Imagine lighting a stick of incense. A silver ribbon of smoke cascades from the stem and fills the room with a sweet fragrance as it fades into the ceiling.
Now imagine lighting a cigarette. The same thing happens, a strand of smoke rises into the air and fades away.
But the smell is different.
It’s not pleasant or sweet. It stinks and clings to your clothes like a scarlet letter.
Your thoughts are the same. Constant and free flowing, they fade from your mind and linger in the air.
Your thoughts are reflections of who you are. When your thoughts are negative, the smoke stinks and the thought of inhaling its cancerous smoke repels others.
Positive thoughts are sweet and vibrant. They entice everyone nearby who are eager to inhale the “fragrance” you’re emitting.
Paulo Caulho said, ““Anxiety was born in the very same moment as mankind. And since we will never be able to master it, we will have to learn to live with it—just as we have learned to live with storms.”
It is okay to have a bad day; you are human.
Sometimes I feel anxiety creep in like a tremor to my core, even when I’m in a good mood. Reassuring myself that it is okay to feel this and accepting my anxiety for who I am instead of battling it is enough to calm me and allows me to move forward.
Learn to love yourself for who you are and remain curious for the emotions you feel. If you dig deeper and remain intact with your emotions then it becomes easier to cope.
Shunning your pain is like ignoring the white elephant in the room. Acknowledge it, question it and put it in your pocket.
Love all of you and everything will be better once you do.
It is okay to cry. I know life feels ruthless; a constant pummeling of discourse and emotional distress. It’s okay to break down.
It’s okay to reveal in yourself your flaws and mistakes. It is okay to fail.
Hear these words, however… failure is a beautiful thing. Mistakes are a natural wonder. With mistakes come growth, and with growth comes the person you desire to be.
Failure is an option. Quitting is NOT.
Fall down every now and then, like the kid learning to ride a bike, but wipe the dirt off and keep trying. You will adjust naturally because you don’t like the pain, the bruises. Suddenly you’re riding freely and effortlessly.
Take failure as an opportunity for growth. Be grateful that with this failure you are one step closer to being a master.
One side of the ribbon is green and the other is red. When you wake up every morning, your ribbon is unspooled. Throughout the day your thoughts and emotions causes the spool to roll one way or the other. As you are feeling these thoughts, the spool is rolling in a certain direction. When your emotions gain momentum, an avalanche of thoughts enters your mind, causing you to feel either good or bad. When this happens your emotion heightens to either feeling, and your spool rolls faster.
For example, Jack and Jill get into a little argument before work. This causes Jack to leave in a bad mood.
Now Jill, annoyed, begins to think negative thoughts. She thinks how he doesn’t do the dishes. Or how he doesn’t clean the toilet seat. Or how sloppy he is. How’d he get so sloppy? It’s so disrespectful. He’s being disrespectful. What a jerk!
Not to mention Jack, who is also simmering in irritation and anger.
When he gets home, a confrontation obviously happens because negatives thoughts have been swarming through their heads like hornets.
This way of thinking creates resentment and contempt.
Think of the spool of red ribbon.
If you want to showcase your green spool, you can’t just switch it from green to red, you have to slowly unravel the red until you get to green.
Here are some steps to get to that green ribbon:
Stop
Take a deep breath and focus in on the thoughts that you are thinking.
Often times these thoughts are pilling in so rapidly that you’ve already begun to feel before you realize what you are thinking.
It is important to acknowledge the thoughts and recognize their presence.
This step helps you grab a hold of your consciousness and prepare for deliberate thinking.
Start thinking backwards
Just like the spool, you slowly unravel your thoughts backwards until you start feeling better. Begin with the active thoughts you are thinking, for example:
“I hate my job!”
“Why do I even work here?”
“My boss is a total jerk. He is always on me about something.”
“I know he cares about his job, but he is always on me.”
“It is nice to be around someone who cares about work so much.”
