How to Control Your Thoughts

“People become really quite remarkable when they start thinking that they can do things. When they believe in themselves they have the first secret of success.” - Norman Vincent Peale.

Eliminating all negative thought from your consciousness is not easy these days and it will not happen overnight. However, as you become aware of your thoughts, you will begin to recognize them as either positive or negative. Most of us spend our days with thoughts running in and out of our brain and we don’t stop to analyze them. Now is the time to begin analyzing your thoughts.

As you begin to feel negative thoughts and energy, change them to positive thoughts immediately. Words or thoughts like I can’t, I don’t, I won’t are all negative. Replace them with, I can, I do, I will. For example: Instead of thinking, “I don’t want to get stuck in traffic,” think “I do want to get where I’m going quickly and I will handle what ever comes my way with patience and intelligence.”

Another technique you can use to control your thought is by interrupting your thoughts with positive affirmation. For example, when negative thought comes around, interrupt your thought with positive affirmation by talking to yourself or saying out the words “No Worry, Be Positive” repeatedly. The beauty of this technique is that you get a definite sense of shifting a negative thought to something that is positive and uplifting.

If you find negative thoughts are overwhelming you, evaluate why you’re having so many negative thoughts. Try not to judge yourself for having the negative thoughts, merely try to understand them. Once you understand why you’re feeling so negatively you can take steps to move towards a more positive outlook.

You now have the tools to turn your life in a powerful and positive direction. There is nothing that you can’t handle. You are in control of your life and in control of your moods. Positive thinking is a skill and as you improve upon your ability to think positive, you’ll find it will become second nature. As your ability to become completely positive grows, few of life’s challenges will feel overwhelming. You will feel in control most of the time and you will learn to believe that your health and your life are determined solely by you.

Time Management - The Key To A Balanced Life

Time management is basically about being focused on the important things. The Pareto Principle - a.k.a. the '80:20 Rule' - states that 80% of efforts that are not time managed or unfocused generates only 20% of the desired output. However, 80% of the desired output can be generated using only 20% of a well time managed effort. Although the ratio '80:20′ is only arbitrary, it is used to put emphasis on how much is lost or how much can be gained with time management.

Some people view time management as a list of rules that involves scheduling of appointments, goal settings, thorough planning, creating things to do lists and prioritizing. These are the core basics of time management that should be understood to develop an efficient personal time management skill. These basic skills can be fine tuned further to include the finer points of each skill that can give you that extra reserve to make the results you desire.

But there is more skills involved in time management than the core basics. Skills such as decision making, inherent abilities such as emotional intelligence and critical thinking are also essential to your personal growth.

Personal time management involves everything you do. No matter how big or small, everything counts. Each new knowledge you acquire, each new advice you consider, each new skill you develop should be taken into consideration.

Personal time management should not be a daunting task. It is a very sensible and reasonable approach in solving problems big or small. A great way of learning time management and improving your personal life is to follow several basic activities.

One of them is to review your goals whether it be immediate or long-term. A way to do this is to keep a list that is always accessible to you. Always determine which task is necessary or not necessary in achieving your goals and which activities are helping you maintain a balanced life style.

Below are some important steps you must always remember in order to manage your time and achieve the important tasks.

• Learning to say "No". You actually see this advice often. Heed it even if it involves saying the word to family or friends.
• Pat yourself at the back or just reward yourself in any manner for an effective time management result.
• Try and get the cooperation from people around you who are actually benefiting from your efforts of time management.
• Don't procrastinate. Attend to necessary things immediately.
• Have a positive attitude and set yourself up for success. But be realistic in your approach in achieving your goals.
• Have a record or journal of all your activities. This will help you get things in their proper perspective.

From the moment you integrate into your life time management skills, you have opened several options that can provide a broad spectrum of solutions to your personal growth. It also creates more doors for opportunities to knock on.

If you can't remember anything what you've read so far, just remember this one: "Time management is about getting results, not about being busy".

Four Effective Time Management Techniques

If you have always felt that time is running out, this article is for you. It explores four essential techniques of effective time management.

People all over the world are getting more busier and busier with their lives these days. Thanks to the advanced information age, we’re living in a world that has gotten more demanding of our time than ever. Without effective time management, we won’t be able to use our time productively and would always feel like we’re running out of time.

