet of paper stuck to the mirror in your bedroom, in your diary. Everywhere and anywhere is good as long as you can see it. Be committed to doing something each day towards the attainment of your goal you are likely to make headway each day.
This next process may seem way out there but you must do it because it works. At least once a day (three times a day is preferable) see yourself as already in possession of the goals and experience the joy you will feel on a deep emotional level. This consistent focus will cause you to feel a sense of certainty that your desires will be attained and hence your actions will ensure your success.

It is important to understand that your goals are just a means to an end and not what our life is about. Goals aid us in focusing our attention towards a particular desire, they help us in our personal growth. In the long term achieving goals by themselves will never make us happy. It is who we become through the process of achieving our goal that gives us the greatest, deepest and long lasting sense of fulfillment. So ask yourself “What kind of person must I become in order to attain my goal?” what skills do I need to learn? What kind of clothes should I wear? What kind of attitude must I have? What other areas do I need to develop in order to live my dreams? Write it all down.

The most important step in setting your goal is your follow through. Many people set goals and all they remain is a something that was written on a sheet of paper because they never followed through. Once you have set your goals you absolutely must take some form of positive action towards its achievement, immediately. You actions can be as simple as thinking up the name of the business you want to start, or doing some research on home financing for that home you want to buy.

Another crucial element in the whole goal setting process is that whenever you find that you are about to achieve a goal it is important that you begin to set up the next set of goals. If you don’t you may experience a kind of let down and end up asking yourself “Is that all there is?” because you don’t see anywhere else to go from there. Some people even end up in deep depression after achieving their goals. So it is important that you set highly compelling goals to guarantee a smooth transition from completion to new inspiration and a continued commitment to personal growth. If your original goal is the ultimate goal for you then it can be difficult to have the commitment and drive to go outside our comfort zone and pursue a new goal. But we can do so by giving of ourselves to others, as contribution is a powerful way of living and can inspire us for a lifetime.

In your drive towards your goals it is always good and a smart thing to figure out from the beginning what roadblocks you may face on the way. What out there or within you that may prevent from attaining your goal and do something to deal with them right away rather that later.

A compelling future creates a high level of personal growth. It is a necessity that allows you to set out and achieve that which you desire. You will have a sense of control over your destiny, and experience joy, excitement and growth as you go along the way giving your life meaning. Now go set some goals and do something to achieve them.

Mastering Your Emotions: Feelings the Truth

The word emotion is derived from the Latin word meaning “to move out” or “to excite” and Psychologist define emotions as ‘ physiological changes and conscious feelings of pleasantness or unpleasantness aroused by external and internal stimuli that leads to behavioural reactions’ (Davis and Palladino: Psychology 2nd ed.). Simply put your emotions are what you are feeling at any given moment no matter what is happening to you and it makes you react and behaviour in certain appropriate ways.

Many persons feel that their emotions are not in their control. They believe that they are slaves to their emotions and that they are just reacting to the events of their lives. There are even those who fear their emotions as if it is some great big tyrant. In an effort to avoid feeling certain emotions many people do things like turn to drugs, alcohol, overeating, sex and even get into a paralyzing depression.

Most of us handle emotions in four common ways:

Denial.
We all use this strategy at some point. It generally it occurs when we try to disassociate from our feelings by saying things like “ it really doesn’t hurt that bad” Yet we keep holding on to how terrible things are, or how no matter what we do and how perfect we do them things will always turn out wrong, and why does this always happen to us. If you have done this, what you are doing is focusing on the wrong thing by the disempowering questions you keep asking yourself. You see when you experience an emotion and then try to pretend it’s not there you create more pain for yourself. So by ignoring the signals your emotions are trying to send you, you will never be able to make things better. If you ignore these signals the emotions will only just increase their intensity and will keep intensifying until you finally decide to attend to it.

Avoidance
This is another approach we all use as we try to avoid those painful emotions we experience. As we do this we also tend to avoid any situation that may lead to the emotions we that fear. So if you far being criticized, then you would try to avoid any situations that would lead to you being criticized. You will shy away from certain relationships or even from applying for certain challenging jobs. When you deal with emotion in this manner you are setting yourself up for a big trap, because although avoiding negative situation may protect you in the short-term, it keeps you from feeling the sense of achievement, being praised, the approval and success you desire most. Ultimately what you’ll learn is that you can’t avoid feeling.

