“A real decision is measured by the fact that you’ve taken a new action. If there’s no action, you haven’t truly decided.”

“Beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy. Human beings have the awesome ability to take any experience of their lives and create a meaning that disempowers them or one that can literally save their lives.”

“Commit to CANI! Constant And Neverending Improvement”

“Determination is the wake up call to the human will.”

“Everything happens for a reason and a purpose, and it serves you.”

“For changes to be of any true value, they’ve got to be lasting and consistent.”

“How am I going to live today in order to create the tomorrow I’m committed to?”

What is Time Management Really?

Referencing Wikipedia, “time management is the act or process of planning and exercising conscious control over the amount of time spent on specific activities, especially to increase effectiveness, efficiency or productivity. Time management may be aided by a range of skills, tools, and techniques used to manage time when accomplishing specific tasks, projects and goals complying with a due date. This set encompasses a wide scope of activities, and these include planning, allocating, setting goals, delegation, analysis of time spent, monitoring, organizing, scheduling, and prioritizing. Initially, time management referred to just business or work activities, but eventually the term broadened to include personal activities as well. A time management system is a designed combination of processes, tools, techniques, and methods. Usually time management is a necessity in any project development as it determines the project completion time and scope.”

3 Steps to Better Time Management

There are 3 steps I use to take advantage of the time I have. They are, ordering, planning and executing.

1. Ordering – ordering is the skill to list and prioritize you high value tasks. In other words, if I’m at work today and it’s 9AM, and there is a deadline that I need to submit a report to my boss at11 AM, and my daily morning tasks include reading e-mail, assigning work, submitting time cards, attending a meeting at 10AM and ensuring my workers are doing their job, I might feel there is not enough time to get the report done. However, by ordering, I would write down each task and then the deadline right next to  it. This will help clear up what needs to be done now and what gets done later. This clarity will empower you to take action and not drop the ball on other tasks as well.
2. As  for planning, step one has taken care of most of step 2. By setting deadlines you are planning to tackle those tasks at the appropriate time! How’s that for killing 2 birds with one stone?
3. Now that you have a clear understanding of what needs to be done, the last step is to execute, or take action.

Of course, this is a simple example. I also use this same strategy to plan each day in advance. Before I used to leave the office, I would write all tasks that had to get done the next day, ordered them, added a time stamp to them and committed to seeing them through. A simple, yet powerful method for getting more out of your day!

Practice Persistence

How can we become better at persisting? Well, what is the goal you are trying to achieve? Why are you trying to achieve it? Who will benefit when you achieve that goal? How positively will it impact their lives and yours? Do you know that often times, people are so close to achieving a goal, but give up moments before they may have had a breakthrough that would have propelled them to succeed? Thomas Edison is always the perfect example when studying persistence. He worked relentlessly to create his inventions and succeeded greatly. How successful would he have been if he did not persist? He said, “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” What a great piece of truth that is. Go a little farther and you may reach your destination. However, if we do not make that last effort, we won’t get there will we? Hopefully we are not waiting for someone to pick us up an get us there? Most people have enough trouble just getting themselves from where they are to where they want to be? Persistence is an intrinsic ethic that needs to be cultivated. There is only one way to practice persistence. When you decide to accomplish something – do not give up. Even if there is a mountain in front of you – don’t give up. You can go under, over or around that mountain. There is a way, but only if we persist. If we let that mountain stop us – well, enough said!

In today’s self improvement article, I wanted to touch on a very important subject. That is, the old saying “actions speak louder than words”. Ask any effective coach, manager, teacher or parent that has been successful in getting positive results, “how did you do it?” and they will tell you that they lead by example. They would never ask someone to do something that they themselves had not done. They walked their talk and thus gained not only successful results, but an admirer, a friend, respect and finally are called a leader!

To Be a Leader…

I once worked in a production plant and had 20 direct reports. You could ask any of those 20 wonderful, hard working people today what was most important to them and they would probably answer their “self respect”. It wasn’t how much they made, or how they did on their performance review. However, that would not have been the answer 12 years ago. When I first started as their manager I did not try to change much. Although there we said to be problems. I first set out to understand what the problem was. Finally after talking to the team and assessing “happenings”, I hypothesized that there was a lack of appreciation and respect for the team. Prior management took the “if you don’t like it, go work somewhere else” attitude. Fear was leading the way and nobody was happy about it.

