Personal Growth & Transformation Archives - Page 42 of 54

7 Habits that Will Make You Happier, Healthier & Way More Likeable

Happiness — I want it, you want it, we all want it. Just the fact that you’re reading The Change Blog means that you and I are on a similar path—seeking for those nuggets of wisdom that will bring us more peace, joy, and personal fulfillment.

After having owned a businesses for about 10 years in the swimming pool industry, a little over a year ago I commenced a new quest in life to satiate my need to teach and help as many possible to achieve their full potential. This is also why I asked Peter if I could contribute a guest post to The Change Blog. So if you’re looking for ‘change’, if you want more joy and fulfillment out of life, here are 7 qualities that, for me, have made all the difference:

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Turning Gratitude Inside Out

By Ruth Harrison Moody / 21 Comments

Discovering how to live in and with gratitude has exploded onto the personal development scene. Many of us have cultivated a deep and intimate knowledge of things for which we are grateful. This is a tremendous step towards developing a positive life. Even so, maybe its time we turned our gratitude inside out and gave it more of a real world voice.

We’ve all probably come across the idea of keeping gratitude journals, using affirmations about gratitude, and so on. Many of us work very, very hard at being grateful, at being aware of all mercies small and large. Many of us begin and end our days with written or prayerful litanies of instance after instance, person after person for which we give thanks.

These are all good things, but having made a place for gratitude to live in our hearts, minds and souls, we’re then offered an opportunity. We can lose sight of the fact that all good things in our lives have specific sources. Many people do things large and small that make our dreams, wishes, and affirmations possible. It’s far too easy to treat gratitude like a spiritual coin to be put in a cosmic vending machine, with the actual process all too often taken for granted.

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‘Rock’-ing Your Gift

By Jillian Davis / 23 Comments

I grew up with a mother that, loving though she was, believed that people with great talent – artists, writers and the like – are born with their special gift. She would often watch a program on PBS, say a broadcasting of one of the MET’s operas, and say afterward, ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to….’ (Fill in the blank for the specific talent).

You can imagine how hard it was to believe that I could accomplish much, given my mother’s feelings about human genius being confined to the few born into it.

I think a lot of us were raised with parents like this.

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Only You Can Change You

By Philip Glen / 22 Comments

My life changed with a spade fork in my hand and the hard earth under my feet. I was a screwed up and angry fifteen year old, standing in my family’s backyard vegetable garden. Red eyed and brain fogged from heavy drinking and chain-smoking pot the night before, I was in a pretty ugly state. It was a Saturday morning in the spring, and my parents had gone away to the country for the weekend, leaving me home alone, much to my relief of not having to go with them.

My father left me with a project for the weekend. He asked me to dig up the family garden, which was hard and compacted after the long winter. Next to going away with mom and dad, digging up that garden was the last thing I wanted to do with my weekend.

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Sitting On The Fence: How It Zaps Your Energy and Compromises Your Dreams

By Bamboo Forest / 8 Comments

My whole life I’ve had this great dream. I wanted to run two miles around a track.

Every morning I’d get up at the crack of dawn and walk to the track. On arrival, I’d sit in the bleachers hesitating, sometimes for up to a half hour wondering whether I should get on the track and whether I had the energy to run.

I’d finally generate the courage to walk onto the track and start running, except as soon as my legs started to move I’d begin wondering if the effort was worth it.

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Productivity and Owning Our Shadow

By Christopher R. Edgar / 16 Comments

In this post, I’ll offer a perspective on procrastination, and an approach to dealing with it, that you probably haven’t heard before.

Often, in my experience, we put off working on a project because we know making progress in our task will force us to face some part of ourselves — some aspect of our personalities — we aren’t fully okay with.

Once, I worked with an accountant who was constantly anxious about turning in reports to her boss, because he tended to make comments she found abrasive. When we explored this further, we discovered that, when her boss was critical, she felt angry. And she was frightened by that feeling — that roiling, fiery energy that came up in her solar plexus.

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How to Stand Out from the Crowd

By Gabe Martinez / 22 Comments

The world is full of competition. There’s always somebody else trying to out-run us so that they can get to the top. This can be discouraging because we might feel we can’t compete on their level. But I think we should see competition as a good thing. It helps us to stay motivated in the things we do, and it helps us to do better for ourselves and others.

Sometimes we get to a point where we just kind of lie dormant, not really progressing much in our lives. For example, sometimes in our careers we lose hope and think that there’s just too much competition and there’s no way for us to get ahead. Simply put…not true! Part of wanting to make positive changes in your life involves giving yourself that extra boost to stand out from the crowd.

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Five Powerful Habits to Establish Today

By Ali Luke / 9 Comments

I struggle when it comes to using a ton of will-power to make changes in my life. I might manage it for a day or two, but it’s not long before I simply give up – I’ve put so much effort in that I’m exhausted.

Do you ever feel the same? Perhaps you stick determinedly to your diet for a week, but then you just can’t resist that candy bar or slab of cake – especially when everyone else is tucking in. Or maybe you make it through the first three chapters of a business book – but then you get busy and you can’t seem to find the time to carry on.

I’ve noticed that, while I struggle to stick with things which take willpower, I don’t have any problem keeping up with the habits that I’ve established in my life. I imagine it’s the same for you. You’ll have all sorts of current habits like:

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5 Skills to Improve Your Coping Ability

By Mike Reeves-McMillan / 10 Comments

One of the personal qualities that helps most with handling change is called self-efficacy. It’s an odd word, and not one you hear a lot in everyday conversation. It’s been around since the 1970s, though, when Albert Bandura invented it as part of his theory that the beliefs we have about our abilities affect our actual outcomes. Or, as Henry Ford put it many years earlier, “If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right”.

In 1979 Ralf Schwarzer and Matthias Jerusalem came up with a test to predict how well people are likely to cope with daily problems and stressful life events. Since then, a lot of research has gone into showing that, in fact, our beliefs about our own abilities do affect our success in many different areas of life.

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Get Out of the “Success Trap”

By Melinda Elliott / 27 Comments

When I was in the work force every time I got promoted it never seemed to be quite enough. Sure, it was fun for a while, I got to go to meetings that I hadn’t been invited to before and I had a new set of peers to rub elbows with, but eventually I’d find myself looking at the folks the next level up wondering “What do they have that I don’t?”

I thought I’d left that behind when I became a Life Coach and blogger, but lately I’ve found myself in the same trap, looking at other, more “successful” blogs wondering “What do they have that I don’t?”

Success is the quintessential slippery slope – the more success we have, the more we want. But there are some simple ways to manage the quest for success.

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Start Your First Day of Change Right Now

By Scott McIntyre / 14 Comments

“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.” ~ Maria Robinson, American author

Have you already identified an area of your life you want to change, but you keep putting off doing something about it? Perhaps you’ve read all the ‘how to’ guides under the sun and researched every technique needed to make that change a reality… yet you don’t ever take any action.

I’m sure at one time or another you’ve promised yourself that you’ll begin a new habit another day: you’ll give up smoking tomorrow; you’re going to eat more healthily from Monday; you’ll be more confident at next week’s team meeting. All too often, however, the promised day passes by and still you haven’t done anything to achieve your goal.

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