Indulgence
Many of us tend to get to a point where we stop fighting our painful emotions and decide to just totally indulge in them. We submerge ourselves in them so deep that instead of learning the positive messages our emotions are trying to give us we make it so intense that we end up making it worse. We then begin to say things like “if you think things are hard for you, let me tell you how hard it is for me” It’s as if the emotion become an integral part of who we are and what makes us unique. We then begin to take pride in being worse off than anyone else. This approach tends to end up becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy with the person having a vested interest in feeling bad all the time and that’s when they are truly trapped.

Making emotions work for us
If you want you life to work it’s imperative that you make your emotions work for you. Do not run or hide from them, do not fool yourself about them or what they mean and never allow them to run or control your life. Your emotions whether positive or negative are like a map with directions pointing you towards the actions you need to take to get to your desired goal.

You must comprehend the truism that your emotions are there to serve you and until you see that you can never effectively use your emotions. To create the results you desire for a higher quality of life you must learn from your emotions and in turn use them to that end. Your negative emotions therefore are really a call to action, a signal that something needs to be done. The moment you begin to be familiar with signals your emotions are sending you and the messages there in, your emotions will also begin to aid you. You will be guided through highs and lows of this life and once you learn to use these signals you’ll begin to have the confidence to experience all the wealth you are capable of. It is therefore necessary to master your emotions and use them to your advantage

How to Master Your Emotions.
The first thing you need to do when mastering your emotions is to know your true feelings. Have you ever felt so overwhelmed that you don’t even know what you’re truly feeling? All you know is that negative emotions and feelings seem to be swarming through you. Interrupt this pattern by stepping back for a moment and just ask yourself “What am I truly feeling at this moment?” if your fist thought is that “I’m frustrated” ask yourself right away “Am I truly frustrated or is it something else?” “Could it be that what I am feeling is disappointment?” By simply taking a moment to figure out what you are truly feeling and questioning and challenging your emotions you will be able to lessen the intensity of the emotion you’re experiencing and hence be able to deal with the situation much quicker. You’ll also find it easier to learn from the emotion.

Next you must admit and give value to your emotions, because they anchor you. Many of us have had those moments when we make our emotions wrong. This is something you should never do, as it is a sure way of blocking true communication with your inner self and even with other persons. What you must do is be grateful and thankful that your brain is sending you signals of support urging you to take action to change your perceptions or something in your life even you present actions. By trusting your emotions even when you don’t understand them and knowing that they are there to support you in making positive changes, you will begin to end the internal wars you have with yourself. You’ll then begin to seek out and move towards the simpler solutions.

You then have to be eager to learn what your emotions are saying to you. Do not just accept your emotions on face value for sometimes what you presently feel is really about something else. When you become eager to learn what your emotions are saying to you, you will begin to master them, which in turn assists you in solving the challenge and prevent the said problem from reoccurring. So if you find yourself feeling rejected, for example, ask yourself “could I be misinterpreting the situation to mean I’m not good enough when in reality I am using one instance to make my determination?” “What if I approached other persons who may be accepting of me?” “Is my feeling rejected a message that I need to take action to change how I present myself? Ask yourself the following four questions when questioning what your emotions are saying to you:
1. What is it that I truly want to feel?
2. To feel the way I have been feeling what would I have to believe?
3. To create a solution and handle this right now what am I willing to do?
4. Is there anything I can learn from this?
5. What actions can I take now?
You answers to these questions will help you to learn about your emotions and their uniqueness each time they occur.

It’s very important that you believe you can do it, that you can deal with this emotion right now. The simplest, most powerful and quickest way to handle an emotion is to recall an instance in the past when you felt a similar emotion and recognize that you had successfully handled it before. If you dealt with it in the past then it is possible that you can deal with it again right now. Think about how you dealt with your emotions in the past and use this as your guide for what you can do right now to change how you feel. What was your process back then? Did you change your perception, what you focused on, and the questions you asked yourself? Do the same things right now believing that it will work just as it did before. So if you’re feeling lonely, for example, and you were able to turn it around in the past, ask yourself “What did I do back then?” Did you take action by calling up some of your friends and staying in touch with them thereafter? Did you visit your friend at their home? Whatever you did in the past try them out right now and you will likely get similar results.

Next you have to be sure you can handle the emotion in the future. To do this you need a great plan to do so. One method you can use is to remember the way you have handled it in the past and rehearse handling those situations where this negative emotion would come up in the future. You will have to use visualization to hear, feel and see yourself handling the situation with ease. By doing this over and over again with some emotional intensity will cause your behaviour to be set in such a way you will easily deal with the challenge. You can also write down a couple of other ways (at least four of them) you can change your perceptions when negative emotions arises. Do this also for ways you can change how you communicate your feelings and your needs and also for ways you could change the actions you were taking in this particular situation.

