Be the Best You Can Be By Brian Tracy and Christina Tracy Stein, Authors of Kiss That Frog: 12 Great Ways to Turn Negatives into Positives in Your Life and Work
Mental fitness is like physical fitness. You develop high levels of self-esteem and a positive mental attitude with train ing and practice. Here are the seven keys to becoming a completely positive person:
1. Positive self-talk: Speak to yourself positively; control your inner dialog. Use affirmations phrased in the positive, present, and personal tense: "I like myself!" "I can do it!" "I feel terrific!" "I am responsible!" We believe that fully 95 percent of your emotions are determined by the way you talk to yourself as you go throughout your day. The sad fact is that if you do not deliberately and consciously talk to yourself in a positive and constructive way, you will, by default, think about things that will make you unhappy or cause you worry and anxiety. As we said before, your mind is like a garden. If you do not deliberately plant flowers and tend them carefully, weeds will grow without any encouragement at all.
2. Positive visualization: Perhaps the most powerful ability that you have is the ability to visualize and see your goals as already accomplished. Create a clear, exciting picture of your goal and your ideal life, and replay this picture in your mind over and over. All improvement in your life begins with an improvement in your mental pictures. As you "see" yourself on the inside, you will"be" on the outside.
3. Positive people: Your choice of the people with whom you live, work, and associate will have more of an impact on your emotions and your success than any other factor. Decide today to associate with winners, with positive people, with people who are happy and optimistic and who are going somewhere with their lives. Avoid negative people at all costs. Negative people are the primary source of most of life's unhappiness. Resolve that from today onward, you are not going to have stressful or negative people in your life.
4. Positive mental food: Just as your body is healthy to the degree to which you eat healthy, nutritious foods, your mind is healthy to the degree to which you feed it with "mental protein" rather than "mental candy." Read books, magazines, and articles that are educational, inspirational, or motivational. Feed your mind with information and ideas that are uplifting and that make you feel happy and more confident about yourself and your world. Listen to positive, constructive CDs and audio programs in your car and on your MP3 player or iPod. Feed your mind continually with positive messages that help you think and act better and make you more capable and competent in your field. Watch positive and educational DVDs, educational television programs, online courses, and other uplifting material that increases your knowledge and makes you feel good about yourself and your life.
5. Positive training and development: Almost everyone in our society starts off with limited resources, sometimes with no money at all. Virtually all fortunes begin with the sale of personal services of some kind. All the people who are at the top today were once at the bottom, and sometimes they fell to the bottom several times. The miracle of lifelong learning and personal improvement is what takes you from rags to riches, from poverty to affluence, and from underachievement to success and financial independence. As Jim Rohn said, "Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune." When you dedicate yourself to learning and growing and becoming better and more effective in your thoughts and actions, you take complete control of your life and dramatically increase the speed at which you move upward to greater heights.
6. Positive health habits: Take excellent care of your physical health. Resolve today that you are going to live to be eighty, ninety, or one hundred years old and still be dancing in the evenings. Eat excellent foods, healthy and nutritious, and eat them sparingly and in proper balance. An excellent diet will have an immediate, positive effect on your thoughts and feelings. Resolve to get regular exercise, at least two hundred minutes of motion per week, walking, running, swimming, bicycling, or working out on equipment in the gym. When you exercise on a regular basis, you feel happier and healthier and experience lower levels of stress and fatigue than a person who sits on the couch and watches television all evening. Especially, get ample rest and relaxation.
7. Positive expectations: Having positive expectations is one of the most powerful techniques you can use to become a positive person and to ensure positive outcomes and better results in your life. Your expectations become your own self-fulfilling prophesies. Whatever you expect, with confidence, seems to come into your life. Since you can control your expectations, you should always expect the best. Expect to be successful. Expect to be popular when you meet new people. Expect to achieve great goals and create a wonderful life for yourself. When you constantly expect good things to happen, you will seldom be disappointed.
Re-printed from the book "Kiss That Frog!" with the permission of Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2012
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