Becoming Valuable to Your Social Networks (Part 2): Twitter
Sorry for the delay in posting the next post in this series on being valuable to your social networks, it has been a very hectic but very productive week. Anyways….
About a week ago, I posted this http://www.lifetosuccess.com/2012/01/13/are-you-making-a-difference-in-the-lives-of-those-in-your-social-netwoks/ and followed it up with the next in the series which you can read here: http://www.lifetosuccess.com/2012/01/16/becoming-valuable-to-your-social-networks-part-1-facebook/ so now that we are caught up let’s get on with Twitter.
Twitter is a micro blogging site that limits you postings to 140 characters, so brevity is the key here.
A lot of people use this to give quick thoughts about what they are doing and where they are at. One of the big things on Twitter is RT (Re-Tweeting) tweets from the people in your network. It is basically forwarding a message that you feel is important to the rest of your group. This is a great way to increase your influence as well, if you add messages of value, people will be more inclined to RT them, which opens up your influence to people on their lists.
When you first start building your list of people on Twitter, your list will be small so if you happen to get someone on your list that does a lot of tweeting, it may look like SPAM but when you list grows and more people starting pouring information into your Twitter pipeline, it will not appear that way. This is also the same on Facebook as well.
When you start to work within the social networking websites, you will see many similarities, so you will have to pick and choose the things that you want to do on Facebook and what you will do on Twitter. As each have their own type of function, duplication certainly will make things more difficult and frustrating.
Before I forget, make sure to add me to your Twitter list!!
As Always, Here’s to Your LifetoSuccess,
God Bless You,
John Clark
Becoming Valuable to Your Social Networks (Part 1): Facebook
The other day I wrote a post about becoming valuable to the Social Networks, I hope you had a chance to read it, if not here is the link: http://www.lifetosuccess.com/2012/01/13/are-you-making-a-difference-in-the-lives-of-those-in-your-social-netwoks/ , at the end of the post I said I would recap the bigger social networking sites with a recap of the advantages and the purposes of each.
In this post, we are going to focus on Facebook. Facebook is the granddaddy of all the social networking sites right now. It was one of the fastest growing social networking sites to date.
Facebook started off as a college social network started by Mark Zuckerburg while at Harvard. “The Social Network”, a recent movie focuses on the start up of Facebook, it was an interesting movie to say the least.
I remember when Facebook came out and I was not one of the early adapters to the site. But it has by far become one of the hubs that I like to check out on a daily basis.
They have made some great strides to the site as far as how you can now segment, your contacts into lists and you can now communicate to these lists separate from each other. This is probably one of the best things that they have done with the site.
Now you can send a message that only a portion of your list can see.
For example, you can now create lists in any category that you would like to set up and then create messages that only that category can see. Facebook is making this easier by using the data that you provide and adding people to these list based on similar data.
For example: they will add people to your high school list if those people in your contacts have the same high school.
For me I started using these lists very early on in their inception because my list started to get very big. So the news feed was in constant flow, so I would miss stuff from my family members or close contacts. So when I started to see that functionality coming around, I started to set up my on list with a list for family members, a list for my children’s contacts, my classmates, my professional contacts and so on.
So when I went on Facebook I would click on each list and it would provide me with the news feed with just those people.
Now that Facebook has added the ability to communicate with people in specific lists, it has provided a better cleaner way of communicating very specifically with one group.
So now your whole list does’t have to see work related post and your work related people don’t have to see your family posts.
With the sheer size of Facebook, I would suggest that you start to master Facebook and start setting up your lists to better communicate with you social contacts.
If we haven’t connected on Facebook yet, make sure to click on any of the Facebook links on this page and let’s connect.
As Always, Here’s to Your LifetoSuccess,
God Bless You,
John Clark
The Main Reason for All That Ails This World…
With everything that is going on in this world right now, it’s not to hard to feel like everything is falling apart at the seams.
We have:
Class Warfare being waged all over the world.
This past Friday we seen all of Europe, except for Germany, downgraded by S&P.
We have a citizenship in the US that does not trust the government for any reason.
