Let’s face it; it is simply not possible to listen and talk to your colleagues at one and the same time.

Working on your listening skills to the point of perfection is likely to be one of the best assets you have to offer your organization. This skill alone will take you further in life than practically anything else you can think of in connection with how you connect and communicate with other people.

Instead of listening to what someone has to say in an uninterested manner, try actually engaging your mind in the conversation which is taking place. Give serious thought to what the other person is saying to you and if you find yourself drifting away from what he or she is saying, focus your concentration on that person’s lips and watch as they mouth the words.

Make sure you break your gaze every now and again as staring at them looks strange and may lead to awkwardness between you.

Whilst someone is talking to you, make a mental note of what they are saying. If you are not sure about a particular point, when they have finished speaking ask them to clarify the point in question. This shows the one speaking that you are listening to what he or she has been saying. A good speaker will always give you the opportunity to ask any question at specific intervals throughout the conversation.

If you decide to make written notes, don’t attempt to do this verbatim. It is practically impossible for you to write down every single word of the conversation and get the exact meaning of what the person is trying to say. You are too busy writing to be listening to what is said.

Piggybacking is a technique you can use to continue the conversation if you do not have a great knowledge of the subject being discussed. An example of this is when your assistant is describing something technical to you about his or her computer which you have no knowledge about, or interest in, whatsoever. When your assistant says to you that the RAM needs upgrading, simply ask why it needs upgrading. This open ended question requires an answer with more details.

The response can then be used for you to continue the discussion even further and you will appear to remain in control of the conversation at the same time.

Listening skills are not acquired overnight. They take time to develop. If you actively look people in the eye and show an interest in what they are saying by repeating little snippets of what they have said, this shows a genuine interest in what they are sharing with you. Overall this gives you far more credibility with others and your relationships will go from strength to strength.

Kevin Sinclair is the publisher and editor of Be Successful News, a site that provides information and articles on how to succeed in your own home or small business.

If you were to hire a life coach, you would have some help in clarifying your personal goals, as well as someone to hold you accountable in your efforts to attain them.

But hiring a personal coach can get expensive, and it can be a little awkward and embarrassing to ask someone to help you to get along in your personal life. Here are five steps you can take to help you become your own best life coach.

1. Write in your journal every single day. While my coffee is brewing each morning, I write three pages longhand in my journal. It really helps me to clarify my goals for the day and to burn through all of the tedious thoughts that can stifle my creativity at work.

For best results, try writing without thinking too hard about what you are writing. Just focus on moving the pen across the page. It’s up to you whether to go back and look at what you’ve written. For me, the most powerful personal coaching tool is the act of writing itself.

2. Put your goals in writing. Your daily journal writing will likely help you break through to discover what you really want from your life. When you get one of these insights, write about your goal. Break down each goal into achievable action steps. Think in baby steps and create an action plan that breaks down your ultimate goal into daily and weekly tasks.

Be careful not to be rigid in these goals and daily tasks. Listen to your life and pay attention to any adjustments you might feel prompted to make to your goals or the way in which you wish to achieve them.

3. Envision the end result. Imagine what life would be like once your goal is achieved. Engage all of your senses as you imagine the outcome. What will your life look and feel like? What kinds of things will you do? How will you act once you have achieved your goal? Now live out that vision and allow the details to take care of themselves.

The most important thing for my success has been to keep a vision of the completed goal in the forefront of my mind at all times, and then to watch how my life figures out the nitty gritty details of how to eventually achieve the goal. It’s a fun process once you get the hang of it.

4. Set aside time each day to read (or listen to) positive and encouraging words. Whether you choose to read about your industry or simply a favorite topic in the personal growth genre, make sure that what you are reading is empowering and can be immediately translated to future action that you can take.

If you don’t have time to read for an hour or so a day, get creative. Go to the library and get a stack of books, so that you always have one handy. I have a book in my car, in my handbag, by my bedside (anywhere that I might have some unexpected downtime).

You can also check out audiotapes from your public library. Or download some great books or speeches from audible.com and have them ready to go on your mp3 player. That way, you can get your reading done during your commute or your daily exercise session.

