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Developing Your Smart Goals for the Future

  • Posted on July 1, 2009 at 9:05 pm

Would you take a vacation with no itinerary or road map to guide your journey? Would you try to build a doghouse, an entertainment center, or any piece of furniture without looking at the instructions? Hopefully, the answer is no. Yet, many people behave in a similar manner by not putting together goals for their future.

To improve your chances of being successful, particularly in this tough economy, you need to set smart goals for yourself. Here are some tips to get you started.

Think Long Term

What do you hope to achieve as your major life goal or goals? What would you need to accomplish in life to consider yourself successful? Think carefully about these questions and be realistic. The idea of setting goals for yourself is not to have a pie-in-the-sky fantasy that could never amount to anything. The idea is to find ways to accomplish a practical but ultimately satisfying major goal in your life.

You might want to have different types of major goals. For example, you don’t necessarily want your only big life goal to be achieving financial success. You might also want a family or to be good as some type of talent like playing the harp or doing woodcarving.

Consider the Steps

Once you’ve thought about your long term goals, you’ve got to start thinking about what smaller achievements you’ll need to reach on your path to that long-term goal. For example, let’s say you want to become a CEO. What would it take to get to that point? You might need to take some extra classes, perhaps in leadership training. You might want to get a master’s in business administration, if you don’t already have one. These are just a few examples.

For each step along the path, you need to have smart goals set that will build you towards that ultimate goal. Think of them as steps along your path.

Always Stay Realistic

The best way to get discouraged as you’re planning your goals is to start thinking they are impossible. The best way to avoid that mindset is to set realistic goals; things you can see yourself achieving. Start small. For example, if you’re terrified of giving presentations but you know that fear must be overcome to achieve your larger goal then make that one of your smaller goals. Then work towards achieving it.

That’s also important when you making plans: have an idea of how the goal can be achieved. If you have a dream but no concrete method of turning it into a reality, chances are good those smart goals are going to stay unfulfilled.

Moving Forward

After you’ve established your goals, you need to begin working on achieving them so you can keep moving towards your ultimate smart goals. Each time you are successful, think of some great way to reward yourself for a job well done. That motivation is going to keep pushing you forward in the right direction.

Victor Ghebre is the editor of http://www.settinggoals101.com where you get practical tips and information on goal setting, motivation, leadership and more.

Visit http://www.settinggoals101.com/smart-goals.html to learn how
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Article Source: Developing Your Smart Goals for the Future

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What Is The Difference Between Self Worth and Self Esteem?

  • Posted on July 1, 2009 at 9:04 pm

The journey towards greater self awareness is long and trying at times but undeniably fulfilling as you proceed. The more self aware you become, the greater your ability to navigate and appreciate the complex human interactions you encounter in your life and handle them to your benefit. One of the key areas of knowledge that is essential to understand on your journey is the difference between self worth and self esteem. While many confuse the two, in fact they are quite different.

The best way to think of self worth is to think of how much you feel you ‘deserve’ something. Many highly capable and talented people sabotage themselves or don’t reach their full potential because deep down inside they don’t feel they truly ‘deserve’ what it is they are trying for. Much of ‘self worth’ has to do with our subconscious feelings of if we have truly ‘earned’ something.

Our upbringing and the environment in which we are raised can also play a big part of making us feel either ‘worthy’ of success and accomplishment or not. While self worth can be changed, it is through hard work and a gradual process where we put the time and effort in and develop the self-competence and ‘sweat equity’ in whatever it is we are pursuing. The goal of course is to develop a life in which you are truly in sync with your self worth and that it is aligned with your goals thereby permitting yourself to achieve your full potential.

Self esteem on the other hand is more immediate and temperamental. One’s self esteem can change from moment to moment or hour to hour based on more superficial things such as how we look on a particular day or how we’re dressed. If we perform well in a certain situation or are commended or accomplish a challenging task, our self esteem can get a temporary boost. At the same time our self esteem can take a hit fairly easily as well if we fail at something or get rejected in some way. As can be seen, self esteem is more an hour by hour and situational kind of thing.

Of the two, it should be apparent that the underlying self worth is the harder and also more important to concentrate on and cultivate. Self esteem is certainly important but is more fickle in its nature. It’s immediacy however makes it comparatively easier to fix and examining one’s situations on a day to day basis to make sure you optimize your self esteem and avoid situations where it will get knocked is a good strategy to undertake.
Constant good self esteem can aid in the process of pursuing the improvement of self worth while frequently poor self esteem can get in the way. It is therefore important to understand the differences in them but to work on both simultaneously.

Make sure to viisit SelfAwareness101.com for more great articles and insight.

