The Ride of Your Life: Who's Driving?

One of the biggest challenges that most people face in the exiting times we live in, is the feeling that their lives are just spiralling out of control. They feel like the events and circumstances of their lives have lead them along a torturous route and that they have no control over all the misfortunes and wrong doings that brought them to this moment in time.

The truth is that your life will not change until and unless you assume full responsibility for it. Responsibility, or your ability to respond, is not a way of accepting some form of blame as most people think, but rather a way of accepting your ability to respond to any situation. It is absolutely critical to realize and accept that it is never the actual events of your life but only your responses to these events that will shape and create your life. You are never the creature of circumstances and you have the ultimate ability to consciously decide what things mean and how to respond to it. You are the only one that can and the only one that will take you where you want to go in your life.

Responsibility is not some skill you need to go and find outside of yourself but it is something you already possess. All you need to do is to assume this power that calls on you to stop blaming any and everything other than yourself. Most of us have been conditioned to blame someone else for the parts of our lives that don't work. When you take full responsibility for your life you put yourself back in charge; you get back in behind the wheel of your life and now you have the ability to control and direct your life the way you choose to. Ultimately it is not the conditions of your life but rather the decisions about what things mean and what you are going to do about it that will create the real conditions of your life.

When you are fully responsible you recognize that you are the creator of your life. At some level you were responsible. If not by your conscious actions, then by the meanings and emotions you attached to the events and experiences. Only when you accept responsibility for creating everything in your life can you start to un-create and re-create it the way you truly want. If you keep blaming someone or something else you will remain bound because you will always rely on something or someone else to be responsible for the way you feel and ultimately someone else will be responsible for the state of your life. You have to consciously unfold your arms, get out of the back seat and get back behind the wheel and start directing your life towards where you want it to go, instead of just going with the flow.

See, there are only two real choices in life, the one conscious and the other unconscious: you can either choose to be directed by the events and circumstances of life and let the river of life take you wherever it's going or you can have both your hands on the steering wheel and decide that you are in full control. You get to decide where you go. Although you can't control all the events of your life, you can always decide what the events mean to you and how you are going to respond. Whenever anything happens to you, you have to respond to it in order to create the outcome. Most people have fallen into the cultural hypnosis that just passes the responsibility on to someone else. This is why their lives feel out of control, because it is. They have not taken responsibility.

You create your world. When you assume your responsibility you are in charge and this is an internal shift in your thinking and behaviour. Your psychology is not just a big part of your life but it is "everything." Winning and loosing in life is an internal game. By learning to control and direct your mind you get to choose what things mean and therefore you get to choose your response, also known as your responsibility. No one can ever give you responsibility. It is an internal process and a switch that only you can turn on or off.

Being fully responsible doesn't mean you live in blame and self pity. It means that you live life from a place of power where you know that on some level you are fully responsible for what happened and you will be responsible for everything that is to come. Be careful how you utilize your past experiences. With responsibility comes a new emotional territory that reinvents your past. You want to use your past as a place to learn from and a place to pull pleasure from. Right, wrong or indifferent, there is a gift in there somewhere. You just need to find it. It's never too late to have a happy childhood – you have the ability (and response-ability) to find an empowering meaning in whatever life gives you.

Responsibility means that you are in charge. You call the shots. Nobody and nothing is in control and to blame other than you. This is how you turn problems into opportunities and how an ordinary life becomes extraordinary. Helen Keller, who was both blind and deaf, said that life is either a daring adventure or nothing. What is it going to be for you? You can either let the environment steer your life or you can get behind the wheel and take responsibility for every aspect of your life. Life is one amazing adventure, but only if you perceive it as that. By being responsible you can take yourself anywhere you want to go because you are the only one who gets to steer your ship and direct the course. You can't control the wind but you can most certainly direct your sails.

source:selfimprovement-gym.com

The Two Choices We Face by Jim Rohn

Each of us has two distinct choices to make about what we will do with our lives. The first choice we can make is to be less than we have the capacity to be. To earn less. To have less. To read less and think less. To try less and discipline ourselves less. These are the choices that lead to an empty life. These are the choices that, once made, lead to a life of constant apprehension instead of a life of wondrous anticipation.

And the second choice? To do it all! To become all that we can possibly be. To read every book that we possibly can. To earn as much as we possibly can. To give and share as much as we possibly can. To strive and produce and accomplish as much as we possibly can. All of us have the choice.