So what did I change? Well, when the team worked late, I was there. When someone needed materials, I took time out to get it for them. When someone needed help with a personal concern, I listened and helped them to resolve it. When someone had an emergency, I respected their need for time to attend to it. I treated everyone with the respect we all deserve and I would never ask anyone to do – or else. Although some of our management did not believe in my approach, I gained the respect of the most important people – my team. Productivity and quality increased. Negative chatter decreased. The team was super successful all because they felt that they had their self respect back. They felt appreciated and they put their hearts into their work again.

Final Thoughts

First, to be a leader, you must have a vision that takes everyone  into account . Each and every person has value to contribute. Some more, some less, but we all have something to contribute. A good leader puts the right people in the right position to help the whole. A leader will put his strongest player in a position to make the biggest, most significant impact and position his supporting staff to do exactly that – support. Finally, the leader will not sit back and rest. He/She will set goals, recognize individual accomplishments, that in essence are team accomplishments, and finally ensure that when mistakes are made (and there are always mistakes) uses that mistake as a tool for future success, not an opportunity to disrespect anyone. Find me one person who has never made a mistake…no chance! So, if you were to create self improvement in this area, it would be to improve on what your actions are and thus translate them to serve others. In the end, when everyone succeeds, you will know true victory.

To me, a good question to ask, is how does our attitude affect the day to day decisions we make in our lives? After all, it is our decisions that determine how our life turns out. If our attitude in a given moment in time towards making a decision is negative, what can happen? Well, we will most likely procrastinate and let the opportunity we have to change something into a positive, pass us by. Mastering the ability to control our attitude can really help to increase our chances of leading a more harmonious and happy life. The great thing is, that we have the ability to this. Viktor Frankel said, “Everything can be taken from a man or a woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” As you may or may not know, Viktor Frankel was held captive in and survived a Nazi concentration camp. If you want to look further into his viewpoint on the importance of attitude towards circumstances in life, I suggest reading his book “Man’s Search for Meaning”.

I don’t have to tell you how a bad attitude only helps us become less resourceful and less powerful. However, how can our attitude positively affect our success in life? NBA all time great Michael Jordan said, “my attitude is that if you push me towards something that you think is a weakness, then I will turn that perceived weakness into a strength”. Think about this for a minute. If life deals you something that you feel you can’t handle, having this attitude will surely lead you to fail. However, if life deals you a challenge, and you learn from it, grow and conquer it, won’t this make all the difference in creating success in your life?

Finally, my hope is, that this self improvement article will help you understand how our attitude directly affects our success in life. Remember, life “happens” – it is our attitude towards the happenings that will determine our decisions, and ultimately our destiny!

This is a great introduction to the law of attraction. When I first began researching self improvement, I came across this powerful law. Understanding and putting it into proper use however, is where I got my value add. Remember the saying coined by Earl Nightingale, “we become what we think about,” well, the law of attraction is very similar conceptually. We will attract what we think about most. To give a quick example, thinking about needing more money will most often result in us needing more money. However, thinking about how to make more money, focuses on how to make more money. Therefore, all your thought energy now focuses on how to make more money. Since your focus in on how to make more money, you begin to attract ideas driven towards that focus and hence, we begin to attract resources to us that help us make more money.

Continuing on, the law of attraction describes us as a living magnet. We attract into our lives the people and circumstances that we think and feel strongly about, most of the time. What exactly does this mean? Well, this simply means that whatever we focus on consistently, most likely will become our reality. The problem is, that most of us are thinking and focusing on things that do not necessarily empower us to succeed, in the major areas of our lives. To succeed in changing current unwanted circumstances, we need to change our focus and especially what that focus means to us. In other words, know exactly what you want, and focus on how you can get it. Focus on solution to what you want 80% of the time and the problem only 20% of the time.

By focusing on the problem for 20% of the time, I mean identifying what the cause was so we educate ourselves on what does not work. We don’t want to do what does not work obviously. Also, focus on understanding, instead of passing immediate judgment based what you may believe to be true regarding a situation. Remember, perceptions are not always true. In fact, from personal experience, most perceptions we have are false and are based on beliefs we have, whether they are true or not. Although the term “our perception is our reality” is certainly true, it’s only because what we believe to be true in that moment. It’s a paradigm and it can always change based on new information.

