HABITS OF TRULY SUCCESSFUL LIVING
We’re starting from the basic premise that there are some areas of your life that probably need help. Well that’s no great surprise. You’re human. It’s part of the package of being a member of the great clan we know today as Homo Sapiens. Welcome to the human condition!
1. Purpose. Understanding why you’re here and what you want from the experience.
Do you know your purpose? One of the most helpful and perhaps most powerful dynamics in our lives is having a really clear and well-defined sense of purpose. People with purpose don’t let obstacles get in their way. If you don’t have a purpose, it’s far too easy to drift through life without really knowing what you’re here for. So I’d like you to pause for a moment and ask yourself if you really know what you want.
Don’t rush and don’t be surprised if the answer is ‘No’. Most people don’t really know what they want beyond the demands and challenges of their daily existence. So your first task on this first day of revolutionising your life is to take a moment to reflect more deeply and see if you can work out what you really want. It’s your life here and I’m asking you to choose something worthwhile. It can be one of the most revealing exercises in your earthly existence. It can power you up and become your personal, daily source of inspiration. Take a piece of paper and a pen and write down your conclusions.
Write down a list of whatever you want. The list can include absolutely anything: material goods, wealth, better health, peace, great relationships. It’s your list. You write down whatever comes to mind. It’s a private list. It is not for sharing nor is it intended for discussion.
When you’ve finished, put the list somewhere safe and let it lie for a few days. Look at your ideas again in two or three days time. Review your list and see if your ideas, plans and goals look different. Feel free to alter, delete or amend anything. It’s your list. Which items really grab your attention? Which items give you an emotional buzz? Those are the items to start with. Now that you know which items are the most important, you need do something, anything, to make them a reality. Take some time to think about how you could achieve your goal. Get a little wild in your thinking. Get creative. Do some research. See what needs to be done to get you started.
Find your purpose. Then move towards it. Right now. The first step is always the most important.
2. Peace and calm. Loosening the lifelong bonds of stress.
Not a hippy mantra but a powerful insight into human creativity. Stress is a habit. An addictive behaviour that blights our lives and diminishes our natural creativity. Cultivating calm in our lives is a hidden and powerful secret that really increases and enhances our latent creativity. Calm helps us to focus on our tasks without the usual intrusions of tension or stress. Most of your stress is completely unnecessary and an obstacle to real progress. Stress is after all just a habit, a conditioned reflex that you learned in early childhood. A calm mind helps us to broaden our perspective, to remain centred. That inner stillness promotes feelings of confidence and a sense of being more deeply in tune with ourselves. The most effective way to bring calm into our lives is to breathe more deeply and more powerfully, slowing each breath until we begin to release our physical and emotional tension and let the calmness bring a deeper sense of peace to our thoughts and feelings.
Let calmness become your normal state of being and tap into your deeper layers of creativity. Do it now. Do it every day. Let this sense of calm become a natural extension of everything you do.
3. Real energy. Feeling the Force of your natural energy source.
Do you get an energy boost from caffeine? Do you ever feel the need to revive your spirits with coffee or caffeine-based drinks? Like many people, I enjoy the taste of good coffee but, if you need a better energy boost, try breathing more deeply and see what happens when you introduce more oxygen into your body. Deeper breathing calms you down, energises your body, improves your thinking and lifts your spirits. And it’s totally free! I’m going to encourage you to breathe more deeply every day until it becomes a natural and life-enhancing habit that you perform without even thinking about it. It’s so powerful, I’m amazed you don’t need a prescription for it.
When you take a deeper breath, remember to keep your throat relaxed. If your throat begins to tense, you’ve filled your lungs as much as you need and you can begin to exhale. If you breathe out powerfully and feel you are really emptying your lungs, you’ll help your body to eliminate toxins and that will boost your energy and concentration levels. It’s a totally free and naturally energising process and it feels wonderful.
Take a moment to try it right now and notice the difference you can make just by breathing a little more deeply. Try it every hour to awaken and refresh your mind and body. Feel the power flowing through your body. This is nothing more than your natural energy circulating through your system and your body will be smiling in appreciation.
4. Dreams. Accessing the profound insights and analysis of the subconscious super-computer.
Hope I didn’t wake you but it’s time to welcome you to the importance of your dreams. Everything that happens in our lives is logged and recorded in our subconscious. Our conscious minds are occupied with the business of our daily existence but the vast resource of the subconscious is often neglected because it doesn’t share a common language with our waking, conscious minds.
Dreams provide a connection between the unconscious and conscious aspects of our minds. You can learn to recall your dreams as you wake up and even make notes about the symbolism that populates your dream world. Tell yourself before sleeping that you wish to remember your dreams at the moment of waking. The subconscious processes vast amounts of data and the conclusions are often revealed in dreams. This is a very powerful asset and extremely worthwhile in enhancing the quality of our lives, developing deeper understanding of ourselves and our circumstances, offering precise and timely insights into complex situations. Don’t neglect your dreams. It’s like having the latest Cray Supercomputer at your disposal and using an abacus. Dreams offer their highly personalised messages for your benefit and they are simply too important to neglect. Make a note to tell yourself to remember your dreams every night.
