How To Find Happiness Blog

Learn From the Lessons of History

The concepts of military strategy have been studied and written about for more than 4,000 years, going back to the early works of General Sun-Tzu in China more than 2,000 years BC. These principles of strategy that have been developed and perfected over the centuries have direct applications and implications for strategic thinking, both personally and corporately.

Decide In Advance What You Want

The most important military principle is the Principle of the Objective. This principle requires that you decide in advance exactly what it is that you are trying to accomplish. What exactly is your objective? In my experience, fully 80% of all problems in personal and corporate life come from a lack of clarity with regard to objectives and goals.

Clarity Is Critical

Clarity of objective precedes all other elements in strategic thinking. Here are some questions that you can use over and over again to focus and clarify your objectives. The first question is, “What am I trying to do?” The second question is, “How am I trying to do it?” The third question is, “What are my assumptions?” And the fourth question is, “What if my assumptions were wrong?”

Question Your Assumptions

Having the courage to ask these questions, and to question your assumptions, both spoken and unspoken, is a key mark of the superior person. Sometimes individuals avoid questioning their assumptions for fear that they will have to change their minds or do something other than what they started out to do. However, false assumptions lie at the root of almost every failure. The only way that you can root out these wrong assumptions is by carefully analyzing them and discussing them, and then by demanding proof or evidence that these assumptions are still valid.

Project Forward In Your Mind

Another method for clarifying your objectives is for you to project forward and look backward. In other words, imagine that you have already achieved the objective that you are working toward. Project yourself forward in your mind and then look back to the present day, to the present moment. What do you see? What changes could you make looking back from this imaginary perspective of hindsight? This is a key peak performance thinking technique.

Determine Why You Want It

The final part of clarifying your objectives revolves around your identifying the reasons why you want to achieve this objective in the first place. Why is it important? Is it still as important as when you started off? Is this objective more important than any other objective that you could be working on? It is essential that you be clear about the answers to these questions.

Action Exercises

Here are two things you can do immediately to apply the principle of the objective to your personal and business life:

First, take out a piece of paper and answer the question: “What am I trying to do?” What are your goals? What are your objectives? Why are you doing what you are doing in the first place? Is this the very best use of your time and energy?

Second, question your assumptions. What things are you assuming are true about yourself, the people around you and the situation? What if one of these assumptions turned out to be false? What changes would you have to make if you found that your most cherished assumptions were not based on reality, or were contradicted by facts?

———————-
Article by Brian Tracy

Get Brian Tracy’s 21 Success Secrets of Self-Made Millionaires for FREE!
“Did you know that every 60 seconds someone else in the world becomes a Millionaire?”
Wouldn’t it be great to know their secrets? Their formulas? The little-known facts? Well now you can - and ALL for FREE! Absolutely no commitments and no strings attached.
Get it Get it here.

There are just a few aspects of life that we can truly control, and it’s useful to know just what those areas are. If you don’t know, you’ll spend a lot of time blaming others for your own failings. Try and exert too much control in areas you shouldn’t and the universe will create some interesting ways to remind of your place.

So be prepared an learn the 10 things in life that you DO control:

1. What you do.

Your actions are yours alone. You choose to make them or not make them and you are responsible for the effects of those actions.

2. What you say.

Likewise, the words you speak (or write) are also consciously chosen. Like actions, they have an impact on your life and the lives of those you contact.

3. What you think.

Yes, there are some subconscious thoughts that you can’t control. But the things that you really think about, your beliefs, your ideals, etc. are concepts you have chosen to accept and believe in.

4. Your work.

Many people like to overlook this one, it being much easier to say “Oh, I’m trapped in my job because I don’t have a degree, experience, etc.” Hogwash! That’s simple a way of denying one’s responsibility in having chosen the job in the first place. It’s your job and you chose it. If you stay (or go), that’s a choice as well.

5. The people you associate with.

There’s a famous t-shirt that states: “It’s hard to soar like an eagle when you’re surrounded by turkeys.” Colloquial is very often correct! Your friends can either lift you up or bring you down. You make the decision which type of friends you wish to have.

6. Your basic physical health.

Much about our health is a factor of genetics, environment, and exposure. Much more of our health is simply a matter of the things we choose: diet, exercise, drugs, sleep, routine physicals, check-ups, etc.

7. The environment you live in.

Your house, the condition of your home, the town you live in, the amenities available to you are all things you can control, although some to a lesser degree (i.e., you decide to tolerate them or move someplace else).

