Everything is always working out for me | Abraham | Esther Hicks

Everything is always working out for me is a wonderful rampage of appreciation from Abraham, to get us in the Vortex.  For more information check out http://www.abraham-hicks.com
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Choose yourself | James Altucher | TEDxSanDiego

This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences. James Altucher is now considered to be a reknowned author and serial entrepreneur, but in this brutally honest talk, injected with outrageous humor, he reveals how at one point failure led him to consider suicide, and how he turned his life around by following five key practices:

 - Improve your physical health (focus on exercise and diet)  - Improve your emotional health (be around people that you love and trust)  - Improve you spiritual health (always expressing gratitude)  - Capture your brilliance (write down ten ideas every day)  - Give without expectation (give your ideas away).

“If you don’t make the choices in your own life, then someone else is going to end up making them for you, and it won’t be good.”

James Altucher is a successful entrepreneur, chess master, investor and writer. He is the author of the WSJ and Amazon Best-Sellers “Choose Yourself” and “The Power Of No” as well as ten other books. He has started and run more than 20 companies, and sold several of those businesses for large exits and failed miserably at all the rest. His book “Choose Yourself” explains how he rose from repeated failure to find success. He has also run venture capital funds, hedge funds, is an active angel investor, and currently sits on the boards of several companies.
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Healthy Personal Boundaries & How to Establish Them | Z. Hereford

Learning to set healthy personal boundaries is necessary for maintaining a positive self-concept, or self-image. It is our way of communicating to others that we have self-respect, self-worth, and will not allow others to define us.

Personal boundaries are the physical, emotional and mental limits we establish to protect ourselves from being manipulated, used, or violated by others. They allow us to separate who we are, and what we think and feel, from the thoughts and feelings of others. Their presence helps us express ourselves as the unique individuals we are, while we acknowledge the same in others.

It would not be possible to enjoy healthy relationships without the existence of personal boundaries, or without our willingness to communicate them directly and honestly with others. We must recognize that each of us is a unique individual with distinct emotions, needs and preferences. This is equally true for our spouses, children and friends.

To set personal boundaries means to preserve your integrity, take responsibility for who you are, and to take control of your life.

How do we establish healthy personal boundaries?

Know that you have a right to personal boundaries. You not only have the right, but you must take responsibility for how you allow others to treat you. Your boundaries act as filters permitting what is acceptable in your life and what is not. If you don't have boundaries that protect and define you, as in a strong sense of identity, you tend to derive your sense of worth from others. To avoid this situation, set clear and decisive limits so that others will respect them, then be willing to do whatever it takes to enforce them. Interestingly, it's been shown that those who have weak boundaries themselves tend to violate the boundaries of others.

Recognize that other people's needs and feelings are not more important than your own. Many women have traditionally thought that the needs of their husbands and children are more important than their own. This is not only untrue, but it can undermine the healthy functioning of the family dynamic. If a woman is worn out mentally and physically from putting everyone else first, she not only destroys her own health, she in turn deprives her family of being fully engaged in their lives. Instead, she should encourage every family member to contribute to the whole as well as take care of himself or herself. Putting themselves last is not something only women do, but many men as well.

Learn to say no. Many of us are people-pleasers and often put ourselves at a disadvantage by trying to accommodate everyone. We don't want to be selfish, so we put our personal needs on the back burner and agree to do things that may not be beneficial to our well-being. Actually, a certain amount of "selfishness" is necessary for having healthy personal boundaries. You do not do anyone any favors, least of all yourself, by trying to please others at your own expense. 

Identify the actions and behaviors that you find unacceptable. Let others know when they've crossed the line, acted inappropriately, or disrespected you in any way. Do not be afraid to tell others when you need emotional and physical space. Allow yourself to be who you really are without pressure from others to be anything else. Know what actions you may need to take if your wishes aren't respected.  

Trust and believe in yourself. You are the highest authority on you. You know yourself best. You know what you need, want, and value. Don't let anyone else make the decisions for you. Healthy boundaries make it possible for you to respect your strengths, abilities and individuality as well as those of others. An unhealthy imbalance occurs when you encourage neediness, or are needy; want to be rescued, or are the rescuer, or when you choose to play the victim.