“I’ve had my fair share of boss’ that don’t care and he’s not one of them.”
“Maybe I have a lot to learn from him.”
“He might be making some very good points. Maybe I could do some of these things differently.”
“I like the way he delegates his tasks and frees up his time to focus on things that’s important to him.”
“I can learn a lot from him.”
And just like that, the momentum has shifted and the spool rolls faster in the other direction.
Fuel the Fire
Deliberate thinking is a way of staying ahead of emotions.
When you feel your mood shifting, find something to make you feel good.
When you wake up in the morning list things you are grateful for.
This is one of the most powerful tools to use because it helps you find more things to be grateful for, which feels good.
Practice Makes Perfect
Shifting your thoughts and emotions is a lot easier said than done. It does take practice but is worth putting your attention in daily.
This will escalate your mood and is a good technique to have for those heated arguments.
Your thoughts are a reflection of your emotions, so experience with words or phrases that make you feel good and use them on a daily basis to get to the color ribbon you want.
Maybe you’re new to the neighborhood and are looking for some friends, or maybe you’re trying to land new clients, or maybe you’re tired of being single and want to start dating.
The key to succeeding in meeting people and maintaining a solid relationship is to be likable.
Below are some of the basics of being likable to help maintain friendships and relationships and to help jumpstart you into changing yourself for the better.
BE POSITIVE
This may seem like common sense, but it must be stressed that in order for others to want to be around you, shed off the negativity.
Happiness is welcoming, and positivity conveys to everyone around you that you’re happy. This attracts more happy people, and sometimes even negative people who are inadvertently using your good vibes to make themselves feel better. This works well for attracting new clients or influencing a friend.
When you practice positivity, it starts to become who you are and deflects even the most negative people without shifting your own mood.
However, life happens. It may seem easier said than done to maintain a great mood when a loved one just passed away, or your boyfriend just dumped you, or your boss at work yelled at you again.
There are a few tricks you can use to help guide your mind back to being positive, like smiling (yes, even a fake one can trick your brain to thinking it’s happy).
Even rearranging the phrases you think can create a more positive mindset. Omit from your thoughts phrases like “i don’t want” or “I can’t” or “I don’t like when”. The more you focus on the negative, the more negative you will feel. The people around you will be able to feel that negativity too.
CONFIDENCE IS KEY
It’s okay to be likable and know it. Having confidence, or even pretending to have it, conveys to everyone that you know what you’re doing and that you accept yourself and it’s okay for other’s to accept you too.
There are a number of ways to exude confidence, from the way you walk (chin up, shoulders back), how you work, and how you speak. Someone once said to me that his mother would tell him that a soft voice belonged to a liar and a thief, and a clear confident voice had power.
Affirmations are another great way of gaining confidence. Yourself can be your greatest enemy. Being aware and actively battling the inner demon in your head telling you that you’re not good enough will start to make you feel confident.
Here’s a great exercise: Every morning when you wake up, before leaving your bed, think of ten things that you are grateful for. At first you will only be able to think of a small handful of things, like your wife or your dog, but the more you do the exercise, the more things you will find that you’re grateful for. Now once you’ve done that and are feeling good, start telling yourself that you’re good enough and that you deserve that promotion. Assure yourself that you are liked and people love being around you. You will start feeling better about yourself, and everyone will be able to see that about you.
It should also be said that there is a fine line between confidence and arrogance. Having confidence while maintaining the rest of the advice given will ensure the line isn’t crossed.
EVERYBODY LIKES A GOOD LISTENER
And by good listener, I mean an active one. That doesn’t mean hearing, or waiting for someone to finish talking so you can say what you want to say. It means actually giving someone your full attention, one hundred percent. It means making eye contact and holding on to their words.
The key to active listening is to put yourself in their shoes and try to understand how they feel. More often than not, if someone is talking to you, they don’t want you to say anything. Most are just venting and need a lending ear. Listening is one of the best ways to gain someone’s trust.
