To grow in spirit is a day-to-day process. We win some, we lose some, but the important thing is that we learn, and from this knowledge, further spiritual growth is made possible.
Read moreCreating A Life Road Map: A Vision for Success →
There is a quote by Lewis Carroll that says, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.” Success is more than economic gains, titles, and degrees. Planning for success is about mapping out all the aspects of your life. It’s like taking a road trip, you need to define the specific details of the journey: origin, destination, vehicle, travel bags, landmarks, and route.
Origin: Who you are
A road trip has a starting point. Your origin is who you are right now. Most people, when asked to introduce themselves, would say, “Hi, I’m Jane Doe and I am an engineer, working for the XX Company.” This does not tell you about who Jane is; it only tells you about her present occupation and accomplishment. To gain insights into yourself, you need to look closely at your beliefs, values, and principles aside from your economic, professional, cultural, and civil status. You must also reflect on your experiences to give you an idea of your good and not-so-good traits, skills, knowledge, strengths, and weaknesses. Doing so will help you find your true self. Many of us walk around as imposters of our true selves afraid to reveal our identity because of fear of not living up to the expectations of others or society.
Destination: A vision of who you want to be
“Who do want to be?” It doesn’t matter where you started. This is your vision. I hope you haven’t lost sight of your vision. It is important that you know yourself so that you have a clearer idea of who you want to be; and the things you want to change whether they are attitudes, habits, or points of view. If you hardly know yourself, then your vision and targets for the future are also likely to be unclear. Your destination should cover all the aspects of your being: the physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual. The problem is that many of us are still trying to figure out who we want to be. Sooner or later we must be that which we desire to become.
Vehicle: Your Mission
A vehicle is the means by which you can reach your destination. It can be compared to your mission or purpose in life. To an extent, your mission depends on what you know about yourself. Your mission becomes what you live for each day. It’s your reason for being; gives you the motivation to fulfill your destiny regardless of the circumstances you face. We each have our own mission to take us to where we should go. Without it, we tend to wander from place to place.
Travel Bag: Your knowledge, skills, and attitude
Food, drinks, clothing, and other traveling necessities are contained in a travel bag. Applying this concept to your life map, you bring with you certain knowledge, skills, and attitudes. These determine your competence and help you in attaining your vision. Given such, there is a need for you to assess what knowledge, skills, and attitudes you have at present and what you need to gain along the way. This two-fold assessment will give you insights on your landmarks or measures of success. Don’t be afraid to repack if you discover that you lack the knowledge, skills, and proper attitude. New opportunities always require us to replace or upgrade what’s in our travel bag.
Landmarks and Route: S.M.A.R.T. Goals
Landmarks confirm if you are on the right track while the route determines the travel time. Thus, in planning out your life roadmap, you also need to have landmarks and a route. These landmarks are your measures of success. These measures must be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound. Some you are probably reading this article feeling that you have bypassed your landmarks or traveled too far in the wrong direction. It’s never too late to establish new landmarks and set out for a new destination. The journey is over only if you say it’s over.
Anticipate Turns, Detours, and Potholes
The purpose of a life roadmap is to minimize hasty and spur-of-the-moment decisions that can make you lose your way. But oftentimes our plans change along the way due to problems, delays, and other situations beyond our control. Like in any path, there are turns, detours, and potholes; however, we must anticipate them and adjust accordingly. If you should find yourself at a dead-end, do a quick U-turn or shift into reverse. Don’t sit there and panic. The only way to become unstuck if to take action to get back on track. It doesn’t matter if you are 18 or 81 years young a life roadmap will serve you well.
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By Dr. Robert L Kight
10 ways to Maintain Control of Your Well-Being →
We must be willing to act to control our well-being. Many of us allow ourselves to be overcome by negative thinking patterns because we become frustrated by life’s challenges and feelings of being overwhelmed. This negative outlook makes it even harder for us to manage those challenges and move forward.