Let’s explore the four essential techniques of effective time management:

1. Planning and setting priorities.

You will be able to manage your time more effectively if you set out a PLAN first. With a plan to follow, you are more organized and focused. You will know exactly what are the tasks you need to do and complete. No more time wasting and you will feel more accomplished and released at the end of each day. Without a plan, you don’t know what are the things you should be focusing on and accomplished. You don’t know where you are supposed to be going. If you don’t know where you’re going, it doesn’t matter where you arrive at. You may not like your destination and at the end of the day you’ll feel that you’ve been wandering around, wasting time and accomplishing nothing.

2. Decide what are the most important things to do today.

This will help you focus your energy on what is important to you according to your plan instead of what others think is important. You will feel that you are in control of your life and your time, you accomplish the things that are important for you. It will also help you to finish your tasks on time.

3. List those important things IN ORDER in your diary.

This will ensure that you always remember what to do and avoid missing out on important tasks. It also helps you to check and track your progress. Effective time management is all about focus and organization. With a solid plan and list-to-do, you’re able to increase your chances of success multifold.

4. Work through your list in order.

Again, this will ensure that you tackle important taks in a focused and organized manner. Focus on and finish one task at a time according to your plan and list-to-do, do not jump around between different tasks. Doing so can make you lose your focus, make mistakes and end up having to redo and spend more time doing the same tasks. Remember that the essence of time management is NOT to waste time!

These are the essence of effective time management. Use and apply them daily and you will never feel like running out of time again.

Life Is About Making Choices And Decisions

Life is like a road. There are long and short roads; smooth and rocky roads; crooked and straight paths. In our life many roads would come our way as we journey through life. There are roads that lead to a life of single blessedness, marriage, and religious vocation. There are also roads that lead to fame and fortune on one hand, or isolation and poverty on the other. There are roads to happiness as there are roads to sadness, roads towards victory and jubilation, and roads leading to defeat and disappointment.

Just like any road, there are corners, detours, and crossroads in life. Perhaps the most perplexing road that you would encounter is a crossroad. With four roads to choose from and with limited knowledge on where they would go, which road will you take? What is the guarantee that we would choose the right one along the way? Would you take any road, or just stay where you are: in front of a crossroad?

There are no guarantees.

You do not really know where a road will lead you until you take it. There are no guarantees. This is one of the most important things you need to realize about life. Nobody said that choosing to do the right thing all the time would always lead you to happiness. Loving someone with all your heart does not guarantee that it would be returned. Gaining fame and fortune does not guarantee happiness. Accepting a good word from an influential superior to cut your trip short up the career ladder is not always bad, especially if you are highly qualified and competent. There are too many possible outcomes, which your really cannot control. The only thing you have power over is the decisions that you will make, and how you would act and react to different situations.

Wrong decisions are always at hindsight.

Had you known that you were making a wrong decision, would you have gone along with it? Perhaps not, why would you choose a certain path when you know it would get you lost? Why make a certain decision if you knew from the very beginning that it is not the right one. It is only after you have made a decision and reflected on it that you realize its soundness. If the consequences or outcomes are good for you, then you have decided correctly. Otherwise, your decision was wrong.

Take the risk and decide.

Since life offers no guarantee and you would never know that your decision would be wrong until you have made it, then you might as well take the risk and decide. It is definitely better than keeping yourself in limbo. Although it is true that one wrong turn could get you lost, it could also be that such a turn could be an opportunity for an adventure, moreover open more roads. It is all a matter of perspective. You have the choice between being a lost traveller or an accidental tourist of life. But take caution that you do not make decisions haphazardly. Taking risks is not about being careless and stupid. Here are some pointers that could help you choose the best option in the face of life’s crossroads:
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Get as many information as you can about your situation.

You cannot find the confidence to decide when you know so little about what you are faced with. Just like any news reporter, ask the 5 W’s: what, who, when, where, and why. What is the situation? Who are the people involved? When did this happen? Where is this leading? Why are you in this situation? These are just some of the possible questions to ask to know more about your situation. This is important. Oftentimes, the reason for indecision is the lack of information about a situation.

Identify and create options.