8. Your fiscal situation.

Having or not having enough money is a factor of what you make versus what you spend.

9. Your time.

You choose how to “spend” your time and how much of your time to give to various activities. You’ll never get more time than the 24 hours your given each day.

10. Your legacy.

All your actions, words, and knowledge that you share while you are living become the gift that you leave when you are gone.

About the Author:
Jim M. Allen, personal & business success coach. For more ideas, visit
http://www.CoachJim.com or subscribe to re:ACT!, Jim’s bi-weekly
newsletter by emailing: SubscribeACT@CoachJim.com

Improve the Quality of Your Thinking

Human beings are mental organisms. Everything we are or ever will be, will be as the direct result of the way we think. If we improve the quality of our thinking, we must improve the quality of our lives. And, there is no other way to do it.

Youth and Creativity

In one series of I.Q. tests given to children ages 2 - 4 years, 95% of the children were found to be highly creative with curious, questioning minds and an ability for abstract thinking.

When the same children were tested again at age 7, only 5% still demonstrated high levels of creativity. In the ensuing years, they had learned to conform; “If you want to get along, you had better go along,” is what they had discovered.

The Dangers of Conformity

They had learned to color between the lines, to sit in neat little rows, to do and say what the other kids did and said, and to do as they were told. Over time, they lost the wonderful fearless spontaneity of youth and learned to suppress ideas and insights that were unusual or different.

Aggressively Seek New Ideas

Most of us have had similar experiences. The “Not invented-here” syndrome in many large companies is simply the adult version of “not rocking the boat.” But fortunately, since creativity is your birthright, a fundamental part of your nature, you can tap into it at any time, no matter how long it has been since you really used it.

Action Exercises

Here are two things you can do to start thinking outside of your mental box.

First, imagine that there was a vastly better, cheaper, faster way to do your job - and somebody else had already discovered it and was going to put you out of business.

Second, imagine doing exactly the opposite of what you are doing today. Allow your mind to float freely and consider how current trends will change your business.

———————-
Article by Brian Tracy

Get Brian Tracy’s 21 Success Secrets of Self-Made Millionaires for FREE!
“Did you know that every 60 seconds someone else in the world becomes a Millionaire?”
Wouldn’t it be great to know their secrets? Their formulas? The little-known facts? Well now you can - and ALL for FREE! Absolutely no commitments and no strings attached.
Get it Get it here.

I’m in Chicago attending a Dan Kennedy event. At the first break a young man stops me, saying he is one of my subscribers and a big fan. I’m flattered. We talk. During the brief conversation, he confesses that fear is what stops him from achieving anything.

Interesting. Just that very morning I had breakfast with Paul Hartunian, famous publicity expert and a licensed medical doctor, when he told me, “There is no such thing as fear.”

“There isn’t?” I asked Paul.

“No. You are born with only two fears,” Paul explained. “The fear of loud noises and the fear of falling. You lose those early on. Any other fears are created by you. They aren’t real.”

“How do you get rid of fear?”

“Stop it.”

“Stop it?”

“Just stop it,” Paul said. “Say you have a fear of bridges. If I put one million dollars in cash on the other side and said you could have it if you walked across the bridge, nude, in front of a crowd of people, you’d do it. Why? Because the reward is greater than the pain. Make the rewards greater and the fears will vanish.”

I told the young man before me the same thing. I then went on to add that most people in business have a fear of success, or a fear of failure.

“I was just in a seminar with Ted Nicholas,” I went on. “Ted said he had failed many times, and what he learned is that nothing bad ever happens to you when you fail. Instead, you get life’s greatest lessons.”

Of course, Ted is known as the four billion dollar man because he is now a legend in direct marketing. It’s obvious no failure ever stopped him.

“As for the fear of success,” I told my new friend in Chicago, “what I’ve learned is that the more successful I am, the more I can help myself, my family, and the world.”

In the last week alone I had made contributions to a new children’s foundation dedicated to helping babies suffering from a stroke at birth, and I made donations to Paul Hartunian’s dog rescue work. I also built a health club for myself on my property, shopped for a home theatre system for myself, and I sent money to help a relative with an operation.

“Success enables me to help myself as well as everyone else,” I said. “When you realize the good you can do as a success, the fear evaporates.”

I saw a light come on in the eyes of the fellow before me. He seemed to get it. He seemed to realize that fear was stopping him, but that he was the one creating it, so he could be the one to let it go.

As Dan Kennedy said in Chicago, “There is no limit to the money available. The pie is infinite. It’s up to you to go scoop it up.”