We also have a government who is proud of the amount of people who have dependent upon them for their source of living.
We have the Middle East about to explode with all the strife between Israel and Iran.
There is a huge focus on the monetary system that is controlling the money all over the world.
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What is causing all of this to happen?
Well, in my opinion, I think we have:
1. A lot of lack of faith in God
2. A lot of abuse of power
3. With a whole of bunch of scarcity mentality
Just look at all the negative press that Tim Tebow has gotten as a believer in Christ. You can’t get through the sports section without someone throwing him under the bus for his faith in Jesus. Thankfully, he is not moved by this and presses on with his thankfulness and gratitude.
Look at our government over the last 20 years, there is an unprecedented power grab by our government that was escalated shortly after 9/11 with the Patriot Act and more recently with the bill that Obama just signed into law that considers the USA a battle ground and that they can round up citizens and hold them without due process. This virtually over turns our Bill of Rights. It is very scary… Taking that a step further, we have Homeland Security now monitoring all the social networks and keeping all the files. For some reason with this stuff in the hands of the people we have in power, I don’t feel safe.
And last but not least, we have a majority of people in this world that think that everything that we need to survive is running out. Take a few minutes to read this blog post for my thoughts on this.
There is only one way that we can allow this stuff to happen… And that is by not taking care of ourselves and our families and letting the government become to needed.
If we were to do the right thing like save our money to take care of ourselves instead of relying on the government to do this for us, we would not be in this situation.
But instead, we have allowed the government to grow to big and now too many people rely on them for their survival and we are staring down the barrel of 3rd and 4th generations welfare and food stamp recipients.
And because of this when we try to draw back these programs, way to many people are effected by them. These programs should have been the last resort.
People often ask me, well what are these people supposed to do?
Here is how I see the whole thing:
Because we have turned away from our faith in God, our family units have fallen apart to the point of a 50% divorce rate. If we maintained our faith in God and the biblical principles we wouldn’t be so fast to pull the trigger when it comes to divorce.
So we end up with crumbling families. The economical and emotional effects of a broken family carry on to the children.
The fathers see their pay not reaching as far having to support two houses, so they throw in the towel and the mothers now have to turn to the government for support. As the children grow up this is how they seem to think the world is and they fall into the programs and the cycle starts to repeat itself.
Slowly, we have more people relying on the government then paying the government in taxes and the class warfare begins.
From there it is not too long before a great nation or society crumbles.
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I apologize for this being such a negative message. But there is hope.
And it all starts with the person that you look at in the mirror everyday.
When we start to look at ways that we can start serving those around us, our focus changes. When we start to focus on how we can serve instead of how much we are getting or not getting and the latter starts to take care of itself like it was a perfect system that was set up. It is a perfect system, we just need to have faith and work within the system as it setup and get out of the way.
As Always, Here’s to Your LifetoSuccess,
God Bless You,
John Clark
The Whole World Will Be Better Off When We All Realize This…
As of yesterday’s post, I was going to start a series of posts exploring the different Social Media websites and how to leverage them to be a source of good to your social contacts. I will get to those starting on Monday. But this as for this post, I just want to get something off my chest.
I received a comment from this post, http://www.lifetosuccess.com/2012/01/13/are-you-making-a-difference-in-the-lives-of-those-in-your-social-netwoks/,that kind of stuck with me. Take a few minutes to review the post and then check out the comments. I wasn’t offended by the comments and they were certainly posted with a good mindset but for some reason, it ate at me all day.
The comment was:
“That is a great quote! I question whether that can always work, such as zero-sum game situations. What if they want what you also want – like your money?”
It was in reference to a quote that I had in the post. Please take a minute to read it if you haven’t already.
Looking at that quote, I just thought that we always seem to look at things from a “scarcity” mindset. The view that everything is limited. That there is only as much as we can see with our eyes, beyond that there is nothing.
By looking at things from that standpoint, we leave so much on the table by thinking that there is a limited supply of anything. The pricing we use on commodities is all based on scarcity. The government uses scarcity to keep its citizens in line. It is just a natural way of life and has been from the beginning of time.
