30 Ways To Start Living To Your Full Potential

Are You Living To Your Full Potential?

According to popular belief, on average, we are only using 10% of our potential. That means that you can be 10 times more productive, thus successful, than you are now.

There are claims that the number is much lower, at just 2%, regardless, it is clear we are living far below our potential. We are selling ourselves short, constantly creating reasons that will justify and rationalize a lack of success of poor performance.

There are three big lies that we often tell ourselves which feed our inability to live to our fullest potential.

Lie 1. Beating yourself up is productive. We spend a lot of energy telling ourselves they we’re just not good enough, which leaves little energy left for everything else. You find yourself reading and taking quizzes to uncover your hidden talents, and what job is right for you. You focus on what others are doing, and pretty much everywhere else but on you. We limit our potential by failing to focus on what we truly want, and what we are passionate about.

Lie 2. Failure, fear, and sorrow don’t feature in a life fulfilling potential. This is downright wrong. Part of living to your full potential is embracing fear and failure, and acting anyway. We view things, as they are, not how they should be.

Lie 3. Telling yourself, you are not good enough. That is what you’re doing when you kick yourself for not achieving your full potential. It’s a lie and it is dis empowering. Let go of the lie and choose empowerment, because the choice is always yours.

Just as there are three lies, there are three ways to ensure that you are living to your full attention.

Clarify. It’s time to develop your long-term vision. Now, skip ahead five (or ten) years, and what type of life do you see for yourself? What job will you have, what life will you lead? What type of success do you wish to have achieved? How do you imagine yourself feeling about yourself?

Set Goals. You have your vision, now you need to shape it into goals that are specific and actionable. Come up with at least 10 goals that you would like to achieve professionally and personally. Review your list and choose the goal that will make the biggest difference in your live. Create a timeline and milestones on how you will achieve it.

Win. Creating winning habits is crucial to success. The habits that you have now are responsible for your performance, skill set, and the success that you have today. If you aren’t happy with your success, then it’s vital adopt new, winning habits. The most important of which is self-discipline. This is the ability to motivate yourself to do what you need to be doing, even when you don’t feel like it.

Living up to your potential doesn’t mean avoiding failure or mistakes. It means embracing those things and ploughing ahead. It means choosing you, and doing things one-step a time, doing it your way. Remember that life is not about pleasing everyone around you, rather about pleasing yourself.

Don’t get caught up in the belief that others are better or more capable than you are. You can achieve those same things. Nor should you hold yourself back from achieving everything you want, just because you’re worried about upsetting the apple cart.

It’s your life, live it however you want to, and by choosing to live up to your full potential, you are giving yourself permission to be you. You will feel empowered, excited, determine, proud, and even scared. That does not happen by accident, it is because you choose it.

5 Tips To Stop Surviving And Start Living

Do you find yourself merely surviving or is your focus on thriving? People who thrive are focused on how they can reinvent themselves, and be a success, despite the negativity and adversity that surrounds them.

Everyone goes through rough times, and there are plenty of things that are entirely out of your control. You can’t control the state of the national debt or the economy, you can’t control the weather or what other people do and say. There is something that you do control, though, and that is how you think, how you act, and how you respond to those things that are out of your control.

You should be living to thrive, not living to survive! Positive thinking doesn’t mean that you’re being unrealistic, nor does it mean that you’re sitting on the fence, waiting for goodness to wash over you. Thinking is just the first step, what following thinking is action. It’s vital to understand that the world is full of challenges, and you can learn from that and create a plan to stop surviving, and start living.

Don’t give in to negativity. No matter what it is, don’t participate in negativity, whether it’s gossip, nay saying, or even the recession! Keep your focus on your vision, your goals, whether they are for your business or yourself. Start believing that success is within your grasp. Remain positive, work hard, and take actions to grow.

Don’t invite judgement. You don’t need to allow judgement from others to enter your life, because by allowing it you’re inviting negativity. You are capable of doing amazing things, so don’t make excuses, and don’t let outside judgements cloud yours.

Be accountable. You own your thoughts and you own your actions, so step up and take responsibility. Don’t engage in finger pointing, or pass the blame on to someone else if things go wrong. Look at you, and how you can alter the outcome. Do remember this, you can only be responsible for the things you have the power to change.

