You are allowing past situations, current situations, your own negative thoughts, or other people to hold you back. This is a set up that will lead to your not succeeding. Many times we don’t look at those things as setting us up. We convince ourselves that for one reason or another that we don’t deserve it, or that it is too late, or that success is not for us.

But that way of thinking is a set up. And you deserve to live a life that is fulfilling and rewarding. You deserve to let your life shine. Even though you may look at your life right now and feel that it is not where you want to be. That doesn’t mean that you park right there and settle.

What that means is that you learn to be purposeful in the present. By that I mean that you learn to love who you are right now, and you are thankful for the blessings that you have in your life today. You know your purpose in the present, but you are also dedicated to work on things that are going to make you feel fulfilled in the future.

A major part of a mindset set up is when you think that just because you have made mistakes in the past that have led you to where you are today. That’s the end. Well, why not flip that mindset? Why not look at today as the beginning?

Why not look at all of the past mistakes as learning experience that have prepared you for where you are at currently. The things of the past can’t be changed. But how you allow them to affect your life can be changed.

When you can look at your mistakes as learning experiences you have gained empowerment to look past the past and toward the future. I admit that I have fallen for many set ups. And the sad part about it is that at that time I didn’t even realize that it was a set up. I just had accepted the mindset that I had missed it. I had accepted the mindset that success wasn’t going to happen for me.

But now when I look back into my life, and see what was going on in my mind before my mind shift occurred I can clearly see that it was a set up. It was a set up to prevent me from living the life that I was designed to live. And that is a life that is rewarding and fulfilling.

It was a set up because if I would not have followed my dreams then all of the people I was created to help wouldn’t have been helped through me. So if I would not have recognized my set up it would have affected more people than just me.

So think about this. Have you allowed something to set you up? Have you allowed something to prevent you from living the life that you deserve to live? Have you allowed the chains of your past to be a set up for your future?

If you answered yes then it is time to take action, and refuse to be set up anymore. Today is YOUR day to make your set up a comeback!

Your level of self-confidence will actually show in so many ways – it could be through your behavior, your body language as well as on the manner of speaking, and so on. Here are the steps on building your self-confidence:

Preparing Yourself

First and foremost, you should get yourself ready for your journey towards building self-confidence. You must know where you are heading to and think about where you should go. You should have the right direction and mindset, by committing yourself to starting it out right and to staying that way.

Setting Out

This is the stage where you should start your journey slowly and slowly, while moving towards achieving your goal. By doing the right things in a gradual manner, starting with small and easy wins, you should be able to put yourself on the right path to success, while starting to build self-confidence that comes with this.

Step up towards Success

At this stage, you should be able to feel confident about yourself. This is the moment where you start stretching yourself, in order to make your goals a bit higher while getting through the more tough challenges. This is where you need to increase your commitment and motivation, while extending the skills that you’ve proven for yourself.

For as long as you keep on moving forward, although not too much, you’ll soon find your self-confidence building rapidly. This is where you realize that you have finally earned your self-confidence, all because of the hard work that you put into it.

I have found that in my professional experience as an educational psychologist, children and adults alike can benefit from setting reasonable yet challenging athletic goals. Setting these types of goals with the intention of improving self-esteem has the synergy of creating a more positive mindset that is focused on real world problem solving, progress, goal setting, adapting to change, and a host of other positive benefits that an individual suffering from lowered self-esteem can instantly apply to almost every other aspect of their life.

Unfortunately, the field of psychology is based on the medical model which focuses on what is WRONG with you. The psychologist acts as though he or she is the doctor who can “cure” you. However, first you must be categorized into a nicely defined area which is spelled out in the DSM-IV. In my opinion this is an outdated method when it comes to the vast majority of individuals who are seeking a psychologist to improve their mental health but are able to function relatively well in today’s society. Although it helps to identify what is getting in your way of success, it doesn’t help to focus on this and dwell on it.

Rather, it is much more beneficial to focus on what is working for this individual, what resources do they have available to them to get out and do something about this problem. Focusing on the positives and strengths of an individual now opens new doors. Setting goals, creating dreams, and taking action. That is the future of psychology in my opinion.

Where does athletics fit into this equation? Well, for one thing sports is one way you can learn how to master life. Dreaming of completing a triathlon, setting goals to begin a training program, taking action and complete the program and then complete the triathlon can be quite an empowering experience and only serves to remind the world, Yes! Anything is possible when one sets their mind to it, sets goals, and creates a plan.