I mentioned above that there is a line between confidence and arrogance. Being an active listener is drawing a line in the sand. When you listen to someone, make them feel like they can talk about themselves. Assure them that you are listening by nodding and reiterating what they said, “so what you’re saying is…”
Asking open ended question like, “what was the scariest part about jumping out of a plane?” or “when did you first realize that you were allergic to shrimp?” will prompt them to speak, and the more you open up the door, the more they will begin trusting you.
Everybody likes to talk about themselves, and when we find someone that shows interest in what we like, we naturally feel drawn to them. Listening and engaging and showing people you care is a sure fire way to catapulting your likability factor.
PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT
Being likable is an ability, not a quality. This means that it can be learned and practiced. It is an essential ability to possess if you’re trying to succeed with your employees, make more friends, or even market your brand.
Just like anything you start out doing, it may seem tough but with persistence and a willing to succeed, people will start flocking to you.
Sometimes swift and sharp; other times gradual and painstaking. Turmoil happens in life and can easily sweep you into a current where there isn’t ever a grasp to what you’re enduring, and before you know it you’re in a great deal of suffering.
Everyone experiences the hurt in their soul; it can be through hearbreak, being fired, or rejection.
I know I’ve felt it. Work puts the stranglehold on me sometimes and it feels like there is a boiling inside of me that eliminates all focus. It leaves me in the middle of a mental hell with no tether to safety.
I hate being a prisoner to this kind of stress. That’s why I started meditating. It minimizes the sporadic frenzy of thoughts, closing the door on them and only allowing your focus to be a sliver until there is only a focus on the breath.
My attention to detail has heightened and my threshold for stress has strengthened. Sometimes i feel unstoppable and cushioned with a stronger mental capability.
The point of this post isn’t to inform as much as it is to let others know that meditation isn’t just a fad but a way of truly bringing peace into a busy world.
So often I talk to friends or even strangers who discuss the chaos of their life and when i mention meditation, it’s always the same response, “no, but i should.”
Yes! Yes you should. I am yelling on top of a mountain to you so you can listen.
MEDITATE! MEDITATE! MEDITATE!
It starts with a relaxing environment and a focus on the breath. It’s okay to let the thoughts come and go, but always bring it back to the breath.
That will get you started.
Trust me, it’s like pouring a glass of water over your brain and allowing it to wash away the fog that clouds your mind. You’ll feel refreshed!
Finding yourself, your niches, and your persona is the beauty of growing up. Everyone has something that makes them different and it’s not uncommon that when seeing someone succeed who is doing something different than you, one feels discouraged.
Jumping over the edge of something new is a wondrous difficulty in our reality and when doing so it is best to allow consistent defeat for yourself before the success.
The age old saying “practice makes perfect” has become so cliche that most hear this and don’t comprehend the importance of such a powerful phrase.
Allowing yourself to learn and fail while doing something perfectly (no cutting corners here), will make you better at being perfect.
Professional athletes know this notion all too well. Being a professional is a separation from the good and the great. More importantly it is a separation from good and the persistent.
Professional athletes are closest to perfect in their profession, and even then there’s a branch of athletes that excel at being the best.
It’s because they practice being perfect; and they fail, and they adjust, until they’re perfect.
If you are willing to cut corners to satisfy you in the moment, then you are doing a disservice to yourself as a whole. Cutting corners is just conditioning yourself to be content with your mediocrity.
Practice perfection, even if it is harder or more discouraging, and it will benefit your growth.
Challenge yourself everyday, it’s the best way to show that you love yourself.
The Law of Attraction states that whatever is like unto itself is drawn. In other words, like attracts like; positive attracts positive; and negative attracts negative.
These are thoughts that we’re talking about. Thoughts give off frequencies, like a radio, sending out signals to like minded frequencies. These frequencies, or vibrations, are then relayed back to you and your life experience. We’ll call it your point of attraction. The higher the vibrations, the more powerful the point of attraction is.
