Being Genuine and Successful

I follow with interest the blog of John Chow dot com for several reasons. First you never know what he will post and second because he is upfront and genuine in his blog. I am sure, like all of us, there are sides to John Chow that we don't see, but what we do get to see is consistent which adds to the creditability of his statements.

What has this got to do with success?

If you are genuine you don't have to remember the exaggerations, falsehoods (lies) or omissions you have told someone to better your image in their eyes. You are free to express your likes and dislikes and best of all you don't have to spend a lot of time maintaining your facade allowing you to use that energy more productively. You also can more readily ask for help when you need it, admit mistakes so that you can correct them and attract people that appreciate you for who you are. Even if they don't like what you say they will still respect your opinion. People are always ready to help or support people they like or respect.

Behind every story of long lasting success is a genuine person.

Technorati tags: success, genuine

The Secret to Changing Habits

We have our habits because they have a benefit for us. We don't have to think about them or make decisions. You don't want to go through a complicated routine to tie your shoelaces or to drive your car. Some of our habits are easy to change. If we are forced by road construction to find an alternative and we like it, we may never go back to our old route. Some of our habits are hard to change, like how we respond to criticism or how we treat money because we have had them a long time and are old friends.

So how do you change those long term habits?

If you have tried and tried to make a change and gotten nowhere; (smoking, weight, money...), it is likely that you took an all or nothing approach. With gritted teeth and armed with your willpower you decided it was going to change right now and got nowhere at all. The secret is that you don't try to replace your habit all at once. Remember your habits are there because they benefit you in some way so you need to change them in small doable steps.

For example I lost 118 lbs from a weight of 298 to my current weight of 170 by making a small simple change in my eating pattern. I started eating 5 meals a day instead of big meals twice a day. I still ate what ever I wanted but I found that I started to eat smaller meals because my next one was only a few hours away. Over time as I lost weight slowly I changed what I was eating and so on until 14 months later I reached the weight that was comfortable for me. It was relatively painless and intially I would fall off the wagon but I just continued back on my routine. It got easier the longer I did the routine. I eased into the change rather than fighting it.

If you have a long term habit you want to change then try being nice to yourself instead of fighting yourself.

Technorati tags: changing habits, secret, weight loss

Are you in Survivor mode?

You know that you are a survivor when you have lost everything and then were successful in rebuilding your life or it could be your finances or relationships and so on. If it is the third or fourth time that you are rebuilding the same thing then you may be in survival mode.

I call it survivor mode when someone pours all of their energies into protecting what they have because they believe it will be lost again and watch everything intensely for the slighest hint of it reoccuring. When they get that first hint they then act as if it has already happened and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Potential race drivers learn in driving school that if they are sliding towards the wall and put all of their focus on the wall they will hit it. I know that when I see and focus on a pothole in the road ahead of me I am sure to hit it everytime. 

So how do you stop from staring at the pothole?

By focusing on where you want to go. Focus  is like having tunnel vision or wearing blinkers so that you just don't see the problem because all of your attention is on what you want. Yes, it's easier said than done. It will take practice just like the race driver or when you were learning how to ride a bicycle. Each time you will get a bit better until it becomes a habit.

 

 

Technorati tags: Thinking, survivor, habits

Using the power of over 1,000,000 searchers

Saturadays post: A tip or a tool that I have found useful.

Social Bookmarking Sites

 There are several advantages to belonging to a site like del.ico.us one of the popular social bookmarking (Wikipedia) sites on the web.

The first is that if you have a major crash or buy a new computer the bookmarks that you have gathered over time are not lost. The second advantage is you can search the bookmarks of all the members of the community which in the case of del.ico.us is over 1,000,000 members. The third is that you can put a number of tags (labels) on each bookmark that you can use to find a site that you have saved long ago that make sense to you. So a site for music that you want to save you could tag it with the site name eg. Pandora and add tags for music, online, radio or any other tag that makes it easy for you to find it again when you need it.

Del.ico.us is not the only social bookmarking site on the web. Web 2.0 Directory : eConsultant has a list of 54 sites. Read/WriteWeb has a good post comparing some of the different sites, well worth the read.

 

 

Technorati tags: Tips, Social, Bookmarking, Searches