Fear?

Stop it.

You’ve got a life to live, and people to help.

Go for it.

———
Dr. Joe Vitale is the author of way too many books to list here. His latest title is “The Attractor Factor: 5 Easy Steps for Creating Wealth (or anything else) From the Inside Out.”
Get details at http://www.AttractorFactor.com

The starting point of maturity is the realization that “No one is coming to the rescue.” Everything you are or ever will be is entirely up to you.

Take Charge

This life is not a rehearsal for anything else. This is the real thing. The game is on. Time is passing quickly, and all of your decisions and indecisions, your actions and inactions, have added up to create the life you’re living at this very minute. If you want things to be different in the future, you’ll have to make things different in the present. You’ll have to take complete charge of yourself and your life and make things change, because they won’t change by themselves.

Make A Decision

Self-management is really personal management, time management, life management. It’s putting your hands firmly on the steering wheel of your life and then taking yourself in your chosen direction. Remember the old Confucian saying, “If you don’t change the road you’re traveling on, you’ll probably end up where you’re going.” Every successful man or woman in America made, at one time or another, a firm decision about where he or she wanted to go and then took deliberate steps to get there. And you can do this for yourself as well.

Bundle of Resources

One of the most useful ideas I ever learned was to view myself as a “bundle of resources.” You can benefit from this idea by standing back and looking at yourself in terms of what you are, instead of what you do. We tend to define ourselves in terms of our work, in terms of what we’re spending most of our time doing at the present moment. When we meet someone, even at a bus stop, we describe ourselves in terms of our jobs. We say things such as “I’m a salesperson,” “I’m a manager,” or “I work in such-and-such a business doing such-and-such a job.” Since we tend to become what we think about, the more we describe ourselves to others as being what we do, the more we think of ourselves as what we do. Perhaps this is why people who are fired or laid off go through a period of shock and emotional turmoil. it’s as though they’ve been cut off from their identities. You may have had that experience.

The fact is that you are not what you do. Instead, you are a bundle of resources. You have the combination of ingredients that makes you a unique and remarkable human being, different from anyone else who ever has lived or who ever will live. You’ve undergone a wide variety of experiences, both positive and negative. You’ve had a formal education, and you’ve learned from the various jobs and activities that you’ve engaged in.

You Are Unique

You have a unique intelligence, much of which isn’t yet developed to the full. You have skills that you’ve acquired through hard work, discipline and practice. You have abilities that you were born with, which make it easy for you to do certain jobs and to accomplish certain tasks. You have energy and ambition and goals and opportunities. You have a philosophy of life, however developed it is, and you have attitudes and perspectives that make you extraordinary. The federal government has identified more than 22,000 different job categories; when you put all your skills together, you’re probably capable of excelling at hundreds of jobs, doing different things in different organizations, businesses and industries.

Action Exercises

Now, here are three things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action:

First, make a clear decision about what it is you really want to do and then get busy doing it.

Second, define yourself in terms of your unique talents and abilities instead of your job title.

Third, view yourself as an incredible bundle of resources who can do a variety of jobs quite well.

———————-
Article by Brian Tracy

Get Brian Tracy’s 21 Success Secrets of Self-Made Millionaires for FREE!
“Did you know that every 60 seconds someone else in the world becomes a Millionaire?”
Wouldn’t it be great to know their secrets? Their formulas? The little-known facts? Well now you can - and ALL for FREE! Absolutely no commitments and no strings attached.
Get it Get it here.

The Determinant of Your Success

Perhaps the most powerful single factor in your personal success is your beliefs about yourself and money. We call this the Law of Belief. It says simply this: Whatever you believe, with feeling, becomes your reality.

What Successful People Believe

Whatever you intensely believe becomes your reality. That we have a tendency to block out any information coming in to us that is inconsistent with our reality. What we’ve discovered is that successful people absolutely believe that they have the ability to succeed. And they will not entertain, think about, or talk about the possibilities that they’ll fail. They do not even consider the possibility of failure.

Positive Thinking Versus Positive Knowing

You always act in a matter consistent with your beliefs. The most important belief system you can build is a prosperity consciousness where you absolutely believe that you are going achieve your financial goals.

We call this positive knowing versus positive thinking. Positive thinking can sometimes be wishing or hoping. But positive knowing is when you absolutely know that no matter what, you will be successful.