It’s so easy to focus on the negative and fall into the trap that life is hard, our hardships are worse than anyone else’s, and we can lose track of the light at the end of our tunnel. I know I have been through this many times in my life and no matter how hard you try the temptation to fall back into these thought patterns will always be there. That’s why it is so important to know and remember that we become what we think about. Repeat that over and over, realize it and accept it, but remember it’s a good thing.

I say this because this means that the power lies within us to change our circumstances and change the course of our lives. We have this awesome power and great power means great responsibility. It’s our responsibility to make sure that we use this ability to maximize the potential and opportunity in our lives. “If you think you can do a thing or you think you can’t do a thing, you’re right.” – Henry Ford. The world is filled with a limitless bounty ripe for the picking or it isn’t, the answer lies in our own head. Our mindset is the factor that makes that distinction, thoughts become things, keep that in mind.

Self-talk

Building confidence through positive thinking, self-talk is the best method for it. Lead to better self-image positive affirmations can replace negative thoughts in your mind. Whenever you do well at something, you must get in the habit of praising yourself, for trying something new or for any other behavior that you would like to encourage. You need to focus on self-talk until thinking positively about yourself becomes a habit.

To make a written list of your good qualities; it is a more visual form of positive self-talk. Take your time and write down every single positive thing about yourself consciously, from the aspects of your appearance you feel proudest of, to the activities you do excellent. After finishing your list, store it somewhere safe but easy to find. Whenever you feel down and defeated, simply pull out your list and replace the negative thoughts with your list of great qualities.

Creative visualization

Helping people to achieve their goals, creative visualization is a popular technique. In this idea, you repeatedly envision a desired outcome. It’s a form of focused daydreaming. You would want to see in your mind’s eye some action that exemplifies confidence for you, if you’re working to improve your self confidence. It would be giving a speech or being a butterfly at a social event. When you are visualizing, you should make some small movement, like touching two fingers together, in order to imprint the feeling that comes along with the vision. Later you can bring the desired feeling to the forefront by repeating the movement. It is the practice for the outcome you would like to see.

Your subconscious acts FIRST on any dominant desire that you associate with an emotion, such as greed, anger, love etc. This desire will then manifest itself into a physical action relating to that desire. No one knows or understands exactly HOW the subconscious is SO powerful and why it can exert such influence. The stronger the desire, the more action you will take in trying to make that desire real.

No one has total control over their subconscious mind, but if you plant into it any idea, desire, or purpose it will compel you to take action to turn these into reality as soon as possible.

Many see the subconscious as an intermediary through which you can access your spirituality and soul. It contains the secret methods by which your mental impulses are transformed into their physical equivalent. Those who connect with their subconscious mind with true determination and effort will not fail to attract success in any endeavour.

Influencing this part of your mind can be considered the ‘Holy Grail’ in the pursuit of achieving your goals. The difficulty lies in the fact that so little is known about it. The best way to influence your subconscious is through repeated habit. Keep doing them again and again until they become second nature. You are conditioning your mind to accept a positive response as the norm. This works well with positive affirmations when trying to change your mindset.

Your subconscious mind is at work constantly without rest, night and day whether you want it to work or not. It feeds on the thoughts you think about, and grows accordingly. It will not judge whether the incoming thoughts are positive or negative in nature, it will happily accept any strands of thought and will start to plant the associated seeds into your mind. It never rests and if you fail to implant anything into it, it will simply focus on the things you have neglected to feed it.

Once you master how to train your subconscious with only positive thoughts, you will have gained the ability to unleash its power to achieve anything you desire, because positive thoughts lead to positive behaviours and this will eventually manifest into physical things.

ALL your ideas, in fact every single thing you think about, begins with a thought. If you have no thoughts you have no ideas. So how can you create the behaviours you need without first having a relevant thought? Once you start thinking, you start imagining. Imagination is a powerful ally as it helps build the foundation of your plans. And plans have to be executed to achieve results.

Your subconscious mind is most susceptible to impulses of thought mixed with emotion. Emotion can charge the mind into becoming action prone. Emotion will often lead you to act in ways you wouldn’t normally act. Its power can easily over-ride any conservative mechanisms of your conscious mind. You will find that when you are emotional, you are more likely to take action than if you were not emotional. Emotions rule your mind. They can be positive – such as desire, love, happiness, faith, hope, and enthusiasm or negative – such as greed, hatred, fear, revenge, anger or jealousy.