To do or not to do. To be or not to be. To be all or to be less or to be nothing at all. Like the tree, it would be a worthy challenge for us all to stretch upward and outward to the full measure of our capabilities. Why not do all that we can, every moment that we can, the best that we can, for as long as we can?

Our ultimate life objective should be to create as much as our talent and ability and desire will permit. To settle for doing less than we could do is to fail in this worthiest of undertakings.

Results are the best measurement of human progress. Not conversation. Not explanation. Not justification. Results! And if our results are less than our potential suggests that they should be, then we must strive to become more today than we were the day before.

The greatest rewards are always reserved for those who bring great value to themselves and the world around them as a result of who and what they have become.

What Drives Us Forward? by Adam Khoo

If taking action is the key to producing results, why doesn'teverybody take action? Why doesn't everybody follow through on their plans? Why is it that so many people know what they should do, but still don't do it?

The most common reasons are: 'I lack motivation', 'I'm too lazy','I don't feel confident' or 'I am afraid that...' Is this true for you as well? If you are like most people, you would probably be nodding your head.

For example, you know that you should start exercising three times a week, but you put it off because you feel lazy. As a salesperson,you know you should make ten cold calls a day, but you don't do it because you don't feel like being rejected. You know that public speaking will help your career, but you don't get on stage and face the audience because you feel the fear.

At the same time, there are many things we do, knowing full well that we shouldn't! Why is that so? That's because we feel like doing it.

For example, you know that eating that extra piece of delicious chocolate cake is bad for your weight/health but you still do it because you feel greedy. You know that you shouldn't go back to sleep when the alarm rings, but you still lie in because it feel so good.

Have you ever experienced a day when you managed to get a lot of things done? When your ideas flowed, when you made the best decisions and you were absolutely on form? Well on those 'top of form' days, you were in a series of resourceful states.

Then again, have you had days when you couldn't get anything done?When you couldn't do anything right? You said and did the most stupid things? How could this happen? You were the same person and had exactly the same resources available to you. The difference was that you were not in a resourceful state.

If you think about it, 'motivation', 'fear', 'confidence', 'inertia - expressed as procrastination', are nothing but emotional states we experience. Emotional 'States' like 'excitement', 'passion', 'confidence', and 'happiness', 'exhilaration 'get us to take action and perform at our peak.

At the same time, states like ' fear', 'anxiety', 'stress','inertia', 'depression', 'tiredness' hold us back. It is not logic that drives our actions. It is our emotions. Very often, we know that logically we should do something, but we don't do it because we don't feel like doing it.

People who take consistent action and produce great results do so because they experience many more resourceful states on a daily basis. It is truly our emotional 'states' that drive our actions and behaviors all the time. How we feel truly determines what we do and how we do it.

It is these empowering states that allow us to get the best out of themselves!

The Success Peoples: Wilbur and Orville Wright

Wilbur and Orville Wright were self-taught engineers. They repaired bicycles for a living in Dayton, Ohio, while they studied what humans had long-dreamt of achieving: flight. Because they insisted on proving the naysayers wrong, they ended up revolutionizing not only how we travel, but also how we do business and relate to each other around the world.

“We were lucky enough to grow up in an environment where there was always much encouragement to children to pursue intellectual interests, to investigate whatever aroused curiosity.” —Orville Wright

Wilbur Wright was born in 1867, the third child to a minister and his wife near Millville, Ind. Four years later, Orville was born at the family’s new home in Dayton, Ohio. The boys, along with their older brothers and younger sister, Katharine, were raised in an intellectually challenging environment. Their father was editor of the church newspaper, and he kept two libraries at the house, making reading a favorite family pastime.

In 1878, Rev. Wright brought the boys a toy that looked like a primitive helicopter. The brothers later said that this toy initiated their interest in flight, and they spent the next few years trying to build their own versions. However, they found that the larger the toy, the worse it flew. So they turned instead to building kites.

The family moved from Dayton temporarily in Wilbur’s senior year, so he didn’t graduate from high school, despite his stellar grades. Wilbur had a natural instinct for business and when Orville dropped out of school, the young men devised a plan to put their entrepreneurial instincts to work. Using a damaged tombstone and buggy parts, the pair built a printing press and started taking on odd printing jobs.

Then in 1892, they bought bicycles. The brothers were so good at repairing the bicycles they opened their own shop in 1893. Within three years, they were making and selling their own brand of bicycle.