Article Source: What Is The Difference Between Self Worth and Self Esteem?

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The Power of Belief to Transform Your Experience

  • Posted on July 1, 2009 at 7:57 pm

Just had a great conversation with a friend who was telling me about some business associates who have had a complete turn around on their dream.

A few months ago, they were enthusiastic and on fire for their future. Unfortunately, they didn’t keep their mental doors locked … and something negative slipped in, and they dropped the pursuit of their dream.

All failure begins this way.

People may have high hopes, but when their perceived circumstances suggest a lesser outcome is more likely (perhaps via an unexpected obstacle), this perceived discrepancy becomes the initial seed of failure.

Being unaware of how this process destroys the dreams of countless people, they fall victim to its seduction.

Take a look at what happens and how this process works:

1. We all have two parts in our thinking: One is our dream or goal, and the second is the belief that it might not ever happen. This is where most people start out.

2. Next, something begins to spark or inspire a person to take action on their dream. (Yet, not having a full understanding of the Laws of Success, they are actually moving in the direction of their dream with a great deal of ignorance. Ignorance is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as a person stays open to what he/she must learn along the way. The problem is many individuals are not open to growth and change.)

3. Their subconscious manifests an obstacle to keep them from experiencing anything “new”. This new challenge is perceived as a point of failure.

It is at this point in a person’s journey where moving forward becomes too painful or fearful, and a person usually chooses to stay “safe”. The truth, however, is that this is also the point where moving forward would allow a person to see the bigger win they are hoping for!

You see, YOUR beliefs control your perception of everything in your world, which in turn creates your reality. If you want to change your reality, you must use new information to change your beliefs AND your perception. Until you see things differently, you will continue to makes choices that keep you where you are. And eventually, you will give up on your dreams.

In other words, your experiences reflect your belief system. This means that if there is anything in your life you don’t want to experience all you need to do to change “it” is to change the belief that caused “it” in the first place!

In theory, it’s really simple … but in practice, many people find it difficult because they really don’t understand all beliefs are nothing but illusions anyway. But these illusions are so strong people think that they are real when actually they are not.
The power of belief is astounding. I encourage you to study its mysteries for yourself and see what changes you truly do have the power to make.

“Just Believe”

How would your life change if you stepped into the full embodiment of Your Highest Self today? Would you like to step up to the next level of life? At power of belief receive David Neagle’s free audio course, The Art of Success, and step up to the next level of life!

Article Source: The Power of Belief to Transform Your Experience

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Self Improvement Solutions – 5 Tips For Maintaining Your Self Esteem

  • Posted on July 1, 2009 at 7:56 pm

Self esteem can be very hard to build and once you have it, it can be a burden to maintain. Everyday life will test your self-esteem; see how much you can take before it finally gets through to you. Never let it get the best of you and never let it destroy you because once you lose all self esteem, you’re back to square one and the journey will be long to regain you esteem. In this article discover 5 things you should avoid to keep your esteem high.

1 – Negative Environment
This is the place where non – appreciative people thrive. Everyone will have one of these in their life may it be work, school or even at home. Any work you do is not appreciated even if you worked yourself to the bone. This environment will have you feeling bad so avoid it at all costs as it will ruin your self-esteem.

2 – Other People’s Behaviour
If someone is in a bad mood leave them alone. People who are in bad moods are most likely to attack if provoked. Anyone that sends out a bad vibe you should immediately back off from as it may affect you too or they could attack (verbally) denting your esteem.

3 – Changing Environment
This isn’t avoidable but it is something you should look out for. Sometime in your life you will experience a change may that be house, school, job or even relationships. Changes will be hard to adjust to and some big changes can seriously hurt your self-esteem (a change to a lower paid job because you weren’t as good at your last one) but remember that with change you can easily adapt to it.

4 – Past Experience
This is a major self-esteem crusher. Some things happen in the past and every now and then we will rethink these events and some will even cry. A good example and probably most common past experience that would crush you would be a divorce from your parent (you feel you caused it) or your parents leaving you for adoption. Sure the past can come back to haunt us, but the past is the past and you have to put that behind you and think about the future.

5 – Negative World View
The world is full of negativity; war, famine, poverty…All this can hurt you as you know you can’t do anything to help but you can. You may donate clothes, food or even money to help people who need it more and you are guaranteed to get a major boost of esteem.

Don’t get knocked on your feet by people who are trying to pull you down. We are given our options and it is us who choose which one =s to take. Follow this guide to make sure that you don’t get pulled down by the world and so that you can keep on top.

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Article Source: Self Improvement Solutions – 5 Tips For Maintaining Your Self Esteem

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