Robert Gaston

7 Beliefs That Will Stop You Losing Weight

Steven Aitchison — Mon, 02 Aug 2021 14:02:00 GMT

Most of us want to shed some pounds or there have been times when we've wanted to drop a clothes size or two. The problem is we have told ourselves a lot of stories about losing weight which have then formed deep seated beliefs.

If you believe something, in your mind it is true. The same is true with the beliefs you have about losing weight.

If you've told yourself often enough 'I can never lose weight, no matter what I try' – guess what, your mind tells your body that statement, and that information is then transferred to the cells of your body. Sound ridiculous? – Read the Biology of Belief by Bruce Lipton who speaks about your beliefs being stored at the cellular level of your body.

So maybe it's time we re-evaluated our beliefs about losing weight and started forming new beliefs about how easy it is to lose weight – Check out The Belief Principle to help you with this.

7 Beliefs That Will Stop You Losing Weight

1. Losing weight is hard.

If we believe losing weight is going to be hard – guess what – it will be!

This is a very strong reason why many people struggle to lose weight, and why many give up before they make a dent in their goal of losing weight.

Losing weight doesn't start with going on a diet or starting a new fitness regime, it starts with your mindset.

Work on your mindset a few weeks before starting your new eating plan and fitness regime. This can be done using affirmations, or searching for evidence to prove that you've lost weight in the past and you can do it again.

2. I have to go to the gym to lose weight.

First off, there’s nothing wrong with going to the gym. Many people do it, and many people reap positive benefits from doing it. However, if you hold this particular belief, you will become a slave to your workout routine if you want to lose weight or maintain weight loss. This can become problematic over time.

When we feel like we “have to” work out, it becomes just another thing on our to-do list, and it starts to feel like a chore.

One of the best things you can do to lose weight and get into a routine is to do something you enjoy whilst doing a little exercise. For example I read my book or listen to an audiobook whilst I am walking my dog. Reading is something I enjoy, but I don't particularly enjoy walking, however since I now associate walking with doing something I enjoy I have learned to enjoy walking as well, which in turn has helped me to lose weight.

3. People gain weight when they get older.

Four generations of beautiful women sitting together in a camomile field and smiling

I think this is one of the beliefs where it is more of an excuse than anything else, however it doesn't stop people believing this.

You need to change this belief, as you do not necessarily put on weight just because you get older. It may be that you slow down a little as you get older and that contributes to you putting on a little extra weight, or your metabolism slows down due to a build up of bad habits.

There is no evidence to show that we naturally put on weight as we get older so again it's another belief that we can work on eliminating.

4. I'm a too busy.

Reality check: What you're really saying is I don't want to prioritise losing weight over other things. Things like watching TV, having a long lie in the mornings, spending too much time on the internet are all things we can do less of in order to make some time to get more healthy

you have the same amount of time as everyone else, but you might not be setting your goals as a high enough priority. Those with high priorities, no matter how committed their time, find a way to make sure they give attention to their priorities.

If weight loss is a goal, it might take a little more time to plan, prepare and cook meals, but as a high priority it might mean you spend less time doing other things that don’t help.

If you truly want to lose weight you won't look for excuses you'll just do it and you'll prioritise it so you achieve your goal.

5. I can’t do it.

If you have tried unsuccessfully to lose weight many times before, you may find yourself struggling with a strong belief that you can’t lose weight.

Maybe you believe that you can only lose so much weight, or you may believe that you can’t lose any at all. Either way, this kind of belief will override your desire to eat healthy and exercise, so that it seems like a constant battle to keep going and making any progress at all.

When you tell yourself a hundred times that "I just can't do it" you're sending a ton of signals to your brain, your body and the cells in your body.

Think about something you're good at. The reason you're good at it is because you've told yourself you're good at it so many times and other people have affirmed this too that it has become a deep seated belief. That's how beliefs are formed; the negative beliefs as well as the positive beliefs.

Whatever you tell yourself and believe about yourself is true so if you want to change something in your life give yourself different beliefs and the way to do this is tell yourself different stories about yourself.

