Monthly Archives: November 2015
Iron-Clad Confidence
“He just oozed confidence.”
That’s the way a long-time friend described Aristotle Onassis when he was just a teenager. Some people are late bloomers. They don’t gain much real self assurance till they are well into adulthood.
But there are also early bloomers — Onassis was one — and the stories describing his early years don’t all agree on details. The do all agree, however, on one point: young Ari had charisma, and lots of it. They all describe a young man with brains and drive and overflowing with confidence.
Taking Permanent Control of Your Moods
Your Mental State Is in Your Hands
I sure do hope you’re not typical … because the typical person has little control over how they’ll feel when they get up tomorrow.
Most days, they feel like a pinball. They crawl out of bed expecting that — again today — they’re going to be bounced from one obstacle to another, pushed this way and that, and rolled helplessly into an unending stream of unexpected experiences.
Information Overload? No Such Thing
So Much Information, so Little Time
How will I ever keep up? … that feeling grips many of us.
When it does, we shrug our shoulders and curse the glut of data pouring into and through our lives. It has, in fact, become quite trendy to complain about feeling harassed and overwhelmed by all the incoming info that we need to know. Somebody even coined the term “information overload,” right?
Getting Your Confidence Back
When Confidence Deserts You
How many different ways have you heard it said?
- “I can’t get my golf swing (free throw; tennis serve; pitching) back on track”
- “All these hours of practice are only making things worse”
- “I wonder why I ever thought I could be an athlete”
- “Others might succeed, but I guess I’ll never make it.”
Ever been there?
I have. And so have most people … if they’ll tell you the truth.
The Most Unpopular Secret of Personal Power
HELEN KELLER SAID, “Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experiences of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired and success achieved.”
So you hate the hard times you’ve passed through? Maybe you need to think again.
Easy times never stretch us, never enlarge our strengths, never give us a new, expanded grasp of our capabilities.
But I Don’t Want to Wait THAT Long
Impatience
Years ago, I worked in a camera shop with a man named Sam who was constantly bemoaning his bad luck. He often talked about Mr. Dawson, a man in our town. He was in his seventies, and he was really lucky. Dawson was “lucky” according to Sam because he owned buildings all over the western suburbs of Chicago.
One day when he mentioned Dawson, I commented, “Hey, Sam, you’re only thirty-five now. Why don’t you start buying buildings this year? By the time you’re seventy-five you’ll have become as rich as Dawson.”
Control Your Words — Control Your Destiny
Undependable
Mike had run into a stubborn little glitch with his affirmations. “When I say the word ‘productive,’ he told me, “I get a little spike of self-doubt.”
Each time Mike affirmed that he was productive, it stirred up in him a deep feeling of mis-match — what psychologists call cognitive dissonance. This basically means he was trying to believe two things that contradict each other. At the gut level, Mike “knew” that he was UN-productive, so strong doubts came welling up within him.
Your Affirmations vs. Your Results
Getting What You Expect out of Life?
If not, how do you behave when you’re disappointed?
My wife and I last year moved back to Japan after living six years in Thailand. Now, I’ve eaten and enjoyed Thai food for years, but being in the source-country of all that goodness did bring me a few surprises. Take milk for example.
