Doesn’t it seem like every time you turn on the TV or get on the computer, there is always more negative news that just weighs you down. On top of that, you have your own personal issues to deal with. This “negative storm” can cause someone to feel stuck, lost and full of anxiety. It is the fear of the unknown that builds up in our mind and takes over like a dark cloud. This dark cloud follows us and rains on us, making us negative in our personal and professional lives.

As humans, we sometimes focus on the negative and stay under that negative cloud that we created. We must understand that we can walk from under this cloud at anytime, and we have the power to make our days sunny and bright.

I am sharing with you 7 ways that I have found to be the most effective when attempting to live a more productive and positive lifestyle along with my Get off Your Attitude Exercises (GOYA-cise) to get you moving.

1. Think Positive

Thinking Positive is probably the most important of the ways that I can share with you, because you know that everything starts in the mind. Thoughts turn into feelings, which then turn into actions. If you tell yourself you can’t do something, you will ultimately find failure. If you tell yourself you can do it, you have increased your chances of accomplishing that goal. Keep your mind clear and your thoughts positive. This way will bring great success to you in your personal and professional life.

GOYA-cise: When a negative thought comes into your mind, instantly swap it with a positive one. An example of this would be thinking about a child’s smile or someone you know. This will keep the mind clear of any negative thoughts.

2. Get Around Positive People

Stay away from negative and pessimistic people. Surround yourself with positive people, and you will be more positive! This is a simple and crucial way in reaching a positive lifestyle. Negative people can rob you of your energy and your drive. We must learn to get around people that are like minded, have goals and the ones that have courage to go forward in life.

GOYA-cise: Think about someone that you respect and has the positive traits that you want to possess. Try to meet with that person frequently so that their positive attitude will become part of you.

3. Read and Listen to Positive Information

One of the best ways to create a positive mindset is by filling it with positive information. Too many times we get our information from the wrong places. We get focused on the negative news of the world and it bleeds into our subconscious. We need to learn to be careful on what we let into our mind. To get out of the negative rut, we need to get in the habit of picking up an inspirational book, find a positive article on the web or just listen to a positive inspirational CD.

These positive items will open your mind, encourage, inspire, and teach you how to create a positive mindset. (Some of my favorite inspirational authors are Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy and Les Brown).

GOYA-cise: Put a Positive CD in your car, home stereo or in at your office. Listen to it for the length of the car ride or 30 minutes in your home or office. Try to implement that one new positive idea that you learned into what you are doing that particular day.

4. Focus on the Future

Too many of us dwell on our past and let it block our vision of our future. We think about something disturbing that happened to us or we think about something that someone has told us that upset us, and we play it over and over like an old movie reel. We need to break this bad habit and visualize on what we want our future to be. The next time your past is haunting you, instantly think about something in your future. Write down your goals and create a vision board. This way you can always focus and see the positive things you want in life.

GOYA-cise: Make a list of all things that you want in life. Go online and find it, print a picture of each item. Pin them up on a board in your office or home where you can see them. Look at this vision board daily and visualize yourself possessing all of these items.

5. Plan Ahead

Using time efficiently helps to maintain a positive attitude. The best way to do this is to plan your day and your week ahead of time. We need to adopt this habit so that we won’t let procrastination take over and keep us from reaching our goals. The habit of planning and focusing on your priorities and important tasks will help you accomplish more in less time. This very act will keep your life in check and help you stay on track towards your goals and let you know stay aware of your accomplishments.
GOYA-cise: Each day sit at your desk for ten minutes and map out your next day. This exercise can save two hours the next day.

6. Be Grateful

Take some time everyday to be grateful and thankful for everything that you have in your life right now. It is easy for us to focus on what we don’t have or things we didn’t accomplish. Find these great things and recognize them. The very thought of what you are grateful for will help you maintain a positive attitude in your life. This habit is one of the best ways to turn negative thinking into positive thinking instantly.