The Foundation of Willpower

Another principle related to your beliefs is willpower. We know that willpower is essential to any success. Willpower is based on confidence. It’s based on conviction. It’s based on faith. It’s based on your belief in your ability to triumph over all obstacles. And you can develop willpower by persistence, by working on your goals, by reading the biographies of successful people, by listening to audio programs, by reading books about people who’ve achieved success.

The more information you take into your mind consistent with success, the more likely it is that you will develop the willpower to push you through the obstacles and difficulties you will experience.

Beat The Odds on Success

Remember that success is rare. Only one person in one hundred becomes wealthy in the course of a lifetime. Only five percent achieve financial independence. That means that the odds against you are 19-to-1. The only way that you’re going to achieve your financial goals is if you get really serious. To succeed, you must get serious. You must get busy. You must get active. You must get going. Remember, everything counts.

Resolve To Achieve Greatly

Self-mastery, self-control, self-discipline are essential for anyone who wants to achieve greatly. And control over your thoughts is the hardest exercise in self-mastery that you will ever engage in.

See if you can talk and think about only what you desire and not talk or think about anything that you don’t want for 24 hours. Then you’ll see what you’re really made of. It’s a hard thing to do but with practice, you can reach the point where you are thinking about your goals and desires most of the time. Then, your whole life will change for the better.

Action Exercises

Here are two things you can do to build a belief system consistent with the financial success you desire:

First, continually repeat to yourself the words, pictures and thoughts consistent with your dreams and goals. Whatever you repeat often enough, over and over, becomes a new belief.

Second, set a goal for yourself to think and talk only about the things that you want for the next 24 hours. This will be one of the hardest things you ever do. But if you can keep your mind on what you want and off of what you don’t want for 24 hours, you can begin to change your entire future.

———————
Article by Brian Tracy

Get Brian Tracy’s 21 Success Secrets of Self-Made Millionaires for FREE!
“Did you know that every 60 seconds someone else in the world becomes a Millionaire?”
Wouldn’t it be great to know their secrets? Their formulas? The little-known facts? Well now you can - and ALL for FREE! Absolutely no commitments and no strings attached.
Get it here.

Let me tell you a story. Mark Yarnell, minister in a small town in Texas, was headed for bankruptcy and just about to lose his car and home. He looked for a way out and discovered Network Marketing.
Luckily, he had a wise sponsor. The sponsor gave Mark “THE PROMISE”: THIS BUSINESS CAN SET YOU FREE FINANCIALLY IN ONE TO THREE YEARS.
But he also gave him “THE PRICE”: TO SUCCEED YOU WILL HAVE TO FACE AND CONQUER FOUR MAJOR ENEMIES. Mark said, “It’s a deal!”

He then invited 200 friends over to his house to watch a video. 80 said, “No, not interested.” Mark had encountered

ENEMY #1: Rejection.
He thought, “No problem, my sponsor warned me about that. I have 120 people still coming over.”
Guess what? 50 didn’t show up. He had just met

ENEMY #2: Deception.
Mark thought, “No problem, my sponsor warned me about that. I have 70 people who watched the tape.”
Guess what? 57 said, “Not interested.” he had just encountered

ENEMY #3: Apathy.
Undaunted, Mark thought, “No problem, 13 people signed up.”
Guess what? 12 of them dropped out of the business shortly.

ENEMY #4: Attrition.
Attrition had left Mark with just one serious associate. But Mark had paid the price and succeeded. To this day, that single distributor earns Mark over $50,000 per month.

Some years ago, 20/20 did a feature story on Amway. They spent 19 minutes interviewing the whiners and complainers; several distributors who had failed, and showed their garages full of products they couldn’t sell. During the last minute of the show, one of the most successful Amway distributors was interviewed in front of his palatial home. He was asked, “This business has obviously worked for you. What’s your secret?” He replied, “There is no secret. I simply showed the plan to 1200 people. 900 said, “No” and only 300 people signed up. Out of those 300, only 85 did anything at all. Out of those 85, only 35 were serious and out of 35, 11 made mea millionaire.” Like Mark Yarnell, he worked through the numbers.

Here’s the lesson: Your success is directly related to the degree to which you are willing to work to find others like yourself who are committed to succeed. Mark Yarnell’s odds were 1 out of 200. The Amway distributor’s were 11 out of 1200.

Would you be willing to go through 200 people to find the one who will make you $50,000 a month? Or go through 1200 people to become a millionaire? I hope you will. It’s easier when you know the odds up front.
But there’s the catch: You have your own set of odds and you won’t know what they are until after you’ve succeeded. So if you’ve gone through 50 or 100 people and you haven’t found one serious person yet, you can either give up and assume the business doesn’t work, or recognize that you are working through your own numbers.

