ROBERT J.R. GRAHAM: Oprah Winfrey

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Thursday, 18 September 2014

10 Sure Fire Ways To Empower Yourself

10 Sure Fire Self Esteem And Self Improvement Tips

by: Bill Urell

When people talk about improving self-esteem, they usually mean self-confidence. While the two are related, they are not exactly the same. Self-esteem is all about self-worth and self-value. It’s how we see ourselves in relation to other people and our environment. It has nothing to do with vanity or conceit.

The lack of self-esteem is a major problem and has a leveling quality. Rich and poor alike are afflicted by it and people decide between happiness and unhappiness because of it. If self-esteem is an area in your life where you need improvement, here are some tips you can use to build your self-value and improve the way you see yourself:

1. Know what you want. You can’t assess where you are in your journey if you have no idea what you want to have in life. You also will not be able to judge whether you’ve been doing a good job or just so-so.

Set goals that are clear and doable. Make sure that these are things you want to do and attain, and not things your parents, family, friends and colleagues insist you ‘should’ have. Is it just the latest trends that dictate your aspirations? If so, you will never catch up and be satisfied. You can only claim your goals as your own if you recognize them as things you truly, genuinely want in your life.

2. Assess your good points. List the things that you do well and the things that make you a good person. It could be anything intelligence, a good sense of humor, good analytical ability, compassion, creativity, ability to spot trends, people skills, things that you have and recognize as an integral part of your personality and talents. No matter how low you feel in your life, these are qualities that you never lose.

3. Recognize your liabilities. Improving your self-esteem does not mean ignoring the things that make you human. To be human is to make mistakes, just do not let them keep you stuck. List your negative traits and label them as areas in your life you need to work on, areas for improvement. Treating them as downright liabilities will make them seem an unalterable feature of your life and create a feeling that you are helpless against them.

4. Build slowly but surely. Take little steps to improve your self-esteem. Big successes build upon small successes. You can’t decide to change your outlook drastically today and expect extreme results in the morning. By taking it slowly and performing well during each turn, you gradually build a solid base of achievements that will boost your self-esteem more effectively.

5. Make it a point to improve yourself daily. Whatever you do, say or think should be geared towards improving your self-esteem. Improve the way you dress, walk or talk. Take further studies to hone your knowledge and skills, learn a new language, take up cooking classes, start a new hobby. Being able to immerse yourself in worthwhile activity creates a feeling of capability and opens new opportunities for growth.

6. Keep away from people who shoot you down with snide remarks and unfair criticisms. Associate with positive people. There will always be grouches and negativists who will think nothing about giving careless opinions that make other people think unworthy of praise or recognition. If you find people who make it their life mission to belittle other people’s achievements, keep your distance. They will not contribute anything good to your life.

7. Be yourself. You’ll never improve your self-esteem if you try to live life and find acceptance as a projected mask of yourself. Pretending to be someone you’re not will fail to affirm your uniqueness and potential and will only make you sadder about your circumstance. You can’t make everyone love you, so don’t try.

8. Make other people feel good about themselves. People tend to like you more if you’re honest and pleasant. Polish your listening skills and body language to make people feel comfortable. Respond to them visibly and with interest.

You might think that this is the opposite of what you want to do to improve your self-esteem but by actually focusing your attention on other people, you create an aura of likeability that they gravitate towards, making them choose you over others. And when you are singled out as a good person who’s terrific to be with, your self-esteem grows.

9. You have the right to make mistakes. Nobody’s perfect, regardless of what you’ve heard or what popular media wants you to believe. By accepting that you will make mistakes and that it’s all right, you learn to recognize that it is a necessary process you need to go through in order for you to improve yourself.

10. Recognize that you are a unique individual with a different set of talents and that you have something to contribute. You may not be a big celebrity like Justin Timberlake , as rich as Bill Gates or as powerful as Oprah Winfrey , but your individuality makes you as important as they are, with as much right to exist and make something of yourself.

Source

Blaming your spouse for your self esteem

Teaching Self-Esteem Undermines Students’ Academic Achievement

Forget Self-Esteem. You Need Compassion.

[Limited Time Only: Get 21% Off!] Want To Increase Your Self-Esteem? Achieve 10/10 Self-Esteem – For Life!