5. Fuel. Respecting your body’s need for the most natural nutrition.
A closeup of a backlit illuminated gas gage with the needle indicating a near full tank on an isolated dark background
A number of highly successful individuals that I’ve worked with held their bodies in very high esteem. They treated their bodies with obvious respect and consideration. That meant that they took good care of themselves and that included their diet. In fact most of them preferred to eat quite simply and modestly but always in accordance with their body’s health requirements. It was one of the ways they stayed in shape and successfully dealt with the challenges that life would throw at them.
Food allergies create too many health problems today and that brings us to the important subject of food intolerance. The main culprits seem to be our old friends wheat and dairy products. The gluten in wheat and the casine in dairy products can produce a whole range of unpleasant reactions. We don’t have to be allergic to these substances. We only need to be mildly intolerant. The effects can accumulate over the course of our lifetime until the body begins to display stronger reactions, eventually leading to a range of avoidable health problems.
The answer is to cut gluten out of your diet for a couple of weeks and see if your health improves. The same approach can be adopted for dairy products. This simple experiment can lead to an overall reduction in allergies, reduce skin problems and inflammatory diseases, improve breathing and, amongst many other benefits, boost your energy levels. If you suspect that you have any food intolerances, take steps today to reduce your intake of potentially allergic foods and increase your well-being. If it’s true that we are what we eat, make today the day that you stop poisoning your body!
6. Positive Influences and the hidden power of our expectations.
Expectations shape the outcome of many events in our lives. Does that sound realistic to you? Do our expectations really influence the way that things happen in our lives? Well, we need to consider the fact that so much happens in our lives as a result of our interaction with other people. If we develop positive expectations in our relationships, this attitude shapes how people react to us. A positive expectation shapes our perception of the world around us. Our brains process data according to these patterns of expectation. When we adopt a positive frame of mind, people mostly react to us in a similarly positive way. This positive behaviour can influence the way people behave towards us and that in turn produces positive results. So our expectations can profoundly influence the outcomes in our lives. Your mission is to learn to expect positive results from friends, family, colleagues and situations. Learn to see positive potential in every condition and circumstance.
Programme your brain to expect really great, positive outcomes. The results can be both revealing and very pleasantly surprising. You might notice that your positive attitude becomes contagious, encouraging the people around you to share in the group spirit of achievement and success.
1. Purpose. Understanding why you’re here and what you want from the experience.
Do you know your purpose? One of the most helpful and perhaps most powerful dynamics in our lives is having a really clear and well-defined sense of purpose. People with purpose don’t let obstacles get in their way. If you don’t have a purpose, it’s far too easy to drift through life without really knowing what you’re here for. So I’d like you to pause for a moment and ask yourself if you really know what you want.
Don’t rush and don’t be surprised if the answer is ‘No’. Most people don’t really know what they want beyond the demands and challenges of their daily existence. So your first task on this first day of revolutionising your life is to take a moment to reflect more deeply and see if you can work out what you really want. It’s your life here and I’m asking you to choose something worthwhile. It can be one of the most revealing exercises in your earthly existence. It can power you up and become your personal, daily source of inspiration. Take a piece of paper and a pen and write down your conclusions.
Write down a list of whatever you want. The list can include absolutely anything: material goods, wealth, better health, peace, great relationships. It’s your list. You write down whatever comes to mind. It’s a private list. It is not for sharing nor is it intended for discussion.
When you’ve finished, put the list somewhere safe and let it lie for a few days. Look at your ideas again in two or three days time. Review your list and see if your ideas, plans and goals look different. Feel free to alter, delete or amend anything. It’s your list. Which items really grab your attention? Which items give you an emotional buzz? Those are the items to start with. Now that you know which items are the most important, you need do something, anything, to make them a reality. Take some time to think about how you could achieve your goal. Get a little wild in your thinking. Get creative. Do some research. See what needs to be done to get you started.
Find your purpose. Then move towards it. Right now. The first step is always the most important.
2. Peace and calm. Loosening the lifelong bonds of stress.
Not a hippy mantra but a powerful insight into human creativity. Stress is a habit. An addictive behaviour that blights our lives and diminishes our natural creativity. Cultivating calm in our lives is a hidden and powerful secret that really increases and enhances our latent creativity. Calm helps us to focus on our tasks without the usual intrusions of tension or stress. Most of your stress is completely unnecessary and an obstacle to real progress. Stress is after all just a habit, a conditioned reflex that you learned in early childhood. A calm mind helps us to broaden our perspective, to remain centred. That inner stillness promotes feelings of confidence and a sense of being more deeply in tune with ourselves. The most effective way to bring calm into our lives is to breathe more deeply and more powerfully, slowing each breath until we begin to release our physical and emotional tension and let the calmness bring a deeper sense of peace to our thoughts and feelings.