“We knew that men had by common consent adopted human flight as the standard of impossibility.” —Wilbur Wright

In 1896, Orville caught typhoid fever. During the time Wilbur stayed by his brother’s bedside, he read an article about the passing of a German aviator whose work with gliders had proven that manned flight was indeed possible. Wilbur was intrigued and wrote to the Smithsonian Institution for all the information they had on aeronautics.

Through his personal studies, Wilbur defined three elements necessary to build a successful flying machine: wings for lift, a power source and a method of control for the pilot. Unlike other researchers at that time, Wilbur also recognized that the craft must be controlled in three axes of motion: pitch, roll and yaw.

Wilbur tested his theories on one of their kites, and in 1900 he built their first glider. Over the next couple years, he and Orville tested three gliders on a sandy and windy stretch of land at Kitty Hawk, N.C.

“In studying their failures we found many points of interest to us.” —Wilbur Wright

The brothers used a methodical and successful strategy of trial and error that helped them overcome obstacle after obstacle. After constructing a wind tunnel to test wing design, they finally flew a glider, traveling a record 620 feet. Using their new data, they returned to their Dayton bicycle shop and built a propeller and an engine for their first flying machine.

The Flyer was shipped to Kitty Hawk in 1903 and assembled for a trial run. Wilbur was the first to test the plane, but the engine stalled on takeoff. True to their method of persistence, they repaired the plane, and on December 17, Orville took his turn at the controls. At about 10:30 that morning, he made the first manned heavier-than-air machine flight in history. The flight lasted 12 seconds and didn’t even make most major newspapers the next day. But it would change the course of history in ways neither the Wright brothers nor the rest of the world could yet envision.

“If we worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true really is true, then there would be little hope for advance.” —Orville Wright

After another two years of experimentation and often frustrating mechanical malfunctions, the Wright brothers constructed a plane capable of flying for extended periods of time and operating under the full control of a trained pilot.

Rather than flaunt their accomplishment, Wilbur and Orville were protective of their invention and treated the burgeoning technology as a new business. After receiving a patent in 1906, they began public demonstrations to prove to a skeptical world that human flight was not simply possible but a potential asset to government and industry.

In 1908, Orville flew in a demonstration for the U.S. army, and the Wrights obtained a contract to build the first military airplanes. Meanwhile, Wilbur had been flying demonstrations in France and soon became a national hero, debunking European rumors that the brothers had lied about their earlier flights.

Shortly after Orville started taking passengers up on his demonstration flights, he was in a tragic accident. His passenger was killed, and Orville was severely injured. The Wrights’ sister Katharine, who had been instrumental in supporting their early experimentation, immediately came to Orville’s aid. He recovered but suffered from chronic back pain for the rest of his life.

“What one man can do himself directly is but little. If however he can stir up ten others to take up the task he has accomplished much.” —Wilbur Wright

By 1909, the brothers’ flights were attracting the attention of the world, and their demonstrations were attended by press, wealthy investors and even royalty. Wilbur and Orville received medals from U.S. President William Taft and the French government; they were greeted by crowds of well-wishers and admirers wherever they went. And after years of dismissing the Wrights’ achievements as exaggeration, the citizens of Dayton acknowledged their hometown boys with a parade in their honor, one of many across the country.

While flying in Italy, Wilbur caught the attention of American industrialist J.P. Morgan, who later offered to help the brothers establish their own aircraft manufacturing company. The Wright Company opened in Dayton in 1910, and the brothers established a flying school at nearby Huffman Prairie.

Wilbur passed away of typhoid fever in 1912, and Orville sold the Wright Company in 1915. He went on to serve for 28 years on the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the predecessor to NASA, and in 1930 was awarded the first Daniel Guggenheim Medal. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1936.

Orville passed away in 1948 at the age of 76. Through their visionary belief and their refusal to quit in the face of obstacles, he and his brother Wilbur forever enlarged our world, expanding our ideas of what is possible.

Decide Upon Your Major Definite Purpose by Brain Tracy

Since you become what you think about most of the time, a major definite purpose gives you a focus for every walking moment. As Peter Drucker said, "Whenever you find something getting done, you fine a monomaniac with a mission." The more you think about your major definite purpose and how to achieve it, the more you activate the Law of Attraction in your life. Helping you to attract people, opportunities, ideas, and resources to move more rapidly toward your goal and move your goal more rapidly toward you.

