personal development – Page 26 – Empowering Your Mind

5 Steps to Create a Greater Self-Image

June 6, 2019 Linda-Ann Stewart

by Linda-Ann Stewart

Do you identify yourself as a procrastinator, leader or optimist? How you view yourself is a component of your self-image and it affects your decisions and actions. Without being aware of it, you’ll be congruent with how you characterize yourself. For instance, if you consider yourself to be a procrastinator, then your actions will support that belief. It will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But your self-image isn’t set in stone. It can be changed. When it changes, then your actions and decisions change to agree with your new one. To achieve your goals and vision, personally or professionally, your self-image will have to shift. It will have to be in alignment with the person you need to be to accomplish your vision.

For instance, a procrastinator will not be tapped to be a manager, because they won’t have the necessary quality of being proactive. But if you start viewing yourself as proactive, and choosing those actions, you’ll be management material. You’re not lying to yourself in this new view; you’re choosing to behave in a new way.

Improve Your Self-Image

One way to expand your self-image is to imagine your ideal self. This is your vision of who you are in the future, the person you want to be. This is the same concept as having a vision for other parts of your life or your business. With your ideal self, you have a vision of the future you, so you can create strategies to achieve this goal.

This is the person you must be working towards before you can bring your greater vision for your life into being. You may have these ideal characteristics in some measure, but won’t have fully expressed them at this time. They’re qualities you’re aspiring to embody and are still striving to bring into reality. And your choice of traits may change over time.

Here are five steps to help you create the new, ideal you.

1. Select three to five words you want to use to describe yourself. They need to be reasonable and possible for you. These words are different from your values, but may have values inherent in them or made up of them. They’re concepts that reflect the way the Universe views you. And the ideas probably suggest traits of your most authentic self.

For instance, you could want to be:

Compassionate, imaginative, and motivated
Confident, proactive, and determined
Resourceful, trustworthy, and self-disciplined
Spiritual, present, and empathetic

2. Ascertain the qualities you need to develop for your words to be true. These will include attitudes, beliefs, habits, and skills that are cultivated and amplified as you work on your overall vision for yourself. What do you need to develop to fully bring these attributes into reality?

For instance, to be self-disciplined, you need to follow through on the decisions and promises you’ve made, even when they’re inconvenient. To be proactive, you take action to bring about specific results, addressing issues before they become a problem. In developing compassion, you choose to consciously seek the good in everyone and be nonjudgmental.

3. Write your words somewhere so you see them daily. This could be on your phone, tablet, computer or taped on the wall by your desk. They’ll remind you what you’re aspiring towards and that their qualities are important to you.

4. When you read these words, feel what they mean to you. This impresses the subconscious and it will take that as direction to become like them. Say to yourself, “This is who I’m choosing to be.” Identify with them because you tend to become what you identify with. Your subconscious wants you to be congruent with your belief about your identity.

5. Commit to acting on your new characteristics. For instance, to be more determined, persist when the going gets rough. If you want to be more optimistic, and you’ve had several setbacks, choose to believe the best possible outcome. Be consistent with the behaviors, qualities and traits that reflect your ideal you. Over time, they will feel more natural and it will become automatic.

What you’re doing is creating a vision of the best version of yourself. You’re molding your future you into the person you want to be. As you do, you’re becoming the person who accomplishes your goals and vision.

Affirmation:
The Universe approves of me, as I am, and also has an ideal concept of who I can be. It views me as my best self and knows that I can grow into that ideal. It supports me fully in my endeavor to be a better person. I make the choices that reflect my future, ideal self and act on them.

Watch the accompanying video, 3 Exercises to Improve Your Self-Image.

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Meditation to Train Yourself to Be Positive

May 13, 2019 Linda-Ann Stewart

Optimists aren’t born, they develop the skill over years. They choose to focus on the positive and not the negative. As they do, they develop the habit to look on the bright side. This meditation will help you shift from negative thinking to positive, and to consider the best outcome for you.

Transcript:

Thank you for joining me. I’m Linda-Ann Stewart of Heartvision Consulting. I’d like to share a short meditation with you to help you to train yourself to become more positive. Optimists aren’t born, they develop the skill over years. They choose to focus on the positive and not the negative.

As they do, they develop the habit to look on the bright side. They literally train themselves to seek out the benefit in every situation. What they seek, they tend to find, because they set their subconscious the task to find it. This meditation will encourage you to do that and establish a more positive direction for your thinking.

If you feel comfortable, just close your eyes. Take a deep breath and relax.

Just notice what thoughts are running through your mind right now? Just notice what they are. It may take a moment or two to catch them, because they generally run beneath your conscious awareness. Just allow one of them to surface. Are these thoughts supporting you and your endeavors? Or are they hindering you and holding you back?

If your thoughts aren’t supportive or helpful, don’t accept them simply because you’re thinking them. That doesn’t make them true. What ideas are the opposite of your unhelpful thoughts? What idea would be more positive and uplifting? Once you determine what it is, repeat the positive idea that would be more supportive.

Then, consider what the best outcome for your endeavors would be. Visualize it, using all your senses, feel it. You may become aware of your next step along the way. If there are any challenges in your path, you notice them, deal with them, and move on. You search for and find the best in every situation. You focus and act on the positive possibilities and opportunities.

Whenever the negative, unhelpful ideas surface, or you feel anxious or upset, you bring your attention back to the positive idea that’s more supportive. Focus on it. Repeat the positive idea to yourself and then visualize the best outcome and result.

Open your eyes.

When you practice this short meditation every day, you’ll start to retrain your mind and brain to be more positive all the time. This way of thinking will become a habit for you. And it’s not just your thinking that will be changed. When you’re more positive, you take more action, because you expect it to turn out in the best way possible. This empowers you to make a greater impact in your world.