6. My life will be perfect when you lose weight.

No. Ask yourself how you'll feel when you lose your extra weight? Your answers may surprise you. These answers are the clues to why your body is holding on to what you want it to get rid of.

Striving toward the way you want to feel will increase chemical neurotransmitters sometimes called happy hormones. This starts the process of balancing your hormones, which will help your body release unnecessary weight.

If you truly want to change your beliefs about losing weight then start changing your beliefs and redefine what it means to lose weight.

If you want a quick and easy way to change your beliefs about losing weight check out the

7. Losing weight

Now, I've spoken about losing weight all through this article but the truth is if we tell ourselves we are 'losing' something our minds automatically get it back or keep it.

So stop saying 'Losing' weight and instead use some other phrases like:

Burning fat
Shedding some pounds
Getting fitter
Get healthier
Look after myself

Conclusion

The way we speak to ourselves has a massive impact on our lives, much more than you can imagine. Becoming healthier and fitter is one area that ma lot of us struggle with and it's largely in part due to the things we tell ourselves, some of which have been mentioned above.

You can change any aspect of your life simply by changing what you tell yourself.

If you want more information on changing your beliefs and how they impact your life then read my book The Belief Principle

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Seven Practical Ways To Be More Optimistic

Steven Aitchison — Wed, 14 Jul 2021 17:53:00 GMT

All of us have moments when we feel sad or anxious about our life. Feeling down is normal, but that doesn't make it a good experience. Unhappiness, in excess, can also impair a person's ability to cope with life's challenge and to be productive. Learning to be more optimistic is the antidote to sadness and worry. An optimistic attitude makes it much easier to overcome difficulties and to live well. Here are seven good ways to have a more optimistic attitude to life.

1. Take responsibility.

Some people try to blame others for anything that goes wrong in their life. Recognizing that you and only you are in charge of your life will give you a healthier outlook on the world. If things go badly, don't look around to see who you can blame. Look at yourself first. Discovering what you did wrong will give you knowledge of how to do better in the future. Knowing that you are master of your own fate will allow you to put your mistake behind you and proceed forward optimistically.

2. Reflect.

Taking some time, even just a few minutes, to step back and consider all you have to be thankful for can really change your attitude to life. Instead of only seeing the bad side of things, you'll be reminded of all you have to be glad for. Think about things like your family, your friends, your health, and your career. Is every aspect of your life a reason for joy? No, of course not. But you probably have more to be optimistic about than you had thought.

3. Make plans.

Optimism is all about looking towards the future. If you have nothing to look forward to, being optimistic will be impossible. Solve the problem by setting goals for your life. Want to start your own business? Want to get in shape? Whatever your dream, make a plan with a concrete goal for your future. With a vision of what's to come in mind, you'll feel as if your life has direction and meaning.

4. Take pride.

A big part of feeling optimistic is knowing that you are capable and competent. Negative people will credit even their own success to luck or the efforts of others. Look back at your life and everything you've accomplished. Examine each event and you'll see how your success was due to your own skills, habits, character, and perseverance. It's not a coincidence that you achieved these things, so why not look to the future with hope? More success can be expected.

5. Get help from others.

Inevitably, there will be times when you feel pessimistic and unhappy. In such situations you need good friends to help put you back on even keel. If you've lost perspective and are seeing the world in a completely negative light, a friend or family member can help you recover. Negativity can be like a poison that worsens with time. Stop the damage by venting your feelings to someone you know will help you see the good side of life again.

6. Take joy in simple things.

Pessimists see only the bad side of reality. Such people think that the things they don't have are the most valuable things in the world. A healthier attitude is to get happiness from simple things, such as the beauty of nature, your health, or your closest family members. Money, material things, and status don't really make us happy, so don't waste your time wishing you had them. Taking joy in what is already yours is a better path to optimism and happiness.

7. Improve your surroundings.

The TV you watch, the books you read, and the people you spend time with all have an enormous effect on your mentality. Surround yourself with negativity and you will soon acquire a harmful mindset. Examine your life and cut out the most damaging influences, replacing them with more positive things. For example, stop watching that TV show that leaves you depressed and angry. Use the time to do something productive instead, or watch a more upbeat program.