Getting back to The Secret, each time I watch this video, it gets me in a very positive state of mind. The value of watching this video to me, is that we can learn some new strategies to create self improvement in the areas of positive thinking and positive expectancy. Think about it, would you rather want to expect misery, or happiness? Again, to me, the bottom line is that by thinking about what we want in a positively stated way, will help change our
focus to positive and thus increase our chances of manifesting those positive circumstances in our lives. If it sounds like we have a choice, it’s because we do! We can choose to consciously work on our thoughts and then through repetition, we condition this positive way of thinking into our lives. As we direct our thoughts toward positive means and ends consciously, we end up embedding that into our subconscious which works automatically – meaning that we eventually convert our conscious thoughts into new, positive habits.

Finally, you can purchase the full video at most stores, online at amazon.com or at thesecret.tv. I definitely recommend this video to those who want to build a positive library of self improvement material.

The Secret (First 20 Minutes)

Today’s self improvement article focuses in on the new year. Many of us think of the new year as a time to change our focus and get back on track on actions we did not take the year before. These actions probably include going on a diet, taking a closer look at our finances, looking for a better job and doing some stuff around the house that we have been putting off.

Have a Just Do It Attitude Toward What is Most Important

I was thinking about this and asked myself, do we really need to wait for a new year to begin to commit to taking actions we should have been taking all along? Why did we allow ourselves to get caught up doing things at times that might have been of lesser importance? Not getting the right things done can lower our self-esteem and self-confidence. Ask yourself, what has not taking action on these things that really need your attention caused you? Are you happier or more stressed out and if this pattern is to continue, won’t it just cause you to not create the level of happiness in your life that you really want?

A Self Improvement Principle That Can Change Your Life!

So we know we want to change, but how? First, it helps to look at why as well. Take some time to think about what not taking action has created in your life. Are you happy with that? This is a good way to motivate yourself and put a bit of added pressure on yourself to start to do what’s necessary. To help change all this, we can commit to a key self improvement success principle this year. We can commit to taking action now, rather than later.
What I have noticed, is that later sometimes never comes. We often put things off and think that there’s going to be a better time to do them. However, by putting things off, we take them out of our focus and sometimes forget about them, until New Years Day for example. I think we all have some experience with this. When the new year comes around, we try to re-commit to our past goals and often times repeat the same pattern again. Anthony Robbins correctly calls this the “New Year’s Syndrome.” This occurs because we’ve put things off so often, that putting things off has become a habit pattern that we run. Unfortunatly, it’s a BAD HABIT! Breaking this habit pattern can be done by TAKING ACTION NOW and keep on taking action on the things we need to get done consistently. Keeping this pattern up for a month or two will help embed a new habit pattern that will ultimately help empower you in achieving your goals, as well as steadily increase your self-esteem and self-confidence.

Final Thoughts

Finally, keep in mind, that keeping your goal in your focus can increase the chances of achieving the goal. Yes, awareness in itself is that important. Also, try not to make small tasks like taking out the trash or getting dinner ready bigger than the goals you really want to achieve. Many of us will start to use those smaller tasks as excuses. Don’t fall into that trap. Instead, write your goal down, identify the obstacles that stand in your way of getting that goal and finally, decide what actions you are willing to take to overcome those obstacles. These three steps will actually create a goal plan for you and once you take the first step, you will be closer to achieving your goal!

Do you believe in yourself? I’m sure you have had times, when beyond the shadow of a doubt, you did. You may have been faced with some kind of adversity and took action to overcome it without even blinking an eye. On the other hand, you may have had a time in your life that you believed yourself to be incapable of producing some kind of result. This is what we call limiting beliefs. Why did those limting beliefs creep in, and how can we begin to create the self improvement necessary to overcome that going forward? Simply, we can begin by noticing the thoughts we think. Our  thoughts will either help us achieve what we want or stop us dead in our tracks. Henry Ford said, “Whether you think you can or whether you think you can’t, you’re right.” Consequently,  our thoughts control what we believe we can or cannot do. It’s true that there are millions of people who have achieved their goals. However, there are also just as many, or even more who are not achieving what their goals. So, what is it that stops us from getting what we want? I believe one of the major contributors, is what we think ourselves capable of. We are capable of achieving exactly what we believe or think ourselves capable of achieving. However, the moment we believe ourselves to be limited in a skill, in knowledge, or in anything for that matter, we have just stopped our growth, potential and our ability to believe and finally we cease to take action. In order to change this, we need to create self improvement in this area. We need to change our beliefs or paradigms to those that can help us achieve what we want. We will need to change the way we think and what we believe ourselves capable of in order to make progress towards achieving our goals.