GOYA-cise: Write down the top 10 things you are grateful for and read them over at least 10 times daily!

7. Exercise More

Daily exercise will help you improve your mood, along with helping to against stress and depression. This healthy way of life will keep you living longer and living a healthier lifestyle. Remember exercising will also make you feel better about yourself. When you feel better about yourself, it breeds confidence which will help you in your personal and professional life.

GOYA-cise: Go for a 30 minute brisk walk on a treadmill or around the neighborhood. This is a great exercise to create positive thinking.

If you follow and implement these 7 life changing ways of life daily, they will bring you the success and happiness you desire. They will take you from underneath that dark cloud of negativity and bring you out into the sunshine of a positive lifestyle. Use the GOYA-cises to improve your productivity and see the positive things like peace and happiness that will come into your life.
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Ryan C. Lowe is a Speaker, Coach and Author. Ryan is the founder of Get off Your Attitude seminars and merchandise. He works with various organizations to help inspire change and achieve success through a positive mental attitude. For more information on Ryan’s services, merchandise or his new book you can visit www.GetOffYourAttitude.com

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-Share your biggest takeaway lesson from the article above in the comments below.

When it comes to meeting and conquering the negativity in your life, here is a key question: What can you do, starting today, that will make a difference? What can you do during economic chaos? What can you do when everything has gone wrong? What can you do when you’ve run out of money, when you don’t feel well and it’s all gone sour? What can you do?

Let me give you the broad answer first. You can do the most remarkable things, no matter what happens. People can do incredible things, unbelievable things, despite the most impossible or disastrous circumstances.

Here is why humans can do remarkable things: because they are remarkable. Humans are different than any other creation. When a dog starts with weeds, he winds up with weeds. And the reason is because he’s a dog. But that’s not true with human beings. Humans can turn weeds into gardens.

Humans can turn nothing into something, pennies into fortune, and disaster into success. And the reason they can do such remarkable things is because they are remarkable. Try reaching down inside of yourself; you’ll come up with some more of those remarkable human gifts. They’re there, waiting to be discovered and employed.

With those gifts, you can change anything for yourself that you wish to change. And I challenge you to do that because you can change. If you don’t like how something is going for you, change it. If something isn’t enough, change it. If something doesn’t suit you; change it. If something doesn’t please you, change it. You don’t ever have to be the same after today. If you don’t like your present address, change it—you’re not a tree!

If there is one thing to get excited about, it’s your ability to make yourself do the necessary things, to get a desired result, to turn the negative into success. That’s true excitement.
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“A person is limited only by the thoughts that he chooses.” —James Allen, As a Man Thinketh

You are not limited to the life you now live. It has been accepted by you as the best you can do at this moment. Anytime you’re ready to go beyond the limitations currently in your life, you’re capable of doing that by choosing different thoughts.

We each earn the income we do today because that is the amount we have limited ourselves to earn. We could easily earn 5, 10, 20 times more if we did not limit ourselves through the thoughts we maintain.

Don’t believe that’s true? Surely you know people who earn much more than you who don’t have your education, your skills, or your intelligence. So why do they earn more than you?

I love the story of George Dantzig that Cynthia Kersey wrote about in Unstoppable. As a college student, George studied very hard and always late into the night, so late that he overslept one morning, arriving 20 minutes late for class. He quickly copied the two math problems on the board, assuming they were the homework assignment. It took him several days to work through the two problems, but finally he had a breakthrough and dropped the homework on the professor’s desk the next day.

Later, on a Sunday morning, George was awakened at 6 a.m. by his excited professor. Since George was late for class, he hadn’t heard the professor announce that the two unsolvable equations on the board were mathematical mind teasers that even Einstein hadn’t been able to answer. But George Dantzig, working without any thoughts of limitation, had solved not one, but two problems that had stumped mathematicians for thousands of years.

Simply put, George solved the problems because he didn’t know he couldn’t.