Be a magnet for success. You want to start attracting money, opportunities, positivity, love, peace, business, or clients? Then focus on what it is that you want, and don’t give your personal power to negative circumstances. That type of behavior only gives power to your debt, or your lack of success. By focusing on negative situations, you’re gifting it your power. Focus your thoughts and attention on how to achieve what you want. This motivates positivity and improves your creative flow.

Know your why. What makes you get up every morning? People who are living and thriving know their why and use it as their fuel. Once you finish reading this, take half an hour out and sit and consider your why. What’s important to you, and why do you do it? What is it that you want? Discover the why and stay on track. Behind every goal there is a why, and it’s vital that you take time out to understand it. If you want to accomplish your goals, then you need to understand it to breathe purpose and meaning into it.

Now, ask yourself this: who are you? Have you just been surviving, or have you been living and thriving? Survivors view the world as uncertain and unfavorable, they’re cautious and think narrowly. Livers and thrivers, though, think positively, they find ways to solve their problems, and act with courage and strength. They think outside the box and believe that every goal is achievable. They take action and work hard to achieve those goals. They never give up.

5 Key Steps To Enhance Your Personal Power

While we wage a daily battle, attempting to influence others, we often forget we struggle to influence ourselves! A key element in influencing people is credibility. People judge you based on your actions, not by your intentions, and not by what you say or how you say it. Your behavior fuels your credibility; you are essentially your behavior!

Your credibility feeds your personal power, and just because you find yourself in a position of power at work or at home, you aren’t guaranteed respect, and it certainly doesn’t mean that people will listen to you. You have to earn it. You may be able to leverage your status, or expertise, to influence people, but this isn’t personal power, it’s power-crazed.

Everyone is born with personal power, it’s shaped by the influences of parents, social lives, and culture. These components condition us on how we can fit in. Unconsciously, we follow the accepted behaviors for someone in a particular role, as influenced by authority figures in our lives.

We push our personal power down, when we play the role of good employee. Often, we find ourselves over-awed by the power that we perceive in others. Over time, we are desensitized to our personal power, believing that other people have more value or worth. Your personal power is always there, beneath the surface, you just have to tap into it. If you want to enhance your personal power, there are five key steps to succeed. Here’s how to do it:

Self-awareness – the majority of people struggle with finding their voice at some point. Finding it, though, allows you to make a contribution, to lead and to make a difference. You won’t wake up one morning and find your voice and your self-awareness. You have to take time to study you to find you. Ask yourself this: what do you love doing? What is it that you are good at, and passionate about? When you know your value, share it.

Clarity & Empathy – people with awesome personal power are focused on the important things in life. They know what they are capable of and can easily define it for others. They have goals that are clear, and take action to achieve them. Another big part of your personal power is the ability to empathize. You can influence people more effectively when you can see things from their point of view. People will be more open and honest with you, if they believe you can understand them. Remember, it isn’t all about you.

Self-belief – You aren’t what you eat, it’s what you believe. Your thoughts are your personal reality. Those with strong levels of personal power completely believe in their vision, and they take actions to ensure that they happen. Change your thinking and reframe the limits you’ve placed on yourself. When you believe in yourself, people find you more credible.

Energy & Enthusiasm – There is a link between enthusiasm and energy, simply because they feed off of each other. Energy and enthusiasm as vital components of personal power. Positive, successful people tend to be filled with energy; enthusiasm is seriously infectious. So, ask yourself this- what are you spreading to the people around you?

Lead the Way – You don’t need to be in a positive of power to be a leader. We are conditioning to believe that we need formal authority to do it, but why wait? You can step into your personal power and choose to be a proactive person, rather than always waiting and instead reacting. No one needs to offer you permission to lead, true leadership comes from within. It’s easy, lead yourself and other people will start to follow.

Don’t delay, it’s time to start enhancing your personal power today.

5 Key Ways Being Mindful Helps Really Busy People

The phrase “being mindful” has been used to define a psychological state in which you focus on the present moment and don’t dwell on the past or worry about the future.

It is a practice that promotes awareness of the present moment.

In order to be consistent with most of the research, mindfulness is recognized as a moment-to-moment awareness of your experiences without placing judgment. It is a state of being and not a character trait. While it may involve things like meditation, it is much more than that.

