My Essay Blog

Yola Eve

Business Trainer

VIP Quality Software

Time Management is getting more and more popular day by day. People want to be more successful, proactive and wealthy. It is not new to everyone that there are common time wasters in our lives. Watching TV all evening long, spending too much time on the Internet, having a very long conversation over the phone, and, my favorite one, doing trifles instead of going bed and loosing your precious sleep – these are common time wasters that you already know of. If you eliminate all these things, you will start to practice Time Management. But for me, it is rather

Ellen was brought up to be invisible. She was taught to be very tuned into others’ feelings and needs, but to never have any of her own. Her family made it clear to her that her job was to give to them but to never expect anything in return. As a result, Ellen learned to be totally tuned out to her own feelings and needs. It was as if she, as a person, didn’t really exist, other than to be there for others.

When Ellen’s feelings and needs did surface, she would tell herself that they weren’t important, that she was strong and could handle not having her feelings cared for and or her needs recognized. She convinced herself that if she just cared enough about others, others would eventually care about her. It never happened.

The inner stress of never attending to her own feelings and needs and always feeling so invisible to others as a result finally took a toll on Ellen’s health. Ellen is now dealing with cancer and finally has to attend to herself.

Many of us have learned to be invisible &ndash to ourselves and to others. What are some of the ways you create invisibility?

* Do you remain silent, not speaking up for yourself, when feeling discounted or unseen by others?

* Do you ignore your own feelings and needs in deference to others?

* Do you go along with what others want, even if you really want something else?

* Do you accept blame for things that you know are not really your responsibility?

* Do you put aside your own opinions and accept the opinions of others to be accepted?

* Do you accept disrespectful behavior from others, finding ways to excuse the behavior?

* Do you pretend everything is okay when you are really feeling lonely or sad?

* Are you conflict avoidant, preferring peace at any cost rather than rock the boat?

* Are you carrying too much of the load at home or at work, without complaint?

* Do you pretend to like a food, a movie, a topic of conversation, or sex, rather than run the risk of disapproval or rejection?

* Do you allow yourself to be violated in any way &ndash physically, emotionally, verbally, sexually &ndash to avoid rejection?

* Do you allow others’ anger or bullying to control you into doing what they want?

* Do you do everything yourself, never asking others for help?

How often do you end up feeling unappreciated, unseen, not valued? How much of this is a reflection of how you treat yourself?

If your own feelings and needs are invisible to yourself, they will end up being invisible to others. It is not realistic to constantly put yourself aside and then expect others to value and respect you. Anytime you tolerate uncaring or disrespectful behavior in others to avoid conflict, you are training others to see you as invisible, to not care about your feelings and needs.

If you have been allowing yourself to be invisible for a long time, it is a real challenge to start to care about yourself. You need to be willing to go through a difficult period of feeling others’ anger and resentment. After all, you trained them for years to not have to care about you or see you, and now you are changing the rules. They won’t like it, but they will eventually respect you for it. You will also discover in the process of caring about yourself who really cares about you and who has just been using you. Those people who really care about you will eventually applaud your self-care, while those who were just using you will go away or be constantly angry with you for changing.

It takes great courage to shift from invisibility to being seen and valued. It takes great courage to be willing to lose others rather than continue to lose yourself. Yet, like with Ellen, your very life may depend upon it. Hopefully, you will not wait until you are ill or feel alone and cast aside by others to start to become visible to yourself.

It must start with yourself &ndash with learning to tune into, acknowledge, value, and take loving action for yourself regarding your own feelings and needs. It means moving into personal responsibility for your own feelings and needs rather than taking care of everyone else in the hopes they will eventually take care of you. If you are ever going to feel cared for and loved, it has to start with you caring about and being loving to yourself!

On the surface, a glimpse into the life of Dara Stewart reveals nothing unusual. She’s got a job she likes, friends and family who love her and a big, dumb Akita named Jake. But after a brush with death from a brain hemorrhage in 2002, Dara’s recovery included having to learn to walk again. For Dara, the normal life she has now, for which she is profoundly grateful, required an astonishing degree of effort and focus.

