Reason or THE BIG WHY

One common reason is the desire to change things, because you are less than thrilled about the way things are. You may want to change or improve your health and fitness, your social life, your career or business, your financial situation, or find your own meaning in life.

Another good reason could be to become your best self (improve self image and self worth) and shape life circumstances to design a better future.

In doing so, you will become able to deal with challenges in a better way, be in control of creating your own life, and develop your name into your own “brand of one.” In many situations, the deep-seated cause of personal problems is an inferior self image.

Maybe you are seeking wisdom and understanding of self, humanity, the world, and the Universe. That is, you want to understand the Truth and consciously grow and enjoy the adventure of your current life experience. Then later give back your skills and wisdom to the world.

So don’t just be yourself – be your best self, and take control of your life. Intentionally decide what you want and work on attaining it. Design your own future. Don’t let anyone shape the circumstances of your tomorrow.

Become more, so that you can Do more, so that you can Have more.
– unknown

Those who sit in the circle of their own creation are the ones who are truly peaceful and happy.
– unknown

Deep deep inside most of us want peace of mind and happiness – or in other words, we want to live in a state of love:

• to love the way we live
• to love the way we feel
• to love doing what we love
• to be loved, valued and respected by others
• to be lovable, valuable and respectful to others
• to share our happiness with people we love
• to lovingly contribute our value to humanity

Motivation

First things first, I had to overcome my own mind/body natural resistance, and prove (to myself and the Universe) that I really wanted to change myself. From personal experience I know that it’s not easy to change diet, habits, or beliefs. However, once you prove that you mean it, you’ll receive quality support from the inside as well as from those around you.

Plus all the benefits (being lean, having energy, feeling rich, etc.) will motivate you to keep going. The whole change becomes easy and a part of the new you. At that point it’s impossible to go back to the old ways.

Achieving a 100% result consists of 99% deep intent & real action and only 1% method – you will always find a way.
– unknown

Every process starts with 1 step, 1 friend, 1 pound, 1 dollar – patience and persistence will get you where you want to be. If you’re on a budget or have little time in your day, it’s still absolutely doable, it will just take a bit longer.

The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.
– Walt Disney

The world is changing. I am sure you’ve heard it somewhere or experienced it yourself. Now is the right time to make changes to transition smoothly into the new era of Generation WE. It’s not too late. You can do it!

Focus on one goal at a time, preferably one that will challenge and push you. Learn the theory, go out and practice, analyze findings and improve. Let the progress be your motivation. Keep going and keep at it. After a while things will start to get easier.

Mike Litman (motivational speaker) said it well:

“Successful people share one thing in common: persistence at recognizing what brings them joy. This is what makes you unique. This is what you do better then 99% of people out there. This is where your unlimited wealth of knowledge and joy resides. It comes natural to you, you’re wired to do it. You have to recognize it, live it, and make a living using it.”

Be bold, have fun, take a risk, make a change, leave a legacy. Don’t miss out on the adventure of life. You are a unique and amazing human being, pre-wired at birth with a unique talent that’s highly valuable to humanity.

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
– Mark Twain

Do Your Homework

You need to do a bit of homework to keep yourself on track and motivated, and to be more sensitive to opportunities and strange synchronicities that will be occurring around you.

Think about things you currently love about yourself and your life. Consider major areas of your life and be grateful and appreciative that you already have a great head start! Gratitude is the basis of all good things. Watch The Secret a couple of times and pay special attention to the concepts of gratitude, mindset and taking action.

Next think about what Resources you currently have. That means basics such as food and shelter (even if it means living with your parents), income or trust of a credit card company, your friends who love you and support you (even if it’s only 1 of them), and your contacts that can open doors for you (again, even if it’s only 1 person).

Then consider your ideal life. If money, time, or know-how was no object, what kind of life would you like to have:

• Who would you like to be?
• What would you like to do?
• Where would you like to live?
• What home would you like to have?
• What tools or things would you like to have?
• What kind of friends or companions would you like?
• What kind of family life would you like to have?

You have to be as specific as you can be: exact image of yourself, exact places, exact products, exact interactions, exact feelings. Write all this down. Click the Prep and Next Step navigation button for some examples when you’re ready to start.

Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve.
– Dr. Napoleon Hill

Ask For Feedback

If you have trustworthy and honest friends or family, you can ask them directly to describe you (for example give you 3 adjectives about you) or to simply tell you where you need to improve. Don’t argue, don’t comment, don’t say anything except a single “Thank you.”