If you consider your subconscious to be a sieve, then emotions are like flour. The smaller particles will slip through easily, however larger particles will not. Unfortunately, negative emotions are like the smallest particles, they are easily dropped into the mind, whereas positive emotions are like larger particles and have to be ‘forced’ into the mind. This is why positive thinking takes effort and negative thinking does not. The only way to master positive emotions is to use them as much as possible. This is the key to success.

Point #1: Break free from the Time Management myth: You have to first change your mindset and point of view to understand and acknowledge the fact that Time cannot be managed. Time is time and is a constant. What you have to focus on, instead, is how to manage YOURSELF in time. Stephen Covey once said, “Time Management is a misnomer. The key is to manage yourself.” So from the here on, the focus will be on how YOU can take charge of your time.

Point #2: Tackle Overwhelm effectively: In this age you have too much information coming at you, and one keeps jumping from one topic to the other leading to overwhelm and waste of time. We always move in the direction we look. So if you want to change your direction, then just change where you look. And one keeps looking at different things throughout the day, and guess what they end up moving everywhere – and that means nowhere. So how do you tackle it? Let’s start with you – Don’t complain about too much information. The way you look at it determines how you would react to it. You CANNOT AVOID overwhelm, but you CAN MANAGE it. And this is how you do it:

1.You must form the habit of scheduling everything that needs to be done: You cannot just react to new information. Be a student and not a follower. Your day should have a pattern and everything that needs to be done should be given an appointment. If the newspaper wants you to read it, then you should give the newspaper a specific time to engage you. Your time is important, so everything that takes away your time should be scheduled.

2.Disconnect yourself regularly: Take regular time-offs from your daily grind. Find ways of relaxation and refresh yourself with new ideas and thoughts. Engage in your hobbies regularly. If you like fishing, schedule it every week. It’s said that the most creative ideas come to you when your mind is relaxed. So when once you are back at your work, you are keyed up and raring to go.

Point #3: Avoid the #1 killer of time – Distractions: It’s not social media, emails, etc that causes you distractions; it’s YOU. You are the one who let’s them distract you. You cannot do things when you feel like doing it; you have to schedule it. You have to build a boundary of protection around you. The best solution, what I have experienced, to tackle distractions is to get the most important things done before distraction comes looking for you. That means that most of the distractions start after people have started waking up and getting to work. Roughly after 1000 am things start to take on the colors of distraction. So the best thing to do is to schedule all your important activities early in the morning. By doing this, you ensure consistent productivity. It’s said that great poet Ernest Hemmingway used to finish off all his writing before 1000 am. After that, he used to enjoy life. Use that principle.

Point #4: Choose your environment: My experience shows that I can’t get everything done in front of my work-desk. I also don’t like to exercise in the house. I tend to do better outdoors, sucking in the fresh morning air. What environment you choose is entirely up to you. It helps to assign specific environments to specific activities.

To summarize, if you take a look at the above 4 points, you will see a common pattern – it’s about YOU. It starts with you and ends with you. You have the total power and control to manage yourself and boost your productivity. Try the above techniques for a week, and see how you adapt to it.

All the best and God Bless.

By practising mindfulness, whether for a minute or an hour, our thoughts and emotions are revealed to us. Every time we release the stories and wounds that hinder our spiritual growth, we free up more time and energy. We start to see where we’re closed off and unaware because spiritual awareness always shines a gentle light on what’s holding us back from happiness and joy. For example, if you stopped carting around your long list of grudges, how much lighter would you feel? Or how much more mind space would you have if you stopped worrying about money and started creating money-making ideas?

When we commit to being awake and aware in our lives, we’re not just meditation practitioners. We’re spiritual warriors on a rugged and adventurous inner journey. All those behaviors and emotions that zap our time and energy, whether through procrastination, depression, self-pity or rage, can dissolve if they’re met with compassionate awareness, non-judgment and a generous dose of light-heartedness. Spiritual warriors who battle their personal dragons in the meditation ring are rewarded for their bravery by living more peaceful, purposeful and authentic lives.

If you still don’t believe in the payoff of meditation or the practice seems too daunting to even begin (which means your dragons are winning their war against you), consider the alternative. By not committing to greater quality of time and energy in our lives, our threshold for life’s curveballs is severely eroded. When we feel stressed out, in a bad mood, irritated or overwhelmed (perhaps even hostile), there’s no opportunity for expressing the best of ourselves with others.

The real enemies of effective time management and long-term energy are feelings of inadequacy, worthlessness and anxiety. Thousands of years, and now thousands of studies, prove that meditation diminishes the impact of bad feelings and behaviors.

So meditate. By regularly visiting a calm and creative place within, you’ll find more time and energy for the people and priorities that mean the most.