But when you truly look at the world with open eyes, you can only come to the conclusion that the only thing with a limited supply on this earth is the time that we have living and breathing on it. Other then that God has set this planet up to supply whatever we need to survive.
We have fields that produce crops of food year after year.
We have trees that bear fruit every year.
We have a system set up where as we breath in oxygen and exhale CO2, the trees and plants take in the CO2 and release oxygen.
The water in the oceans, lakes and rivers evaporate into the atmosphere and return to earth in the form of rain and snow.
And this has been happening since recorded history.
We are TOLD that we have a limited supply of oil, yet year after year for as long as I have been alive and far before that the earth has been bringing forth this liquid that powers the vehicles we use to get from point A to point B. But we are told that we are running out. I have even heard that the progress for truly “green” vehicles has been put on hold, until we have rung out every ounce of profit from this “limited” supply of oil.
Think of the advances that we have made since the beginning of recorded history.
Do you think that the people who made the drawings on the caves, to tell stories, could have ever envisioned the organization of the resources that were on this earth to make an object that would hold between 90 – 200 people and fly across the ocean in a couple of hours?
Were the things needed to make that plane, available at that time? Of course they were. The thing that was missing was the mind set to make it happen.
The same that was true then is true today.
Think about the advances in technology over the last 100 years, how about the last 20 years?
Don’t get me wrong, I know this is a hard concept to accept. But if you honestly take a few minutes to contemplate this idea, it is one that only has one conclusion.
When we start looking at this world as a treasure trove instead of something that we are destroying, and become grateful for the things that we do have while in pursuit of the things that we would like, it goes from a zero sum game to a game that everyone can win if the chose to participate.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this.
As Always, Here’s to Your LifetoSuccess,
God Bless You,
John Clark
Are You Making a Difference in the Lives of Those in Your Social Netwoks?
One of the quotes that I refer back to on a regular basis is…
“You can have everything you want, if you just help ENOUGH people get what they want.” – Zig Ziglar
This is probably one of the greatest quotes that I have ever come across. Zig has plenty of great quotes and I think this is his best by far. Here is something to consider about this quote, if for some reason, you don’t feel that you are getting what you want, then it is time to focus your efforts on helping more people get what they want.
And with all the technology that we have at our disposal, it is getting easier to get the pulse of what others are looking for. The key is finding a way to become a solution to these problems.
We have Facebook, Twitter, Google +, LinkedIn.
We have photo sharing programs,
We have programs that share our locations with those in our social circles, where we can give those locations a thumbs up or a thumbs down depending on our experiences.
We have music sharing programs, where we can share our tastes in music and suggest music to our social circles.
With every passing day, we are getting more and more connected.
The question that we have to ask is:
How are we influencing the people in our social circles?
Are we being a source of positive, helpful information that is helping people or are we the ones that people are are blocking?
Is your in boxes filled with people looking for your guidance?
Are you a source of referrals that help your social circles?
Chances are if you were a good net worker before all of these online social networks came around, then you are probably just as good with the online services.
Over the next couple of days, I will be tackling the big social networking websites and breaking down each one and making some suggestions on how to make them work for you in a way that serves those that are in your social circles. Each one has their own niche and it is important to know how to use them.
If you start to make a difference to those in your Social networks, your life will start to take a direction for the better.
As Always, Here’s to Your LifetoSuccess,
God Bless You,
John Clark
Taking One Step Backward, To Get Two Steps Forward…
So here we are, we have been making some great steps forward with our goals since the beginning of 2012, and we seem to have plateaued or we hit that wall. Bummer, we have been making some great progress and now this… What the heck do we do now?
This always seems to happen doesn’t it?
There are a few reason why I think this happens:
1. I think that God tests our resolve towards our goals. I think that He puts up some roadblocks to see if we are truly committed to pay the price for this goal. If we are not committed or willing to pay the price, then quite frankly, we do not deserve to get this goal or objective.
Also, we tend to appreciate things that we have our blood, sweat and tears in.
I suggest that the person that works nights, weekends or whenever to put themselves through school and get their law degree appreciates that degree a little more then the person who got it paid for by whoever.