Practicing positive thinking enables us to focus on our strengths and accomplishments, which increases happiness and motivation. This, in turn, allows us to spend more time making progress, and less time feeling down and stuck. The following tips provide practical suggestions that you can use to help you shift your mindset into positive thinking patterns:
1. Take Good Care of Yourself
Don’t neglect yourself when faced with your toughest challenges. It's much easier to be positive when you are eating well, exercising, and getting enough rest. Even if you don’t have what you want, do the best you can with what you have.
2. Remind Yourself of the Things You Are Grateful For
Stresses and challenges don't seem quite as bad when you are constantly reminding yourself of the things that are right in life. Taking just 60 seconds a day to stop and appreciate the good things will make a huge difference. A single breath of air to sustain your life is something to be grateful for.
3. Look for the Proof Instead of Making Assumptions
A fear of not being liked or accepted sometimes leads us to assume that we know what others are thinking, but our fears are usually not reality. If you have a fear that a friend or family member's bad mood is due to something you did, or that your co-workers are secretly gossiping about you when you turn your back, speak up and ask them. Don't waste time worrying that you did something wrong unless you have proof that there is something to worry about.
4. Refrain from Using Absolutes
Have you ever told a yourself "I ALWAYS come up short!" or complained to a friend "I never get a BREAK!"? Thinking and speaking in absolutes like 'always' and 'never' makes the situation seem worse than it is, and programs your brain into believing that you are incapable of changing the situation.
5. Detach from Negative Thoughts
Your thoughts can't hold any power over you if you don't judge them. If you notice yourself having a negative thought, detach from it, witness it, and don't follow it.
6. Squash the "ANTs"
In his book "Change Your Brain, Change Your Life," Dr. Daniel Amen talks about "ANTs" - Automatic Negative Thoughts. These are the bad thoughts that are usually reactionary, like "Those people are laughing, they must be talking about me," or "My manager wants to see me? It must be bad!" When you notice these thoughts, realize that they are nothing more than ANTs and squash them!
7. Practice Lovin', Touchin' & Squeezin' (Your Friends and Family)
You don't have to be an expert to know the benefits of a good hug. Positive physical contact with friends, loved ones, and even pets, is an instant pick-me-up. One research study on this subject had a waitress touch some of her customers on the arm as she handed them their checks. She received higher tips from these customers than from the ones she didn't touch!
8. Increase Your Social Activity
By increasing social activity, you decrease loneliness. Surround yourself with healthy, happy people, and their positive energy will affect you in a positive way! Get out and do something you haven’t done in while and stop making excuses for not doing so.
9. Volunteer for an Organization, or Help another Person
Everyone feels good after helping. You can volunteer your time, your money, or your resources. The more positive energy you put out into the world, the more you will receive in return.
10. Strategic Interruptions to Fight Worrying
If you find yourself worrying, a great way to stop it is to interrupt the pattern and force yourself to do something completely different. Worrying is being super-focused on something negative. It's never productive, because it's not logical or solution-oriented, it's just excessive anxiety. Try changing your physical environment - go for a walk or sit outside. You could also call a friend, pick up a book, or turn on some music.
Life throws us curve balls every day. It’s up to us to control how we respond. We can play it safe and wait for the right pitch to come, or we can take a chance and trust ourselves and go after it. It may require us to make some adjustments, but we have the potential to knock the curve ball out the park. I hope you find these tips helpful as you strive to maintain control of your well-being.
Connect with People to Find Self-Empowerment →
Have you ever noticed how some people are so naturally friendly when placed inside a room of strangers? They quickly connect and engage in conversations with almost everyone in no time. We often refer to them as a people-person, outgoing and charismatic, with the ability to charm a spot from a leopard’s back. They can entice others to contribute and celebrate their success. These individuals appear to operate from a mindset that they can accomplish anything because of the overwhelming support base behind them.
In all honesty, these are skills that I dedicated a significant amount of time to improve over the past years. By nature, I am somewhat reserved, but recognized I could never reach my full potential if I didn’t do more to aggressively connect with others to broaden my circle of influence. At one time, I could walk among hundreds of people and didn’t feel the need to connect with any of them. In hindsight, the lack of a more outward going personality probably hindered my career advancement and limited my access to other opportunities. Fortunately, I began to recognize these as flaws as a hindrance to my ability to maximize my knowledge, skills, and talents. Thus, I began this journey of self-improvement.