Taking the time to educate yourself on topics of interest can really help you to grow on a daily basis, and it’s amazing how your perspective can change when you marinate in positive thoughts for just an hour a day.

5. Attend workshops, seminars, and take classes in your field or industry as well as in the personal growth industry. Choose two or three of your favorite authors whose books you find particularly helpful or empowering.

Visit their websites and see if they will be coming to speak this year at a town near you. If so, book the tickets now. A day or weekend spent in such an environment can propel many significant changes in your life.

Use the tips above to determine whether a personal coach is what you need, or if you can continue to be your own coach and create your own success.

Jamie Jefferson writes for Momscape.com and Susies-Coupons.com, where she shares discounts and specials on personal growth seminars and events as well as specials and free CDs from Brian Tracy.

Each of us have soul wounds that we came here to heal. These are our most difficult and painful inner issues. We have the choice to see our soul wounds as a curse or as a challenging opportunity for transformation.

These wounds developed in our psyches as children when our parents or caretakers were unable to be as supportive, nurturing and attentive as we needed.
Because we saw our caretakers as omnipotent, we decided whatever was problematic for us in our relationship with them must be our fault or due to our inadequacy.

In addition to the healthy reflection we received from our caretakers, we also got messages about ourselves which were not beneficial to our growth. To our detriment, we believed the negative messages and turned them into limiting beliefs about ourselves and the world. It is fascinating that we continue even now to carry these childhood wounds which drain our energies daily and diminish our contentment with life.

Soul wounds are made of entrenched limiting beliefs about ourselves which adversely affect our relationships, health, work, finances, happiness, productivity, confidence, ability to take care of ourselves . . . just about every area of our lives!

Do you know what your limiting beliefs are? They are not always easy to recognize. Soul wounds may be repressed into the unconscious mind. Examples of soul wounds are: “Nothing works out for me; people are against me.” “Men always abandon me.” “I am too much, people can’t handle me.” “I am intrinsically bad and need to be punished.” “I’m not enough; nothing I do is ever good enough.”

In childhood, painful experiences typically happened in relationship to parents and guardians. We got hurt because our parents were too focused on their own needs and couldn’t be there for us. They might have abandoned us emotionally or even physically. Parents have their own problems, and if they did not heal their own wounds from growing up with their parents, they are bound to pass them on to their children.

Because the childhood wounds happened in relationship, our current intimate relationship can be a catalyst for uncovering and processing soul wounds. Our partner can act as a mirror for us to see our wounds more clearly, as he or she triggers the old hurts and painful feelings that need healing. Sometimes the catalyst for discovering a soul wound is a tragedy, an illness, or some sort of breakdown that we cannot control. Whether we are forced into it or whether we explore willingly, it takes tremendous courage to admit a wound, face it, own it, and go to work healing it.

A wound starts to heal when you take responsibility for it and stop blaming others. It heals as you stay with the painful feelings, listen to them, and accept them. Often our parents could not listen to our pain, anger, fear or sadness when we were young. This is what you need to do for yourself now.

In order to heal, you need to care for yourself like a loving mother: be with the feelings, create a safe place for your feelings, and feel the feelings all the way. You need to become the nurturing parent you always needed, accepting yourself as you are, painful feelings and all.

If you find yourself ready to undertake soul growth, it is helpful to find a friend, counselor, or coach who understands the process, has done their own work, and can support you on the path to healing. I hope you are intrigued to learn about your soul wounds.

As you heal, energy is freed which can be channeled into new talents, creativity, and strengths. The healing will affect every area of your life, attracting new opportunities, more satisfying relationships, abundance, and joy.

Recreate your life with Nina Cherry’s Business and Life Coaching Nina lives on Maui and coaches people across the U.S. by telephone. Contact
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Success is a beautiful word and a powerful antidote for failure; it is a well known truth that success drives away failure and makes us happy and prosperous. Simply speaking, the word success is related to a positive mental attitude, while failure is genuinely connected to a negative mindset. The rate of success is so rare, while the failure is common among all walks of human life. Now, is it really possible that any work or task we do or undertake in our daily life culminates in a perfect, fairytale ending? Probably the answer is a positive NO! Because success eludes most of us, due to many reasons and factors. Most of the highly successful people attain such a level of success by applying many established keys to success.