We tend to take the things we get without effort for granted, where we tend to appreciate the things that we work really hard for.
2. If we were just to reach our goals without the road blocks, why the heck didn’t we have it already.
The reason that we have not achieved it already is because there are some thinking and action habits that we have to change in our lives in order to get there. If there weren’t, then we should have been there already.
So does it make sense that taking steps backwards is a good thing when we are trying to make forward progress?
I personally don’t like the idea of taking steps backwards.
I do like the idea of making ADJUSTMENTS in what we are thinking and the actions that we are taking.
So in other words, we need to examine the thinking and the actions that are causing us not to progress and we need to make those adjustments. Or we need to seek council from someone who has gone before us, to see where we need to make changes. Or we need to hit the books and take the course so that we can get the knowledge we need to remove this roadblock.
The key here is to make sure that we keep moving forward with something that we can do in order to maintain that forward progress until we get to the root of that thinking or action that is causing the delay.
If we spend too much time in delay, we could lose some of the motivation that has been propelling us forward.
So we need to maintain forward motion…
If you are like me, you are probably working on a couple of goals in different categories and maybe you have made some great strides in the area that you seem to have stalled. If that is the case then maybe it is time to invest a little more time and effort into another goal.
But it is still important to be doing something in the stalled goal even if it acquiring new information or education in order to overcome.
Whatever the case may be, it is extremely important to never GIVE UP!!
As Always, Here’s to Your LifetoSuccess,
God Bless You,
John Clark
P.S. One of the programs that has really helped get past some huge obstacles is the Habit Busting System by Lee Milteer. This program has some great insights that can help you overcome some very difficult obstacles.
How Would You Like to Secure Your Success? Or What You can Do to Ensure Failure Every Time?
Success with our goals is very tricky sometimes. Sometimes, we can achieve our goals with relative ease and sometimes these goals evade us at every turn. So how can we secure success with our goals almost without fail?
Here are a few things we can do to secure our success with our goals:
1. Always take steps towards our goals… Everyday! – If we are not making forward movement towards our goals we are moving away from our goals. We need to be making forward progress towards our goals everyday. Something, anything… we need to be completing a step towards our goal without fail everyday.
2.Enlist the help of the people closest around us – if we keep our goals only in our minds, we leave a lot of help on the table with people who can help us make forward motion towards our goals. There are people who have knowledge that could save us weeks, months even years with regards to our goals. I think sometimes we may keep our goals close to the vest because we don’t want to hear the criticism from certain people and we don’t want to be embarrassed if we do not reach our goals.
Here’s the deal with people who criticizes, if and when you reach your goals, they will tell you that they knew that you could do it all the time. Some will even be taking credit for your success, in that case just let them, you know the truth.
3. Never Give Up… EVER!! – If the goal is important enough to you, then you should never give up. To be quite frank here, the only way that you secure your failure is by giving up. There is always something we can do to move forward towards our goals, the key is to make sure that we maintain the same desire that we had when we first started to envision our goal and keep that fire stoked.
Success is not an easy preposition. It takes time and constant forward moving effort to make these things happen. But the minute we throw in the towel, we have virtually guaranteed our failure.
Giving up is the only way to secure that we fail.
4. Ask for God’s Help – I have added this step into a few of my previous posts. This is actually the most important step. There is only one person who knows how to get anything that we desire and that is God, our Creator. He has put in place a perfect system that works every time for everyone that works within the system.
And for those who obey Him, out of love for Him, will get special blessings in their lives.
Quite frankly, the ultimate success for us will be determined by where we end up after we leave this world. And eternity is a long time.
As Always, Here’s to Your LifetoSuccess,
God Bless You,
John Clark
Achieving Success for Your Longterm Goals By Making Decisions in the Moment
“Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines, practiced everyday, while failure is simply a few errors in judgement, repeated everyday. It is the accumulative weight of our disciplines and our judgements that leads us to either fortune or failure.” – Jim Rohn
That is one of my favorite quotes…
Jim Rohn had a great way of boiling down complex ideas in to very simple concepts.