Optimism is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself. Optimism is like an all-purpose tool that makes the task of living life well far easier to accomplish. Don't let negativity and a pessimistic mindset ruin your life — begin a new life of optimism and happiness today.

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The ESM Method Of Goal Setting

Steven Aitchison — Wed, 23 Jun 2021 11:01:06 GMT

It's taken me years to find a great method for easy, achievable goal setting.

I've finally found it.

This method has helped set and achieve countless goals in my life and I'd like to share it with you.

It's called the 'ESM Method' of setting goals, and it's extremely easy.

I first discovered this when I was writing my book: The Belief Principle

I'll give you a quick overview, then explain the theory behind. I will then give you some examples to better illustrate how it works.

The Easy, Stretch, Moonshot Method

ESM stands for – Easy, Stretch, Moonshot.

A very quick overview of it is when you are setting a goal in your life create three different versions of your goal: an easy version (Easy) a version that is more difficult but still achievable with a lot of work (Stretch) and a version that is just way beyond what you think is achievable (Moonshot).

To give you an example:

I want to lose weight as I've just been over indulging for the last 6 months. Now is the time to really get serious about getting healthy and shedding some fat.

What most people would do is look at how overweight they think they are according to a BMI calculator or some other measurement and then set a goal based on that.

Using the ESM Method, if I am 30 pounds overweight, I would set three goals: An easy goal, a Stretch goal and a Moonshot goal.

Easy goal: – 7 Pounds in 1 month
Stretch goal: – 14 pounds in 1 month
Moonshot goal: – 30 Pounds in 1 month

What most people would automatically do without using the ESM method is pick a goal that is relatively easy, like losing 7 pounds.

The problem with this is we tend to give up quicker with an easy target as we think we can do it anytime we want.

This means we don't prepare for it as well as we would have had we chosen the stretch goal or the moonshot goal.

When you set a stretch goal you tend to prepare much more for it e.g. thinking about the month you're going to start; is it school holidays, or you on holiday, do you have to travel for work etc. So, you would pick a month that you're going to be busy at work, the kids are at school, and your mind is generally going to be preoccupied with other things. This gives you a better chance of sticking to your goal.

The Purpose of The Moonshot Target

The moonshot target is there to stretch your mind.

Imagine for a second I asked you how much more money do you think you could easily earn per day. Now, the average person earns around $100 per day, before tax and insurance, which is daily amount taken from their income from their job.

So, you might say you could easily earn an extra $10 per day ($70 per week or $280 per month) doing some overtime and you might stop there.

If I asked you to give me an easy figure, a stretch figure and a moonshot figure, you might say:
$10 would be easy
$50 would be a stretch
$100 would be a moonshot target

However, had I asked you to think of ways of earning an extra $100 per day, a moonshot target, your mind would be stretched to the limit. So you might think about renting out a room in your home, selling items on Facebook marketplace, getting an extra part time job, renting out your car, teaching something you're skilled at, sell services on Fiverr, start a blog and so on.

The thing is your mind has been stretched to the extreme and now the perception of your stretch goal becomes easy, and your easy goal is like childs play.

You see what you're doing here, you're opening your mind from the outset rather than closing it at the outset.

Opening Your Mind

We are programmed to think of the path of least resistance when it comes to setting goals which means we tend to lower our targets.

When you open your mind to a much higher target than you think you can "realistically' achieve you open your mind to new possibilities that would have been closed to you had you set your mind on the easy target.

What happens when you set a higher target for yourself is your mind immediately goes to solution mode. In the background you constantly ask how can I achieve this and your unconscious mind comes up with lots of possibilities.

Here's an example

You have a goal to write a book within the space of 1 year and the book will be around 100,000 words in length.

So you set yourself 3 targets

Write the book in 1 year – (Easy (ish)

Write the book in 6 months (Stretch)

Write the book in 3 months (Moonshot)

When you start from the perspective of writing a book within a year, your mind immediately shuts down as it doesn't have to do any work, it has no solutions to solve. Your mind will say
"okay, that's about 300 words per day, which is about 20 minutes per day, dead easy no thinking time involved in this."