We Choose What to Think

Easier said than done? I believe that if something has been done by someone else, I can do it as well. If it has been done, does it really matter who has done it? The answer is no, but the point is, that it has come into existence by human thought and action. Aren’t we human? Well, then we can do it to. Each outcome had a specific formula. Find the ingredients and put them together in the same order, in the same way and you will most likely be able to duplicate the result. Think you can and you will find the way. Think that you can’t and you won’t. It’s as simple as that. As you can see, there is tremendous value in creating self improvement in the area of self belief – what we think ourselves capable of is critical.

Believe and Succeed

If you are in a certain position in your career, what is keeping you from advancing? Do you believe that you can? Do you belive something outside of yourself is keeping you from this? Are you limiting yourself by thinking that you have to stay in that same position? Will this way of thinking stop you from attempting to advance? Isn’t it our right as human beings to be able to advance ourselves as much as we want to in knowledge, career, wealth, health and really in every aspect of our lives? I believe that to grow as individuals, we need to think we can and remove any idea that we can’t. It all begins inside of each of us - inside our minds. The human race has gone to the moon, sent information through air waves and found cures to life threatening diseases. Do you think any of these things were accomplished by people with a limited way of thinking? Brian Tracy said, “Whatever we expect with confidence becomes our own self-fulfilling prophecy.” I think that this is a true statement.

Finally, think you can, believe in yourself and in others. Have faith that you can do what you want. This will give you the mindset of most successful people. Think of the opposite – will that get it done? Create the self improvement necessary to believe in yourself. Change your thoughts and do not fear that you can’t. It has already been proven by many of our fellow men and women that you can!

The term self improvement sounds simple, but what does it mean? Furthermore, how can self improvement help us create any kind of personal success? To begin, I would like to reference a common dictionary that defines self improvement in this way: improvement of one’s mind, character, etc., through one’s own efforts. Why is this so important? Think about this question for a minute – how well do you think you would do in creating any kind of personal success, if you believed that you are incapable or unworthy of creating it? The answer should be obvious. I have another question for you. To be successful in life, or in anything for that matter, how important is it to improve your mind and character? If we think ourselves incapable of any personal success, what are the chances of creating it? On the other hand, if we believe ourselves capable of achieving some kind of personal success, how does this change our chances compared to thinking ourselves incapable? So as you can see, when we improve our perceptions of what we think is possible or attainable in our lives, we have totally empowered ourselves to help to make it happen. Whatever “it” may be, we need to believe we can do it, be it, get it – whatever. If we don’t believe, do we really even give ourselves a decent chance of achieving or attaining “it”? When we come to believe that we can, we have improved our way of thinking or our attitude towards what we can do. We have improved ourselves.

There is no Luck in Self Improvement

Continuing on, self improvement is the means of gradually creating the mindset and skills to improve not only ourselves, but our entire surroundings. Think about the person who is employed at a job and is comfortable earning an average wage. Although this person is fully entitled to this, he might notice that others are earning a higher wage. He may assume that he has no luck and other people were just born with greater talents and accidentally made the right connections. However, what he does not know, is that those people intended for their circumstances to manifest as such. He assumes it’s luck, but the law of cause and effect explains why this is not luck. The higher wage earner has done something differently and thus produced different results. To achieve those same results, f improvement is needed. Since we are fully responsible for creating our lives, self improvement then is necessary, if we are to get from point A to point B. Where we are to where we want to be.

This is a question I asked myself a while ago. Why are some people better off than others? What has driven their personal success? I found out what caused many people to succeed in any endeavour, whether it was their career, family life, personal finances or health, was that they have learned the skills or improved themselves to take action on what causes success in those areas. They improved until they found what works, and even then, there was room for improvement until they got as close to perfection as they could.

The Ultimate Value of Self Improvement

Finally, that is the ultimate value of self improvement. It’s an opportunity to learn to act in a way that can cause us to succeed in every aspect of our lives. I used to think that people were born successful or that it was a talent that only some people had, or yes that people were just “lucky”. I later found out that it didn’t matter how much money, intelligence, power, influence or any other successful trait that someone had that made them successful. It was those who figured out exactly what they wanted, found out the right steps to take and then took action to actualize their goals - that is what created personal success in their lives.

