Book of the week....The Science of Goal Setting, The Road to Joy & Prosperity

My book recommendation of the week....  this is a new thing for me... books I have read and can recommend... here is the first and I found this a superb book and very useful...  some of the best 27 pages I ever read for about R60!

Diana Nyad: Never, ever give up

In the pitch-black night, stung by jellyfish, choking on salt water, singing to herself, hallucinating … Diana Nyad just kept on swimming. And that's how she finally achieved her lifetime goal as an athlete: an extreme 100-mile swim from Cuba to Florida — at age 64. Hear her story...

Worry About the Things that You Can Change

Are you a worrier? Do you worry that you get worried by small things, big things, ALL things? The thing is – worrying takes up a lot of time and energy that can be better used elsewhere. Dispense with it wherever possible.

Worrying is a common human emotion that usually occurs when an outcome is uncertain, or something might happen over which we have no control. Let’s think about control for a moment.

This thing you worry about. Do you have any control over the matter? Can you change it? If you don’t have any control over what’s worrying you, and you can’t change it – then don’t worry.

If you think you should be able to control everything – who appointed you Managing Director of the Universe?

You may not be able to control events or other people, but you can control your own emotions. You can take control of worrying, and if you like, delete it from your life. No worries.

Does the thought of having no worries worry you?

You probably already know that anxiety and worry cost time and add no value whatsoever to what you are doing. So why do it?

Do you only worry about work-related things, or does anxiety affect your personal life too? Whether you suffer from worrying about a particular thing – your health, your marriage – or from what is known as ‘free-floating anxiety’ – worrying about all sorts of things you can’t affect, or worrying about things in general, then you’ve probably realised that you may need more help than I can provide here. For now, we will allay your mild, niggling worries. and help you to control that tendency.

If you are somebody who does worry, what is causing that?

Dean Hawkes of Columbia University once said “Half the worry in the world is caused by people trying to make decisions before they have sufficient knowledge on which to base a decision.”

He makes a very good point. So – get the facts, weigh them up and then make a decision. The important thing to do once you have made your decision is to ACT on it. Don’t procrastinate. Don’t spend your time worrying about what could go wrong. Look instead at the positives, and focus on them.

Before you are tempted to worry about a problem – take stock of it and ask yourself the following:

• What is the problem?
• What is the cause of the problem?
• What are the possible solutions?
• What is the best solution?

You will be amazed how simple the initial “worry” will become and how easily resolved it can be.

If this approach does not work for you, then you can take it one step further, and pander to your need to catastrophise. Face the very worst case scenario. Ask yourself these 3 questions:

• What is the absolute worst thing that could happen?
• What are the chances of this actually happening?
• What would I or could I do about it, if that did happen?

Considering worst case scenarios, then visualising and finding solutions for them, is one of the best ways to deal with anxieties. You may find that the worst thing that can happen isn’t insurmountable. Or you may be able to laugh at the ridiculousness of your worry when you actually put it into perspective.

Jack: OMG! I have forgotten my mother-in-law’s birthday party! OMG! I am a dead man! I can’t go home. What am I going to do?
Jill: What’s the worst thing that can happen?
Jack: She might never speak to me again!
Jill: That’s the worst thing. Your mother-in-law won’t talk to you.
Jack: Yeah. Oh. Wait. No. That’s not so bad.
Jill: OK. So what’s the worst thing?
Jack: My wife will kill me?
Jill: Really. How, precisely, will she kill you?
Jack: Painfully. Oh, you mean, how? Erm. With a look. That look.

Focus on a solution. Your entrepreneurial creativity will find solutions to even the toughest scenarios. This exercise gets you to confront your worst fears and – more importantly – to provide practical resolutions for them. Once you have a plan to address the worst thing that can happen, the problem and uncertainty is minimised. That allows you to move on.

After you have considered your worst case scenario, if you do discover that there is nothing you can do about it, embrace the certainty. It can be a relief to be absolved of choice and resign yourself to the inevitable. If you know something is going to happen and you cannot change it, then live with it! Enjoy the ride and enjoy the learning, since there is nothing else you can do.

Another common problem is worrying about the past. Now, I have met some very clever people in my time, but I have yet to meet anyone who can turn back time. Don’t waste time worrying about something in the past that has gone. There is nothing you can you can do about it, other than to learn from it and take the learning forward to inform the future. Leave unhelpful emotions in the past, where they belong. Reflect on what has happened. Reflect on what you have learnt about what has happened. Decide what you’ll do differently in the future. Embrace it as a great learning opportunity, and move on.

Develop a positive mental attitude. Know that it takes as much time and energy to do something about a problem or fix the thing we’re worried about, as it does to worry about it. Instead of sitting worrying – do something, and sort it out!

Worry adds no value to your life. If you must worry at all, develop processes that minimise the time spent worrying by setting a time constraint. Say, OK, I am going to spend five minutes worrying about this, and then I am going to move on. Work through your worry methodically, until you reach conclusions and find solutions or come to an acceptance. Within those five minutes!