If you’d like more tips on how to use visualization to make your day flow more smoothly, download my free guide, Take Control of Your Day.

Thank you for watching. What positive thought could you focus on right now? Take care.

Read the accompanying article, How to Train Yourself to be More Positive.

~ Linda-Ann Stewart

How to Train Yourself to be More Positive

May 7, 2019 Linda-Ann Stewart

by Linda-Ann Stewart

Your mind was programmed in the past without your knowledge. If you have negative programming, it was generally in response to fear, anger or safety concerns. Also, you uncritically accepted ideas from your parents, because you were too young to know any better. At that time, you simply didn’t have the experience to reject their ideas. And then you repeated those concepts until their belief became your beliefs.

As you grew up, you acted on those ideas automatically. By not assessing them to see if you wanted to believe that way, you were simply swept along by your thoughts. Because you haven’t challenged them, your subconscious acts on those dominant ideas and thinks they’re what you want. But you have a choice of what to think and believe. You can take control of your life. It all depends on where you put your attention.

What You Focus on Changes Your Brain

What you focus on grows more brain cells in that area of your brain. When you pay attention to the positive and possibilities, your brain grows more cells that support empowerment and action. You literally rewire your brain, which makes it easier to be positive. It’s a cycle that benefits your moods and mindset, and your thoughts inspire your actions.

So how do you choose your thoughts and program your mind? It’s as simple as it sounds, but not necessarily easy.

1. Become aware of what you’re thinking. You have hundreds of thoughts running through your head just below your conscious awareness. The point is to begin noticing what they are. Observe your mood, or if you’re avoiding something or taking some action that isn’t beneficial. Then listen to what you’re telling yourself. Because your self-talk, which are your habitual thoughts, will be underneath your attitude or actions.

2. Break those automatic habitual thoughts. Now that you’ve become aware of what you’re thinking, challenge those thoughts. Determine if they’re helpful or not. Just because they’ve been correct in the past, don’t be deceived. Past experience doesn’t make them true. It may be that they were a self-fulfilling prophecy or that you only filtered information that made them appear to be true. Ask, “In what ways could they be false?”

3. Choose what you’d rather believe. You have the power to change your thinking and your focus. Decide what you want to believe. Some people shift from expecting the worst to expecting the best. What would you choose to think? What idea would better support you and your endeavors? What would be the best outcome that you can imagine? When you consider these questions, you set your subconscious to seek beneficial answers and to find opportunities to make them true.

4. Focus on your new belief. Create a positive statement, mantra, affirmation, image or visualization that fortifies your new belief. At the beginning, you’ll have to use it frequently, because the old ideas will surface to test you. When they do, don’t fight them. They’re not “bad.” They are just from an earlier time and want to make sure it’s safe to make the change. Simply substitute your new ideas for the old ones. Repeat your new belief a thousand times a day if needed.

Keep bringing your thoughts back to the positive. The more you do this, the more brain cells you’ll grow that reflect positivity. This will make it easier and easier to find and focus on the positive. It’ll become a habit for you. When you take charge and master your mind, you condition it to be more positive and improve your outcomes.

Affirmation:
The Universe completely supports my decisions and endeavors. It wants for me what I want for myself. It’s safe for me to make the mental and emotional changes that are necessary for me to experience my desire, goal and vision. The old ideas once served a purpose, but they are now outdated. I now choose and focus on ideas and beliefs that are in line with what I truly want.

Watch the accompanying video, Meditation to Train Yourself to Be Positive.

3 Tips to Handle Obstacles

April 18, 2019 Linda-Ann Stewart

Most people spin off course when an obstacle arises. They don’t seek for the core of the problem and just react. This can make it worse. But you can take charge and discover a lasting solution. Learn what to ask yourself to get yourself back on course.

Transcript:

Thank you for watching. I’m Linda-Ann Stewart, a vision strategist. Today, I’d like to give you 3 tips on how to take charge and handle obstacles. If you don’t know what to do when trouble arises, it can send you spinning off course, can’t it?

Unfortunately, when most people hit an obstacle, they aren’t even sure what the problem is. They just look at what’s obvious and don’t investigate any further, right? This generally won’t solve the problem and may just get you in deeper.

So your first step is to discover what the obstacle actually is. Don’t just react or you could make it worse. Ask yourself if the problem is what’s showing up, like miscommunication, or if it’s a deeper, systemic issue? Keep digging until you identify the core of the obstacle. Once you do, you’ll be able to find creative solutions that will last.

Second, take responsibility for your part in contributing to the obstacle. Sometimes you have had a part in creating it, and sometimes you haven’t. But you still have responsibility to contribute to the solution. Ask yourself these questions, “What could I have done differently to prevent it?” and “What can I do differently from this point on to improve the result?” The answers you come up with will help prevent similar issues from arising.

Third, ask yourself, “What can I learn from this?” Because there’s always something for you to learn to use in the future. This is how we grow, develop and gain experience. If you don’t learn from it, you’ll continue to repeat the pattern, and I don’t think you want that, do you? When you’ve determined what you’ve learned, you can put it into practice.

These 3 tips will get you back on course. About 85% of your success is due to your mindset, which affects how you respond to life and to challenges. By taking charge when an obstacle arises, you empower yourself to work through it and become more successful.

If you’d like more tips on how to increase your productivity and accelerate your success, download my free guide, Take Control of Your Day.

Thank you for watching. Can you commit to putting these tips into action in your life?

Read the accompanying article How Accountability Can Increase Your Success.

~ Linda-Ann Stewart

Empowering Your Mind

Mindset, Motivation and Empowerment

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