Let calmness become your normal state of being and tap into your deeper layers of creativity. Do it now. Do it every day. Let this sense of calm become a natural extension of everything you do.
3. Real energy. Feeling the Force of your natural energy source.
Do you get an energy boost from caffeine? Do you ever feel the need to revive your spirits with coffee or caffeine-based drinks? Like many people, I enjoy the taste of good coffee but, if you need a better energy boost, try breathing more deeply and see what happens when you introduce more oxygen into your body. Deeper breathing calms you down, energises your body, improves your thinking and lifts your spirits. And it’s totally free! I’m going to encourage you to breathe more deeply every day until it becomes a natural and life-enhancing habit that you perform without even thinking about it. It’s so powerful, I’m amazed you don’t need a prescription for it.
When you take a deeper breath, remember to keep your throat relaxed. If your throat begins to tense, you’ve filled your lungs as much as you need and you can begin to exhale. If you breathe out powerfully and feel you are really emptying your lungs, you’ll help your body to eliminate toxins and that will boost your energy and concentration levels. It’s a totally free and naturally energising process and it feels wonderful.
Take a moment to try it right now and notice the difference you can make just by breathing a little more deeply. Try it every hour to awaken and refresh your mind and body. Feel the power flowing through your body. This is nothing more than your natural energy circulating through your system and your body will be smiling in appreciation.
4. Dreams. Accessing the profound insights and analysis of the subconscious super-computer.
Hope I didn’t wake you but it’s time to welcome you to the importance of your dreams. Everything that happens in our lives is logged and recorded in our subconscious. Our conscious minds are occupied with the business of our daily existence but the vast resource of the subconscious is often neglected because it doesn’t share a common language with our waking, conscious minds.
Dreams provide a connection between the unconscious and conscious aspects of our minds. You can learn to recall your dreams as you wake up and even make notes about the symbolism that populates your dream world. Tell yourself before sleeping that you wish to remember your dreams at the moment of waking. The subconscious processes vast amounts of data and the conclusions are often revealed in dreams. This is a very powerful asset and extremely worthwhile in enhancing the quality of our lives, developing deeper understanding of ourselves and our circumstances, offering precise and timely insights into complex situations. Don’t neglect your dreams. It’s like having the latest Cray Supercomputer at your disposal and using an abacus. Dreams offer their highly personalised messages for your benefit and they are simply too important to neglect. Make a note to tell yourself to remember your dreams every night.
5. Fuel. Respecting your body’s need for the most natural nutrition.
A closeup of a backlit illuminated gas gage with the needle indicating a near full tank on an isolated dark background
A number of highly successful individuals that I’ve worked with held their bodies in very high esteem. They treated their bodies with obvious respect and consideration. That meant that they took good care of themselves and that included their diet. In fact most of them preferred to eat quite simply and modestly but always in accordance with their body’s health requirements. It was one of the ways they stayed in shape and successfully dealt with the challenges that life would throw at them.
Food allergies create too many health problems today and that brings us to the important subject of food intolerance. The main culprits seem to be our old friends wheat and dairy products. The gluten in wheat and the casine in dairy products can produce a whole range of unpleasant reactions. We don’t have to be allergic to these substances. We only need to be mildly intolerant. The effects can accumulate over the course of our lifetime until the body begins to display stronger reactions, eventually leading to a range of avoidable health problems.
The answer is to cut gluten out of your diet for a couple of weeks and see if your health improves. The same approach can be adopted for dairy products. This simple experiment can lead to an overall reduction in allergies, reduce skin problems and inflammatory diseases, improve breathing and, amongst many other benefits, boost your energy levels. If you suspect that you have any food intolerances, take steps today to reduce your intake of potentially allergic foods and increase your well-being. If it’s true that we are what we eat, make today the day that you stop poisoning your body!
6. Positive Influences and the hidden power of our expectations.
Expectations shape the outcome of many events in our lives. Does that sound realistic to you? Do our expectations really influence the way that things happen in our lives? Well, we need to consider the fact that so much happens in our lives as a result of our interaction with other people. If we develop positive expectations in our relationships, this attitude shapes how people react to us. A positive expectation shapes our perception of the world around us. Our brains process data according to these patterns of expectation. When we adopt a positive frame of mind, people mostly react to us in a similarly positive way. This positive behaviour can influence the way people behave towards us and that in turn produces positive results. So our expectations can profoundly influence the outcomes in our lives. Your mission is to learn to expect positive results from friends, family, colleagues and situations. Learn to see positive potential in every condition and circumstance.
Programme your brain to expect really great, positive outcomes. The results can be both revealing and very pleasantly surprising. You might notice that your positive attitude becomes contagious, encouraging the people around you to share in the group spirit of achievement and success.