Bob Proctor tells us to “keep reminding yourself that you have tremendous reservoirs of potential within you, and therefore you are quite capable of doing anything you set your mind to. All you must do is figure out how you can do it, not whether or not you can. And once you have made your mind up to do it, it’s amazing how your mind begins to figure out how.”

And that’s worth thinking about.
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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!

There are only two words that will always lead you to success. Those words are yes and no. Undoubtedly, you’ve mastered saying yes. So start practicing saying no. Your goals depend on it!

If you are constantly saying yes to other people, then you are constantly saying no to yourself and your goals. Ask yourself if what is being requested of you is in line with your goals, will it benefit you in some way and bring you closer to your success, or will you simply be spending your time on someone else’s good opportunity?

How much time do you waste with projects and activities that you really don’t want to do simply because you are uncomfortable saying no?

Success depends on getting good at saying no without feeling guilty. You cannot get ahead with your own goals if you are always saying yes to someone else’s projects and agendas.

What a simple concept this is, yet you’d be surprised how frequently even the world’s top entrepreneurs, professionals, educators and civic leaders get caught up in projects, situations and opportunities that are merely good, while the great is left out in the cold—waiting for them to make room in their lives. In fact, concentrating on merely the “good” often prevents the “great” from showing up, simply because there’s no time left in our schedules to take advantage of any additional opportunity.

Is this your situation—constantly chasing after mediocre prospects or pursuing misguided schemes for success, when you could be holding at bay opportunities for astounding achievement?

If saying “No” is so important, then why is it so hard to say?

Why do we find it so hard to say no to everybody’s requests? As children, many of us learned that “no” was an unacceptable answer. Responding with “no” was cause for discipline. Later, in our careers, “no” may have been the reason for a poor evaluation or failing to move up the corporate ladder.

Yet, highly successful people say “no” all the time—to projects, to crazy deadlines, to questionable priorities and to other people’s crises. In fact, they view the decision to say “no” equally acceptable as the decision to say “yes.”

Others say no, but will offer to refer you to someone else for help. Still others claim their calendar, family obligations, deadlines and even finances as reasons why they must decline requests. At the office, achievers find other solutions to their co-workers’ repeated emergencies, rather than becoming a victim of someone else’s lack of organization and poor time management.

“It’s not against you, it’s for me…”

One response that I have found helpful in saying “no” to crisis appeals or time-robbing requests from people is… It’s not against you; it’s for me.

When the chairman calls with yet another fund-raising event that needs your dedication, you can say, “You know, my saying no to you is not against you, or what you are trying to do. It’s a very worthy cause, but recently I realized I’ve been over committing myself. So even though I support what you’re doing, the fact is I’ve made a commitment to spend more time with my family. It’s not against you; it’s for us.”

Few people can get angry at you for making and standing by a higher commitment. In fact, they’ll respect you for your clarity and your strength.

So, how can you determine what’s truly great, so you can say no to what’s merely good?

Start by listing your opportunities—one side of the page for good and the other side for great. Seeing options in writing will help crystallize your thinking and determine what questions to ask, what information to gather, what your plan of attack might be, and so on. It will help you decide if an opportunity truly fits with our overall life purpose and passion, or if it’s just life taking you down a side road.

Talk to advisors about this potential new pursuit. People who have traveled the road before you have vast experience to share and hard-headed questions to ask about any new life opportunity you might be contemplating. They can talk to you about expected challenges and help you evaluate the “Hassle Factor”—that is, how much time, money, effort, stress and commitment will be required.

Test the waters. Rather than take a leap of faith that the new opportunity will proceed as you expect, conduct a small test, spending a limited amount of time and money. If it’s a new career you’re interested in, first seek part-time work or independent consulting contracts in that field. If it’s a major move or volunteer project you’re excited about, see if you can travel for a few months to your dream locale or find ways to immerse yourself in the volunteer work for several weeks.

And finally, look where you spend your time. Determine if those activities truly serve your goals or if saying “no” would free up your schedule for more focused pursuits.

