Adventurous Mom

Posts Tagged ‘positive attitudes’

So you’re stuck in a pretty bad sit­u­a­tion huh? Seems like things couldn’t get any worse, and then they did.  How do we cope with when we’re in these hor­ri­ble situations?

To be hon­est, when I was talk­ing to moth­ers that were sin­gle, barely mak­ing ends meet, I felt awful.  I wanted so badly to alle­vi­ate their pain, to make them instantly suc­cess­ful, to end their wor­ries.  But I knew if I did this, it would only pro­vide tem­po­rary relief.  Much like those that win the lot­tery, they find tem­po­rary finan­cial relief, only to blow all of their money on friv­o­lous spending.

The best way I have found to help peo­ple swamped in Stress, in Debt, stuck in Life, is to show them the way, let them fig­ure it out with help and assistance.

If I were to do all the walk­ing for my kids when they were grow­ing up, they would not have a rea­son to learn to walk on their own.  Same is true for any­one stuck in a mis­er­able sit­u­a­tion.  I could hand you a life pre­server, and res­cue you, but it is bet­ter if I teach you how to swim so the next time you fall over­board, you can make it to shore on your own.

With this being said, when you’re stuck in a hor­ri­bly stress­ful sit­u­a­tion, “SEE” your way out of it.  What I mean by this is you have the capa­bil­ity of visu­al­iz­ing your way out of debt, out of stress and out of fear.  The three most debil­i­tat­ing human feel­ings are those I just listed.  But, peo­ple find their way out all of the time, why can’t you?

If you’re say­ing that it’s impos­si­ble, you’ve defeated your­self before you began.  All per­sonal devel­op­ment experts will tell you that the num­ber one way to get­ting what you want is to Visu­al­ize your Desire.

So then, let me ask you, if you are stuck in this mis­er­able sit­u­a­tion, WHAT DO YOU REALLY WANT?

• Do you really want to become debt free? – ask for it
• Do you really want to find a bet­ter pay­ing job? – see your­self work­ing in one
• Do you want a bet­ter rela­tion­ship with your kids? – believe every day that it is happening.

Doing this exer­cise may seem what I call “woo-woo” or just plainly stu­pid and eso­teric.  But ask any of the super suc­cess­ful, the wealthy, the happy, the bal­ance peo­ple in this world, and they will admit, they had a vision of how their lives would be.

This Vision puts into play sev­eral prac­ti­cal steps:

• -          You declare that you desire some­thing to hap­pen, you openly admit it to your­self, and it goes beyond wish­ing, it is a request.  You believe this will hap­pen and you get past the fear of actu­ally ask­ing for it.
• -          Your Retic­u­lar Acti­vat­ing Sys­tem (RAS) acts as a “ful­fill­ment request cen­ter”.  It is given a demand to ful­fill a desire, and then seeks to accom­plish that request.  It is a very black and white issue, and does not deal with the com­pli­cated emo­tions that are involved, it doesn’t have to.
• -          So now that the RAS has its request, it starts shoot­ing out images and ideas to your sub­con­scious in attempts to ful­fill that request.  Some­times you may start see­ing more images, TV ads, signs or other “coin­ci­dences” that will poten­tially fill your desire.
• -          Lastly, as we declare a desire, and we see it vividly in our mind’s eye, we start doing the emo­tional work nec­es­sary to com­plete the goal.  Emo­tions like to get in the way of goal com­ple­tion, but hav­ing a clear and accu­rate vision will allow us to do the work nec­es­sary to make it hap­pen.  The ques­tion is, how badly do you want it?

It’s no won­der that gurus such as Tony Rob­bins and Joe Vitale sug­gest using tools such as Vision Boards.  It allows us to take our men­tal pic­ture and put it into phys­i­cal real­ity.  Sure, the phys­i­cal real­ity is only 2 dimen­sional when you’re mak­ing your vision board, but it is still a phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion of your desire, and is the first step in see­ing what the desire feels like.

This vision board also allows you to rein­force your desires.  If you look at the board once or even twice a day, it is that daily con­sis­tency that acti­vates the RAS, the sub­con­scious and the con­scious mind to work together to bring forth your desire.

So I know this is a lot of infor­ma­tion about a pretty sim­ple idea: Visu­al­iza­tion. Yet, believ­ing that you will not be STUCK in your mis­er­able sit­u­a­tion is so impor­tant to your men­tal health and to your abil­ity to dig your way out!

Think about this:

In all things it is bet­ter to hope than to despair. “ Johann Von Goethe

When things are bad, we take com­fort in the thought that they could always be worse. And when they are, we find hope in the thought that things are so bad they have to get better.

Let me know what you think…have you had suc­cess with Vision Boards, have you been able to SEE your way out of bad sit­u­a­tions?  Leave a com­ment below, I love feedback!

Many Adven­tures!

Maken­zie

I con­sider myself and adven­turer, a life adventurer.

There is also the tra­di­tional sense of the word Adven­turer, like when you think of Mag­el­lan, or Colum­bus. There are Adven­tur­ers such as Richard Bran­son or the late Steve Fos­sett who thought mak­ing money was an adven­ture, and also push­ing their pos­si­bil­i­ties to the limit.

Are you any dif­fer­ent than any of these peo­ple?  Are you made of the same chem­i­cal com­po­si­tion as these peo­ple? Seri­ously, when you were born, is it pos­si­ble that you were born just a REGULAR human, and they were born SUPER human?  No.  You were born with the same pos­si­bil­i­ties as they were.