This is all in conjunction to the emotions you feel, which is the strongest point of attraction. When thinking thoughts about what you want or what you don’t want, you’ll start to feel in accordance to those thoughts.
The Law of Attraction is an older concept that has been revitalized in recent years by publishers and speakers in the mainstream, due in large part by Rhonda Byrne’s “The Secret,” which talks about the many accessibilities the law of attraction has on your life. It also glamorizes the concept as a way of attaining anything you want simply by thinking it.
The same idea comes from other books. Napoleon Hill interviewed hundreds of successful leaders and business moguls, and took what they had to say about their secrets to success and found a pattern in all of them. What you focus on and what you build a passion for will manifest itself to be. He then wrote about it in his widely known book “Think and Grow Rich,” which is 80 years old and still relevant to this day.
I know this sounds like new age bologna, but please refrain from the eye roll and hear me out. If you strip the glamor and glitz of the law of attraction, and look at the concept in its most bare form, it is a grand notion and illustrates an ideal way of living life. It is a way of directing your thoughts to the things that really make you happy and grateful and increases the vibrations of joy in your life. It is lifting a dark veil over the things that you want and covering the unnecessary things that can cause unhappiness in your life. I mean, who doesn’t like to be happy?
The steps to the law of attraction are as followed:
1.) Decide what it is you want to manifest and bring forth into your life experience.
2.) Make your intent known to yourself and to the universe. Why is it you want this? How does it make you happy?
3.) Expect the outcome, no matter what.
4.) Allow your desire into your life.
5.) Receive it.
Now let’s break these down into a larger scale.
Choose your desire
I use the word desire because that’s what it needs to be to attain. Anybody can want anything, but when it borders obsession and you’ve decided that you don’t just want it, but you can see yourself with it, then it becomes a desire. That desire will be built once applied with all the other steps.
Have intent
Sharp focus and clarity.
That is what is needed to allow for this glorious concept to work. Focus and clarity on why it is you want to attain it. No need to focus on how or when, but why you want it. This amplifies your emotions toward the desire. As mentioned before, your emotions are the attraction point for your desire. When made clear to yourself and the universe why you want what it is you want, then it unmasks the want into a desire or passion.
For example, money is a desire that most of us have, right? Who wouldn’t want more cash? So we ask for more money. But why? What is our intent? Perhaps we could use the money to help travel more? Maybe more money pays off your student loans? Or maybe your intent is financial freedom for all the above?
Make it clear to yourself and to the universe what your intent with the desire is and it will launch the desire full force into the universe.
A mistake often made from beginners is the focus of lack. As with the money example, it’s okay to ask for money, but the focus of wanting money out of your frustration of not having it is just a focus on what you don’t have. According to the law of attraction, you will continue not to have it.
Remember, your strongest point of attraction is your emotion.
Believe in the arrival
You’ve thought about your want and turned it into a desire. You’re clear on why you want it.
Call it faith, or belief, but this process is essential. You must believe that your desire is now manifesting itself into your life experience and is being prepared and offered to you. Know it, believe it, and expect it.
A guarantee way to propel your belief is visualization. Take ten minutes out of your day to sit, close your eyes and think about your desire. Visualize yourself using what you want, or going to where you want.
If it’s a new car you want, visualize the steering wheel in your grasp, or the leather seats flexing as you shift your body. Imagine that new car smell and the sound of the engine humming as you smoothly shift lanes.
Or if you want to go to Paris, visualize the view from the skyline as music from the local bistro lingers in the background.
Enjoy this exercise. Fall in love with your desire. Feel the buzzing of excitement in you when you think of it? That’s your point of attraction firing on all cylinders.
Affirmations are another great and powerful tool. They’re phrases or words that you repeat to raise your vibrations and affirm to yourself your belief, making you confident in your desire. An example of an affirmation is, “I am happy and grateful in the direction my life is going. I deserve the abundance of joy that is being drawn to me.”