Above all, recognise your role in being able to change things. If you can do something, that’s great. Do it.

If you can’t, just don’t waste your energy thinking about it. Think of positive things you can do. Life is too short!

Further Reading:

Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway by Susan Jeffers (Amazon Link UK, US)

The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle (Amazon Link UK, US)

How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie (Amazon Link UK, US)

If the above topic, or indeed any of my blogs are of interest to you, then contact me and let’s talk! Drop me an email at getintouch@marcwinn.com.

Why fear of discomfort ruins your life

Think about the major problems in your life — from anxiety to lack of regular exercise to a bad diet to procrastination and more.

Pretty much every one of these problems is caused by a fear of discomfort.

Discomfort isn’t intense pain, but just the feeling you get when you’re out of your comfort zone. Eating vegetables for many people, for example, brings discomfort. So does sitting in meditation, or sitting with a hard task in front of you, or saying No to people, or exercising. (Of course, different people are uncomfortable with different things, but you get the idea.)

And most people don’t like discomfort. They run from it. It’s not fun, so why do it?

The problem is that when you run from discomfort all the time, you are restricted to a small zone of comfort, and so you miss out on most of life. On most of the best things in life, in fact. And you become unhealthy, because if eating healthy food and exercising is uncomfortable, then you go to comfort foods and not moving much. Being unhealthy, unfortunately, is also uncomfortable, so then you seek distractions from this (and the fact that you have debt and too much clutter, etc.) in food and entertainment and shopping (as if spending will solve our problems!) and this in turn makes things worse.

Amazingly, the simple act of being OK with discomfort can solve all these problems.

This is a discovery I made a few years back, when I was trying to change my life.

I started by trying to quit smoking, but I hated the feeling of having an urge to smoke and not actually smoking. It was uncomfortable to resist that strong urge. My mind resisted, tried to make up all kinds of rationalizations for smoking. My mind tried to run from this discomfort, tried to seek distractions.

I learned to sit and watch the discomfort. And when I did, incredibly, it wasn’t too bad. My world didn’t end, nor did my mind implode. I was just uncomfortable for a bit, and then life moved on.

Then I watched this same process happen with running. I didn’t want to run because it was too hard. My mind made up rationalizations, etc. I found ways to avoid the running. Then I gave in to the discomfort, and it wasn’t hard. I ran, and learned to love it.

I repeated this process for changing my diet (many times, actually, because my diet gradually got healthier over time), for getting out of debt and not spending so much, for beating procrastination, for meditation, and so on.

Becoming OK with discomfort was one of the single biggest discoveries of my newly changed life.

How to Become Good at Discomfort

If you can learn to become good at discomfort, your life will have almost no limits. There’s no better skill to learn.

Here are some tips I’ve learned:

Try it in small doses. Sit for 30 seconds in discomfort. If you’re averse to vegetables, try one green veggie. Put it in your mouth, leave it there for 30 seconds. You probably won’t like it much, but that’s OK. You don’t have to have a mouthgasm with every bite. I’ve learned to love veggies.

Immerse yourself in discomfort. Are you sad, or angry, or stressed, or frustrated? Instead of avoiding those emotions, immerse yourself in them. Dive into them, accept them, be in them. Same with procrastination — sit with the task you’re running from, and don’t switch to something else. Just be there with that uncomfortable feeling. How does it feel? Are you in deep pain? Are you OK?

Seek discomfort. Challenge yourself daily. Find uncomfortable things and do them. Introduce yourself to strangers. Hug a friend. Confess your feelings. Confront someone (with a smile). Say No to people. Go for a run. Try a new healthy dish.

Watch yourself run from things. What have you been avoiding because of discomfort? What feelings have you been rejecting? What problems do you have that stem from discomfort? What have you allowed your mind to rationalize? Become aware of this process, and see if you can stop avoiding things, one by one.

Learn that discomfort is your friend. It’s not an enemy to fear. It’s actually a good thing — when you’re uncomfortable, you are trying something new, you’re learning, you’re expanding, you’re becoming more than you were before. Discomfort is a sign that you’re growing.

Discomfort is the reason I decided to undergo my Year of Living Without — I’m facing the things that make me uncomfortable (and so far, finding that it’s not hard at all).

While others stay in their comfort zone, I explore the unknown. And I treasure the experience.

This article is by leo babauta from Zenhabits.net

 Leo Babauta is a simplicity blogger & author. He created Zen Habits, a Top 25 blog (according to TIME magazine) with 260,000 subscribers, mnmlist.com, and the best-selling books focus, The Power of Less, and Zen To Done.

Babauta is a former journalist of 18 years, a husband, father of six children, and in 2010 moved from Guam to San Francisco, where he leads a simple life.

