Enhance and expand your creativity, ability to think outside the box with

How to Jump Into the Cold Water

Have you ever gone into cold water, so cold that from the first step you start rethinking your desire to be there?  How do you handle that situation?  Are you one of those people that will simply jump in?  Or do you torture yourself by taking one painful step at a time? 

I went to personal development seminar once, and one of the concepts that they taught us was: “How you do anything, is how you do everything”.  Basically what they were trying to say was that if you are a person that will simply jump into the cold water, you will also carry that trait into other areas of your life.  If we take starting a business as an example, you would simply go at it 100%, as opposed to doing endless preparation before you actually do anything productive.

The “Simply jump in” attitude has both advantages and drawbacks.  One of the great things about this outlook on life is the fact that it initiates action.  Inaction is the greatest peril in the way of accomplishing absolutely anything.  Unfortunately we are all susceptible to it to some degree.  The flipside of this concept is that sometimes we can act too fast, and that bears a whole new set of consequences.

So what is the best solution to this problem of making our selves take action, but acting at the “right time”? 

I often bring this up in my articles, but balance is very important in anything that we do.   To apply this concept to what we are discussing – we should “simply jump in”, but at the same time we should also be able to stop out selves long enough to do some necessary due diligence. 

The other solution to inaction is a simple piece of advice – “Get over your-self”.  It might be a bit harsh, as a statement, but I believe that it is a vital thing to do in our life in general.  People tend to over analyze a lot of what they do.  Often we simply need to push ourselves to jump into the cold water, so that we can feel less cold after we do.

Last but not least, we should talk about having motivation to be able to “jump”.  It is easy to say that we should “just jump”.  The simple fact is that if we are not motivated to do so, if the reward at the end of the “jump” isn’t big enough to get us to do it, we simply are not going to jump.  This is a very crucial point.  Imagine that you are standing on the shore of a very cold ocean.  Would you be able to force yourself to jump into it if you didn’t really want to swim?  Probably not!  

People, who are exceedingly successful in life, all have one thing in common.  They all live their passion.  What would be a better motivator then being passionate about what you do?  So the very first thing you have to do before taking any action is to ask yourself a question – is what I am about to do what I really want?  And if it is, or it will give you something that you really want, or bring you to that place where your passion lives – don’t think, even if it is unpleasant at first, simply jump!

Technorati Tags: Personal Development, Success, Fear, Self Discipline

How I Was Able To Quit Smoking

Smoking is probably one of the hardest things to quit – it is a very serious addiction. Partly, this is because it is so acceptable in society. We all see smokers around us and view it as a norm. This however makes it harder for those of us who want to break that habit, as it adds a layer of social pressure to an addiction that is already hard to overcome.

Like any addictions, smoking has a physical as well as a psychological aspect. Cravings are a common knowledge, but what isn’t widely known is that you can get cravings long after you have broken through binds of physical addiction. I was blown away that after 10 years of being smoke free all of a sudden I got an urge to light up.

It is well known that quitting is hard, but are there things we can do to increase our chances of success?

Let’s first of all look at what we have to overcome.

Physical addiction may seem the hardest aspect, but from personal experience I can assure you that it is not. It only lasts a couple of weeks at the most, while the body tries to filter out the toxins. I didn’t really do much to help the physical aspects of my addiction. But there are a few tools you can use. One of them is the patch. It doesn’t work for everybody, but can be very helpful for many people. The other thing we do not normally think of when talking about quitting smoking is acupuncture. This ancient tradition can not only calm your cravings but also help you detoxify faster.

Next step in recovery is battling the psychological aspects of addiction. I personally thought that this part was the hardest of the two. I actually had to quit three times before I did for good. The reason it took that many times to quit I attribute entirely to the fact that psychological addiction has much bigger grip on the person then the physiological aspects of addiction. I think what helped me the most in my recovery, was the fact that I really decided to quit. It didn’t matter how many times I failed and started to smoke again - I was determined to quit. There are however tricks you can use even in this endeavor. For example one of the thing I did, in my attempts to stop smoking, was that I chewed tooth picks. I think that chewing anything will do the trick, but for me tooth picks worked best. Every time I would get a craving I would put a tooth pick in my mouth and that seemed to distract me from wanting to smoke. It wasn’t a cure, but it helped a lot.

The last part that, personally, I found very hard to overcome was how other people affected me when I was trying to quit. The social aspect of smoking is incredibly powerful aspect of addiction. It gives us a sense of belonging, and for many of us including me, it is very powerful. When you decide to stop smoking and someone asks you to go for a cigarette, it is often very hard to say no. That’s how I started smoking again when I quit the first two times. I can’t really offer much advice about this. My best advice would be to simply stick to your convictions and be firm in your decision to quit.

All of the suggestions I proposed in this article will be a great help to you on your way to recovery from the addiction of smoking. This however will not guarantee success, only your determination will. If you truly will decide to stop smoking - one way or another you will. Just don’t stop trying, and your success will be guaranteed!
Quitting Smoking, Self help, Health

Technorati Tags: Quitting Smoking, Self help, Health

6 Secrets of Personal Goal Setting

Why do we need goals to achieve anything in our life? The answer is as simple as allowing our imagination to pave the way of our success. What do I mean by that? Simply put, our imagination needs to have an end result in order for us to be able to imagine ways to get to that result. Let’s do a simple exercise. In your mind try to trace the route of getting somewhere, but do not think of a specific destination. Imagine different streets you might take, or different roads. Having trouble? Your mind needs that destination if you are going to think of how to get there, doesn’t it? Otherwise there are simply too many options to choose from, your mind can’t sort through all of them, it needs to choose one. Goals work very similarly. In order for us to accomplish anything, first we need to envision what is it we want to accomplish, before we can commit to action.

So why is it that it is so hard for us to both set goals and stick to them until we accomplish them? A couple of the biggest reasons are the way we set goals and the way we think about them. This can fall into two categories: we might be setting goals that are unrealistic, or we start thinking of goals as set in stone. Either way, when we do not accomplish them right away we get disappointed and end up abandoning them all together.

To help us make goals that are both realistic and easy to achieve here are a few tips:

- We need to be specific about the goal that we are setting. So “I want to loose 30 pounds” is better then “I want to loose weight”.
- Second, we need to know the time frame of our goal. So if it is something like “I want to develop a successful consulting business”, and we know that this will not happen right away, we should put it in the long term goal category.
- If our goal is big like the developing a successful business example, we also need to break it down into smaller, shorter term goals that you will accomplish first before getting to the final destination. Like “I want to make a business plan for my new venture” or “I want to find partners that will help me accomplish what I set out to do”.
- We also need to know when we will achieve this goal. So if we look at the business example, it can be something like “I will have a successful business when I will be able to cover all my living expenses from the profits of the business, while working only 30 hours per week” It is something very precise that will signal to us that we have achieved a desired goal.
- Here are also other questions we should ask our selves when setting a goal. Is your goal achievable and realistic? Is the time frame for achieving your goal acceptable to you? Are the costs and consequences of achieving your goal acceptable? Do you have all the resources you need to achieve your goal and do you know where to get them if you do not?

Another very important point about goal setting is that goals are meant to be constantly adjusted! If you think of goals as a guideline that highly depends on the circumstances surrounding it, you are on the right track. Situations in our lives change all the time. This is the primary reason why we need to constantly adjust our goal to make them fit into the new situations life presents to us. All we really have to do is monitor how we are doing with our goals from time to time. Make sure that these goals still correspond to our desires, and if they no longer do, adjust them or set new ones.