Final Thoughts

So, what causes personal success, is first making a distinction that the results you are creating are not up to your standards, but also knowing that you can change and direct your life in a way that you want. Once you have noticed this, self improvement is necessary to help you create the personal success you seek. How can you improve yourself in any significant area of your life? Books, videos, inspirational biographies, reading your bible or other spiritual works that can inspire and instruct you. Remember, in order for us to create different results, we need to change or improve ourselves. Why? Because we can never create different results by staying the same. We need some kind of change. Change of thoughts will lead to changed beliefs that can replace limiting beliefs. This change of beliefs creates self improvement and thus will help us increase the chance of achieving any personal success in life. Work on improving your skills, your attitudes, your beliefs, your disciplines and you will not be disappointed.

This self improvement article focuses on the power of positive thinking. I think we all know what negative thinking produces. So, are you willing to use a readily available power that can literally change your life? If you are, know that you can shape your life as you want, when you realize that you are in control of what you think. So what is this “readily available power?” Earl Nightingale, in his famous message “The Strangest Secret,” let us know exactly what it is, when he said that the secret key was “we become what we think about.” If we have positive thoughts, we’ll get positive results in our lives. And conversely, if we think negative thoughts, we’ll get negative results.

Is Positive Thinking Really That Simple?

So is this really true? We are the ones who control the thoughts we think, so we can control the direction of our lives. In fact, our thoughts are probably the only one thing in life that we truly can have control of. So, positive thinking is a choice we can make. Oprah Winfrey, is one of the most successful people in the world. To quote Oprah, “I know for sure that what we dwell on is who we become.” Is it this power of concentrated positive thought that has led Oprah to be one of the most successful people in the world? I believe it is. I think that positive thinking is so powerful, that if we would harness it’s power and constantly think about, focus on and concentrate on what it is we want in a positive way, we can achieve it. After all, isn’t this how we achieved all of what we have today? Think about your life and what you have achieved. Didn’t you first create the thought in your mind of what you wanted, think positively about it and finally get the result? In other words, our thoughts are totally creative. Thinking positively about what we want is one of the most powerful forces know to getting what we want.

To quote another extremely successful person, W. Clement Stone, “Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” Whether thinking positively or negatively about situations, results, relationships, beliefs and feelings, we are in control, as we are constantly creating them by the way of our thoughts. It’s amazing what happens when you think positively about a goal. You will begin to figure out how to achieve it. However, when you think negatively about a goal, your brain literally shuts down. The creative thought process disappears, and so does the achievement of the goal.

Positive Thinking is a Choice

Yes, positive thinking can help us get the results we want. Positive thinking is a choice we can make. Positive thinking should be a habit that we all learn to use, as it can shape our lives for the better. You will find many resources on this site intended to motivate, inspire and spark you into making positive thinking useful. The goal of this self improvement article, is to help guide you in a direction that will help you in all that you do, by using positive thinking to your advantage. It’s up to you to expand your thinking and your life. Nobody else is going to do if for you. It’s true that it’s much easier to be swept away by circumstances that are out of your control, right? The distinction to make here, is that you are the creator of circumstance. We can change our circumstances at will, by deciding to use positive thinking as a means to self improvement and personal change.

Final Thoughts

Is positive thinking going to help you succeed at achieving something, just because you’re thinking positive? The answer to this question is no! Just thinking positive alone, is not going to help you climb the mountain of success. If your looking to the west for the sun to rise, your going to be disappointed. You can think really positive about seeing that sun rise while facing west, but you’ll never see it for obvious reasons. If you have a worthwhile goal, and you know the exact steps to getting it, then, thinking positively when faced with challenges along the way, will help you create solutions and achieve breakthroughs. Remember, negative thinking is useful as well, if we use it to see what does not work. However, negative thoughts like, “I can’t do that”, “Why do I always screw up?”, and my favorite “I can never get things right!” will shut you down physically, emotionally and mentally.

Finally, no one is perfect. We all get down at times. Don’t think that you have failed if you keep getting negative. It’s habitual. We created these habits over time through repetition. So, by making positive thinking a practice, we can really begin to positively change our lives. Start now to create self improvement in this area of your life by thinking you can produce a result and then take action towards achieving it.