It is always possible to attain success, so long as you understand the key factors that can create this condition. Whatever you do, in your field of work or the way, in which you work to attain your personal goals, there are some essential requirements, which need to be fulfilled to achieve a fair degree of success in your personal life. Also called KEYS TO SUCCESS, these principles are time tested and proved again and again in the past by many of the highly successful people.

Possibly the most important factor while achieving success is, how determined are you to achieve your ultimate goal. Are you motivated enough to achieve a fair degree of success in a stipulated time frame? What is the measure of your level of perseverance and determination to attain the cherished success? Your decision, determination, attention, and a burning desire to achieve the ultimate success are your important keys to your success. If youre determined to achieve personal success, youll need to release your inner energy to focus on the ultimate goal. Your total commitment to the goal is based on knowledge and meaning of the requirements of the success act, and the mandatory role of both favorable and opposing factors.

The role of positive attitude in everything we do or perform can not be contested and a positive mind is a healthy mind, capable of achieving any success and objectives. One of the most important keys to success is a positive mind, with a right attitude. You may need to inculcate positive attitude or postures in your daily life, to make your life positive and beautiful. To be positive, you may need to drive away all negative attitudes, sentiments and feelings from your mind, so that your personality becomes equipped with a positive energy to achieve even the most impossible of all goals.

Whatever the attitude you have, it is worthless unless you have a solid action plan or a series of goals. These are probably the most difficult keys to your ultimate success. All great accomplishments and deeds in the past history are borne out of solid goals and action plans. Always attach a timeline tag to your goals and action plans. A clear-cut deadline will ensure personal success and this may not look as easy as you feel and believe. Goals are difficult to achieve, but not impossible! Feel the pain to gain! Be focused and attain your personal success.

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As one passes through phases of life, one can also observe or experience many great learning opportunities. Through an individuals’ great challenge in life, it can provide a wonderful platform or avenue to inspire others. We can observe through history how groundbreaking successes in life are achieved through great amount of adversity. One can learn that such successful individuals take great ownership in mistakes they make. They take painful lessons and use it to motivate them to reach great level of success.

The great lessons that one can learn from them are simply influential and inspiring. In facing setbacks and adversity, one can observe that such individuals never give up and they are able to achieve great achievements in life. Other great lessons that one can learn from them is they are able to handle criticisms well and have a great winning mentality in facing the challenges.

“Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless.” – Thomas Edison.

One can learn in pursuing great goals in life, great desire to succeed and strong motivation is a significant component. With desire and motivation, it is also important to create a plan in pursuing great dreams in life. For example, in the current information age now, ones’ goals in life can be to achieve financial abundance that can enable the individuals to have more time, money and freedom to spend time with loved ones or creating opportunity to give back to the society. Through such a goal, the plan to achieve can include investing in areas such financial education, work from home business, real estate or precious metals investment and other financial investments opportunities.

Apart from that, one can also learn from such successful individual the importance of giving back and serving others. One can observe that such individuals are well known in their niche areas and through their success in their niche areas; they are able to give back and serve others well by sharing their expertise and knowledge.

There are many inspiring figures in ones’ life. The choices can ranges from ones’ loving and wonderful mother and father, elderly figures, philanthropists, teachers, educators, social entrepreneurs, work from home entrepreneurs, financial educators and many more. A wonderful point that one can learn from them is for every of their success journey, one can realized that they have their mentors and teachers who inspired them to reach high level of success. The great sharing by mentors enables one to pursue goals in life with passion and drive.

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Many of us find ourselves being judgmental – even when that is not our intentions. However, when individuals differ in their personality traits, physical characteristics, and behaviors, it is easy to place some type of judgment. Chances are, you have experienced this yourself. Whether we admit it or not, each of us are constantly judging others and being judged. However, there comes a time in a person’s life in which it is time to simply accept the fact that every person is their own. We are all unique. We all have a set of unique disciplines, behaviors, feelings, interests, and similar components that makes us who we are. There should not be any room for judgment when we think of things in this manner.