When you start from the Moonshot target your unconscious mind has something to solve?

How am I going to write a book in 3 months?
How can I make more time to write?
How can I make a plot for the book quicker?
How can i write faster?
Could I get up an hour earlier to write?
How can I stay disciplined?

You see the mind has lot of problems to solve from the get go and starts opening the mind up to look for possibilities and solutions as to how you can write a book in 3 months.

Try It Now

Think of two things you want to achieve within the next year and try the ESM method of creating that goal starting from the Moonshot down the the easy.

You'll find that your ae much more opena nd will believe that you can acheive your goal much easy when your mind has stretched itself to the limit.

Let me know how you got on.

7 Things You Don't Want to Learn Too Late in Life

Daniel Kim — Wed, 23 Jun 2021 00:00:01 GMT

Updated 23rd June 2021

Most of the time, people don't assess the situation they're in until a crisis hits. And this usually comes at a time when it's already too late to alter their course of action. The chances we miss, the relationships we didn't cherish or unfinished tasks we didn't complete. Nobody wants to learn things too late in life and mourn on the regret of not having taken action on something

I don't even remember the amount of times that I have thought, "I wish I knew that when I was younger". I'm sure most of us had wished that we could go back to our younger self with all the knowledge we have right now. So here are 7 things that you don't want to learn too late in life.

1. Stop shoulding on yourself

We go through life learning at a young age all the things that we should do and even punished for not doing them. Then we look around other people's lives and see that they're doing the same thing, so we don't question it. But we don't stop to ask ourselves if this is what we truly want.

Do you really want to be a lawyer, or has your parents just instilled this belief upon you? Do you really need college for your passion, or has society made you think it's mandatory for success. Will Smith's parents almost forced college on him, but after much fighting they gave him the opportunity of one year to chase his musical dreams. I'm assuming there would be no Fresh Prince if Will Smith shoulded himself.

There's a new American dream now. This generation has chiseled and revised the American dream into something more viable: living your passion. We take the lessons of the old timers about hard work, dedication and sacrifice, and put it into something we absolutely love doing. Demand something more for yourself from the smidgen of time we're privileged to have here on this earth.

2. Facing your fears

The skill of facing your fear is one of the most obvious, but sometimes the most crucial. It doesn't matter who you are – elite athlete, millionaire, or Chuck Norris; we all have some type of level of fear. A level of discomfort when a situation arises. But without putting yourself face to face with your fears, you can never fully get to where you want to be. There really are no shortcuts.

Most people will probably fear failure. It can paralyze you from moving forward. It can chew you up and spit you out. But look at it this way, failure is something that is absolutely essential for you to be able to enjoy success. Would sunny days feel so special, if there weren't rainy ones?

None of us are perfect, we all make mistakes. But with every mistake, every failure, it slowly transitions into wisdom. The wisdom of knowing how to do it better. The wisdom that those same failures you encountered, developed you into the person you are today.

3. Small steps for big changes

woman walks alone on a deserted beach, solitude, serene, lonely concept. carefree vacation in nature

Small steps aren't about limiting yourself from growing to large, too quick. It's a matter of being able to start (especially with something you fear). It's about growing momentum and putting yourself into a position where you know you can succeed. The thought of doing everything at once exhausts my brain just thinking about it. I used to put way too many things on my to-do list, attempt to get everything done, and end up procrastinating because of how much there is to do.

Break the monster down into bite sized pieces. Want to accomplish more? Start with just two of the most important things on your to do list. Want to change your diet? Start with one healthy meal a day.

I know my lazy days are going to come. But by breaking a goal down to just 10 minutes a day will help you persist in the long run. So when I don't feel like working out, I say to myself just 10 minutes a day. Those 10 minutes almost always turn into a full blown workout!

4. This is your moment

You can learn a thing or two from a child. Their minds only fixate on the playground around them. They're not thinking of their next homework assignment or what they cried about yesterday. They just go out and purely enjoy themselves in the moment: running, laughing and playing.