When we think of success, most of the time, we tend to take the idea of success and make it very complex adding layers and layers of information, thinking that it has to be complex, it is success after all.
Where in reality success is simply doing basic things everyday in a disciplined way that lead to the results that we are looking for.
Let’s take a quick look at fitness and break it down to the basics:
1. Cardio, Weight, and Cross training, 30 to 45 minutes, 4 to 5 times a week.
2. Eating a diet with the proper mix of proteins and high fiber carbohydrates to the right calorie level everyday.
Two simple things, that if focused on everyday would create a fit person.
So where does the problem come in?
It’s not flashy enough for us or it does’t get us to the result we are looking at quick enough.
But I think you would agree that if anyone followed that very simple 1, 2 process, it would result in a very fit person.
The key is to make these decisions in the moment day by day and if we happen to slip up one day and fall off the diet or not make it to the gym, then the NEXT day we need to get back on track. But we have to minimize the slip up time and get back on track as quickly as possible before the bad habit gets a hold of us again.
While doing this, we also need to pay very close attention the thinking that is going on inside of us when we do happen to fall off of the tracks. This will hold a key to long term habit change in the area that we are looking to change in our lives.
Lee Milteer’s great program, The Habit Busting System located at http://www.habitbustingsystem.com, is a great way to implement some of the ideas that are in the posts from this blog.
We don’t have to make our success to complex. If we just practice a few disciplines, day in and day out, we will end up with the results that we are looking for.
As Always, Here’s to Your LifetoSuccess,
God Bless You,
John Clark
Success Through Using Effective Thinking Processes
When it comes to success and successful thinking, your thoughts ultimately do determine the direction of your life.
Your thinking, especially your subtle thinking, shapes the actions that you take and those actions determine the results that you get. For you to change your actions, you need to vigilant about the subtle thoughts that rattle around in your head.
The subtle thoughts that you have about your life have been developed over the years by the input of others. Thoughts about you from your parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles.
These thoughts could have come from well meaning but very misguided individuals that were looking out for your well being. But when we are young, we have no discerning capabilities, so we accept these thoughts into our operating thinking because of the authority positions of these people.
Some of these thoughts pertained to our habits or about what others thought we should develop as habits.
Thoughts or statements that pertained to our health, finances, work ethic, spiritual thinking and our relationships.
Being children with no discernment, we would generally accept these thoughts about us as fact and our actions would be shaped by these thoughts and our results would come from these thoughts.
But….
As we get older and want to start making changes in our lives around these areas, these limiting thoughts that we accepted as children stand in our way and put up road blocks to stop us in our tracks when we start to make progress in these areas.
So how do we get this these limiting thoughts?
1. We need to listen for these thoughts. We have s constant flow of thoughts rolling through our heads every day and when start to change actions in our lives, we need to become extremely sensitive to the thoughts that we are thinking so we can find the limiting thoughts hat can hold us back.
2. We need to continuously take action towards our goals without ceasing. When we take forward movement towards our goals, our thoughts about these goals will come to the surface and hopefully we can catch the limiting thoughts.
3. We can never give up on making positive change in our lives. The fact is if we stop making forward progress nothing will ever change.
This is not an easy process but it is the only one that effectively works for habit change. For an in depth look at habit change make sure to check out: http://www.habitbustingsystem.com
As Always, Here’s to Your LifetoSuccess,
God Less You,
John Clark
Why It is Important to Pay Attention to Your Thinking
With the first week of 2012 in the history books, I hope you have made some good progress towards your New Year’s resolutions. I’m guessing you are part of one of three different groups:
1. You are still formulating your plan but haven’t made much progress yet. You don’t feel the plan is quite good enough yet and you want it to be perfect before you get going on it.
2. You are making some good progress and you feel that it has been pretty easy so far, you’ve made it to the gym everyday so far and you are getting your breath back and the workouts are getting a little easier and you are quite happy with your results so far.
3. You have made great progress so far BUT you have started to reward yourself with the exact things that were holding you back before. You have eaten that pizza three days in, because you have been doing pretty good.