Be brave in saying no to good opportunities, stay focused on your higher goals and let people know that you are committed to those goals. People will respect your clarity and drive.

Remember, just as you are in control of your feelings and attitudes, other people are in control of theirs, so if they do get upset with you for saying no…well that is a choice they make for themselves.
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Jack Canfield, is the founder and co-creator of book brand Chicken Soup for the Soul and a leading authority on Peak Performance. If you’re ready to jump-start your life, make more money, and have more fun and joy in all that you do, get your success tips from Jack Canfield now at www.JackCanfield.com.

The great gift of human beings is that we have the power of empathy.” – Meryl Streep, American actress

You have the capability to improve your relationships, ramp up your ability to learn and increase the quality of your overall experience of life.

Does this sound like the beginning of a typical positive thinking “self-help” book?

How about this: You have an ability that is so very close to mind-reading that when you understand and apply these strategies, you will absolutely open up new possibilities for your life.

Have you ever wondered why you, or other sports fans, get so emotionally involved when watching a sporting event? Isn’t it kind of odd that the fans of baseball, football, soccer or tennis will yell, scream, boo, tense up, wince or leap up out of their seats when watching a sport event unfold, even when watching it on the television? The observers seem to be in sync or empathic with something or someone that is not only far removed from their social sphere but on an intimate, personal level, totally isolated from their daily lives.

Why is this reaction to sports any different from someone watching an engaging scene in a movie and laughing, crying or flinching in horror? Or, what about when a person who is watching a television or a feature film where a large, ugly spider is crawling up someone’s bare leg and the observer of the event cringes in repulsion, fear or actually feels a creepy physical sensation?

How about the visceral negative reaction of social pain or rejection by simple observation? Many experience this when watching one individual move his/her hand forward to caress his/her partner and then – the partner angrily pushes the hand away.

All these scenarios and many others are triggered by what neurologists have labeled “mirror neurons.” Mirror neurons were first described in 1992. Research based on studies using monkeys as subjects was published in 1996 and revealed something quite exceptional. Scientists were surprised to discover that these specific mirror neurons fired whether a monkey actually ate a peanut, banana or raisin – or – simply observed another monkey, or even a human, performing the same act. The neuron “mirrors” the behavior of the other, as though the observer were itself acting! In a very real sense, they analyze scenes and read minds.

Further scientific discoveries using humans have absolutely “flabbergasted” researchers. Humans not only have mirror neurons, they have mirror neurons that are much smarter, more flexible and more highly evolved than those found in monkeys.

Susan Blakeslee writes in her article, Cells That Read Minds: “The human brain has multiple mirror neuron systems that specialize in carrying out and understanding not just the actions of others but their intentions, the social meaning of their behavior and their emotions.”

Neuroscientist Giacorno Rizzolatti, one of the original “monkey” researchers, observed: “We are exquisitely social creatures. Our survival depends on understanding the actions, intentions and emotions of others…Mirror neurons allow us to grasp the minds of others not through conceptual reasoning but through direct simulation.”

That means we accomplish miraculous interpretation by feeling, not thinking. That is “empathy” in action. By extrapolating a few of major points from these studies, you will see why this may be very important to you and to those around you.

First, understand that there is something special about humans that allow us to connect very deeply when we watch other people play a sport, move, touch, be intimate or when we observe their expressions.

Second, the research derived from studying mirror neurons strongly suggests that your mind cannot tell the difference between seeing or doing. In other words – watching someone do something with which you identify is almost the same as doing it yourself.

Third, the discovery of mirror neurons indicates that we are not only linked to other people’s actions but also to other people’s feelings and, therefore, we are able to adopt another person’s point-of-view. Empathy is one of the keys to successful relationships.

Last, and perhaps most important, all the research combined reveals how children learn, why watching violence on television or film may be harmful and why people respond with strong emotions to specific types of dance, music, art and sports. Children are hardwired for imitation.

