Willpower and Self-Discipline

By Remez Sasson

Do you sometimes, feel that you lack the inner strength to take action, act assertively or be persistent?

Are there any habits you want to change, but you lack the necessary willpower and self discipline?

Developing willpower and self-discipline can make a great difference in your life, bringing to the fore, inner strength, which is vital for success and for personal growth.

The possession of these skills or their lack is a major factor, leading to success or to failure, to taking action or to being lazy. This applies to major goals, and also to simple, everyday tasks.

These abilities are vital ingredients of success, both spiritual and material.

• How many times you wanted to go for a walk, knowing how wonderful you feel afterwards, but due to laziness or lack of inner strength, you stayed at home and watched TV instead?
• How many times have you tried to change your eating habits, stop smoking, or get up earlier in the morning, but you didn't possess enough inner strength and persistence?
• Do you start doing things, but quit after a short while?

You can change this behavior when you develop inner strength!

Let's examine these skills.

Willpower Definitions:

• The ability to control or reject unnecessary or harmful impulses.
• the ability to arrive at a decision and follow it with perseverance, until its successful accomplishment.
• It is the inner strength that enables you to refuse to indulge in unnecessary and useless habits.
• It is inner power that enables you to overcome inner and external resistance and obstacles.
• It is the antidote to laziness and procrastination.

Self Discipline Definitions:

• It is the companion of willpower. It gives you with the stamina to persevere with whatever you do.
• It is the strength to withstand physical, emotional and mental hardships and difficulties.
• It stands for perseverance and tenacity.
• It is the ability to reject immediate satisfaction, pleasure or comfort, in order to gain something better, even if it requires effort and time to gain.

With these skills, you have the option to choose your behavior and reactions, instead of being ruled by them. They make you feel more powerful and in charge of yourself.

There is a misconception in the public mind regarding these skills. It is erroneously believed that their development and use require a lot of mental and physical strain and effort. This is not true. You can develop them in a gradual, simple way, by practicing certain exercises, and even enjoy the process.

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How to Strengthen Your Willpower and Self Discipline

A simple and effective technique to strengthen your willpower and self-discipline is doing things, which you would rather avoid doing, due to laziness, procrastination, lack of inner strength and assertiveness, shyness, or other similar reasons.

By carrying out such actions, in spite of your inner resistance, you become stronger.

As muscles get stronger by resisting the weight of barbells, so these skills are strengthened by overcoming inner resistance.

Willpower and Self Discipline Exercises

Exercise no. 1
You are sitting in a bus or train and an old man or woman, or a pregnant lady walks in. Stand up and give up your seat, even if you prefer to stay seated. Act so, not just because it is polite, but because you are doing something that you are reluctant to do. This is an exercise in overcoming the resistance of your body, mind and feelings.

Exercise no. 2
There are dishes in the sink that need washing, and you postpone washing them for later. Get up and wash them now. Do not let laziness control you. When you know that in this way, you are actually strengthening yourself, it becomes easier to take immediate action, despite laziness and the desire to procrastinate.

Exercise no. 3
You come home from work and sit in front of the T.V., because you feel too lazy and too tired to take a shower first. Do not succumb to the desire to sit in front of the T.V, and go take a shower immediately.

Exercise no. 4
Do you like your coffee with sugar? If you do, then for one whole week drink it without sugar. Do you drink three cups of coffee each day? If you do, then drink only two cups a day for one whole week. Such exercises prove to you that you can control or change your habits, and this inner strength.

Exercise no. 5
Do you, like many others, like to read some unimportant gossip in the newspaper or magazine? Then for one whole week abstain from doing so. This might not be easy, but it's a good training. I am not telly you to do so indefinitely, but only one week.

Exercise no. 6
If you have the choice of going up with the elevator or climbing the stairs, choose climbing the stairs. However, climb the stairs only if it's not a high storey, and you are in good physical condition.

You will find many more exercises in my book about this topic.

These are very simple exercises, which everyone can practice. Remember, the purpose of the exercises is to develop inner strength, not to make life difficult for you.

If you practice weight lifting, running or aerobics, you strengthen your muscles, and therefore, you can use your physical strength whenever you need it.

It is the same with willpower and self-discipline. When you strengthen them, you make them available for use, whenever you need them. They give you more control over your life, help you change and improve habits, and are essential for personal and spiritual growth and for achieving success.