It doesn’t matter what group you find yourself in, one of the most important things to consider is where you are with your thinking and even more important is have you been paying attention to what you have been thinking.
There are some thoughts that are working on you that are just under the surface. And those are the thoughts that are woking on you in that area that you are looking to change.
You have your regulars thoughts like:
“I can do this.”
“Ok, It’s time to get up and get to the gym.”
“You are a strong person and you can make past this ______________.”
And then there are those thoughts that are rattling around your head that you are not even aware of. Thoughts that have been working on your since early childhood.
“Your too skinny.”
“Give up. You’ll never do it.”
“You… yeah right.”
These are the thoughts that we allowed to sink into our subconscious as we were growing up. The thoughts that if we opened our minds and allowed ourselves to hear them, we could make lots of progress in our lives with our limiting goals.
One of the things that we could do in order to help us in this area is to pay very close attention to what we are thinking when we find ourselves in times of pressure with regards to our goal or resolution.
When the pressure starts to happen, this is the old limiting thoughts rising up to keep us “safe” and to maintain the self image that we have had up to this point in our lives.
But when we catch that limiting thought, it is a very liberating and the start of true and lasting change in our lives.
So start to day, start paying attention to the thinking in your area of concern.
As Always, Here’s to Your LifetoSuccess,
God Bless You,
John Clark
To Resolve or Not to Resolve When Credit Card Debt is the Question by Guest Contributor Martha Jackson
For the 65% of the Americans that carry revolving credit card debt at an average of $11,000, their January, 2012 statements have already packed an unwelcomed punch for the New Year. Since the last decade, getting out of debt has been one of America’s top resolutions, for both the national debt as well as the consumer credit card debt. There seems to be a running joke that New Year resolutions are made to be broken but with the present economic condition, this would become sheer foolishness. The best way to get started is by resolving to live up to your New Year resolutions to stay out of debt. Though there are many professional companies that can assist you to get out of debt by paying small and affordable monthly payments, yet you should try your best to stay on track so as to avoid seeking professional help.
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Monitor your credit report time to time: If you didn’t check your credit report time to time in 2011, resolve to do so in 2012! You always need not sign up for a credit monitoring service to check your credit report; you just have to keep an eye on the report by pulling out one from any of the three credit reporting agencies. If you stay updated about what the credit bureaus speak about you, you can measure your steps before you take a wrong one.
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Repair your credit score: If you plan to buy a new house or a new car in 2012, you must be looking forward to taking out a mortgage loan or a car loan to finance it. If this is your dream this year, you should also start repairing your credit score in order to make the loans affordable and covetable. All lenders will check your score so as to make sure that lending a loan to you is not risky on their part. You should therefore take steps to boost your credit score and be on the safer side.
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Trigger your high interest debts: Unattended debts can have a negative impact on your credit score and on all the other financial records. You should make sure that you repay your high interest debts as soon as possible so as to eliminate your revolving debt burden. If needed, you should get help from the debt consolidation or the credit counseling agencies so as to get professional help and expert advice.
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Stop living paycheck to paycheck: If you had been living paycheck to paycheck in 2011, you should resolve to quit this habit in 2012. You make one big expense and this is enough to take you to financial ruin and possibly you may even be forced to file bankruptcy. Save money aggressively so that you can form a cushion on which you can fall back during an emergency.
Don’t believe in the clichéd view that resolutions are made to be broken. If you’re financially wise and you want to lead a happy 2012, you should take care of your resolutions. Follow the tips mentioned above so that you can stay out of debt and avoid running to professional agencies to get out of debt.
Author’s Bio: Martha Jackson loves to write financial articles and she is a contributory writer associated with the www.debtconsolidationcare.com and has written several articles on debt consolidation, debt settlement and get out of debt for various financial websites. She holds her expertise in the Debt industry and has made significant contribution through her various articles.
The Biggest Trap to Avoid with the Early Success in Your New Year’s Resolutions
I am pretty connected via the social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter and I have pretty tight list that I pay attention to including my family, close friends, professional associates and so forth. What I find pretty neat about watching these list over the beginning of the year is how well people who have resolved to make changes in their lives are doing.