Several practices and disciplines can promote mindfulness, such as qi gong, tai chi, and yoga; however, most of the research has been focused on mindfulness that is developed through meditation, a practice involving self-regulation control.

It fosters mental wellbeing and development, or specific capacities such as calmness, concentration, and clarity.

Emotional Regulation

Scientists have theorized that mindfulness promotes cognitive awareness, enhances the ability to be attentive, and decreases rumination. These cognitive gains contribute to strategies involving “emotion-regulation.”

More specifically, the research on mindfulness techniques has found that mindfulness has these benefits, especially for very busy people:

It decreases rumination. There have been many studies showing that mindfulness decreases rumination about the future. For example, researchers asked twenty meditators to participate in a ten-day mindfulness meditation retreat. After the retreat, the participants who practiced mindfulness had a higher degree of mindfulness and decreased rumination. Those who practiced mindfulness had a better working memory and were better able to focus on daily tasks.

Mindfulness reduces stress in busy people. There have been several studies indicating that practicing mindfulness-based cognitive therapy and mindfulness-based stress reduction may be helpful in altering cognitive and affective processes. These findings are similar to evidence that mindfulness decreases negative affect and anxiety, and increases positive affect. One study showed that participants assigned to an 8-week mindfulness-based stress program were compared to controls on measures of psychopathology, anxiety, and depression.

It also measured neural activity as measured by a functional MRI scan after watching several sad movies. Additionally, the functional MRI scans showed that those who practiced mindfulness had less neural reactivity when they were exposed to the movies when compared to the control group. This suggests that mindfulness shifts the person’s ability to make use of emotion regulation strategies in such a way that enables them to experience emotion selectivity. The emotions they experienced might be processed differently inside the brain.

Mindfulness increases working memory. Improvements in the working memory of busy people seem to be another benefit of mindfulness. In a 2010 study, for example, there were documented benefits of mindfulness among a group of participants who underwent an 8-week course in mindfulness training. Both groups were highly stressed. The researchers found that those that didn’t meditate had a decrease in their working memory, while those who meditated had an increase in working memory. In addition, mindfulness was related to positive affect and inversely related to negative affect.

Mindfulness improves focus in busy people. There was another study that looked at how mindfulness meditation affected the participant’s ability to focus on attention and their ability to suppress distracting information.The researchers looked at those who were experienced in mindfulness with those who had no experience with the technique. Those who practiced mindfulness had better performance on attention tasks and had a greater degree of self-reported mindfulness.

Mindfulness decreases emotional reactivity. Researchers also supported the idea that mindfulness lessens emotional reactivity. In a study of those who had from a month to 29 years of mindfulness practice, those that had practice in mindfulness helped people disengage from emotionally-upsetting pictures and helped them focus better on cognitive tasks when compared to those who did not practice mindfulness.

5 Ways Mindfulness Improves Your Quality Of Life

You have probably heard about mindfulness, right? You know it’s something Buddhist monks do and it is kind of like meditation and you know it’s supposed to be good for you. Right?

But how good for you is it really and how exactly can you benefit?

First, let us look at what mindfulness actually is, and then we can explore the five ways it can be helpful to you on a day-to-day basis.

You are right in thinking that mindfulness is a form of meditation. It is, to put it quite simply, the art of paying attention to what is happening in each moment. Or, at least, to one aspect of what is happening in each moment.

For example, take a moment now just to focus on your breath…

Breathe in.

Notice the cool air coming in through your nostrils.

Now breathe out, and notice the warmer air coming out through your nostrils as you exhale.

Now, do this a few more times.

You have just practiced mindfulness!

How did it feel? What did you notice?

Of course, there is no right or wrong answers but besides becoming aware of the experience of breathing (something we do not generally do in the rush of our stressed-out lifestyles), you may have noticed that your habitual “racy” thoughts subsided, and there may have been a few moments of still, quiet, peacefulness.

Do not judge yourself if you did not have these positive feelings. Just accept the experience without labelling it “good” or “bad.” Non-judgment is the most helpful spirit in which to practice mindfulness.

Those moments of quiet, still peacefulness would in fact be Benefit Number One:

Mindfulness will help you to experience more peacefulness in your life. Some Buddhists suggest you give the “monkey mind” a job, i.e., to focus on the breathe.