Activate Your Reticular Cortex

Each person has within his or her brain a special organ called the "reticular cortex." This small, finger-like part of the brain functions in a way similar to a telephone switchboard in a large office building. Just as all phone calls are received by the central switchboard and then rerouted to the appropriate recipient, all incoming information to your senses is routed through your reticular cortex to the relevant part of your brain or your awareness.

A Red Sports Car

Imagine that you decided that you wanted a red sports car. You write this down as a goal. You begin to think about and visualize a red sports car. This process sends the message to your reticular cortex that a red sports car is now important to you. A picture of a red sports car immediately goes up onto your mental radar screen. From that moment onward, you will start to notice red sports cars wherever you go. You will see them parked in driveways and in showrooms. Everywhere you go, your world will seem to be full of red sports cars.

Your Major Definite Purpose

Your major definite purpose can be defined as the one goal that is most important to you at the moment. It is usually the one goal that will help you to achieve more of your other goals than anything else you can accomplish. It must be something that you personally really want. It must be clear and specific. Your goal must be measurable and quantifiable. Your major definite purpose must be in harmony with your other goals. If you use your reticular cortex and keep your goal in your mind you are bound to achieve it.

Action Exercise

Determine how you will measure progress and success of achieving your goal. Write it down.

Feed your Mind by Ziglar

Answer,Please! Did you eat anything last month? what about last week? Yesterday? Today? Chances are you are quite puzzled at these questions, of course you ate last month, last week, yesterday and today. Do you plan to eat tomorrow? If you do ,does that mean what you ate today was no good?Absolutely not.It simply means what you ate today is for today.

The average person not only eats everyday but generally speaking, he eats his meals on schedule. I have observed if a person gets busy and misses a meal ,he generally tells anyone who will listen, ”You know what?” I was so busy yesterday I didn’t have time to eat lunch. Then he repeats it to make certain his listener got the message. To him ,it’s a big deal to miss a meal and he wants others to be aware of his ‘sacrifice” Suppose the same individual was asked about his mental appetites?” when is the last time you deliberately, on a pre-determined schedule, fed your own mind?” what do you think his answer would be? for that matter what is your answer? your answer is important because you have mental appetite just as you have physical appetites.

From the neck down, very few people are worth more than $100 a week. so what do we do? we feed our stomachs, the $100 part below our necks, everyday. How often do we feed our minds, the part that has no limit to its value, earning and happiness potential? Most of us feed it accidentally and occasionally, if its convenient or we don’t have anything else to do. The excuse we often give is our lack of time. This is ridiculous.If you have “time” to feed the $100 part  below of you everyday ,doesn’t it make sense you should take time to feed the part which has no ceiling to its potential?

Create a Vision and Stick To It by Anthony Robbins

“There is a powerful, driving force inside every human being that, once unleashed, can make any vision, dream or desire a reality,” says Robbins. “I challenge you to make your life a masterpiece. I challenge you to join the ranks of those people who live what they teach, who walk their talk.”

In order to ever achieve that masterpiece, Robbins believes that you must have faith that it could actually happen and imagine your life as it would be. “Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible,” says Robbins. But, beyond that, success requires a vision; goals are only the stepping-stones on the way to that vision.

“Create a vision and never let the environment, other people's beliefs, or the limits of what has been done in the past shape your decisions,” says Robbins. “Ignore conventional wisdom.” Even in the face of doubt or controversy, have faith in that vision. Cling to it in the knowledge that you have the right to achieve nothing less than what you want for your life.

“You're in the midst of a war: a battle between the limits of a crowd seeking the surrender of your dreams, and the power of your true vision to create and contribute,” says Robbins. “It is a fight between those who will tell you what you cannot do, and that part of you that knows – and has always known – that we are more than our environment; and that a dream, backed by an unrelenting will to attain it, is truly a reality with an imminent arrival.”

Before success must come a visualization of it, believes Robbins. He points to Albert Einstein, who “changed history not because he was smarter, but because he had a vision and followed trough with it. He knew what he wanted and that vision never waned. That power is in all of us, and when harnessed, can lead you on a path toward ultimate achievement.” Whether it’s Einstein or another great achiever, Robbins believes lessons can be drawn from their experiences. “If you want to be successful, find someone who has achieved the results you want and copy what they do and you'll achieve the same results,” he says.

 Once you have that vision, you've got to make the vision a reality by action on a consistent basis.