What options do the situation give you? Sometimes the options are few, but sometimes they are numerous. But what do you do when you think that the situation offers no options? This is the time that you create your own. Make your creative mind work. From the most simplistic to the most complicated, entertain all ideas. Do not shoot anything down when an idea comes to your head. Sometimes the most outrageous idea could prove to be the right one in the end. You can ask a friend to help you identify options and even make more options if you encounter some difficulty, but make sure that you make the decision yourself in the end.

Weigh the pros and cons of every option.

Assess each option by looking at the advantages and disadvantages it offers you. In this way, you get more insights about the consequences of such an option.

Trust yourself and make that decision.

Now that you have assessed your options, it is now time to trust yourself. Remember that there are no guarantees and wrong decisions are always at hindsight. So choose… decide… believe that you are choosing the best option at this point in time.

Now that you have made a decision, be ready to face its consequences: good and bad. It may take you to a place of promise or to a land of problems. But the important thing is that you have chosen to live your life instead of remaining as a bystander or a passive audience to your own life. Whether it is the right decision or not, only time can tell. But do not regret it whatever the outcome. Instead, learn from it and remember that you always have the chance to make better decisions in the future.

Self Improvement And Success Often Go Hand In Hand

How do you handle the ups and downs that life throws at you? We all experience bad times in our life. To continue improve ourselves and move ahead, we should not dwell on the problems or mistakes we made. We should instead learn from our mistakes and use them as an invaluable experience to move on with our life.

One of my favorite self-improvement movies is “Door to Door”. Based on a true story, this movie is about a door-to-door salesman (Bill Porter) who is afflicted with cerebral palsy. Despite his medical condition and had been told by many people that he was not employable, he didn’t allow that to stop him from pursuing a career and became one of the best door-to-door salesman. Despite the pain of his medical condition, he would walk eight to ten miles a day to meet his customers. His story touched the heart of many of his potential customers.

I highly recommend anyone to watch this movie, it’s a very inspiring story. It shows that anyone can achieve success if they can just focus on what they can do, have a never-say-die attitude and refuse to give up despite facing many challenges.

I believe self improvement and success always go hand in hand. Here are some tips to help you in your self-improvement process.

1. Stop thinking or viewing yourself as a failure. This may sound cliche but it’s very important as everything starts in your mind. How do you think other people would view you if you always feel that you’re a failure?

2. Learn to accept yourself. Don’t compare yourself (your look, figure, etc.) to others. Self acceptance is not just about having nice figure, slender legs, or great abs. Concentrate on inner beauty.

3. Don’t succumb to failure. Learn from Thomas Edison, although he failed more than 1,000 times at making the light bulb, he didn’t feel stupid, doomed or succumb to his failures. Instead he said that he had successfully discovered more than 1,000 ways to make a light bulb.

4. Take things one at a time. Slef improvement and success is a process, don’t focus on the prize before you pay the price. Success always comes with a price tag. So, make sure you pay the price first before expecting the prize.

5. Set meaningful and achievable goals. These are the fuel that propel you forward, it motivates and aspires you to get up every morning and achieve the best. People who don’t have meaningful goals in life will be wandering around and wasting time everyday.

When you’re willing to accept change and go through the process of self improvement, you are a step closer to suuccess. You should always remember that there is no such thing as over night success. Treat it as a learning process and be willing to learn and improve. Like this quote says “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”

We are all here to learn our lessons. Our parents, school teachers, friends, colleagues, neighbors could all be our teachers. When we open our doors for self improvement, we increase our chances to head for the path of success.

Tendencies Needing Constant Regulation

Up to a certain point, the ordinary conditions of life, natural and social, provide the conditions requisite for regulating the operations of inference. The necessities of life enforce a fundamental and persistent discipline for which the most cunningly devised artifices would be ineffective substitutes. The burnt child dreads the fire; the painful consequence emphasizes the need of correct inference much more than would learned discourse on the properties of heat. Social conditions also put a premium on correct inferring in matters where action based on valid thought is socially important. These sanctions of proper thinking may affect life itself, or at least a life reasonably free from perpetual discomfort. The signs of enemies, of shelter, of food, of the main social conditions, have to be correctly apprehended.