I think it’s best if you ask them by email, so they have time to think about. You can also add a little disclaimer that you’re seeking an honest feedback and whatever they say will be of great value to you as you choose to work on self-improvement. Tailor the words to the type of relationship you have with them.

Think and reflect on their answers. Take your time, even a day or two. This is how others see you. If you don’t like it, you will have to change the way you present yourself to reflect the “real” you.

Keep in mind that the work to change the outside starts with the work on the inside, that is habits, responses, attitude and behaviour. Logically explaining to them how they are wrong will not work. You must genuinely and consistently come across the way you want through your everyday actions.

If you come to the conclusion that they are onto something, you have to make a decision to improve in that area. It has to be YOUR CONSCIOUS DECISION to improve for the process to work.

Clean Start

First you have to cleanup the foundation to make room for the new knowledge and habits. Start with the physical cleaning: house, vehicle, office, computer, body and health. It is important to clean all this up as worrying about the mess will be interfering with you when you are doing mind, heart, and spirit cleaning.

After physical cleaning you can move on to social environment, deep emotional issues, improving inferior areas, and developing new habits that will help you be your greatest.

Here’s a partial summary of a good start:

– have a plan, keep daily/monthly/annual to-do list, be effective daily, keep focused
– keep positive outlook on life, exercise, spend time in nature, meet with friends a bit
– surround yourself with positive people, avoid getting into arguments with negative people
– organize your finances (control, budget, consolidate, automate payments, investments)
– sign up for the Practical Wellness Guide Newsletter to get a free complete Summary

Take a leap of faith, trust that the next step will be shown to you as you are ready to take it. Within a few weeks or months you will find yourself totally excited about being on the new path. The path where your body, mind, heart and spirit is completely happy and satisfied.

If you’re short on time, you can skip directly to what you feel you must do. As you are going along, the new next step will be shown to you automatically. You will find only those pieces of advice useful, which you are ready to hear at the moment. Sometimes you need to come back to certain lessons a few months later, to see them from a different angle and discover new wisdom.

All you have to do is know where you’re going. The answers will come to you of their own accord.
– Earl Nightingale

Replace Limiting Beliefs

I started with fixing all my limiting beliefs and getting a solid foundation to build on. To change myself, I first needed to break current limiting patterns.

Perception + Behaviour + Structure => Change quality of life

If your habits and beliefs didn’t get you the life you want to date, you have to go outside of your own reality and have a look around. You can’t fix or improve what you don’t even know about. One great way to get around this problem (if you dare) is to say to yourself (and mean it) this statement:

I intend to be shown the edges of my limiting beliefs, and what lies beyond them.

Within a day or two you will start to experience situations where you will either see something that is new to you, or effortlessly experience something that you previously thought was impossible or very hard, or you’ll be put on the spot and have to deal with some challenges.

The big idea here is to replace the Limiting Beliefs with Empowering ones. If to date you are not too happy with how your life is going, clearly you have to change the way you think about or do certain things (short and long term). This exercise is meant to introduce you to new options and new thinking in order to take new actions and end up with new results.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
– Albert Einstein

Gain the Knowledge

In the book Optimal Thinking: How to Be Your Best Self on page 92, you can find these true words:

Making the best of ourselves is the reason we were born, but it requires patience and perseverance. It is time to embrace your vision of your best self – and your highest level of self esteem. You deserve to experience ultimate self-confidence and self-respect, and to see yourself as the person you want to be.

Decide what you want to improve in your life. Is it health, fitness, appearance, education, effectiveness, self esteem, career, business, social skills, relationships, or how to give back to humanity? Ideally this is whatever you’re passionate about. Keep in mind that is has to be YOUR passion, not someone else’s.

Pick your mentor who’s a master at the skill you want to learn and with whom you feel comfortable. You don’t have to know him or her personally, as long as there is a way you can learn the teachings. The absolutely crucial and important first step is to make a conscious decision that you really want to make the change. The second step is to learn, apply and practice.

Choose a learning method that’s best for you (reading books, watching videos, listening to podcasts, searching internet, learning by doing, or all of the above). Then decide what exactly you want to accomplish and how much you want to learn (50%, 80%, 90%, or 100% and become a master yourself). Just remember the software programming 90-90 rule, which applies to learning almost anything new in life:

It takes 90% of the time to do 90%, and another 90% to do the last 10%.