Now that the crazy little monkey has a job, the thoughts can quieten and calm down. This allows you to feel peaceful. In turn, your brain waves slow, your parasympathetic nervous system kicks in and your body relaxes.

Benefit Number Two:

Mindfulness causes your body to relax. In a study where participants practiced mindfulness for just five minutes a day over a three week period, it was found that there were increased reports of stress reduction, more positive relationships with others and “mastery of one’s environment”.

Benefit Number Three:

You can become focused on one task at a time. This will allow you to be more productive and accomplish more without being exhausted from the many stressors we deal with everyday.

Mindfulness helps us to break out of our habitual unproductive thought patterns, which may include anxiety, fear and other forms of negative thinking and it allows us to be “present to what is.”

In being present we experience a sense of spaciousness and awareness of the moment and in that spacious awareness we slow down, yet paradoxically we can get more done, and more efficiently too.

Benefit Number Four:

Mindfulness increases happiness. By being mindful, we can let go of the past, avoid getting caught up in worries about the future and we can appreciate the joy inherent in each moment: we can smell the scent of a beautiful flower; we can savor a delicious meal, enjoy the feel of the wind on our face, and so on.

Mindfulness also allows us to experience much deeper connections with others. We can be more present to them and experience our relationships more fully.

Benefit Number Five:

Mindfulness improves your physical health!

As far-fetched as this sounds, there is plenty of science to back this up. Studies have found that mindfulness can

Lower blood pressure
Improve sleep
Reduce chronic pain

So there you have it! Five beautiful incentives to practice mindfulness and enhance your quality of life and just five minutes a day will benefit you.

What are you waiting for?

5 Ways That A Hectic Lifestyle Damages Your Health

The fast-paced hectic lifestyles that many people have come to adopt as the norm is not all it’s cracked up to be. While many focus on doing more and more, they often forget the whole point of success, which is to be able to do less and less and still maintain a good lifestyle.

What´s the point of planting seeds if you have to sell the farm to do so?

Yet that is all too often what happens. When it comes to health, there is a dark side to constantly pushing yourself to produce more and more.

One of the greatest deprecations to health due to a hectic lifestyle comes in the form of negligence. Typically when a person gets so busy with all the “most important” things in life they often forget to make time for the activities that might not be so urgent but that still have a huge impact on quality of life. One of those important activities is exercise.

Exercise

The percentage of overweight and sedentary individuals has been on the constant rise for many years, in no small part thanks to a busy, work-packed life. Exercise is one of the largest factors in maintaining good health throughout the years and anything that threatens to remove that piece of the puzzle puts the rest of the game in jeopardy.

Even if someone stays strong and manages to make room in their life for exercise, there are usually other factors of maintenance that are neglected.

Nutrition

When life gets to be too much to handle, good nutrition tends to be the first thing to go. Many people are too busy to sleep or breathe, let alone sit down and prepare a decent home-cooked meal. Fast food and TV dinners three times a day quickly become the substitute, and it goes without saying just how hard it can be to get consistently healthy fare on a fast food diet.

Mental and emotional health too suffers when there isn’t enough room on the plate for self-care. When asked what hobbies and activities they do for fun, many professionals will shrug their shoulders and say “none.”

While this might not appear destructive on the surface, it can actually have severe consequences to mental and emotional stability. Relaxation and fun are just as important to good health as vitamins and sleep are.

Hobbies And Recreation

Numerous studies have demonstrated the therapeutic and regenerative effect that hobbies and recreation can have on both physical and mental health. Many people who suffer from anger management issues, anxiety, and other emotional disturbances could probably trace the cause back to a drought of fun and relaxation. Whether you’re a neurosurgeon or a garbage man, everybody needs to take a little bit of time to unwind and enjoy themselves.

A lack of fun and relaxation leads to the fourth detriment to health caused by an overly chaotic life, and that is chronic stress.

There are countless studies that expound the plethora of negative health consequences that stress produces, from heart attacks to weight problems and from depression to temporary personality disorders.

There seems to be no aspect of life that is free from the necrotic touch of chronic stress. Many marriages have ended because of financial reasons, quite possibly due to the constant stress fostered by deep financial issues. It is very difficult to maintain the passion of love alive when stress consumes every waking thought.