The next step is to take action. It makes no sense to go through the first five steps and not take immediate action, you would have wasted your time and nothing would have changed. So once you believe you can handle an emotion take action immediately to prove to yourself that you can handle it.

These six steps can help you master any emotion that may arise in your day-to-day life. Practice using these steps as often as you can it may seem hard at first but the more you do them the better and simpler it will become for you. It is important that you realize that the best time to deal with an emotion is when you first start feeling it. So don’t delay in applying the six steps and save yourself the distress.

Whatever you Concentrate on becomes your Reality: The Power of Focus

To concentration upon something, whether real or imagined, is to focus on it. To focus on something is to attend to it or simply put, to pay intense attention to it. You and I if we wanted to could get sad at a moments notice, couldn’t we? Yes we could and we can do this just by concentrating on something we may have experienced in our past that made us sad. If you focus on something enough, picture it and think about it soon you will begin to feel it. The same is true for things that have not happened yet.

How you feel about things and the meaning you attach to a particular experience is all dependent on your focus. So how you feel about food and your feeling of pleasure when you eat is so because your focus is on eating for pleasure and comfort.

Focus must never be considered true reality simply because it’s just one view, one perception of the way things really are. Consider this, one day you get into a bus and see a young woman crying, we are likely to believe that she is sad or had some bad news or bad experience. You approach her and ask what’s wrong only to be told she just got the job of her dreams and that’d why she’s crying ‘tears of joy’; she is still in disbelief about getting the job. You see, because you were focused on her tears and what crying generally means we were sad for her, until we learnt the truth. So how you feel is based strictly on what you focus on.

What if one day your eleven-year-old son or daughter didn’t arrive home from school at their usual time? Fifteen, thirty, forty-five minutes passes, how you feel is going to be determined by what you focus on. Do you begin to think in your mind that the reason they are so late getting home is because something dreadful has happened to them or maybe the bus broke down and another bus is picking up the stranded passengers and that takes time? Whichever situation you focus will directly affect your emotions. What if you had gotten upset with them and you then found out that they had soccer practice and you had forgotten about it? So be careful what you focus on as it determines how you feel.

It’s important to note that when we change our focus many times we don’t change our direction right away. There is often a lag time between when you change your focus and when your experiences and your body catch up. So we need to quickly start concentrating on what we want and not wait.

Your focus determines whether your perception of your reality is a good or a bad one and whether you feel happy or sad. So it’s important to learn ways to make sure you condition your focus to be as positive as it can be. You must take control of your mind and discipline or else it will play tricks on you.

To control your focus the simplest and most powerful way is by asking yourself some potent questions. You see, whatever you ask it your brain provides you with an answer and whatever you are looking for you will find it, but only if you ask. The more empowering the question, the more empowering the answer will be. So instead of asking, “Why did I fail my exam?” Where you are focusing on your exam failure, consider asking, “What do I need to do to get the grade I want?” this will bring to you a more empowering answer. It is very important to always use questions as a tool too change your life. They can literally change the way you feel about anything and hence change the direction of your like very quickly.

Psychologists will tell you that it’s not only what we focus on but also how we experience the world, which is dependent on how we gather information via the use of our five senses. We all have a tendency to develop and favour a particular way of focusing. Some of us are more visually impacted so what we see influences us more. Other people are more auditory, where sounds trigger our life experiences. These modes of experiences have within them specific elements of sounds, pictures, and other sensations that can be modified so as to increase or decrease the intensity of our experience. These elements are called submodalities. So we can create a musical rhythm in our minds and then take any part of that rhythm (a submodality) and change it to change your feelings about it. We can change the loudness of the drums in the rhythm, immediately changing the amount of intensity you feel about the experience.

By manipulating submodalities you can raise or lower your intensity of feeling about anything. This is so because they affect your feeling about most things be it happiness, sadness, or pain. When you have an understanding of submadalities you will be able to change how you feel about anything you experience in life and also change what It means to you and by extension what you can do about it.

You must discipline your mind and what you are thinking and also the way you are thinking if you would live a better life.

Your Personal Development Plan

To help ensure success in life it is good for every one of us to have a personal Development Plan (PDP) to guide us along life’s road. Your Personal development is not a destination, you’ll never get ‘there’ wherever ‘there’ is. Your personal development is ongoing so as you accomplish or master one area of your life you will move onto the next level or expand that area.

Many people have a ‘mental block’ when it comes on to addressing problems about themselves and fact there are those who are terrified about taking time and thinking about any such problem. These folks find it much much easier to work on a project or to help someone else to solve their own problems but won’t even consider addressing their own. For this reason and others it is important that we all have a PDP.

