Motivation Articles, Essays, Tips and Advice

Our studies of high achievers have shown that no matter how different their personalities, work habits, occupations or gender, the people who accomplish great things in life have visualized and expected success all along.

They’ve had the ability to vividly picture their achievements and to reassure themselves in the face of long odds that they would come through.

To visualize the person you want most to become, set aside some time this week in which you can create an atmosphere conducive to re-affirming your life dreams.

You may want to be near the ocean, or a lake, or in a park, in a garden or in the woods. Or you might just sit quietly by yourself in a comfortable lounge or chair. Get yourself in the mood for visualizing. When the left hemisphere of the brain is quiet and relaxed, the mind is most receptive to creative inputs.

To facilitate this you may want to use soothing recorded music, preferably slow and inspiring like Bach, Handel or Vivaldi if you like classical music, or soft, popular instrumentals from epic movies or other mood music.

Once you’re properly relaxed and optimistic, let your mind focus on who you really want to become. Visualize the future in two time frames: five years from now and ten years from now.

First, design a day in your life five years from now. Who are you five years from now? Where are you professionally and geographically? On Monday mornings, where do you go?

What are you doing, seeing, feeling and thinking? Who are the people around you? What’s different about your life five years from now?

Next, project ahead ten years from today. Picture a film of your life at that time. Who is watching it with you? What dramatic moments are depicted by that film? What personal triumphs are revealed? What obstacles are courageously overcome?

Don’t be shy! The purpose of this exercise is to load visualized software in your mental computer. Just as a computer must be configured to accept specific materials, your mind must be prepared to accept the reality of your greater success. By introducing positive images of goal achievement, you’re preparing yourself to translate those goals into reality.

I especially like to visualize myself being introduced at a dinner in my honor. Maybe it’s the Coaches’ Hall of Fame! Don’t laugh! It could happen!

The emcee comes to the microphone and reads the highlights of my life and adds some insights as to who I really am. What would the emcee be saying about you if such a dinner were held in your honor ten years from now?

Devote a page in your journal to describing the things you would want said about you.

This visualization will put you on a path that leads to your future self that you vividly picture today!

- Denis Waitley
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Denis Waitley is one of America’s most respected authors, keynote lecturers and productivity consultants on high performance human achievement. Learn more about his program The New Dynamics of Goal Setting.

-Do you use visualization to help you achieve your goals? If so, how do you visualize your success?

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The turning point in my life came when I discovered the law of cause and effect, the great law of the universe, and human destiny. I learned that everything happens for a reason. I discovered that success is not an accident.

Failure is not an accident, either. I also discovered that people who are successful in any area usually are those who have learned the cause-and-effect relationship between what they want and how to get it.

Determine Your Personal Growth and Development Values…
To realize your full potential for personal and professional growth and development, begin with your values as they apply to your own abilities. As you know, your values are expressed in your words and actions.

You can tell what your values are by looking at what you do and how you respond to the world around you. Your values are the root causes of your motivations and your behaviors.

Clarify Your Personal Growth and Development Vision…
Create a long-term vision for yourself in the area of personal growth. Project forward five or ten years and imagine that you are developed fully in every important part of your life. Idealize and see yourself as outstanding in every respect. Refuse to compromise on your personal dreams.

Set Goals for Your Personal Growth and Development…
Now take your vision and crystallize it into specific goals. Here is a good way to start. Take out a piece of paper and write down ten goals that you would like to achieve in the area of personal and professional development in the months and years ahead. Write in the present tense, exactly as if you were already the person you intend to be.

Determine exactly what you want to be able to do. Decide who you want to become. Describe exactly what you will look like when you become truly excellent in your field and in your personal life.

Upgrade Your Personal Knowledge and Skills…
Set specific measures for each of your goals. If your goal is to excel in your field, determine how you will know when you have achieved it. Decide how you can measure your progress and evaluate your success.

Perhaps you can use as a measure the number of hours you study in your field each week. Perhaps you can measure the number of books you read or the number of audio programs you listen to. Perhaps you could measure your progress by the number of sales you make as the result of your growing skills.