Obviously most of the people who are posting are making good progress towards their goals but I have noticed some others who have declared to make changes… well their not posting to successfully about them. Maybe their being a little coy about their successes and they are keeping them close to the vest. Time will tell.
One of the things that I would like to go over at this time especially with the people who are making rapid movements with their resolutions right now is what I call the…
“This is easy, I can slip back into a little of the old habit and get right back on track.” MODE
Let me give you an example:
Let’s say that you have been to the gym for 5 days straight since starting your resolution. You are feeling great. You are getting your lungs back and the workouts aren’t that hard on you as much as they were the first day or two.
You have been doing great spacing your meals out every couple of hours with whole grains, protein rich foods and they are balanced just so that you are feeling full and energized with each passing day.
It actually seems quite…. EASY!!
Then all of a sudden that small voice from the back of your head says, “Your doing a great job…. you don’t have to get up early today and go to the gym. You start right back up tomorrow. Or on Monday…” or “WOW, look at you, you are doing so great making those healthy meals, this is easy, it’s not going to kill you to have that one wonderful, sugary soda or eat that whole pizza by your self.”
“It’s been three days since I had that last cigarette. This is easy one more isn’t going to hurt, I can start over tomorrow.”
Don’t fall into this trap. It is hard enough just to handle the pull of old habits, let alone that small voice that tells you it’s ok.
When that voice pops up that tells you how easy this is, you need to be very cautious and aware of the thinking that is going on in your head.
I almost like to refer back to the story of Garden of Eden, when the snake rolled up on Eve and said “Hey, it’s no problem to have some of the fruit from that tree. It’s easy go ahead. What’s the worse thing that can happen?”
Well bingo, bang here we are still paying for that one.
Be careful about that little voice.
It’s one thing to fall back into old habits because old habits do die hard, but don’t do it because of the “this is easy” voice. That is the voice that will get you time after time and will eventually become another habit that will hard to break.
Make sure to get over to http://www.habitbustingsystem.com to get this great program for habit change.
As Always, Here’s to Your LifetoSuccess,
God Bless You,
John Clark
Increasing Your Odds of Success with Your New Year’s Resolutions
We are into day 5 of 2012, and again, I am hoping this message finds you with a lot of WHITE hot desire to make your New Year’s resolution a reality.
I have been writing quite a bit lately about this subject and it has been a little scattered so with this message I will hit the key points that will give you the edge to making sure that you make your New Year’s resolutions a reality instead of a pipe dream.
Here we go:
1. Write it down – The fact that you write your goal down already increases your odds to getting it done. There is a psychological advantage that you get when you put your goals on to paper. The act of doing this tells your subconscious mind that you are serious about getting it done.
2. Make sure that your goal or resolution is crystal clear and concise – When you make your goal or resolution clear instead of vague, your mind starts to dial in like a laser beam and gives your mind quantifiable information that you can get your mind around. If the goal is vague instead clear, your mind will spin round and round, and you will end up getting no where.
Example: “I weight 180 lbs with 15% body fat.” instead “I want to lose weight.”
Clarity is a key to goal achievement.
3. Write Down the Plan to get there – There are some things that you are going to have to that are different then what you are doing now to get to your goal. Again these are best written down with clear detailed descriptions to each task. This does’t have to be perfect!!
4. Take Action!! – There is a Divine principle that goes to work here. When you work towards your goal, your goal starts to move towards you.
There is a tendency to wait to take action until the plan is perfect but there is no perfect plan. So get moving right away on your goals, the minute you get it down on paper, do something, do anything, just start moving towards it.
5. Seek help – #1. From God. #2 From people who have gone before you in the goal that you are looking to reach.
There are many places to go for help.
1. CD or DVD programs
2. Books
3. Classes
4. Coaching Programs
6. Pay attention to your thinking – This is one that is often glossed over but this is one of the most important factors to the success of your goals. You have some thoughts that are rolling around in your head with regards to the goal. This is exactly why you are where you are.
The key here is to listen very carefully to the subtle thoughts that happen to be rolling around in your mind just under your conscious thoughts.