Working to enhance my own social skills has enabled me to better connect and relate to family, friends, colleagues at work, as well as complete strangers. The transformation in this area of my own personal development allows me to experience the level of self-empowerment I now enjoy. I no longer feel vulnerable in my efforts to reach out and connect with others. In fact, I seek as many opportunities as possible.
This drive for self-empowerment has been a process of making a general overhaul in my life and turning myself into a more confident and positive person. While still comfortable in my own skin, most people would probably think of me as a more outward going person today. Next, I would like to share some of the strategies used to better connect with people that led to my own sense of self-empowerment:
1. Be genuine.
Be true to who you are. There must be consistency in your behavior and interactions with others. Attempting to live a double life will eventually bring you down. Once you are perceived to be a hypocrite with selfish intentions, you might as well say goodbye to self-empowerment. Therefore, keep your ego under control by constantly monitoring your thoughts, decisions, and behavior.
2. Be a great listener.
To earn the respect and trust of other people, listen to their problems and empathize with them. Do more than hear them out, listen to them with your heart. Give them your undistracted attention by making eye contact when talking and acknowledging them. Listen as if every word matters, and you are truly interested. You win them over when they sense you care about them as a human being.
3. Laugh sometimes.
It’s not necessary that you force yourself to laugh at every joke cracked by someone, albeit you do not find it funny at all. However, you should find humor in things and not be too serious. Laugh at yourself daily. Learn to use humor to keep things light when you or people around you may be facing their greatest challenge.
4. Don't forget yourself.
It’s easy to get caught up in the challenges of day to day life and lose touch with yourself. Do not be afraid to nurture the qualities in yourself that you expect from others. Remember to love and value yourself before anyone else. If you present yourself as respectable and worthy of affection, people will respond to you as such. You can ultimately determine how the world and others respond to you.
5. Do random acts of kindness.
Make it a practice to do a random act of kindness each day. It’s not necessary to do a Warren Buffet and give all your savings to charity. Little acts of kindness matter the most, and this can be as simple buying someone a cup of coffee or giving up your seat on public transportation. A warm word of encouragement could mean the world to someone down on their luck.
6. Stay in touch with old friends.
Try to maintain connections with old friendships. Although some friendships have served their purpose and should be allowed to fade away, others may have been allowed to fall by the wayside for no apparent reason. Thanks to technology (social media), you can do something about it. Pull out the old yearbook or address book and reach out to the people who brought value and fun to your life at one time.
7. Refine your personality.
Are you grouchy, grumpy and generally miserable? Stop it! You can't go through life behaving this way and be at your best. Yes, life has a way of beating you down, but you must rise above these bad traits and habits that are certain to hinder your growth and development. Who wants to around a grouchy irritated person all the time?
8. Be confident.
Learn to stride across the room and meet and greet people with warm and radiate positive energy. Just remember: be confident, not arrogant. Promote your “can do” brand at all times. There are people watching you even when you do not realize it. Always strive to display the best you no matter the situation, even if shaking in your shoes.
9. Practice control.
When angered, do not be overtaken by your emotions. Avoid throwing tantrums and the “I told them syndrome”. Try to stay calm and collected. Be mature enough to take control of the situation and transform your anger into something more productive or a solution. People will tend to avoid you once they learn about your inability to control your anger.
10. Keep nurturing your relationships.
Relationships with family, friends and significant others are too precious and you must not neglect them no matter what happens. It’s important to go out of your way to enjoy them. Do things that pull you closer together. As you strive to reach the top, be sure that you don’t arrive there all alone. Keep close people who have a genuine interest in your success. The “Johnny Come Lately” is normally not really invested in you, but more interested in what you do.
You too can become more of people-person; it will pay dividends in both your personal and professional development. In the end, connecting with people for self-empowerment requires you to become a more assertive and engaging individual. It's a win-win situation: the people know they can count on you anytime and vice versa.