But this disciplinary training, efficacious as it is within certain limits, does not carry us beyond a restricted boundary. Logical attainment in one direction is no bar to extravagant conclusions in another. A savage expert in judging signs of the movements and location of animals that he hunts, will accept and gravely narrate the most preposterous yarns concerning the origin of their habits and structures. When there is no directly appreciable reaction of the inference upon the security and prosperity of life, there are no natural checks to the acceptance of wrong beliefs. Conclusions may be generated by a modicum of fact merely because the suggestions are vivid and interesting; a large accumulation of data may fail to suggest a proper conclusion because existing customs are averse to entertaining it. Independent of training, there is a "primitive credulity" which tends to make no distinction between what a trained mind calls fancy and that which it calls a reasonable conclusion. The face in the clouds is believed in as some sort of fact, merely because it is forcibly suggested. Natural intelligence is no barrier to the propagation of error, nor large but untrained experience to the accumulation of fixed false beliefs. Errors may support one another mutually and weave an ever larger and firmer fabric of misconception. Dreams, the positions of stars, the lines of the hand, may be regarded as valuable signs, and the fall of cards as an inevitable omen, while natural events of the most crucial significance go disregarded. Beliefs in portents of various kinds, now mere nook and cranny superstitions, were once universal. A long discipline in exact science was required for their conquest.

In the mere function of suggestion, there is no difference between the power of a column of mercury to portend rain, and that of the entrails of an animal or the flight of birds to foretell the fortunes of war. For all anybody can tell in advance, the spilling of salt is as likely to import bad luck as the bite of a mosquito to import malaria. Only systematic regulation of the conditions under which observations are made and severe discipline of the habits of entertaining suggestions can secure a decision that one type of belief is vicious and the other sound. The substitution of scientific for superstitious habits of inference has not been brought about by any improvement in the acuteness of the senses or in the natural workings of the function of suggestion. It is the result of regulation of the conditions under which observation and inference take place.

It is instructive to note some of the attempts that have been made to classify the main sources of error in reaching beliefs. Francis Bacon, for example, at the beginnings of modern scientific inquiry, enumerated four such classes, under the somewhat fantastic title of "idols" (Gr. εἴδωλα, images), spectral forms that allure the mind into false paths. These he called the idols, or phantoms, of the (a) tribe, (b) the market-place, (c) the cave or den, and (d) the theater; or, less metaphorically, (a) standing erroneous methods (or at least temptations to error) that have their roots in human nature generally; (b) those that come from intercourse and language; (c) those that are due to causes peculiar to a specific individual; and finally, (d) those that have their sources in the fashion or general current of a period. Classifying these causes of fallacious belief somewhat differently, we may say that two are intrinsic and two are extrinsic. Of the intrinsic, one is common to all men alike (such as the universal tendency to notice instances that corroborate a favorite belief more readily than those that contradict it), while the other resides in the specific temperament and habits of the given individual. Of the extrinsic, one proceeds from generic social conditions -- like the tendency to suppose that there is a fact wherever there is a word, and no fact where there is no linguistic term -- while the other proceeds from local and temporary social currents.

Locke's method of dealing with typical forms of wrong belief is less formal and may be more enlightening. We can hardly do better than quote his forcible and quaint language, when, enumerating different classes of men, he shows different ways in which thought goes wrong:

1. "The first is of those who seldom reason at all, but do and think according to the example of others, whether parents, neighbors, ministers, or who else they are pleased to make choice of to have an implicit faith in, for the saving of themselves the pains and troubles of thinking and examining for themselves."

2. "This kind is of those who put passion in the place of reason, and being resolved that shall govern their actions and arguments, neither use their own, nor hearken to other people's reason, any farther than it suits their humor, interest, or party."

3. "The third sort is of those who readily and sincerely follow reason, but for want of having that which one may call large, sound, roundabout sense, have not a full view of all that relates to the question. . . . They converse but with one sort of men, they read but one sort of books, they will not come in the hearing but of one sort of notions. . . . They have a pretty traffic with known correspondents in some little creek . . . but will not venture out into the great ocean of knowledge." Men of originally equal natural parts may finally arrive at very different stores of knowledge and truth, "when all the odds between them has been the different scope that has been given to their understandings to range in, for the gathering up of information and furnishing their heads with ideas and notions and observations, whereon to employ their mind."

Anger Management

They say the men are much impulsive and that they measure their masculinity through the showcase of their strength. They also claim that men are difficult to deal with when they are angered by something or someone.