Based on your current situation and role, a PDP will help to prioritize the most important areas of your life that you need to concentrate on and will point you in the right direction for further advice and training.

Identifying Areas that need development.
When constructing your PDP I suggest you begin by identifying the areas in your life that need attention. It can be challenging to identify areas of your life that need development especially if you are not in tune with who you are, what you desire, what you have and don’t have. You have to be aware of where you life is now in terms of what’s working and what’s not and also what you are ignoring totally. Just because you have tried in the past to develop certain areas of your life and failed doesn’t mean you cannot be successful in the future, the timing may be wrong.

For many of us our personal development goals are just not strong enough, they have no ‘humph’ in them, no great desire behind them so we keep changing them from day to day or year to year. I’m sure you know those people who on January 1st every year list out the things they want to achieve for that year when they have not even tried to accomplish their goals for the previous year.

So to identify the areas in your life you need to develop the first thing you need to do is to ask yourself “what are the areas in my life that are very important to me and to well being and my existence.” these areas will be different for each of us, for me they are:
1. Physical health
2. Mental/emotional
3. Spiritual
4. Achievement/recreation
5. Financial
6. Relationships-romantic and family

Be careful not to get too hung up on names and what falls into what category, just write them down. This is really just to make it easier to decide on what you want to improve in your life and is by no means carved in stone.

What are your Personal Development goal for each Area
Once you have identified the important areas of your life write down everything that you would like to improve for each area as it relates to your personal growth. In most cases your development goal is going to be about either building on your existing strengths or developing new skills and competencies. So under ‘Physical’ you can state how you would like your body to look, do you need to join a gym today, stop eating meat, exercise five times a week and so on. The key here is to write down anything and everything that comes into mind, whatever you can imagine write it down. You can include short-term goals –something you may want to achieve this week and also long-term goals –things you want to achieve in twenty to twenty-five years. Make the goals ones that you can get excited about.

Put a Timeline on each goal
Once you have listed the goals for each area of your personal development you then have to take the time to put a time line on each goal. It’s not important right now to know how you are going to accomplish your goals. All you do right now is to write down a time frame within which you’ll want to operate. By deciding when you’ll achieve a goal providence comes to your aid in making them a reality. If one year is your time frame and you are committed to this then write down one year. If it’s five years then write down five years.

Begin with your one-year goal
You want to choose the one goal that you consider to be the most important in any of the areas you have identified, make it a goal that would give your great excitement and make you feel that your year was well spent if you were to accomplish it. Next write a paragraph or two stating why you are totally committed to achieving this goal within the year. Include why this is a must for you, what benefits will you gain by achieving it, what will you lose or miss if you didn’t achieve it. Whatever reasons you come up with ensure that they are strong enough to get you to follow through. If they are not, then come up with better and more empowering reasons or better goals.

Where are you now
Once you have determined what your one-year goal will be you start by analyzing where you are starting. This will become the “baseline” from where you measure your progress. A clear awareness of where you are now will help greatly in facilitating your development. If you find it hard to focus on this or to be honest with yourself you can ask for feed back from someone who knows you well and can be objective. You can ask your friends, family, or even your work colleagues as they are all observing you and are affected by the things you do and will therefore have some views about your skills. Ask them questions like:
“What am I good at”,
“What am I great at”,
“What do you think I could be better at”
Make sure they are specific in what they are saying to you. If you do not want a long drawn out epistle from your friends you can limit them to two or three comments.

If you choose to ask someone else pay careful attention to what they are saying as not everything you hear will be flattering to you and some comments will be useless to you. Note whatever is said keeping in mind that good feedback is always specific, clear and non-critical, so if someone says “you’re always doing crazy things’ this should not be take as feedback but criticism and you should total ignore it’s not worth your time.

Once you are done combine your thoughts and the feedback you get and make a list by writing down what you think were your strengths and weaknesses. You need to be honest with yourself here. Check to see if there are any patterns emerging from the comments.

The End Result
At this point what you do is to imagine what it would be like if you got up tomorrow morning and your was solved. Write down how you will feel, what you will be thinking and what it will be like. Make sure these statements are made in the affirmative and positive. So instead of writing “I feel o.k. about the way I’m dressing now” you should write “I fell happy and confident about my clothes and how they look on me”

Action Plan
Next you need to identify what you need to do to take you to where you want to be. This is the time to think creatively about what you need o do. There are wide range and a large number of resources out there, ready and waiting for you to use to take you in the right direction. There will be a mixture of self-study, formal training, informal training and “on the job” experiences. Only you will know what’s best for you, your budget and your lifestyle. So if your goal is to be physically then you will want to find out information on health and fitness. Your fist stop would be you doctor, and then maybe a trainer, then you need information on a gym that fits what you need. You get what I mean. After you have written down all the things you need to do put them in some order some that you know what you will be doing first and what’s next and so on. Break it down to its simplest task if possible. Take your time when doing your plan and one important point is that it doesn’t have to be perfect, so do not try and make it so.