There are a number of components that come together to establish who we are as individuals. First, the background that we have – such as our experiences and the attitudes that we were introduced to – plays a large role when it comes to determining who we are. Our interests, talents, and abilities also play a role in the development of who we are. While it is natural for a person to want to categorize as we see appropriately in order to associate one thing to another, it is important that when we do this with people that we remember that we are all unique. While the mind can group similar individuals together, we should not allow our minds to separate others from us simply because of the fact that they are different from us.

Throughout our lives, we will interact with a large number of people. We will live, work, and play with a variety of individuals throughout our lives. Many times, you may find that it is difficult to deal with these individuals. It is not uncommon to become frustrated with another person because they do not think, act, or feel the same way that you do. Judging an individual on these things can result in turmoil in the relationships that you share with these people. Many times, it is best to simply let go of the differences that surround you and others. We have to take a look around at the differences that surround us, and just appreciate those things that make others different from us.

There are many situations; for example, when a married couple will experience a lot of anger and frustration because of the fact that one spouse is trying to change another. It is not that the spouse does not love the other; it is just that they feel as if they should be more like them in order to make things a bit smoother in the day to day relationship with another. However, time and time again, this proves to be detrimental to the overall relationship. This is why it is very important to ensure that you never attempt to change or mold a person to your liking. Simply accept the things that you cannot change and appreciate the fact that you and others are different.

Placing judgment on others and living with the personality and characteristics that lead to a judgmental attitude can lead to anger, frustration, and a lot of other detrimental emotions that can break you down as a person. However, accepting the fact that everyone is different and avoiding the temptation of giving into judgmental attitudes can help you lead a life that is full of love, peace, and happiness. Not being judgmental is an art, start creating your masterpiece today!

Kevin Sinclair is the publisher and editor of My-Personal-Growth.com, a site that provides information and articles for self improvement and personal growth and development.

The decision to improve your self esteem can be an important step in improving your life and gaining the respect of other people. Although, building your self esteem is not difficult, you do need to know how to go about it. Here are ten ways to help your self esteem grow:

1. Choose your company wisely. Avoid people who are overly or persistently negative or cynical and instead choose the company of those who have a positive and uplifting outlook.

2. Get clear about your goals. If you set goals and work steadily towards them, achieving small successes along the way to the larger ones, you will gain confidence and begin to feel a lot better about yourself. By reducing larger goals to a series of smaller steps, you increase your chances of achieving them. You will also be able to enjoy the sense of accomplishment whenever you can cross one of the smaller goals off your list.

3. Think and speak deliberately positively about yourself. When things are difficult it is easy to be hard on yourself and focus on your mistakes. However if you remind yourself of your strengths, achievements and importance to your family and friends you can lift your mood and increase your self esteem.

4. Learn to accept and use constructive criticism. You need to set boundaries about what sort of criticism you will be influenced by. If it is negative and an obvious attempt at attacking your self confidence, deflect it or ignore it. However, if the criticism is constructive you can learn from it and use it for feedback on your journey of personal growth. Helpful criticism will guide you in overcoming your weaknesses. As your weaknesses disappear and you become the person you want to be, your self esteem will soar.

5. Be resilient. If you fall down, be willing to get back up again and keep on going. Everyone fails at different times in their lives, it doesn’t mean you’re a failure. Decide to belief the best about yourself and your future. Be persistent and know success is in your future. If we retain our optimism and resilience we will be able to weather the most difficult of circumstances.

6. Don’t compare yourself to other people. There will always be people who are more successful and less successful than you at any point in your life. If you compare your self to others, you make yourself vulnerable to feeling inferior. Instead, evaluate yourself on how far you have come in your own life not how far you feel you have to go. This approach to life will strengthen your self confidence and improve your overall self esteem.

7. Don’t belittle yourself. If we don’t quickly recover from the disappointments in our lives we can end up wallowing in a sense of failure. Our self respect, confidence and self esteem can be eroded to the point of non existence. Do your best to defeat negative thinking and deliberately strive to project a positive image. The attitude you show the world will affect how you are treated and how you are treated will impact how you feel about yourself. If you are treated with respect, you will feel more positive about yourself. So try to accept yourself and avoid the habit of self criticism.