Here are four strategies to help you live an exceptional life:

1. CHOOSE THE COMPANY YOU AND YOUR CHILDREN KEEP – CAREFULLY.

Those around you always influence and have an effect on your state-of-mind and feelings. The fact is: part of your brain models the behavior and possibly even the thoughts of those around you. Perhaps this is a good time for you to do a quick and honest inventory of your friends, acquaintances and business associates. Do they inspire and recharge you – or deplete and frustrate you? The reality is that you may need to make some new and tough choices about the people you surround yourself with.

If you have young children, do a psychological check on their friends and the people surrounding them. You may not be able to control everybody who comes in contact with your child but you do have a great deal of control as to what activities they attend or whom they spend time with.

2. MODEL EXCELLENCE.

Brain science studies leave no doubt that we, as humans, model and internalize the behavior of others. So doesn’t it make sense to model and learn from the best and the brightest? Consider taking the time to review your goals and pinpoint your passion. What engages you and sparks your creativity? Once you have identified your passion, you can explore and seek out those who have already successfully achieved what you wish to achieve. You will be pleasantly surprised how much you can learn about their habits, their thinking and how they manage their time. Professional athletes and coaches have taken advantage of this built-in brain skill for years by using mental practice and imagery. You can too.

3. BECOME AWARE OF HOW YOU SEE YOUR FUTURE UNFOLDING.

The same mirror neurons fire whether you perform an action or task, watch someone else perform an action or task, or simply “imagine” performing an action or task. This mind-bending discovery opens up endless possibilities for you to apply your imagination. What, specifically, do you imagine happening in your future? What are your goals and expectations? Is your imagined future positive or negative? Will you achieve success or succumb to failure?

4. APPLY YOUR IMAGINATION IN A PROACTIVE, POSITIVE AND CONSTRUCTIVE WAY.

Choose one specific goal you want to accomplish. Create a realistic, clear, emotionally-based “mental movie” or “visualization” of your goal “as if” it has already occurred – successfully. It is your success movie of the future that will impact your subconscious to take the actions necessary to make it happen. Visualize your success movie for 1-3 minutes a day for 30 days.

Your brain is equipped for success. Reread this article, follow these four strategies and you will live an exceptional life.
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James Mapes is a life coach and the creator of The Transformation Coach™ program. He is the author of Quantum Leap Thinking: An Owner’s Guide to the Mind. You may contact James at Jim@JamesMapes.com or visit his web site www.JamesMapes.com.

-share your thoughts on the above article in the comments below.

Read more articles by James Mapes …
* Your Mind: The Rider and the Elephant
* Reinvent Yourself with Purpose

It’s Pavlovian. Springtime arrives and my mind is on a plane to Jupiter, Florida. That’s where I spent many spring training sessions helping the St. Louis Cardinals get into peak mental shape for the upcoming baseball season.

That’s right. It’s not just about swinging a bat and figuring out how not to blow out your throwing arm. It’s about mental toughness. And those mental pointers are as useful in the workplace as they are in the field.

The Cardinals hired me in 2006 – I was their first Director of Mental Training – to do these mental calisthenics with the team. The organization already had a coach to teach the mechanics of pitching, batting, and fielding. What the players needed was to learn how to set goals, focus on their priorities, stay positive, be disciplined and win. The year I came on board, the Cards won their first World Series in 20 years.

But my strategies go way beyond baseball. I’ve also trained scores of entrepreneurs and executives. It’s not as apples-and-oranges as you’d think. Business professionals are prone to many of the same detrimental behaviors and mindsets as under-performing athletes. These shortcomings prevent people in both arenas from being at the top of their game and outshining the competition.

You may not be a St. Louis Cardinal but you might need a bit of a boost in your own metaphoric stadium or dugout. Here’s what baseball can teach you about business performance.

1. Forget the home run: pay attention to your swing. Focusing only on the target – finishing the report, making the sale, acquiring the new client – is almost a guarantee you won’t reach your destination. That’s because you can’t accomplish a goal without first having a sound process in place.