Self-Esteem: Activities for Building Your Tweens Self-Esteem

Being popular on Facebook will make you fat

Self Compassion- An Article I Read

Self-Worth and Relationships

Everyday Choices That Help Improve Self-Esteem

A Heaping Bowl of Self-Esteem

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Wednesday, 10 September 2014

The Real Secret

by: Dave Osh

In 2006, a film named The Secret was distributed virally through the internet followed subsequently by a book. In no-time The Secret became a cultural and social phenomenon attracting interest from media figures such as Oprah Winfrey, Ellen DeGeneres and Larry King and criticism from the mainstream press.

The Secret consists of a series of interviews related to the idea of optimist thinking. It states that everything you want may be accomplished by wishing for it. This is called the Law of Attraction. As described in the film, the “Law of Attraction” principle states that feelings and thoughts can attract events, from the workings of the cosmos and interactions among individuals in their physical, emotional, and professional affairs.

The Secret lists three required steps — “ask, believe and receive” — as the essence of the Law of Attraction:

Ask

Know what you want and ask the universe for it. This is where you need to get clear about what it is you want to create and visualize what you want as being as ‘real’ as possible.

Believe

Feel and behave as if the object of your desire is on its way. Focus your thoughts and your words on what it is you want to attract even if you have to trick yourself into believing it.

Receive

Be open to receiving it. Pay attention to your intuitive messages and signs from the Universe to help you along the way as assurance you are on the ‘right’ path. As you align yourself with the Universe and open yourself up to receiving, the very thing you want to manifest will show up.

New Thought and the Law of Attraction

Essentially, The Secret is … touting the principles of the New Thought movement that began in the late 19th century as the historical basis for their ideas.

The idea stated in the Law of Attraction was used widely by New Thought writers. They referred to the idea that thoughts influence chance. The Law of Attraction argues that thoughts (both conscious and unconscious) can affect things outside the head, not just through motivation, but by other means.

Various scientists have stated that many of the Law’s claims are impossible, violating scientific principles and a scientific understanding of the universe. Instead, the Law may be explained as an illusion created by the connection between self-confidence and success or by one’s own perception, like the placebo effect.

I watched The Secret with my family after it was released in 2007. Even my 9 year old daughter was fascinated with the film and glued to the screen. The idea that my kids will believe that they just have to ask, believe and receive what they want, scared me. If this is true all of us would be healthy, wealthy and successful. But this is not the case.

It is a dangerous belief, and unfortunately a popular one based on the success of The Secret, that you just have to think about what you want to get it.

I have no doubt that positive thinking, optimism and creative visualization are important. But an important foundation for success in life was not mentioned in The Secret.

Rhonda Byrne, The Secret creator, told a Newsweek interviewer that her inspiration for creating The Secret was her exposure to Wallace Wattles’s book The Science of Getting Rich. Reading The Science of Getting Rich will no doubt leave you feeling that the most important foundations of success were neglected in The Secret.

The first foundation is Effective Action.

Wattles writes that thought is the force that causes the creative power to work for us but we must not rely upon thought alone, ignoring action. This is where thought and action meet. Wattless suggests that action will be taken a in certain way. We must act effectively now!

We have to act decisively, effectively and efficiently. We don’t want to procrastinate with our decisions and actions resulting from our thoughts.

There is no other time than now. The past is history and the future does not exist yet. We even don’t have any guarantees that we will make it to the future. Every thought should be converted to action at the current moment. How many times we told ourselves “we’ll start it tomorrow, next week, next month, next year…and we never started”. When tomorrow, next week, next month or next year arrived…we were busy with something else that consumes our attention, focus and priority.

The second foundation is Enhancement.

As leaders, or just human beings, our main goal is to enhance, advance and enrich every person we come in touch with. We inspire, encourage and motivate everybody around us. Everybody wants to enhance life. Everybody wants more of his or her life. We have something to give to somebody else that is just looking for that something. We just have to make a conscience decision to act on it. Teachers, physicians, psychologists are professions that enhance other people lives. But it doesn’t mean that each of us in our own roles of profession, family and community cannot find a way to enhance other peoples’ lives.

Sure we can!

Whether you work as an accountant, customer support, salesperson, administrative assistant or clerk, you have something unique that can enhance, enrich and advance other peoples’ lives. If we find it, we will redefine our purpose and start a new journey toward our true life mission, success and leadership.

About The Author

Original article by Dave Osh who is a forward thinking leader who has steered his way to the corporate pinnacle. His Thought Leadership blog is a wealth of stories, ideas, experiences, values, traits and skills which every manager who seeks a breakthrough towards international enterprise leadership needs.