These are the thoughts that help create the reality that you are experiencing.
Let’s take a look at an example:
Let’s say that you suffer from excessive weight and this has been a struggle for you.
Let’s say when you were young, you had a family that encouraged people to eat everything on their plate, which was not uncommon for people who came out of the depression. They didn’t want anything to go to waste… period!! So as a kid you were told that you were not to leave the table until your plate was empty. Well as you grew up this just happened to be part of your way of being and from that point forward, you didn’t get up from the table until your plate was empty no matter how full it was.
As you can see this would add a lot of calories to you over a lifetime.
Or maybe your were told that you were skinny and you didn’t like being called skinny so you eventually got un-skinny but in a non-healty manner.
These are just a couple of examples but these can occur with any area that you are looking to change.
But until you get to the root cause of why you are where you are, the change will be short lived.
7. Never give up – The fact is, you will NEVER reach your goal if you give up. If you give up, you will simply fail and that will be the end of it. But if you keep pressing forward, you will eventually stumble upon the thinking that is creating the results in your life in a manner that you will be able to change it. But only if you keep moving forward.
Over the next week or two I will be having some guest bloggers that will be writing in the areas of finance and fitness. I hope you will find the information useful.
As Always, Here’s to Your LifetoSuccess,
God Bless You,
John Clark
The Hardest Things to Overcome with Regards to New Year’s Resolutions and Our Goals
I hope this posts finds you with the WHITE hot desire that you started your New Year’s resolutions or New Year’s Goals with.
We have all read the stories about New Year’s resolutions not working or how shortly after we start them, we soon fall back into our old habits of thoughts and actions and the resolutions are over. Quite frankly, if you look back over my posts I may have written one. Sorry about that…
I recently read an article about how yo – yo dieting is actually better then not having a dieting goal at all. It went on to say that as the weight has come on and come off several times, that situation is a lot better to have then to have the pounds come on and never come off. As one who has done this several times, it kind of made me feel good about my yo – yo dieting experience.
The thing that I find most interesting about people who find themselves in this cycle, me being one of them, is that we always go back to what we know we should be doing.
This applies to many areas of our lives, from our health to our finances and everything in between.
The one thing that is missing and the one thing that causes the weight to come back on or our bank accounts to shrink is….
The subconscious thoughts that we have with regards to these areas in our lives.
Because we have failed to dig deep enough to find the subconscious thoughts that cause us to go in the other direction.
When we set ourselves in forward motion with our goals, we have the desire, we have the motivation and we have the initial willpower to start making changes but a year later we find ourselves right back in the same spot that we started. So what the heck happened?
Well the subconscious thoughts that we have rolling around in our heads did NOT change and this caused us to get off track AGAIN.
Now let’s go back to our yo – yo diet scenario again, so we have done it a million times and here we go again.
The good news is that you are still moving forward AGAIN.
Frankly, we can never give up. We should be trying it again anyways.
Why should we keep trying if we are destined to fail?
Because if we keep trying we WILL eventually uncover the subconscious thinking that constantly holds us back and the changes will stick. FOREVER.
We can never give up. We need to constantly move forward even if we go backwards several times.
Thomas Edison tried and failed over 1000 experiments while trying to invent the electric light bulb. What if he tried 3 times and threw in the towel, I’m guessing we probably wouldn’t be enjoying the the luxuries that we have today.
This same thought process applies to our lives as well.
We must keep trying to make the positive changes in our lives and never giving up until it sticks.
If your like me, you have those around you that will say, “Here you again, John. Why don’t you just stop trying, you know that it won’t it won’t last.”
We need to ignore those voices as well and start listening to the voices that are going on in our heads with regards to the area in our lives we are looking to change. Eventually, we will find that thought that causes us to go backwards, kill it and change it to a thought that will cause the lasting change we are looking for in our lives.
I hope this article helps, if you are serious about changing some habits in your life, make sure to get over to http://www.habitbustingsystem.com , this is a great program that can help you break down this complex subject and make it simple to follow.
As Always, Here’s to Your LifetoSuccess,
God Bless You,
John Clark
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