SOURCE: http://www.successconsciousness.com/willpower-self-discipline.html

HOW TO ATTAIN WEALTH WITH MIND POWER

By Remez Sasson

The word wealth brings into the mind thoughts about riches, plenty of money and the ability to buy and enjoy whatever one wants. It brings thoughts about fancy houses, hotels, world travel, cars and everything money can buy. It is something most people want, but do not believe they can get and enjoy.

Wealth is all the above and much more.

Wealth is not restricted only to money and possessions. It manifests as plentitude in various and many forms in our life and in nature. A person can be wealthy with love, compassion, goodness, strength, energy, knowledge and wisdom.

Nature manifests wealth in the many life forms and plants it produces, and in the endless stars and worlds it has created.

The Life Force, which is also called the Universal Consciousness, Spirit or Creative Power, desires to express and manifest itself.

This power also expresses itself as the desire to manifest wealth, to grow, develop, and become stronger and bigger.

This natural desire manifests through everyone, but is often inhibited, due to negative programming, negative thinking, and lack of faith in themselves and in their abilities.

Changing Your Attitude Toward Wealth

The first step to make wealth flow into your life is to change your thoughts and attitude toward it. The mind has to be cleared from its wrong concepts about wealth, before it can start to manifest. This is done by bringing to consciousness all of your thoughts and ideas about wealth, money and prosperity.

Take a pen and a sheet of paper, and find a place to be alone and undisturbed for a while. Think about wealth and what it means to you, and then jot down any thought that comes into your mind. Write down every thought, good and bad, positive and negative. Do this for at least ten minutes or until you do not find more ideas and thoughts.

After you finish writing, read, think, and analyze what you have written. You will be surprised at the stuff that comes out of your mind. This analysis will help you to find out where and why you are inhibiting yourself in regard to success, money, and prosperity. You will find out what thoughts and wrong concepts have been holding you back.

You will discover the fears that have been holding you from success, and from manifesting any degree of riches in your life. There might be various reasons to account for that. You may have been educated to regard wealth as bad and corrupting. You may have experienced lack in your childhood, and now you are locked into the belief that it is not possible to improve your life or that you do not deserve to possess money.

It might be that you shun the responsibility and the work that wealth might entail.

Maybe you are afraid that you would not be able to handle wealth or that you will not know what to do with it.

These reasons or any others, might be responsible not experiencing prosperity and wealth.

The inner inhibitions are mostly due to past mental programming, making you feel and believe that you are not worthy, do not deserve success or that wealth and money should be avoided.

If you perform this analysis sincerely, you will find out what thoughts and attitudes hinder your way to success, and it will be clearer to you what you should do. Now that they are out, it will be easier to handle these inhibitions, free yourself from their grip, and start attracting wealth into your life.

If one session is not enough, keep writing down your thoughts, and think about them every day until feel you have discovered what is holding you back.

After this analysis, you will find it easier to change your thoughts and attitude toward money, possessions and wealth.

You will find it easier, and you will experience less inner resistance when you visualize what you want to get or accomplish. It will take less effort to reject negative or contradictory thoughts from entering your mind.

Persistence in your efforts of holding an image of success in your mind until you realize your desire, and at the same time keeping an open mind for opportunities, will lead you to do the right thing at the right time, and attract the right people at the right time.

An intense and concentrated thought possesses a vast power. All wealthy people focus their energies in a positive and powerful manner on what they desire to achieve. Some of them understand and practice consciously the laws of success, while others do so unconsciously.

Unlimited Thinking

The Universal Consciousness is unlimited and contains unlimited wealth. There is plenty of everything in it, and it constantly creates more of everything. It expresses itself through everything, including the individual unit that you consider as yourself. The problem is that negative thoughts and attitudes hamper the natural tendency of the Universal Consciousness to freely manifest its creative powers in unlimited ways.

You need to open your mind to prosperity and throw away your limiting thoughts. It does not matter how limited your life and circumstances are at the present moment, because if you choose to change your thoughts and attitudes, and start thinking without imposing limitations, your life will start to change. In your mind, refuse to be tied and limited by your circumstances. Think about possibilities, not about limitations.

Expand your unlimited thinking to what you consider as yourself, your personality and individuality. Your Consciousness is one with the Universal Consciousness. If you consider yourself as only a body you limit yourself. You are limitless consciousness, but erroneously identify yourself with the body and therefore feel limited. The feeling of limitation obstructs you from expressing the great powers of the Universal Consciousness. By being one with the Universal Consciousness you participate in the power of creation. Think about it, you are connected to the powers of the Universe.