If you’re not sure how much you want to pursue the mastery, just start and you will find out soon enough. In my journey to change myself, I went for about 70-85% mastery of most skills. Basically good enough and then I moved on to the next master. In some cases where I really enjoyed the skill, I went for 85-100%.

Solid self-discipline and educated persistence are extremely important to great life.

Remember that no amount of reading will prepare you for the real thing. It is important to know the rules and tips, but at some point you have to get on that bull, tennis court, night club, whatever. Start small at first, take baby steps, and keep moving forward. Be patient. Do everything diligently and completely. Watch your world changing before your eyes.

Improve Across the Board

If you see your situation being similar to mine, you can follow my path until you can break off and follow your own. Or if you don’t see similarities, you may be better off going directly to the topic you feel is relevant: how to be a better man, better person, healthier person, happier person, etc.

Success is not to be pursued; it is to be attracted by the person you become.
– Jim Rohn

Remember that you can only learn what you are ready to learn. It will do you no good to study how to be the life of a party, shoot jokes, and play games, if you feel depressed and angry all the time. This might be a somewhat extreme example, but it’s a very important point to understand. You have to fix the root of the problem, and then achieving everything that depended on it becomes much easier.

One thing I can tell you for certain is that if you want to make dramatic positive changes in your life, you’ll do it easier, quicker, and with much better long-term results by mastering your own mind rather than looking for a ‘magic pill.’
– Danish Ahmed, Visionary

You have to be in the right state of mind to:
1. Allow yourself to receive a lesson
2. Accept the lesson
3. Commit the lesson to your habitual response (ie. feel naturally comfortable using it)

You have to pay the price – it’s usually time. You need time to work on yourself, get something done or learn a skill. Money will speed up the process by paying experts to teach you instead of taking the time to figure things out by yourself. It takes about 100 hours to learn and adopt a new habit.

Multitask 2 or 3 lessons at once (if you’re able) to speed up the process. Make your own one page summaries, highlight in books, make additional pictures with a pencil, practice on the spot, reread your notes the next day.

Follow Your Passion

I think these quotations say it best:

It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.
– Shakespeare

I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
– Albert Einstein

Success: To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children, to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends, to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded!
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Just Do It! You can blog or journal about your progress and keep a record of your thoughts and reflections. Note what worked, what didn’t and what was the result. This way you can get useful comments and feedback as you go along. The value of the notes is immense when you decide to write a book or share your knowledge and passion through your own website.

Ask For Help

Do appreciate the value of mentors and experts. They can make a huge difference from working things out by yourself. Not only are they great time saver, but they will also show you the best way to proceed, give you valuable tips, correct techniques, and a different point of view, as well as tell you what pitfalls to avoid. They will push you to your 110%. There is only so much you can do by yourself, be it working out, investing, or healing psychologically or spiritually.

Also, whatever your faith or religion is, don’t be too proud to ask God/Universe/Higher Intelligence/Nature for help.

Ask and it shall be given you. Seek and you shall find. Knock and it shall be opened onto you.
– Matt 7:7

Every night say to yourself:

“Universe, please bring me the people I need to go to the next level. Bring me the situation I need. And do it in a way that I know it occurred from this exercise.”

In prayers we talk to God/Universe/Nature, in meditation God/Universe/Nature talks to us:

Inner silence is the place of silent knowledge where you know everything, and you can see that there are multiple choices.
– Heloisa da Silva Porto

Dreams are made if people only try. I believe in miracles… I have to…
because somewhere the hurting must stop.
– Stanley Terry Fox

Bottom Line

The self-improvement industry can only help you if you really want to be helped. It is a simple but not easy process. Be careful, it is also addictive – you just want to keep going…  don’t complain I didn’t warn you 😉

You must have a dream, desire, and discipline – the last one is especially important. Like everything, it takes time. For some it can take as little as a few days, for others up to 2 years or even more. On average you can see major changes in your life in less than a year.

The beginning is the most important part of the work.
– Plato

Then one day, the eureka moment will just hit you:
EVERYTHING becomes clear! Body, Mind, Heart and Spirit purpose surfaces and all of the parts are congruent and in agreement with each other.

I WISH YOU A REWARDING JOURNEY AND ALL THE SUCCESS YOU DESIRE!

Click here to start designing your own Personal Development Plan.

If you’ve found this article helpful, please post your comments below and spread the word. I want to hear your feedback. To Your Best Self!

[ Practical Wellness HOME | Start Here INDEX | Back to TOP ]