What makes them suc­cess­ful and oth­ers just mediocre?

There are many dif­fer­ent the­o­ries about what makes peo­ple excel into this  Out­lier cat­e­gory.  Some think its envi­ron­ment, some think it’s DNA, oth­ers say it’s just luck.  One com­mon­al­ity I can say for cer­tain is their abil­ity to cre­ate men­tal tough­ness, pos­i­tive self-talk and incred­i­ble self confidence.

You may not aspire to become a Mag­el­lan of the 21st cen­tury, but per­haps, you want to adven­ture into a new career, cre­ate a busi­ness, or have the guts to do what­ever it is that you want?  What is keep­ing you from achiev­ing your goals?  I can almost guar­an­tee that it is not the exter­nal cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing your sit­u­a­tion.  It’s prob­a­bly what you tell your­self when you talk to yourself.

Become Men­tally Tough

What does it really take to become men­tally tough and cre­ate your own self con­fi­dence?  One great exam­ple that I love to use is Mil­i­tary Boot Camp.  (But Maken­zie, seri­ously, boot camp?  I can’t even do a push up!)  Imag­ine the out-of-shape, skinny, or chubby kids that enter boot camp.  They’re scared, they have lit­tle or low self esteem, and are timid when they enter boot camp.  But over the course of sev­eral months, a tran­si­tion occurs in their body AND their mind.  Not only are they strong, but they are con­fi­dent and men­tally tough.

How did this happen?

1. They were sub­ject to “sug­ges­tions” day and night by drill instructors
2. They were immersed in suc­cess talk (learn to do this, oth­er­wise you will be killed!)
3. Their bod­ies were trans­formed by day after day phys­i­cal training
4. Many small suc­cesses led to build­ing confidence
5. Prac­tice, prac­tice, practice

This didn’t occur overnight.

Men­tal tough­ness for you won’t occur overnight, but you can believe that you can become tough, strong willed, and con­fi­dent.  It really begins with the first step of “belief”.  Unless you are will­ing to sub­ject your­self to a boot-camp type immer­sion, you will need to set a reg­i­men for your­self to Prac­tice Self Confidence.

Prac­tice Self Confidence

Much like boot camp, you will need to prac­tice your reg­i­men.  This is what I suggest:

1. Real­ize that you are born with no dif­fer­ent abil­i­ties than peo­ple that are great and achieve success
2. Decide what goals you want to achieve
3. Rec­og­nize when say neg­a­tive things to your­self (this is pos­si­bly the hard­est part because only you will rec­og­nize this, no one can do it for you.…but again, it take PRACTICE!!!)
4. Elim­i­nate the word: CAN’T
5. Replace the neg­a­tive beliefs with pos­i­tive beliefs:  “I CAN” or “I WILL” inter­nal statements
6. Don’t give up, keep try­ing, keep practicing.…you can do it!
7. Prac­tice and repeat

Good luck, and happy adventures!

Okay, so I am giv­ing away my age with this post, but that’s okay.  I already told every­one I was about 12 pounds over­weight in the prior post!

I really wanted to share with every­one how excep­tion­ally excited I am to have Retired!  I guess I like to use the term Retire because it really epit­o­mizes the mind­set that I have taken regard­ing my new life transition.

Some define retire as:

To with­draw from one’s occu­pa­tion, busi­ness, or office

To fall back or retreat, as from battle

To move back or away; recede.

I have def­i­nitely withdrawn.…

I moved back or almost like the tide, I’ve receded.    Yet, I really enjoy the sec­ond def­i­n­i­tion, as I’ve fallen back or retreated as from bat­tle! Wow!  I def­i­nitely felt like I was in a los­ing TIME bat­tle, and with the deci­sion to fall back, I have regained my Life! Decid­ing not to con­tinue to fight the bat­tle doesn’t always mean you lose.  Some­times you find out that you’re only bat­tling your­self, you are your worst enemy in some situations.

Retir­ing young DOES NOT mean:

Well what the heck do I mean then?

This type of retire­ment stinks

How DID I retire at 33?

1. Unlucky peo­ple often fail to fol­low their intu­ition when mak­ing a choice, whereas lucky peo­ple tend to respect hunches. Lucky peo­ple are inter­ested in how they both think and feel about the var­i­ous options, rather than sim­ply look­ing at the ratio­nal side of the sit­u­a­tion. I think this helps them because gut feel­ings act as an alarm bell — a rea­son to con­sider a deci­sion carefully.
2. Unlucky peo­ple tend to be crea­tures of rou­tine. They tend to take the same route to and from work and talk to the same types of peo­ple at par­ties. In con­trast, many lucky peo­ple try to intro­duce vari­ety into their lives. For exam­ple, one per­son described how he thought of a colour before arriv­ing at a party and then intro­duced him­self to peo­ple wear­ing that colour. This kind of behav­iour boosts the like­li­hood of chance oppor­tu­ni­ties by intro­duc­ing variety.
3. Lucky peo­ple tend to see the pos­i­tive side of their ill for­tune. They imag­ine how things could have been worse. In one inter­view, a lucky vol­un­teer arrived with his leg in a plas­ter cast and described how he had fallen down a flight of stairs. I asked him whether he still felt lucky and he cheer­fully explained that he felt luck­ier than before. As he pointed out, he could have bro­ken his neck.