Signs of Unhealthy Boundaries

• Going against personal values or rights in order to please others.
• Giving as much as you can for the sake of giving.
• Taking as much as you can for the sake of taking.
• Letting others define you.
• Expecting others to fill your needs automatically.
• Feeling bad or guilty when you say no.
• Not speaking up when you are treated poorly.
• Falling apart so someone can take care of you.
• Falling "in love" with someone you barely know or who reaches out to you.
• Accepting advances, touching and sex that you don't want.
• Touching a person without asking.

When we possess healthy personal boundaries:

• We have improved self-confidence and a healthy self-concept. 
• We are more in touch with reality. 
• Are better able to communicate with others. 
• Have better more fulfilling relationships. 
• Have more stability and control over our lives.

It is never too late to work on establishing healthy personal boundaries. 

Please let me know what you think below.

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10 Things Successful People Never Do Again | Henry Cloud

We all make mistakes but the people who thrive from their mistakes are the successful ones.

“Never go back.” What does that mean? From observations of successful people, clinical psychologist and author of Never Go Back: 10 Things You'll Never Do Again (Howard Books, June 2014), Dr. Henry Cloud has discovered certain “awakenings” that people have—in life and in business—that once they have them, they never go back to the old way of doing things. And when that happens, they are never the same. In short, they got it.

“Years ago, a bad business decision of mine led to an interesting discussion with my mentor,” Dr. Cloud says. “I had learned a valuable lesson the hard way, and he reassured me: ‘The good thing is once you learn that lesson, you never go back. You never do it again.’
“I wondered, what are the key awakenings that successful people go through that forever change how they do things, which propel them to succeed in business, relationships, and life? I began to study these awakenings, researching them over the years.”

Although life and business have many lessons to teach us, Dr. Cloud observed 10 “doorways” of learning that high performers go through, never to return again.

Successful people never again…

Related: 10 Little Things Successful People Do Differently

1. Return to what hasn’t worked.

Whether a job, or a broken relationship that was ended for a good reason, we should never go back to the same thing, expecting different results, without something being different.

2. Do anything that requires them to be someone they are not.

In everything we do, we have to ask ourselves, “Why am I doing this? Am I suited for it? Does it fit me? Is it sustainable?” If the answer is no to any of these questions, you better have a very good reason to proceed.

3. Try to change another person.

When you realize that you cannot force someone into doing something, you give him or her freedom and allow them to experience the consequences. In doing so, you find your own freedom as well.

4. Believe they can please everyone.

Once you get that it truly is impossible to please everyone, you begin to live purposefully, trying to please the right people.

5. Choose short-term comfort over long-term benefit.

Once successful people know they want something that requires a painful, time-limited step, they do not mind the painful step because it gets them to a long-term benefit. Living out this principle is one of the most fundamental differences between successful and unsuccessful people, both personally and professionally.

6. Trust someone or something that appears flawless.

It’s natural for us to be drawn to things and people that appear "incredible." We love excellence and should always be looking for it. We should pursue people who are great at what they do, employees who are high performers, dates who are exceptional people, friends who have stellar character, and companies that excel. But when someone or something looks too good to be true, he, she, or it is. The world is imperfect. Period. No one and no thing is without flaw, and if they appear that way, hit pause.

7. Take their eyes off the big picture.

We function better emotionally and perform better in our lives when we can see the big picture. For successful people, no one event is ever the whole story. Winners remember that—each and every day.

8. Neglect to do due diligence.

No matter how good something looks on the outside, it is only by taking a deeper, diligent, and honest look that we will find out what we truly need to know: the reality that we owe ourselves.

9. Fail to ask why they are where they find themselves.

One of the biggest differences between successful people and others is that in love and in life, in relationships and in business, successful people always ask themselves, what part am I playing in this situation? Said another way, they do not see themselves only as victims, even when they are.

10. Forget that their inner life determines their outer success.

The good life sometimes has little to do with outside circumstances. We are happy and fulfilled mostly by who we are on the inside. Research validates that. And our internal lives largely contribute to producing many of our external circumstances.
And, the converse is true: people who are still trying to find success in various areas of life can almost always point to one or more of these patterns as a reason they are repeating the same mistakes.