The better strategy is to identify the daily goals that will have the greatest influence on your performance. These “process goals” are the ones ultimately tied to your success. Once you’ve chosen them, put all your energy and courage into tackling them every single day. If your aim is to double your client load in a year, then figure out three process goals you need to complete daily that will help you reach that ultimate target. If you’re relentless and consistent about doing them, chances are high you’ll succeed.

2. Don’t take your eye off the ball. Many high-performing businesspeople believe they can multitask and still maintain focus. For instance, they answer emails and check their e-calendar while talking to a client. However, recent research conducted by Stanford University found that multitaskers are less productive than their single-minded counterparts, and that they also suffer from weaker self-control. The American Psychological Association also cites a study showing that multitasking leads to as much as a 40 percent drop in productivity.

The bad news is multitasking can be addictive. Control your tendency to become distracted by keeping your eye on the task you are involved with in the moment. That means turning off your cell phone and shutting down your email when you complete your three designated process tasks.

3. Be your own referee. If you want to be more productive, you must establish your own limits. Your “not to-do” list might include counterproductive tasks such as responding to company emails during family time, talking to clients after a set time you’ve designated, or saying yes to a new project without evaluating it properly. You need to schedule your calendar, rather than let your calendar schedule you.

4. Get R&R between workouts. Nearly four out of 10 workers are regularly fatigued, according to a recent study in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine . In fact, the rate of lost productivity for fatigued workers – often caused by lack of sleep – was 66 percent, compared with 26 percent for workers without fatigue. That translates into a total average of 5.6 hours per week of lost productive time for fatigued workers, compared with 3.3 hours for their counterparts without fatigue. Make rest and rejuvenation a priority. Give yourself between seven and nine hours of sleep per night.

5. Listen to your body. When athletes try to push through the pain they often end up injured, which secures them a place on the dreaded Disabled List. In the workplace, this behavior is known as “extreme working,” which results in lower performance.

New research has found that 69 percent of extreme workers – those super-high achievers who regularly work between 60-80 hours a week and are ranked in the top six percent of earners – admit that their extreme working habits undermine their health. Not surprisingly, this level of performance is unsustainable. The resulting burn out happens both in baseball – check out those promising athletes benched for the season or faced with early retirement – and in office cubicles.
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Jason Selk, PhD, trains companies and organizations – including the world’s finest athletes, coaches, and business leaders – on how to achieve optimal performance. He’s the bestselling author of 10-Minute Toughness (McGraw-Hill, 2008) and Executive Toughness (McGraw-Hill, 2011). He’s a regular television and radio contributor to ABC, CBS, ESPN, and NBC. Learn more at www.enhancedperformanceinc.com

-what was your biggest lesson learned from the above article?

I used to have this problem. It’s going to sound crazy, but it’s true.

I had road direction anxiety. Not road rage — more like road haze.

Here’s how this worked: whenever I had to drive somewhere I hadn’t been to before, I would get so anxious I would completely freeze up. (This was in the pre-GPS days.) Road map? Great directions? Didn’t matter. I would become a basket case.

Ask my wife. She’s seen it. I consider myself a generally fairly intelligent, capable guy, but I could get lost going from the bedroom to the living room. And that is not as much of an exaggeration as you think. I was at a restaurant a few years ago and got up to use the men’s room. When I came back out, I was lost. I’m serious.

I’ve had this condition my whole life. And guess what? It’s gone.

Gone.

In fact, I describe exactly how it got gone, and how dozens of other people lost all manner of fear, paralyzing terror, sadness, depression, jealousy, heartbreak, ennui, existential angst, insecurities, nervousness, addiction, self-sabotage, and other self-defeating issues—and learn exactly, precisely how to do the same thing yourself—in the new book, Code to Joy, which I had the pleasure of coauthoring with two remarkable psychologists, George Pratt, PhD, and Peter Lambrou, PhD.