8. Stand up to bullies. Bullies come in all shapes, sizes and social status. Unfortunately, they don’t disappear once we leave school. We can find them in workplaces, in our families or in our social groups. If you are dealing with bullying at any level, it is important to stand up to the bully. Practice being assertive rather than aggressive and teach people how you want to be treated. As people treat you with greater respect, your self esteem will improve.

9. Learn to relax with people. If you are shy or self conscious and find it difficult to break the ice with people you don’t know, your self esteem has probably taken a battering. Our confidence in relating to other people has a big impact on how they treat us and how we feel about ourselves. Practice starting conversations with people who don’t know well or at all. Listen to what they have to say and if the conversation gets bogged down, ask some questions. Show your interest through your body language and your responses. As you get used to talking to new people, your self esteem will improve and you will feel more confident in social situations.

10. To feel your best you need to look your best. If you are lounging around in creased, unfashionable clothing, you are not going to feel as good about yourself as if you are well dressed and well groomed. Remember, the impression we give other people will impact how we are treated by them and how we feel about ourselves. It is also important to look after your health, not only to look good, but to feel energized and positive about life. A healthy self esteem and a healthy body go hand in hand.

Kevin Sinclair is the publisher and editor of My-Personal-Growth.com, a site that provides information and articles for self improvement and personal growth and development.

Procrastination is a very common issue among many individuals. This is so common that many individuals have actually turned it into an art. Procrastination is simply a means of putting off what you could do now, and doing it at a much later time. While this does not seem like an entirely bad thing at surface, it can lead to a number of complications that are uncomfortable for an individual. For example, the stress of having a lot to do, the pressure of deadlines, and even physical and emotional complications. Throughout this article, you will learn some simple steps on how to avoid procrastination.

1. One of the first methods that you can use in order to avoid procrastination is to learn to love lists! Many people find that lists are an essential component to do their day. You should write down all of the things that must be completed, and then the other things that you would like to get done. As you complete each task, simply mark it off on your list. You should ensure that you make lists that are reasonable and put items on it that you can achieve.

2. Next, you should determine what time of the day you are most productive. You may be a morning person, or you may be more of an afternoon person. If you try to complete tasks that need to be done at a time of the day in which you are not very productive, it is likely that you will fail at your endeavors. Do not worry about when something should be done, simply worry about doing it when you are at your best. This will ensure that you are successful in all that you do.

3. Now, when it comes to avoiding procrastination, you should consider having an accountability partner. I know it sounds a little weird at a glance, but it really is an effective measure of getting things done. Simply ask a friend or relative to keep track of the things that you have to do, and request that they encourage you throughout each day to complete those things. At the end of the day, report to this individual and get feedback on your performance. This will prove to be a very valuable resource.

4. It is said that it takes three weeks, or twenty one days, to create and break habits. Procrastination is often considered to be a habit. If you keep this in mind and work for this time frame to avoid it, you can bet by the time the twenty second day hits, you will have succeeded in breaking the habit of putting things off. This may help to motivate you when attempting to break this cycle. Just remember to keep this in mind, and be positive. Change can be a good thing, and should never be something that it is dreaded.

5. Last, but not least, learn to accept the tasks that you know you are able to do, and reject those that you know will compromise your time. Many professionals in time management will instruct you to learn how to say “no”, and this is a very important element in your success. Over committing yourself can cause many problems and can actually increase the level of procrastination that you experience. If you learn to say “no”, and commit only to those things that you know are possible, you will see that you are successful in overcoming procrastination.

As you can see, it can be quite easy to avoid procrastination. All it takes is a little time management and some self control, and you will find that you have more time than ever before!

Kevin Sinclair is the publisher and editor of My-Personal-Growth.com, a site that provides information and articles for self improvement and personal growth and development.

Think carefully when I say that ideas are the building blocks of any creative thinking process. Without ideas, you cannot go very far when trying to create something unique, inspirational, imaginative and magnificent to become a successful achiever.

Brilliant ideas were at play when Sir Isaac Newton discovered gravity, when Thomas Edison discovered the light bulb or when Albert Einstein stumbled upon the famous energy formula. It was thought provoking ideas that led to the abundant mega structures around us and it was creative ideas working their charm whenever we see successful achievers after successful achievers being churned out.