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Self Improvement Leads to Success →
When we open our doors for self-improvement, we increase our chances of finding success. Everything that happens to us happens for a purpose. There is usually a lesson in the situation that may be a turning point in our lives. Therefore, instead of locking yourself behind a wall of fears and crying over past heartaches, embarrassment and failures, treat them as opportunities to learn and they will become your guide to both self-improvement and success.
I recently watched a human-interest story featured on the NBC Nightly News with Lester Holtz. The story was about a single mother of five children who is about to graduate from Texas Southern University, Thurgood Marshall School of Law in May. The story was truly inspiring. Back in 2009, the mother was a high school dropout, lost her job and then lost her home to a fire. On top of that, the father of her youngest two children died of cancer and she was at her lowest point. The mother thought that all of hopes and dreams were over. Her minister convinced her to go back to school to get her General Education Diploma (GED) because she would need the education to improve her quality of life. This was her first step in on her journey for self-improvement and success. Once the mother decided to go back to school, she never stopped and is about to fulfill her childhood dream of becoming a lawyer. Even more inspiring about the story was the way she involved her children in the learning process. They made study time a family affair. The children worked as a team to assist and encourage their mother to continue her education. This is a perfect example of someone who used pain, struggle, hurt and misery to motivate her to continue her education no matter the personal sacrifice. Think of the lost potential if she didn't take the leap of faith and decided to pursue an education.
So, when does self-improvement become equal to success? Where do we start? Here are a few tips that you might find helpful…
- Stop thinking and feeling as if you’re a failure because you’re not. Don’t allow a past mistake or setback to define you. Acknowledge the situation and move on with your life. How can others accept you if YOU can’t accept YOU?
- When you see others enjoying what appears to be a good life or living their dreams, think more on self-improvement, not self-pity. Self-improvement and success are not just about having nice things, materials possessions, or social status. Strive to find peace of mind. You can’t put a price on it.
- When others feel down and low about themselves, help lift them up, but don’t go down with them. They’ll pull you down further and both of you will end up in the dumps. A lesson I learn from an elementary school teacher was that “if you meet someone in the mud, don’t jump in to help them. Otherwise, there will be two people stuck in the mud.”
- The world is a large stage for many shows, not mistakes. Don’t feel stupid and doomed forever just because you failed a few acts. There’s always the next time. Concentrate on what you need to do to improve your performance. The great ones always work to make their best, better.
- Take every situation one step at a time. You should not expect to make a complete turn-around at the snap of a finger. Self-improvement is a one day at a time process. Otherwise, you are likely to become discouraged and give up. Perseverance must become your best friend.
- Self-improvement leads to inner strength, character development and eventually…. SUCCESS. It comes from self-confidence, self- appreciation, and self-esteem. It’s about developing an unshakable belief in self that drives you to succeed.
- Set meaningful and achievable goals. Self-improvement isn’t likely to turn you into Denzel Washington or Oprah Winfrey. The intent and aim should be to improve and become the best YOU.
- Little things could mean BIG things to other people. Sometimes, we don’t realize that the little things that we do like a pat on the back, saying “hi” or “hello”, greeting someone “good day” or giving the homeless person on the street a word of encouragement could make all the difference in the world. It may be the only positive words they hear all day. When we’re being appreciative of beautiful things around us and other people, we also become beautiful to them.
- When you’re willing to accept change and go through the process of self-improvement, it doesn’t mean that everyone else is willing to join you. The world is a place where people of different values and attitude come together. Sometimes, even our loves ones and best friends will decline to join us on the journey towards self-improvement. You may have to go it alone to reach your highest self.
Remember that there’s no such thing as ‘overnight success’. It can take days, weeks, months and even years to become your true self. Some of us have more lessons to learn than others. Unfortunately, life doesn’t grant social promotions. You must pass each course to move on to the next one. If not, you will continue to repeat the lesson over and over until you get it right. We are all here to master life’s lessons. Our parents, school teachers, friends, colleagues, officemates, neighbors, enemies … they are our teachers. There is a quote that says, “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”
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