Drs. Pratt and Lambrou have spent decades studying what they call the “fog of distress” that afflicts virtually all of us to one degree or another.

“Typically, this vague sense of unease parks itself in the background, like the annoying hum of a refrigerator or air conditioner we have learned to block out from our conscious awareness. But whether we are aware of it or not, it pervades our existence like an insistent headache, interfering with our ability to have healthy relationships, to perform to our potential at work, or to have lives that are anywhere near as fulfilling as they could be. Over the years, that background hum can sabotage our careers, friendships, marriages. Sometimes even our physical health starts to suffer.

“For some, this fog of distress shows up in very distinct and specific ways, such as an unshakable fear or irrational anxiety, a problem in one particular area of life. For others, it is more vague and generalized. That is, it’s not that any one specific thing is so terribly wrong. It’s more that nothing is quite right.” (from the Introduction)

According to George and Peter, you can’t address this fog of distress purely through the reason or logic of dialog, even with the most expert counseling, because it lodges not only in our subconscious, but also in our biofield at a cellular and energetic level.

This is why popular approaches of repeated affirmations and visualization, while they can work, to some extent and for some people, are still fairly limited.

What George and Peter’s four-step method does is combine key techniques from cognitive science, imagery, and bioenergetics (similar to acupuncture), to work on all three levels at once: body, mind, and biofield.

The day after George and Peter treated me, here’s what happened:

I had to go interview someone, in an out-of-the-way neighborhood of a city I’d never been in before, out in the sticks, at the end of a long route of twists and turns. And I had no reliable directions. I knew I would be hopelessly lost within minutes. Just knew it.

But that’s not what happened.

Not only did I not get lost, I never had a single moment of anxiety. I rolled down the window, enjoyed the scenery, and casually just drove, way out in the middle of nowhere. I never panicked, not even for a moment—and I found my way there with no problem whatsoever. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before.

And here’s the wildest part: when the good doctors had worked with me, the previous day? It was for some totally unrelated issue, having to do with cleaning up hurt feelings from an old relationship years past. They didn’t know about my road haze. I didn’t even tell them about it.

After that, writing a book with them was more than a job: it was a treat!

P.S.: You can find the story of my weird road-haze and how my intrepid coauthors eliminated it in the first two chapters of the book—but you’ll have to look carefully: like all the other stories in the book, the names are changed to protect the innocent, so I’m there in disguise!
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John David Mann is the coauthor of the national bestseller The Go-Giver, the New York Times bestseller Flash Foresight, and the just-released Code to Joy. You can visit him at www.johndavidmann.com

-Please share your thoughts and feedback in the comments below.

When you were growing up, how often did you hear the words, “It’s better to be safe than sorry”?  Probably too often, especially when you became aware that most people who played it safe ended up sorry. It is the risk takers who generally end up winners!

How many people do you know who have passed up a magnificent opportunity because they might have had to mortgage their house or quit the job they had held for a number of years.  Rather than step out boldly, they stepped back into safety.

Abraham Maslow said you will either step forward into growth or step back into safety.  He also advised us if you plan on being anything less than you are capable of being you will probably be unhappy all the days of your life.

I am not suggesting that you become irresponsible, which is quite different from taking risks, although I will agree it is a fine line that separates the two.

The opposite of taking a risk is, of course, playing it safe.  The latter would probably be a reasonable way of life for seventy or eighty years if you had a contract to live for a thousand years. Playing it safe is a pretty dull way to live and you end up looking back on your life wondering what would have happened if you had done this or tried that.

People who play it safe are generally not very exciting.  In fact, they would probably border on being very boring.  On a scale of one to ten as a risk taker, where do you stand?

Add a little spice to your life today and take a risk.  Remember, if you play it safe you may end up sorry.

To your success,

Bob Proctor
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If you enjoyed the article you just read from Bob Proctor, you’ll definitely want to take a moment to learn more about his life-changing program Six Minutes to Success! – click here!