Relying on simple but powerful life and stress management techniques, she was able to not only recover from what her doctors had expected would be a disabling medical catastrophe, but to go on to find her life’s purpose and to discover a peace that far exceeded what she had known before.

These techniques are available to all of us.

• Manage stress: “Meditation was my initial way to relieve stress,” said Dara. As she recovered, she found that a connection with nature calmed and focused her. She combined hiking and meditation into mindfulness walks and volunteered at the Desert Botanical Garden in order to stay in touch with nature.

• Exercise: Dara found that yoga, in particular, helped keep her balanced. “It really made a big difference in the stress and the body tension that I was having and also it decreased the numbers of headaches that I had,” she said.

• Reach out to friends and family: “The immense support that I got from friends and family reminded me that no matter what happened to me, I was going to be ok,” Dara said. “Whether I died or became handicapped or lived an absolutely normal life, I would be ok.” Diagnosed immediately after a move to an unfamiliar town in California, Dara found additional community in her church and support groups.

• Practice self-acceptance: One side effect of Dara’s life-threatening illness was increased clarity of purpose. “It wasn’t a matter of knowing the exact career I was going to have, it was knowing that I was supposed to be here and that there was a purpose for me,” Dara said. “And I didn’t feel at all worried anymore.” Her mantra became, “I am enough, I am everything I need.”

• Purge negativity: “I would go so far as to not watch scary movies,” Dara said. “I even limited the amount of news I watched.”

• Set boundaries: Initially Dara was careful to surround herself with people who had a positive outlook, and even now, when working in the mental health field makes that harder, Dara says that “what I’ve learned to do now is deflect to some degree. If it starts getting too intense, I take a break.”

According to Dara, the key for having the life she wants is maintaining focus in her day-to-day activities and goals. “As I pursue things, I’m also listening for what I need, which is positive energy in my life, what I want, which is a peaceful life and what fulfills me, which is giving to the world in some way.”

Positive thinking is an amazing tool, but without action it’s a waste of time. Rather than just having a momentary thought it’s more of a way of life. It’s a technique that you use to create positive affirmations that can counter negative thoughts and doubts by neutralizing them and building the self-confidence you need for whatever you want to achieve.

Thinking this way is a skill you can learn and develop with consistent practice, but it is worth it to create a habit of positive thinking?

In some circles positive thinking is sometimes cynically referred to as pollyannaish, a naive and overly optimistic view of life by overlooking the things we don’t like and focusing only on the good.

So how about you?

How do you view things, negatively or positively? It can be easy for all of us to focus only on the negative but it’s usually as easy to look for a positive angle to things as it is for a negative angle.

By looking on the positive side we can affect our subconscious mind as we invoke the law of attraction and we can then attract a better set of circumstances into our life. Remember concentrate on the positive and expect a positive result but did you know that it takes as much effort to think about the negative as it is for the positive.

In some ways positive thinking is infectious and can lead to a ‘can do’ attitude within an individual, a team and an organization. It’s been said that the only difference between a success and a failure is the attitude of mind the person had before they entered that task.

One cannot pay lip service to positive thinking. You need to practice and make positive thinking your prevailing attitude towards life. The very feel of positive thinking itself will help you to feel confident and move towards your goal.

In order to acquire the great status of positive thinker, we must realize what positive thinking is all about and what it is not. Our usual misconceptions about positive thinking are that money will drop out of the sky; GOD will come on a chariot to take away the sufferings and pains and lot more imaginations, while this would be great unfortunately it won’t happen but by staying positive you remain open to new directions and guidance rather than just shutting down and giving up.

Attitude forms an important part of positive thinking whereas thinking contributes lot to the attitude. It’s kind of like the chicken and egg, which came first? If you have a bad attitude you’ll never consider changing how you think but can positive thinking change your attitude.

How you answer this age-old question about positive thinking and attitude may reflect your outlook on life, your attitude toward yourself, and whether you’re optimistic or pessimistic.

A positive attitude and optimistic thinking are healthy. When you wholeheartedly adopt a ‘with all your heart’ attitude and go all out with the positive principle, you can do incredible things. Happy, optimistic people are usually described as having positive attitudes and expressing positive thoughts.

Positive thinking is a mental attitude that admits into the mind thoughts, words and images that are conductive to growth, expansion and success.