Means Without An End

The fifth and final detriment to health caused by a hectic lifestyle is that it can quite possibly change the course of your entire life. It is not uncommon to hear of cases where an individual began working towards a career goal with the idea of using that career to achieve some long sought-after dream. After years of life-draining work however, the dream is forgotten and replaced by the career itself.

It isn’t that the individual gave up on achieving the dream, but rather that after focusing their entire mind, life, and soul around the means to the end, the means eventually became an end in itself, crowding out the original dream entirely.

It is natural consequence that when a person obsesses and stresses over something for long enough, that thought or idea begins to absorb the entire mind, becoming the central focus of life.

The effect is basically that one trains her mind so much to think about the means, the career, the finances or whatever, that eventually that idea becomes the only thing that the mind is capable of comprehending, and maybe even the only thing that the mind capable of desiring.

Where once a healthy zest for life once dwelled, there now resides a trojan horse of empty time trials and productivity goals, with no real end point in sight.

This is the ultimate trap of the hectic lifestyle, where one gets so used to living in a constant rush of cortisol and adrenaline that he forgets how to enjoy the company of his friends and family, or loses interest in the hobbies and dreams that once gave her hope and longing for the future. Instead of enjoying life, one merely tries to beat it.

Existence becomes a meaningless chain of milestones that lead nowhere.

For that reason alone it is imperative to take some time to stop, disconnect, sniff the roses, and maybe even the moldy bananas beside the sink, just for the sake of remembering that life still exists outside the workplace, because if life wasn’t made up of the little moments of love, joy, laughter, and struggle, then what would be left?

Having goals and milestones is great, as long as they don’t make you lose sight of the fulfillment you hoped to gain from them. In like manner, having a crazy week or two here and there is just fine, as long as it doesn’t become the norm.

5 Ways To Focus Your Energy Towards Your Well being

When you take better care of yourself and your body, it will boost your well-being rather quickly. Eating well and exercising will provide benefits that can be seen almost instantly, helping the mind and body to manage virtually any difficulty that you may face, which includes depression and anxiety.

In addition to providing nourishment for your body and participating in physical activities that you enjoy, there are a number of other ways that your mental health and overall well-being can be improved, as well, which are highlighted here.

Accept the Emotions You Experience

There are some people who would make the argument that the majority of your physical, relational and mental issues come from the inability to be able to experience your emotions. Rather than experiencing them, you medicate, rationalize, project, bury, deny, smother, drink away, suck it up or sweep unpleasant emotions under the rug. The emotions that are most often avoided include fear, anger and sadness.

If you put more energy into avoiding emotions, rather than feeling them, you are going to feel stressed and suffer anxiety. Take an active role in letting your guard down and feeling emotions.

Take Risks Everyday

It is a good idea to create a routine and structure; however, this can also cause you to become stuck in a rut. This means that you are not growing as a person. Taking a certain number of risks can be both rewarding and healthy.

Take some time to challenge yourself and take a risk every single day. This can mean talking to a new person, trusting someone, asserting yourself or setting some type of tough goal. The key is to push yourself beyond your comfort zone.

Live in the Moment

There are a number of mental health trends that become challenged when a person gets sucked into what happened in the past or what people “did to you” rather than actually taking responsibility of r what you are doing or creating the present moment, right this second. The key is to live in the moment, without hyper focusing on the past or the future.

Be Introspective

It is important to avoid just coasting through your life without taking the time to assess yourself. For example, you need to ask yourself often if you are in denial regarding anything or if you are resisting something in your life. It is also a good idea to take a step back and consider where your behaviors and feelings are coming from. You may ask yourself the question “Is this thought helpful? Is the behavior needed? Is there another option?”

Laugh Daily

In many situations, people take themselves much too seriously. If you need proof, consider the following. Kids laugh about 200 times a day and adults, only 15 times a day. In order to laugh more, go see a funny movie, play a funny game or just enjoy life. Taking the time to laugh more will not only help you feel better and be happier, it can also make you younger.

Improving your well-being does not have to be as difficult or complex as you may imagine. By using the five tips here, you can easily discover that you feel better, you are less stressed, and that you are able to enjoy life more.

Don’t ignore the importance of exercise and eating right; however, it is important to understand that there is much more to a person’s overall well-being than physical activity and smart food options. Being informed and aware of yourself, how you act and how you feel can impact your well-being in significant ways.