Develop Winning Personal Growth and Development Habits…
Select the specific habits and behaviors you will need to practice every day to become the person you want to become. These could be the habits of clarity, planning, thoroughness, studiousness, hard work, determination, and persistence.

Action Exercise:

Decide today to develop yourself to the point where you can achieve every financial and personal goal you ever set and become everything you are capable of becoming. Write down your goals and make sure to look at them every day, then ponder ways you possibly achieve these goals.
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Brian Tracy is one of the world’s leading authorities on personal and business success. His fast-moving talks and seminars are loaded with powerful, proven ideas and strategies that you can apply immediately to get better results in every area. Be sure to visit the Brian Tracy web site

-What was biggest takeaway you got from the ideas shared? You’re welcome to share your thoughts in the comments section below.

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Play BIG – have fun with your life. Life is really a game of uncovering, sharing and feeling the exhilaration of being more you. Leaving behind what others have planned for you and becoming who you choose to be.

Be Bold – Courage, faith and action creates boldness. When you know that you deserve wonderful, invigorating and magnificent results in your life, you take positive and powerful actions. You were placed here and now because you deserve your dreams. When you are willing to plant the seeds, to work on your dreams, to take action it is because you know within your core that this is your destiny. This is your year to be bold – to be you!

Live Your Brilliance – What is your sweet spot? What positive impact do you have at work, home and among other people? When you are in the zone of contentment, joy and feeling a rush of satisfaction what are you doing? Knowing your zone is key to living your brilliance. It takes work to be honest with yourself so that you know, really know your zone. There is no easy way to be brilliant. Living your brilliance requires your willingness to focus in on your strengths and develop them to their highest potential no matter what.

Reap BIG results – when you play big, are bold and live in your brilliance you reap big results. It is the way of the world. Those results look different for each person. Your view of success is different from mine, that is what makes living so extraordinary. You can have life your way… if you chose to transform and live life with “The Three Bs” Big-Bold-Brilliant.

Decide that this is the year you will play Big, be Bold and be Brilliant!

It is your choice!

- Pegine
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Pegine Echevarria is a motivational speaker and author – a nationally recognized expert on success, leadership, and team building. Visit her at Pegine.com

-what do you think of ideas shared? How are some ways you plan to play Big, Bold, and brilliant this year (and beyond)?

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“People do not attract that which they want, but that which they are.”  – As A Man Thinketh

To put it another way: When you stop working on what it is you’re trying to get, and start working on you, only then will you get what it is you want.

It really is very basic when you think about it. Jim Rohn says, “To attract attractive people, you must be attractive. To attract powerful people, you must be powerful. To attract committed people, you must be committed. Instead of going to work on them, you go to work on yourself. If you become, you can attract.”

I know so many people who work very hard and diligently and sacrifice greatly in an effort to create wealth. But they haven’t changed who they are, and until they begin to think and act like wealthy people they’ll never attract the wealth they seek.

Wealthy people don’t think and act the way they do because they have wealth. They have wealth because they think and act that way.

How many people are on a diet today who don’t stand a chance of losing (and keeping off) any weight because they’re still the same person who gained all that weight to start with. Let me repeat again, so you’ll grasp how important this is: Slim people don’t think and act the way they do because they’re slim.  They’re slim because they think and act that way.

To get what you want, you change who you are, and you change who you are by simply changing the way you think and act. And one technique for doing that which is promoted by a lot of wise teachers is to “act as if.” If you “act as if” you’re slim long enough, then one day you will attract slimness even though you may be 100 pounds overweight today.

If you act as if you’re wealthy long enough, then one day you will attract all the wealth you can imagine even though you may this moment be destitute and homeless.

Bob Proctor says, “Act like the person you want to become. For as Goethe, the German philosopher, once wrote, ‘Before you can do something, you first must be something.’”

And that’s worth thinking about.

Vic Johnson
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Vic Johnson is a speaker and founder of a host of personal development websites. You can grab your free ebook copy of “As A Man Thinketh” by James Allen, a timeless success classic by clicking here!

-What are your thoughts on the ideas above? What are some of the ways you “act as if” in your life?

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