Mind Power and Prosperity

Prosperity and success can be yours if you seek them with an open mind.

1. Find out your inhibiting thoughts.
2. Analyze your thoughts and strive to get rid of the negative ones.
3. Put into your mind positive and unlimiting thoughts.
4. Visualize your desire day after day.

Gradually, you will start to see your circumstances improving.

Thoughts possess power. You should be aware of the thoughts you think and admit only positive ones.

Visualization is one of the most important keys to success.

• Visualize clearly your desire.
• Put feelings into your mental images.
• Add faith and belief.

This will create a mighty power. Keep an open mind, be willing to act and take up the opportunities that will come your way, and you are on the proper road to success.

SOURCE:http://www.successconsciousness.com/index_00000b.htm

Why Failure Is Good for Success

The sweetest victory is the one that’s most difficult. The one that requires you to reach down deep inside, to fight with everything you’ve got, to be willing to leave everything out there on the battlefield—without knowing, until that do-or-die moment, if your heroic effort will be enough.

Society doesn’t reward defeat, and you won’t find many failures documented in history books. The exceptions are those failures that become steppingstones to later success. Such is the case with Thomas Edison, whose most memorable invention was the light bulb, which purportedly took him 1,000 tries before he developed a successful prototype. “How did it feel to fail 1,000 times?” a reporter asked. “I didn’t fail 1,000 times,” Edison responded. “The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps.”

Unlike Edison, many of us avoid the prospect of failure. In fact, we’re so focused on not failing that we don’t aim for success, settling instead for a life of mediocrity. When we do make missteps, we gloss over them, selectively editing out the miscalculations or mistakes in our life’s résumé.

“Failure is not an option,” NASA flight controller Jerry C. Bostick reportedly stated during the mission to bring the damaged Apollo 13 back to Earth, and that phrase has been etched into the collective memory ever since.

To many in our success-driven society, failure isn’t just considered a non-option—it’s deemed a deficiency, says Kathryn Schulz, author of Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error. “Of all the things we are wrong about, this idea of error might well top the list,” Schulz says. “It is our meta-mistake: We are wrong about what it means to be wrong. Far from being a sign of intellectual inferiority, the capacity to err is crucial to human cognition.”

Life’s Greatest Teacher

When we take a closer look at the great thinkers throughout history, a willingness to take on failure isn’t a new or extraordinary thought at all. From the likes of Augustine, Darwin and Freud to the business mavericks and sports legends of today, failure is as powerful a tool as any in reaching great success.

“Failure and defeat are life’s greatest teachers [but] sadly, most people, and particularly conservative corporate cultures, don’t want to go there,” says Ralph Heath, managing partner of Synergy Leadership Group and author of Celebrating Failure: The Power of Taking Risks, Making Mistakes and Thinking Big. “Instead they choose to play it safe, to fly below the radar, repeating the same safe choices over and over again. They operate under the belief that if they make no waves, they attract no attention; no one will yell at them for failing because they generally never attempt anything great at which they could possibly fail (or succeed).”

However, in today’s post-recession economy, some employers are no longer shying away from failure—they’re embracing it. According to a recent article in BusinessWeek, many companies are deliberately seeking out those with track records reflecting both failure and success, believing that those who have been in the trenches, survived battle and come out on the other side have irreplaceable experience and perseverance. They’re veterans of failure.

The prevailing school of thought in progressive companies—such as Intuit, General Electric, Corning and Virgin Atlantic—is that great success depends on great risk, and failure is simply a common byproduct. Executives of such organizations don’t mourn their mistakes but instead parlay them into future gains.

“The quickest road to success is to possess an attitude toward failure of ‘no fear,’ ” says Heath. “To do their work well, to be successful and to keep their companies competitive, leaders and workers on the front lines need to stick their necks out a mile every day. They have to deliver risky, edgy, breakthrough ideas, plans, presentations, advice, technology, products, leadership, bills and more. And they have to deliver all this fearlessly—without any fear whatsoever of failure, rejection or punishment.”

Reaching Your Potential

The same holds true for personal quests, whether in overcoming some specific challenge or reaching your full potential in all aspects of life. To achieve your personal best, to reach unparalleled heights, to make the impossible possible, you can’t fear failure, you must think big, and you have to push yourself.

When we think of people with this mindset, we imagine the daredevils, the pioneers, the inventors, the explorers: They embrace failure as a necessary step to unprecedented success.