But how then do you get an influx of ideas? Are ideas even things that you can conveniently buy from your hardware store? Or are they conjured up from some magical formula you can only see in a fairy tale?

Frankly speaking, ideas are actually everywhere and all around you. They are in fact waiting in anticipation and begging for you to discover and utilise them. The onus lies on you to wisely and efficiently seek them out and use them to your best advantage.

Below are a few ways you can generate a massive influx of ideas:

1) observing your surroundings

2) observing your family and friends

3) reading materials such as books, magazines, newspapers, etc

4) admiring pictures or paintings

5) listening to inspirational sounds or music

6) watching movies, films or videos

7) surfing the Internet (in fact you can do some of the above and more through the Internet)

And definitely, much, much more ways to do so. Please note that the above list is not exhaustive and you should think or look into more ways of generating your ideas.

Anyway, it’s prudent to note that it’s not so important as to how many methods you try. Rather, what’s important is that you benefit fully from them (even if it’s just one or two methods) and constantly build up your flow of mind-blowing ideas and think of ways you can put them to practical use.

But then, you’ll probably be asking, how do I put these ideas into practical use?

Well, the most obvious answer is to emulate or model after already proven successful methods especially those by successful achievers themselves.

And here I present a simple 3-step method you can utilise to get you on course to effectively do things the successful achiever way:

1) Identify and find out in detail the successful achievers’ already working/proven ideas, concepts and methods.

2) Reverse and modify them and test if your new and approved model works in the real world.

3) Constantly learn, upgrade and modify them to achieve better improvements and ultimately greater degrees of success.

So, there you have it. My simple explanation on how you can generate an influx of ideas and start your course towards becoming a successful achiever.

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Frustration is a feeling of powerlessness and helplessness when something goes wrong in our lives or when we the result of a certain action does not meet our expectation.

Frustration causes people to be angry and rude. It damages relationship and harms ones health.

Frustration if left uncorrected can spiral into negative events like accidents or impulsive decisions like quitting a job. It could also damage a marriage or a relationship.

Using Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) to Overcome Frustration.
Our body consists of meridians which carry the energy through out our body. We can think of the meridians like rivers along which the electricity in our body flows. This flow has been called many other names such as, chi, prana, life force, electromagnetic, electrical or just energy.

When you are experiencing a negative emotions like frustration, the energy in your meridians is blocked. By tapping on the meridian end points the blocked and stuck energy gets released and causes an immediate relief. You feel the relief because the energy flow is restored to normal by the EFT tapping.

How to avoid frustration

1) Set goals based on your desires and passions not what others want from you.

2) Learn to be kind to yourself

3) Identify if you are constantly feeling like a victim. When we believe that we are victims we operate from powerlessness. Heal past pain that has caused you to believe you are a victim.

We attract our reality based on our emotions and beliefs. If you want your circumstances to change you have to heal and change your emotions.

4) Visualize your goal very morning. This allows your thoughts ane emotions to remain focussed on what you want and what you can achieve. It also helps you to start the day with positive vibrations.

5) Be patient. The universe in its divine intelligence will manifest your desire. Do your best and then let go.

6) Do you want to control everything? And when things don’t go your way do you get frustrated? Release the need to control everything and enjoy life. Do your best and then surrender to the divine.

7) Need for perfection. Heal the need for perfection. The need for perfection takes away the peace from ones life.

Understand that life has challenges. The challenge seems bigger when you are overwhelmed with negative emotions. The same challenge will appear different when you approach it with a calm and trusting attitude.

9) Competition is good only when it is at a healthy level. Are you constantly comparing your work with another person? You are a unique and divine child of god, realize this and cherish your potential.

Make a conscious decision to stop playing victim to circumstances. Take action to heal and empower yourself so that you can take responsibility for the situation and overcome the challenge. Take action now to heal negative emotions and embrace personal power.

Susitha Reddy is an Advanced Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) and Law of Attraction Practitioner and specializes in applying EFT to clear blocks to Abundance. To receive a free audio on healing frustration subscribe to her newsletter at Inner Heaven
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