The race is not always to the swift…But to those who keep running.

That is determination.

Nick Koutroulis

The year was… well, too many years ago now. The cry baby lost another tennis match and burst into tears, again. This was a weekly occurrence.

Every week me and the other three members of my representative tennis team would play another district’s rep team. Every week The Cry Baby would lose. Every week he would burst into tears.

Odd for a fifteen year old. Odd he wasn’t getting used to losing.

The reason, it turns out, was his father.

Not that he was scared his father would get mad at him for losing. No. Because his father kept geeing him up. Kept telling him “he was going to win,” “you’ll beat him easy” and on and on and on and on and on and on and on. Relentlessly. Never letting up. So much so, the cry baby believed it.

But when the true skill of the other player won the match and the cry baby lost, his world of positive thinking was destroyed. Mentally, he was devastated. The let down was too much to handle. Tears were the result.

This is what happens when positive thinking doesn’t pan out as planned. This is what happens when reality knocks on the positive thinking door.

Consider the nonchalant. The neutral. The “don’t give a rats either way.” The “c’est la vie.” The “if it happens it happens, if it doesn’t it doesn’t.” The “don’t care.” The “in a hundred years who’s gonna care anyway.” The “it’s nothing much in the grand scheme of things.”

Without large and positive expectations there can be no let down no matter what the outcome.

By having low (no) expectations, you cannot be let down. You become emotionally detached from the event in question and are mentally free to deal with it.

Consider the person who starts a business. Their expectations are HIGH. The business MUST generate fulltime income right away. It has to because it needs to replace another full time income.

IF it doesn’t generate fulltime income right away (which is more likely going to be the case), the budding entrepreneur gets disheartened. Something is wrong with the promotion, the product, the ideas of business as a whole. The “I knew it wouldn’t work” and the “I told you so” people emerge. Negative thoughts replace the super positive one. Thoughts of being a failure - not “not achiving the desired result” but actually BEING a failure - flood the head. Maybe not cut out to be business owner. Blah blah blah.

How about the person whose life didn’t depend on the enterprise succeeding to fulltime income levels right away? They will “take it in their stride.” They will philosphically look at their results, be able to analyse them, and move on. Because they expected little (or nothing), they cannot be let down.

Watching the auditions of Australian Idol revealed the same thing. People with high expectations of themselves were devastated when they weren’t “accepted” into the final 100. Those with little expectations - or who knew on some level they were not any good - were not disappointed or in any way let down.

While positive talk might help someone overcome some “ill” feeling now… it could ultimately cause greater “ill” feelings down the road.

Does that mean we should not encourage someone? No, not at all. There is a difference between encourage and positive thinking. Encouraging can take on many forms - like getting someone to understand that nothing “bad” will happen. For the worst case is usually not really that bad. Whereas positive thnking only focuses on the positive outcome - and that doesn’t happen all the time in the really real world.

Michael Ross

I Can Do That!

My daughter, Emily, at the learned age of 8 taught me a lesson that has never left me.

The church we were attending at the time was planning a huge Christmas play. They were pulling out all the stops and were abuzz with excitement. Mary, the pastor’s wife/casting director was in hot pursuit of the lead role: A young girl with many, many lines. In fact the character appeared in every scene and spoke in all but one.

It was my understanding that she wanted a teenager, but girls weren’t exactly lining up in front of her.
A. Practices would take place each Friday and Saturday night for a month.
B. Forget a line + suffer humiliation = life’s over.

Then one Sunday evening, Mary headed toward me smiling like a cat with salmon on its breath. My first thought was, “Has she gotten that desperate?” I started filing through my mental files for the folder marked EXCUSES, but realized soon enough I didn’t need excuses because she didn’t need a 28 year old teenager.

She: “Sweet Emily has saved the day!”
Me: “My sweet Emily?”
She: “Of course. She wants the role. She’s so excited. I showed her the script, and how many pages there are to memorize. She said she could do it.”

Me: “Then she’ll do it.”

My freckle faced, beautiful little girl who had never done anything remotely like this had just signed on for something realistically over her head. Realistically. But 8 year olds don’t think realistically. They’d never stoop to that.

When I first asked her about it and offered to loan her my EXCUSES folder, she told me what she had apparently told Mary, “Oh, I can do that.” She even seemed incredulous that we adults hadn’t thought of this before - the obvious solution.