Your Reward
Though not necessary you may want to include a series of rewards as you make progress and achieve the smaller goals. You can make it as simple as a slice of your favourite cheesecake after you have been working out for six weeks. For some people no extra incentives are required the improvement is reward enough but small rewards are a good idea still.

Review Your Plan
Once you have finished writing out you PDP it is always a good idea to review it. It’s a good idea to take a break away from your initial PDP of about five to a week then return to it and review it. When reviewing the plan you may also ask someone else to look it over and give their views. If there are any changes that you think are necessary make them.

Implement the Plan
Now that you have completed your PDP, it’s time to implement it. Start with the first task you must accomplish and keep going until all the tasks are finished. Each time you complete a task or do something you are not used to doing do a kind of short review. What did you do well and what could you have done better.

Review Your Progress
By checking your progress you will be able to reflect on what is working and what is not, so you can adjust your actions or change course if you are not achieving what you want. You have to decide how often you check on your progress, it could be every week, every month or every six weeks.

When you develop your own personal development plan and follow through with action it can be one of the most satisfying things you have ever done. It can even build your self-confidence and boost your self-esteem, as you will have a sense of surety about what you are about to do.

The key here is to take the whole process one step at a time. If you ever feel yourself getting overwhelmed, it could be a sign that you are taking on too much. Slow done and concentrate on one thing at a time. Now get going and enjoy the process.

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Only the Rich get Opportunities

Whenever I talk to people on the street, in conference rooms, on the phone and in many other situations one of the major themes I hear from them is the belief they have which says that only the rich get the opportunities out there. Most of them who hold this belief find all the reasons why they believe what they believe, they come up with things like family contacts, being smarter, being born into the right community, and even the rich’s ability to use the opportunities that come their way because they have the financial backing.

I sometimes engage these folk in a discussion about their belief and I always begin by stating that great majorities of rich people were not rich at some point in their lives. Most were not born into riches, many were dirt poor or started out with very little but they all used the opportunities that came their way to benefit them. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Oprah Winfrey were not always a billionaires they came from modest and dirt poor backgrounds. Mr. Sangsters (of the Sangsters Book Store fame) started out poor he used to sell magazine from his bicycle back then. Billy Joel used to sleep in Laundromats at one point early in his career, in fact he even had suicidal thoughts early on when thing weren’t going well for him in those days.

You may not be able to get involved in certain businesses at certain times in a certain way but there are always other avenues open and available to you. So you may not be able to gain control of a major cellular phone company, as that field is very saturated. You however, could instead get in on the cellular accessories market or the phone card market. If you work in a sugar factory as a workman it is unlikely (although possible) that you’ll be able to become the owner of the factory any time soon. But what if you begin to think and act in a certain way that says opportunities abound, you can soon leave the factory and start a fish farm and become a producer of fresh water fish and sell to shops and supermarkets. This is an opportunity that is begging for investment as more and more people move away from eating meat. It’s not impossible.

You are poor not because there are no opportunities available to you. No one group of people has any monopoly on opportunities. You are poor because you failed to see and make use of the opportunities that come your way. You are poor because when no opportunity comes you do nothing to create your own opportunity.

People who have opportunities generally go out and seek it and if they can’t find it they create it. These people act and think differently from those who see no opportunity or believe that only the rich have the opportunities.

One of my favourite programs on television is called ‘The Big Idea’ on CNBC and hosted by Donny Deutsch. Every episode this program features people who are making millions of dollars with their business ideas and these people come up with some needed and in some cases very unusual products. What’s most fascinating about the people who appear on the program is that they are all ordinary people like you and me, from stay at home moms to garbage collectors to secretaries, to bus drivers, they all came up with product ideas, saw an opportunity and worked their buts off to make them reality. You all will do well to watch this program a couple of times, it’s a great motivator to get you look for opportunities out there and there are many.

You will remain where you are in life as long as you continue to think and do things the way you have always done them. You are not poor because money is in short supply, or because there is not enough wealth to go around, or because you are not smart or not smart enough. You are poor because you not do the things that will make you see and use your opportunities and become rich.