Try this and make it a daily habit. This is especially helpful in the morning when first waking up. It allows your mind to start on a fresh and positive note.
Allow room for the universe and be grateful
This step is getting out of the way of the universe and allowing it to come to you. You expect it now make room for it. If you want that new car then clean your garage and make room for it. Or gear up with a new passport for your trip to Paris.
The universe may speak to you in many ways or nudge you in a certain direction to get your desire. Don’t just sit around and think it’s going to just come to you. Be in tune to what is going on around you and what the universe is telling you. It may be prompting you to take action and move you forward to your desire.
Now you’re growing excited. Can you see yourself with that new car or can you feel that wad of cash between your fingers? Great!
Now act as if you have ALREADY received your desire.
Shed your doubts, and be calm in knowing that you have already received it. If you want to be rich, then why act poor? Shed that mindframe! If you want to be happy, why act unhappy? If you want to be in a relationship then prepare for a date. Get a haircut and new outfit and prepare for it as if it’s already in motion, because it is.
Always be grateful. Showing thanks for the things around you, even the smallest things, will send off positive frequencies that the universe, according to law, will send back to you.
Receive
No doubts, no worries, and pure joy. Now it’s time to receive it.
Oh joyous universe! Thank you!
Feeling great is what this is about
Here’s the deal, your purpose in life is to feel good. Live through joy. When you’re happy and are thinking happy thoughts, it feels good. When you’re mad at your job and thinking about quitting any moment, it feels bad. These are the clearest indicators that your thoughts are controlling your mood and vibrations. Be aware, take a deep breath (in and out) and change your frequency. Remember, it’s like a radio so try and get away from the static, and find a station that is clear on what you want.
Let’s preface this with me saying that I haven’t garnished tons of awards, yet; and I haven’t gained a ton of followers on my blogs, yet; and I am not a millionaire, yet. These lack of accomplishments, though, haven’t left me jaded and feeling like a failure.
Actually it has made me realize a lot of the other small successes I’ve gained in my life and to understand gratitude better. And doing that has strengthened relationships around me.
I am learning that the first step to searching yourself and becoming successful is to recognize the definition of success and stomp out the false societal expectations of what it means to be successful.
A little more than a year ago, I got promoted at work and became a manager of the restaurant I was a server at, placing me in my first leadership position. Taking this newfound role very seriously, I plunged myself into a pool of knowledge, searching for my strengths and weaknesses, yearning to be the best at this role that I could be. To me, I wasn’t just a manager; I was a teacher, a coach, a counselor, a leader, and most importantly, I wanted to do all of this with integrity and class. I wanted to be the best.
This wasn’t just my job, it was a reflection of me.
I devoured books and autobiographies with hungry ferocity and in these books of successful people, I noticed a way of thinking in all of them that gave me an “a ha” moment, and it’s now what I am sharing with the internet.
And in my own words, the secret to success, is to be calm in your success.
Decide what you want, what your dream is. Make a plan on how you will achieve it. Execute the plan.
And be calm that you will receive it. It’s this calmness that prevents self loathing, depression, stress, and the fear of rejection.
The fear of failure can be crippling, sending you in this anxiety stemmed whirlwind of doubt and hate which prevents you from achieving your goals. Be calm in your success, be calm that no matter how many no’s you get, you will receive that yes.
KNOW THAT YOU WILL BE SUCCESSFUL.
Know that you will receive what it is you want. You must be absolutely sure of it. Being calm in your success releases any doubt and assures you that even if this moment you are in is difficult, it will pass, and the light will be shed and you will reach your goal. Define your goal, want it badly, seriously, obsess over it. And know you will receive it.
I am in the process of staying calm. I have dedicated myself in sharing my journey of success in hopes others will hear me and conquer their doubts as well.
Next time you are stressed, take a moment and a deep breath and tell yourself slowly to be calm in your success. It’s working wonders for me.
Arthur James 