We spent the month at weekend practices and kitchen table readings. I was even more amazed than usual with this little girl! She not only was nailing her lines at practice, she was feeding lines to older kids AND adults. When the performance rolled around Em was, OF COURSE, magnificent. She didn’t blow one line, and in fact covered like a seasoned pro for an adult who had forgotten his line. I’ve never seen such utter relief on one man’s face!

With a very sharp mind (she gets that from her dad), hard-headed determination (also from him) boldness (ditto) and a flair for the dramatic (what I brought to the gene party), the child was, and is, loaded with assetts.

But what left an impression on me was her can-do attitude. Not once did she complain or give voice to any doubts. She knew she had a lot of work in front of her and knew it wouldn’t be easy. But she knew something more important. She knew she could do it.

And she did.

When I’m confronted with difficult situations and am tempted to throw in the proverbial hat, I think back to the look on her face and the determination in her voice. I remember a very thick script covered in yellow highlighter, marking countless lines. I remember a tiny girl turning off cartoons and lying on the floor with a huge pile of work. I remember looking closely into her big blue eyes and not seeing a trace of doubt or nervousness.

Then again, why would she worry? As she said, “Oh, I can do that.”

About the Author

This article by Joi Sigers can be found at http://www.thementalfitnesscenter.com/, along with other motivational articles and information on self improvement, stress, shyness, relaxation, depression, and more.

Our greatest growth in life comes from pushing through our present comfort zone. This process starts at birth. A baby feels safe, warm and secure in its mother’s womb. However, to stay there much longer than the gestation period would mean certain death for both the mother and child. Life began for all of us as we left the comfort and security of the womb and faced the strange and unfamiliar world outside. Our first breath is often a painful experience, a cry of protest at temporary discomfort. Yet without this experience, our life would be fleetingly short.

Each milestone of growth and accomplishment for a young child involves leaving an existing comfort zone. The first crawl, the first step, many new, first experiences all push from the familiar into the unknown. For the child the process of pushing through their area of comfort leads to increasing independence and the formation of their unique personality and character.

This foundational principle continues into adult life. In order to enrich our life, it is necessary to step out of our present comfort zone. Personal growth occurs when a person moves out of their area of comfort and into the unknown and challenge of a fresh experience. There is a stage of risk and discomfort before any significant growth in our life. For each of us there comes a point where we hold back and resist. It becomes easier to remain static and comfortable than to keep moving forward.

What holds us back?

Whenever we consider taking on a new project, or venture, or want to put ourselves out there, we feel fear. Fear is natural, and is to be expected. It is our body’s way of letting us know we are moving out of our comfort zone. Fear can alert us to possible threats and dangers. However unlike our cave men predecessors, many of the threats today are not life threatening. Fear can warn you and enable you to be more aware and cautious, but need not stop you progressing. If you want to move forward on the journey towards where you want to be, you will have to confront your fears. Unfortunately many people allow fear to stop them, and don’t achieve their goals and aspirations.

Fear does not feel comfortable, and many people want to avoid it at all costs. Everyone experiences fear. People who want to be successful feel the fear and do it anyway! Fear is part of the package. Yes, there is always a risk of failure, but that needs to balanced with the old adage “Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained”. A child’s risk of falling when taking those first faltering steps is high. Yet, what a transformation to a child’s life once they have mastered the skill of walking! Limitless possibilities are opened up in the child’s life. The falls and tumbles are soon forgotten overshadowed by the new adventures and experiences.
Pushing through to leave your comfort zone is hard work. Nature demonstrates that graphically for us. The chick pecking it’s way out of the shell, the butterfly struggling from it’s cocoon, illustrate how that struggle is necessary in order to bring life, growth and success.
The good news is that once we have faced our fears and done it anyway, we have moved forward to a new place. Every time we push through and live out of our comfort zone we will never be the same. Growth happens!

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. US Supreme Court Justice, once said
“Man’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.”

I believe this is true of not only our mind, but also of who we are as unique people. Life moves into a new dimension through each experience we go through in life.
However there is also the possibility that once we have pushed through our comfort zone into a new place of growth, we rest too long there, and create a different comfort zone!
Let’s keep pushing through and moving forward towards growing our uniqueness and living our life fully.

About the Author

Barbara White, of Beyond Better Development,speaks and writes with passion to inspire and empower people in their journey of personal growth towards the excellence in life that they aspire to. This article was written for her newsletter Growing Beyond Better. If you would like to receive Growing Beyond Better regularly, you can subscribe for this free newsletter at Barbara’s website
http://www.livingbeyondbetter.com