-what was one key idea you got from the above article?

Read more articles by Bob Proctor …
* Overcoming the Terror Barrier
* When Was the Last Time You Took a Risk?
* If You Can Visualize It, Then You Can Do It

I am extremely leery of any quick fix solution or overnight formula for success. In my opinion, they don’t exist. With that said, the following formula is one that I have recently shared with 2 members of my family to encourage them to break through the rut they are in and experience success. Therefore, if I would share it with my family, I must believe in the principles. I suggested that they begin to regularly do these three things:

1. Surround themselves with positive people who believe that this life is not all that there is. Personally, I find this at my local church. I know we don’t share the same faith in all cases. This message is not about my faith. It is about you finding a group of people who regularly meet together and have a belief that there is more to life than what we see. This is the first step to a positive outlook on life.

2. You must exercise weekly in order to stimulate endorphins and maintain an energetic life. The exercise of walking to the kitchen or curling 12 ounces does not count as exercise. I run 1 mile twice a week and 2-3 days a week do strength training. This is nothing difficult but it makes a major difference on my attitude.

3. You MUST educate yourself through reading. The average CEO in America reads 4-5 books per month. The average America reads one book per year and 60% of us don’t get past the first chapter! Make a promise to yourself to read at least one book per month. Read anything!

Regardless, of what you read….develop a passion for reading and learning and you will see your attitude and outlook on life begin to change. Any person who faithfully invested their time in these three areas may not break world records in levels of success. However, everything in me believes that they would see dramatic improvements. I believe in those three things so much, I encouraged my family to invest their time in these areas.
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Ron White has spent almost 2 decades training business professionals and students on how to improve their memory, grades and income. He is the 2009 US Memory Champion and has broken a national record by memorizing a 167-digit number in 5 minutes. Take a moment to learn about Ron’s all-time, best seller, Memory in a Month program.

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* Hang In There
* Potential

It is a peculiar truth of life that we often do not appropriately value the things we don’t directly pay for. One of the problems with credit is that it enables us to have something that we “want” now even though we might not really need it. And had we been forced to earn the money for it first then we might have decided later that it’s not worth the money because it’s not worth the  work we had to put in to get it.

Unfortunately, many of us approach our dreams with the same buying-on-credit philosophy that we use to buy our stuff. We want to find a way to get them without having to pay for them upfront. In other words we want the accolades, the raises, the notoriety, the freedom and the status, but we’d rather not have to put the work in for it up front in order to get it. But even though we think that is what we want, it ultimately doesn’t satisfy.

A dream that is handed to you wouldn’t be worth as much as one you had to pay to own. It wouldn’t have the same significance, the same meaning, and it wouldn’t represent the same success. Even though we may not realize it, the satisfaction of reaching the dream comes from having paid the price in order to get it.

So if you have a dream–any dream–you don’t want it on “credit.” That is, you don’t want it “given” to you and you don’t need it to “come easy.” You want to work for it, you want to earn it, you want to pay the price for it. You want to own it! My friend and author, Randy Gage, often says “You should be the number one investor into your own dream.”

There are three currencies you can use to invest in owning your dream: time, money, and energy. If you have a dream that you want, you can own it by investing any one of those three things into it at any moment.

And as the “Buy-In Principle” of the Take the Stairs methodology reminds us, “the more we have invested into something the less likely we are to let it fail.” So don’t wait for your dream to be given to you. Don’t expect an easier way for it to show up. Don’t think it’d be better if it just happened. Instead, start investing! Start paying the price and you’ll be amazed at the power you have once you truly “own” your own dream.

See you in the “stairwell” .
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Rory Vaden MBA – Co-Founder of Southwestern Consulting, Self-Discipline Strategist and Author of Take the Stairs. Visit www.RoryVaden.com

-what was the most important lesson you got from the above article?

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* Discipline is Easy: The Pain Paradox