After Christopher Reeve’s accident in 1995, I was so deeply touched by his attitude. Of course he could have given up and cursed life for giving him a raw deal but he didn’t. But consider this if hadn’t have been so brave and positive do you really think he would have survived for so long as he did? And deep down we all admire him for having such a positive attitude and inspiring us all.

As I finish this article, no matter what happens to us, we can choose positive thoughts and choose a positive attitude. It may not be something that we were all born with but it’s a way of looking at the brighter side of life that helps us build the life we want.

You could sum it up in one word, and that one would be “Faith”.

Self improvement in and of itself is a fairly easy to understand concept. You have one or more areas of your life that you are not happy with, so you decide to take steps to improve those areas.

For some people it is as simple as something like just taking more time for themselves each day, but for most people it is something more extreme such as long-term weight loss, financial freedom, relationship success, etc.

However, as simple as it is to say that you want to improve some area of your life, when it comes to actually implementing the necessary changes, things tend to get more complicated, especially with regard to something like financial or relationship success.

A goal such as losing weight is easy &ndash at least on paper. Eat right and exercise. How do you “fix” financial burdens, though? How do you bring your “dream mate” into your life?

The answer to the riddle about the self improvement task that is so simple that it’s nearly impossible is &ndash whatever task it is that you want the most!

If you have a burning desire for something in your life, whether it be money, health, fulfilling relationships, or anything else, that burning desire is there because you don’t already have that thing.

Did you ever stop to ask yourself why it is that the things that you want most in the world are the things that you have the most trouble actually getting your hands on?

Whether it be via the actions that you take &ndash or the actions that you don’t take &ndash there is a serious disconnect between your desires and what you actually have in your life.

The good news, which is also the simple part of this equation, is that YOU are the disconnect. You are your own worst enemy when it comes to manifesting the things that you want into your life.

It may not seem that way from your point of view, because you are probably working very hard towards getting the things that you want. You may have a job that you are excelling at in order to “move up,” you might put everything that you have into your relationships, and you may save every dime that you can in order to get ahead financially.

However, when it comes down to it, although taking action is a critical component to success, it is your mental state of mind, not just your actions, that sets the stage for your success.

There are any number of belief systems that can affect whether or not you attain your goals. Whether you believe in the Law of Attraction, positive thinking, a high work ethic, strong morals, or even if you just have a high level of self-confidence, your success always &ndash and only &ndash depends on you.

Thus, you yourself become the very solution to attaining the “impossible” success that has been escaping you up to this point in your life.

Your own attitude and belief system is what powers your success &ndash or lack thereof. The trick to the whole process, however, is that most people think they are on the right track mentally, when in all actuality they are headed in the wrong direction because of their focus.

People who have consistently wanted &ndash yet failed to attain &ndash their health and weight loss goals continue to get the same results because they are focusing on something negative &ndash bad health or excess weight.

What you focus on grows, so if you think about the fact that you are overweight or have poor health, then you will continue to be overweight and have poor health. To make matters worse, since a lot of that process is done “behind the scenes” in your subconscious mind, you probably don’t even realize that you continue to reinforce the very self-limiting beliefs that are keeping you from success.

That same concept applies to financial gains, relationship success, career growth, and any other area of your life that you feel needs improvement. By continuing to focus on what you don’t want, all you are doing is continuing to attract the things that you don’t want into your life.

The solution to this issue is very simple, however. All you need to do is focus on the opposite of what you don’t want. Whenever you think about the things that you want, just think about having them, instead of NOT having them.

Don’t think about losing weight, but rather think about how great you already look since you are at your goal weight. Always think in the NOW, as if it has already happened.

Don’t think about how broke you are, but rather think about all of the things that you are spending money on. Go window shopping in your mind, and out in the real world, but again, in the NOW.

Don’t think about how lonely or upset you are because of your relationship status. Think about how happy and content you are with your family and your dream mate. And it is all happening NOW.

It’s crucial to remember to focus on the things that you want as if you already have them. If you think about your success as being in the future, then it will always stay in the future!

Simplify the impossible. Start thinking and acting like you have already succeeded, and before long, it won’t be an act anymore.