And as a general thought, it is said that the men should not really be angered as they are capable of physically hurting the opponent. The same scenario is often shown as true by several action movies that Hollywood films produce.

Men who are usually afflicted with pain take vengeful moves and they manifest it through physically hurting the other. Now these are action-packed-movies which can be true in real life, so to speak.

Is it really difficult for men to handle their anger? Can they not put their whole control over the matter instead of going square with each other? Psychotherapists are expert in counseling people to brace themselves with some anger management practices.

More so, psychotherapists believe that anger management is indeed a skill. This skill can therefore be practiced and honed through proper education. Most of the times, their patients are the men who have gotten involved into serious troubles because of anger. These men are often surprised to know that they can nonetheless learn the art of anger management.

Yes, just like any skill, anger management can be learned. It is just like learning how to ride the bicycle or how to go about with the driving procedures. In a driving lesson for instance, you must yield to the other vehicle drivers, shift into another gear when the engine tends to find the road difficult to ride, you need to step on the accelerator in order to push some power into the engine, and to step on the breaks in cases of possible collision with another car. More practice makes your driving perfect. And when you've gained mastery about its basics, you can already manage to drive on whatever kind of terrain there is before you.

Now what is the connection of such in anger management for men? Meaning, men's anger management is just the same as driving a car. One needs to hold on, let go, plan every action to be taken and every word to be said, deal with life's challenges but containing enough self-discipline, and finally, to step on the brakes when needed most so as to avoid hurting the other person.

There are varied reasons as to why anger in men is stirred. At times the anger can be very big or very small. Whatever the size of the anger and the reason for it, self-discipline is always vital. You may need to ponder first on the rationale of the matter and then to catch your breath before you can do a lot of damage to the other party.

As it goes normally, anger blinds men most particularly when it is their pride which goes at stake or which has been attacked by their opponents. But then with enough knowledge in anger management, such skill will further be proficient when there is enough practice.

It always pays off to gain counseling from the most trustworthy people. They do charge a service fee but one can always go to those who are affordable but can give out the best services. Anger management in men can be a skill that goes on effectively and flawless given the proper training.

Self Confidence

Putting your trust in someone else's hands is one thing that many people would not dare risking. However, many are pretty confident that things would work well when done by other people.

These are two very opposite beliefs that man has to struggle through. There are of course pros and cons to these as much as there will always be negative and positive aspects in every choice. The key here is to hit the balance somewhere.

In this article, we will try to focus more on the dangers and the potential harm of trusting your build-up of self-confidence on another person's care.

Most people have the tendency of only having their self-confidence once someone has noticed his capacities of doing things. Though many might benefit from this perspective, we still cannot negate the truth that we humans are much too obsessed within ourselves that we somehow forget to look at another person's beauty specially when that person is not much of a public figure.

And besides, we all have our own struggles to deal with that pondering over other people's capabilities are somewhat set in the back of our minds.

If people don't notice you, it doesn't mean that you have no talents nor you don't add up to the joy of the world. It only means that they are too busy within themselves. Their attention must never be your basis of gaining your self-confidence.

We all have encountered the adage- misery loves company. This is true, troubles would yet find another trouble just to things even up. You cannot build solid grounds for your self-confidence when all the while the person you are talking to is also expressing how low his self-confidence is. You may cheer up each other at times but this is not usually the case. Be sure that when you open your mouth, the other person would only absorb and trash your miseries away and leave you a much better person than you are now.

There are people who seem to have taken the charge of inflicting other people with negative thoughts. These are those who can sleep only after having thought of a better idea to cause a person his downfall. Such people would definitely do you no good. They neither would help you build your self-confidence nor would they even care for you're over all welfare. At the outset, they may show as the most loving persons that you'll ever meet. But beware. They're not there to give you joy. They are there to pull you anywhere but up.

Assure to it that you stay away from such people. There is no basic rule for identifying them, you just have to use your best judgment.

How many times has it been true that a prejudiced judgments would do nothing but to spoil your belief in yourself? Most parents do biased judgments on their children. Sure, they love them and only want the best things for them. There is no harm on this but once they have stepped beyond the line of being healthy advisers, it would time to hesitate and evaluate fully what truly is at hand.

Giving your child with biased opinions is like coercing him into his actual object of fear. There are better ways than making false words just to encourage your child especially when the world says otherwise.