But you don’t have to walk a tightrope, climb Mount Everest or cure polio to employ this mindset in your own life. When the rewards of success are great, embracing possible failure is key to taking on a variety of challenges, whether you’re reinventing yourself by starting a new business or allowing yourself to trust another person to build a deeper relationship.

“To achieve any worthy goal, you must take risks,” says writer and speaker John C. Maxwell. In his book Failing Forward: Turning Mistakes into Stepping Stones for Success, he points to the example of legendary aviator Amelia Earhart, who set several records and achieved many firsts in her lifetime, including being the first female pilot to fly solo over the Atlantic Ocean. Although her final flight proved fateful, Maxwell believes she knew the risk—and that the potential reward was worth it. “[Earhart’s] advice when it came to risk was simple and direct: ‘Decide whether or not the goal is worth the risks involved. If it is, stop worrying.’ ”

Of course, the risks you take should be calculated; you shouldn’t fly blindly into the night and simply hope for the best. Achieving the goal or at least waging a heroic effort requires preparation, practice and some awareness of your skills and talents.

Easing Into a Fearless Mindset

“One of the biggest secrets to success is operating inside your strength zone but outside of your comfort zone,” Heath says. Although you might fail incredibly, you might succeed incredibly—and that’s why incredible risk and courage are requisite. Either way, you’ll learn more than ever about your strengths, talents and resolve, and you’ll strengthen your will for the next challenge.

If this sounds like dangerous territory, it can be. But there are ways to ease into this fearless mindset. The first is to consciously maintain a positive attitude so that, no matter what you encounter, you’ll be able to see the lessons of the experience and continue to push forward.

“It’s true that not everyone is positive by nature,” says Maxwell, who cites his father as someone who would describe himself as a negative person by nature. “Here’s how my dad changed his attitude. First he made a choice: He continually chooses to have a positive attitude. Second, he’s continually reading and listening to materials that bolster that attitude. For example, he’s read The Power of Positive Thinking many times. I didn’t get it at first, so once I asked him why. His response: ‘Son, I need to keep filling the tank so I can stay positive.’ ”

Heath recommends studying the failures and subsequent reactions of successful people and, within a business context, repeating such histories for others. “Reward them and applaud their efforts in front of the entire organization so everyone understands it is OK to fail. So employees say to themselves, ‘I see that Bill, the vice president of widgets, who the president adores, failed, and he is not only back at work, but he is driving a hot new sports car. I can fail and come to work the next day. Bill is proof of it.’ ”

Finally, Heath stays motivated by the thought that, “if I become complacent and don’t take risks, someone will notice what I am doing and improve upon my efforts over time, and put me out of work. You’ve got to keep finding better ways to run your life, or someone will take what you’ve accomplished, improve upon it, and be very pleased with the results. Keep moving forward or die.”

SOURCE http://www.success.com/article/why-failure-is-good-for-success

A STORY THAT CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE

By Mac Anderson. Founder, Simple Truths

In 1972, Jim Cathcart was working at the Little Rock, Arkansas Housing Authority, making $525 a month, with a new wife and baby at home, no college degree, no past successes, and not much hope for the foreseeable future.

One morning, he was sitting in his office listening to the radio, to a program called "Our Changing World" by Earl Nightingale, who was known as "the Dean of Personal Motivation." That day, Nightingale, in his booming voice, said something that would change Jim's life forever: "If you will spend an extra hour each day in study of your chosen field, you will be a national expert in that field in five years or less."

Jim was stunned, but the more he thought about it the more it made sense. Although he had never given a speech, he had always wanted to help people grow in areas of personal development and motivation. He began his quest to put Nightingale's theory to the test by reading books and listening to tapes whenever he could. He also started exercising, became better organized, and joined a self-improvement study group. He persisted through weeks of temptations to quit, just by doing a little more each day to further his goal. Within six months he had learned more than he had in his few years of college, and he began to believe he could turn his goal of becoming a motivational speaker into reality. All the hard work, the discipline, and study paid off. Jim now has delivered more than 2,500 speeches worldwide and has won every major award in the speaking industry.

Just like companies have market value, so do people. In the simplest terms, your market value increases by knowing and doing more. Knowledge is power, not only for your career, but also to improve your family and spiritual life. I once heard a quote that sums it up well, "Knowledge is like climbing a mountain; the higher you reach the more you can see and appreciate."

I love stories because for me, they can bring an idea to life. This one and many others can be found in my book, The Nature of Success.

SOURCE: http://www.inspire21.com/stories/businessstories/Astorythatcanchangeyourlife