Lego, Let Go and Let God

As boy growing up I had a box of Lego. The box was a white plastic box made by my father who was a plastic engineer; fabricated from a flat 2 foot by 2 foot sheet with 6 inch wall on each of the 4 sides. Inside the square box were a number of compartments, boxes within boxes ideal for storing the Lego. In this box everything had its place; 8 blob red bricks, 2 blob yellow, 4 blob blue, railway track, wheels tyres and so on. Keeping each item in its place should have been easy but in concentrating on building I wasn’t always focused on putting the right piece in its place, I was so absorbed in the construction.  This meant every now and then I would tip the entire box out on the floor and put things back in their tidy places.

I loved Lego and thinking about it I can now so easily apply Lego to my life. Yes Lego may have been the starting block for many engineers, sadly I am not an engineer well not the kind of engineer that builds or repairs thing the only Engineer I have become is an engineer of life. Lego in many ways teaches a young child a great deal and one of those things taught is something I have been pondering while resting and recovering from flu-like symptoms.

Lego, unlike life, comes in a box with instruction on how to build the toy. Whether it be a simply toy car or a complicated and sophisticated modern-day lego robot, it comes with instructions. Life would be easy if it came with instructions and I most certainly would not now be working with a personal life coach. Here’s the other thing about Lego, it’s easy to take apart and rebuild with.  Piece and instructions would make life easy,  imagine if every time you made a mistake you could just break the problem off from life and rebuild it with the correct piece or pieces and make things right. In life that is something so many wish they could do and yes it can be done.

To move on in life you need to look at how you are built, look at the lego blocks that make you who and what you are. When born you didn’t have an instruction manual, but and here is the big but, the fact you have lived means you now have a set of instructions… its called life.  With what you have lived you can now rebuild.

Personally I have decided to unpack the instructions of life, I have needed some help and I am so grateful I found it.  I had some extra tools with my instructions;  firstly my faith and secondly my positive outlook on life and thirdly and finally a deep desire for change. The first step to change in yourself is to let go, let go of what you have built, don’t be afraid to dismantle what you have built and have the courage to rebuild using the new instructions you now have.

Looking back, Lego taught me so much and for that I am grateful. Lego gave me a mind to think and an understanding of the fact that things can rebuilt if needed and you can always add on to the instructions, provided you have the pieces, and improve or enhance the end product. 

There is only one way forward in life if you do not have what you truly desire out of it,  you have to re-evaluate, then let go of all you have and then re-build.  Let Go and Let God is never truer,  and if you think of your life as little plastic blocks its simple… Lego, Let Go and Let God.

Sit back and look at your life, look at what you have been given, be grateful for all you have and even more grateful for the little extras you have.  You are truly blessed, you were given everything you needed to succeed in life the moment you were born… now go ahead and don’t be afraid to use what you have!

So, are you ready to Le’go and live life?  The choice is yours

too sick

Lagoon Beach Hotel

Yuk! Flu! Illness!

Yes that's me today.  Went downhill after Church yesterday and woke up in a different body... one with no energy.

The only way to overcome this is to get going and get moving... so I have.

I am blessed to have a positive mind and a mind that says "get going". I am sick because I am stressed, stressed from the roller-coaster of life.  I fight the negatives then celebrate the positives and I am so glad I can. This takes energy.The lesson to learn in life is related to managing time and that is to rest when you need to rest! I don't mean rest because you are just a little tired doing your job, No I mean rest when you really have to and that without resting your plan for tomorrow and beyond will be destroyed. 

Today is rest day.  I want to be working  I want to be out there sellingn and i want to be out there doing things.

Today is a day of reflection and positive thinking.

Today I am doing what I Must do rather than should - read this http://firstround.com/article/What-to-Do-at-the-Crossroads-of-Should-and-Must

Today is a day of rest....

Tomorrow revitalised!

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Looking up from high above

The bottom is a funny place.  The bottom of a mountain before a climb may seem daunting, the bottom of the ocean for some is where they find heaven and the bottom figure when it comes to costs is generally more favourable. So why does everyone dislike the bottom?

I am at the bottom, again, I revisited this blog and read what I wrote what seems a long time ago. I am back to where I was, this I know why I am here, I am not questioning the why and I am not even questioning the how. I will ask "what now".  When I ask that I see answers to moving on very clearly and often with choices.

At the bottom its a great place,  and ones senses become more alert and things become very clear.

From the bottom I give praise and thanks for things that would often go unnoticed in life, fresh air, life itself, sunshine, a cup of coffee, the fact I have an awesome son, the fact I have food to eat, fuel in my car.

Because I ignored these simple facts and stopped giving thanks for what I have and then worried about what I didn't have I got lower in life and ended up not having even more.

The truth is we always have what we need, we have a good God that will always provide - some call it the universe I choose God. I am free because I accept I have all I need, and I even have more than I need in some areas of life.  Accepting this fact is the first step to being on top, this first fact is that you need to consider all the things you take for granted those things at the bottom of your needs and wants and never forget that.

Today you have all you need, tomorrow you will have as well - that is a promise! Believe it!