Everyone makes mistakes…even the most successful people out there. But, what achievers do better than others is recognize the patterns that are causing those mistakes and never repeat them again. In short, they learn from pain—their own and the pain of others.

A good thing to remember is this: pain is unavoidable, but repeating the same pain twice, when we could choose to learn and do something different, is certainly avoidable. I like to say, “we don’t need new ways to fail….the old ones are working just fine!” Our task, in business and in life, is to observe what they are, and never go back to doing them again.

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New year, new you? Forget it | Oliver Burkeman

Old You is the last person you ought to trust when it comes to designing a New You.

So here we are again: that time known to publishers as “New Year, New You”, partly because they want to sell life-makeover books and partly because, well… alliteration! I trust we’re all in agreement that “New Year, New You” is preposterous and bad. But it’s preposterous and bad, I’d argue, for some interesting reasons – reasons it’s worth grasping if you’d actually like to make a few lasting changes this year. These all result from one rarely mentioned truth: that by definition, the only person who could successfully bring this New You into being is that feckless, lazy, overcommitted, weak-willed, Twitter-addicted, crisps-munching good-for-nothing called Old You.

And Old You is the last person you ought to trust when it comes to designing a New You. Consider the facts. For a start, Old You doesn’t currently do any of the things he or she claims will make New You happy and fulfilled. (Would you trust a personal trainer who chain-smoked through your sessions and never worked out? Exactly.) Moreover, Old You doesn’t even seem to like himself or herself that much, otherwise a makeover wouldn’t be on the agenda. Clearly, Old You has some issues. Lastly, Old You probably has a long track record of trying and failing to implement change – and yet you’re going to trust this shifty character with your future? That’s like taking your car to a mechanic who botches the repair job almost every time.

Behind the seductive lure of “New Year, New You” lies another kind of mistake, too: the idea that what we require, in order finally to change, is one last push of willpower. (Presumably, the hope is that the “January feeling” of fresh starts and clean slates will provide it.) The assumption is that you’re a bit like a heavy rock, poised on a hill above the Valley of Achievement, Productivity and Clean Eating. All you need is a concerted push to get you rolling. But the real reason that transformation is hard – as Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey make clear in their book Immunity To Change – is that people (and organisations) have powerful “competing commitments”, or reasons not to change. To use weakness of will to explain why you take on too much, or overeat, or date disastrous people, is to neglect the fact that those habits make you feel indispensable, or assuage feelings of loneliness, or distract you from inner conflicts you’d rather not address. Technically, physics fans will note, something similar is true of the rock. There are countervailing forces that keep it stuck, beyond the mere absence of an impetus to move.

One useful way to shift perspective is to hand both Old You and New You their marching orders, and narrow your focus to Present You. Don’t resolve to become “the kind of person” who runs, meditates, or listens to your spouse. Instead, just do that thing, once, today. Preferably now. It’s tempting to add “and then do the same tomorrow, and every day, for ever” – except that would be to fall back into the New You trap. Lower your sights. Today is the first day of the rest of your week.

oliver.burkeman@theguardian.com

Let me know what you think below!

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Unbroken - Motivational Video

Unbroken is a 6 minute inspirational video which has been watched by 22 million people and counting. It is designed to remind us of what is important in life.

Source: https://youtu.be/26U_seo0a1g

Be inspired, and let me know below what inspired you the most.

Believe in yourself - Motivational Video (ft. Jaret Grossman & Eric Thomas)

This is a fantastic use of 4 minutes of your life! 8 million views and counting!  

Comments below...

Source: https://youtu.be/AjZ0KbJcav0

Dalai Lama's guide to happiness

This video looks at 'Buddhism and Happiness', as we ask are they a match made in heaven or something else? This eight minute epic reveals some incredible insights into human behaviour and values that impact our happiness, particularly in this materialistic Western life so many are living, or reaching for.

The Dalai Lama is an incredible man. His message here is simple and straight forward. Let me know what you think of it.

Link: https://youtu.be/IUEkDc_LfKQ