Lessons For Growth & Achievement

These days i’m all about lessons for growth and achievement. This thing called life is long. And if you’re the same person you were five years ago, you’re not growing, at least that’s what some experts believe. I believe it too. 

I was reading an article in Success magazine and came across some of the most amazing advice from some of the world’s most successful individuals, including Deepak Chopra, Oprah Winfrey, Wayne Dyer, Seth Godin and more. They each gave a bit of advice on personal growth and achievement. 

Here are 20 that I will do my best to incorporate into my life in 2015 and beyond:

1. Get your breathing to go low and quite. Nothing can be done welll from a state of tension.  (Martha Beck)

2. Look at your mission statement every morning to start your day and set your intention, and then at night, look at it agin and ask, How did I do today? Were there some things I could’ve done better? (Ken Blanchard)

3. Train your mind to serve you. How we live our lives is a result of the story we believe about our selves. We have to consciously create and recreate our thinking with seminars, reading and the goals we set. It’s important that we develop an achievemebt-driven mindset. (Les Brown)

4. God grant me the strength to focus this week, to be mindful and present, to serve with excellence, to be a force of love. (Brandon Burchard). He did not use God, but I need God in there for that sentence to work for me. So, consider this my adaptaton.

5. Keep a Victory box. It’s a place where you put letters, awards and pictures that make you feel good. Go ther ewhen you’re feeling down. (Jack Canfield).

6. Focus on your successes, not your failures. Jack Canfield suggests making a list of 100 successes in your life, including getting a driver’s license, graduating high school, etc. He believes that most people take for granted the things they’ve done.

7. Try the mirror exercise. Before you go to bed, stand in front of the mirror and look yourself in the eye an say, I want to appreciate and acknowledge you for the following things: ( I did not blow a fuse when my husband did not pay the cable bill, etc.) (Jack Canfield)

8. Replace negative self-talk with positive affirmations. They could be things like, I choose to believe I am worth and seserving fo success. I have everything I need to accomplish anything I want. Come up with 10 or 12, put them on your phone or index cards, and read them every day. (Jack Canfield)

9. Mind your cravings. When you’re stressed and want something salty, put grapefruit juice in a glass of water. That kills salty cravings. It it’s sweet you crave, eat dark chocolate, which will boost your serotonin and calm you. (Dr. Mehnet Oz)

10. Good Sleep. Every day. Cultivate healthy emotions. Start your day by saying, I want a loving, compassionate heart; a joyful, enertetic body; a clear, reflective mind; and lightness of being. Let your day orhestrate itself arount the commitment. Stay away from grievances, anger, fear, guilt-these deplete your energy (Deepak Chopra)

11. Enlightment through suffereing. Things can come along in life, and you ask, Why is this happening? My life is ruined. Time goes by, and you realize that was a great gift. For example, the alcoholic who got arrested for driving under the influence: that was th one thing that made him get sober. (Wayne Dyer)

12. Get out in front of it. Befere the negativity and the pain show up, trust your intuition to prevent a crisis. For example, in an argument, play it out in advance: Instead of saying somehting that will create aimosity, saysomething kind. (Wayne Dyer)

13. Rescuetime allows you to block Internet or Facebook access for a certain amount of time. You’re using a system to overpower a lack of self-control (Tim Ferriss)

14.  Be brave enough to turn to someone andsay, “Here, I made this. What do you think?” And if they don’t like it, that’s ok. We have to be able to open ourselves to the world andsay, “This is my work. This is my opinion. This is something I care about.” Without hiding. Only then can we connect to the world (Seth Godin)

15. “Your performance will actually improve if you can commit to not only working hard but also unplugging, recharging and renewing yourself.” (Arianna Huffington)

16. When you go out expecting to get breakes, expecting people to like you, expecting to be at the right place at the right time, that’s going to open up the door for good things to come into your life. I don’t think you’ll reach your highest potential if 1you have limited expectations. (Joel Osteen)

17. Any time you sincerely want to mak a change, the first thing you must do is to raise your standards. Change what you demand of yourself. Write down all the things that you would no longer accept in yur life, all the things that you would no longer tolerate , and th things that I aspired to becoming. (Tim Robins)

18. Recognize your own power. (Sheryl Sandberg)

19. Failure lessons in the words of the amazing Oprah Winfrey, “It doesn’t matter how far you might rise. At some point, you are bound to stumble. If you’re pushing yourself higher and higher, the law of averages predicts that you will at some point fall. And when you do, I want you to remember this: There is no such thing as failure. Failure is just life trying to move us in another direction. Now, when you’re down there in the hole, it looks like failure. When the moment comes, it’s OK to feel bad for a little while. Give yourself time to mourn what you think you may have lost. But then here’s the key: Learn from every mistake, because every experience particularly your mistakes re there to teach you and force you into being who you are. (Excerpted from her 2013 Harvard University commencement speech).

20. Write your goals. Every time you write your goals, you program them deeper into your subconscious, and you activate the Law of Attraction. You start to attack people of a certain status into your life. You start to see possibilities you haven’t seen before. You start to hear ideas you wouldn’t have noticed before. It’s the most amazing thing. (Brain Tracy)