Every moment that passes by you, is another moment that you can't get back. It's a moment that you could have seized. These moments pass us while our minds are somewhere else. You miss the interesting people around you, the beautiful environments, and most of all the life that you're living.

5. Don't make things bigger than they are

Yes, we can learn from a child, but that's not to say we are children. When a child gets upset, they're upset. They get consumed by what upset them and they think it's the end of the world. But as we get older, we live through many stressful things in our lives. We learn the ability to cope and withstand things. We now know that we should not be throwing that tantrum when you don't get the piece of chocolate. But, sometimes we still carry that type of mindset into minor problems we face throughout the day.

When we experience stress – a physiological response of fight or flight is triggered. This is actually very natural, and probably helped our ancestors survive. The part of the brain that creates this response cannot fully distinguish it as a real threat or a perceived threat. But understanding that this physiological reaction is a natural part of us can help us see that nothing is actually attacking us. Life really isn't as serious as you think it is.

The problems that you have now aren't going to matter in a year; it might not even matter by next week! One moment your heart is racing a mile a minute, the next you're laughing at the incident. I remember all the times arguing with my significant other. The arguments were small, but it led to many big fights. Looking back, I could have replied with just a simple "okay," and it would have been fine.

6. The world doesn't revolve around you

You have to understand that people don't think of you as much as you think they do. They have their own minds, insecurities and problems to think about. To them, they are the main character of their own story and if they are thinking of you, it's probably because it interconnects to their own lives.

Even if this thought makes you feel less significant, it helps you put into perspective that all the worries and regrets of what people think of you are only the construct of your own mind. Understanding this lets me feel less anxious about other people judging me and helps me gain confidence in my every day actions.

7. Invest time in others

Recently, my grandmother unexpectedly went to the emergency room because of heart pain. I immediately raced to the hospital and went there only to find her on the bed with a huge grin on her face. I was relieved to know she was okay. But what dawned on me was her ability to remain so happy even when IVs were hooked into her arms. But I knew her joy came from the presence of my whole family being there to support her.

How would it feel if you were sick in the hospital and not a single soul came to visit? Invest some of the time you have in caring for the people close to you, even if it means sacrificing some personal time. Treasuring your relationships with your loved ones is something that should never be overlooked. You know the saying "Live like it's the last day of your life" – take that up another notch and treat your loved ones like it's their last day on earth. They will notice.

Final Thoughts

As every passing chapter comes to an end, you'll realize that you're not going to regret the things that you've done, but rather the things that you haven't. Because the difference between a person that becomes who they want to be and the person that doesn't, is their willingness to take real steps every day to achieve it.

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14 Little Thoughts That Can Shatter Your Dreams

Steven Aitchison — Mon, 21 Jun 2021 09:20:00 GMT

Updated 21st June 2021

Like a rough cut diamond cutting through glass, your negative thoughts can penetrate your defences to leave broken shards of glass strewn across your mind. These tiny little time bombs might not seem like a big deal now, but in time they grow, they fester and eventually shatter your dreams.

We all have negative thoughts that play on our mind day in and day out, but we have to catch them before they set in, and bury themselves in the deep recesses of your mind.

Take back control

There's so much stuff we can't control in our lives, and yet taking charge of our own thoughts is one of the easiest, with practice, things we can control. So, it makes sense to take control of everything we can in order to start living the life we desire.

A lot of people I speak to say 'oh, it's impossible to stay positive all the time, it's just not realistic.' Whilst it's not impossible, I am not advocating that the world is all unicorns and rainbows, but what I am suggesting is at least take some control back of our thoughts by being mindful of how we think, what we say, and how we act. It all starts with your thoughts: your beliefs, your words, your actions, your habits, your values and eventually your destiny.

So here's a few of the worst culprits:

14 Little Thoughts That Can Shatter Your Dreams

1. I've had my heart broken too many times to love again

Surprisingly I hear this a lot from the readers on my Facebook page, and it just doesn't make sense.

You may have had your heart broken, but that means you weren't with the right person. By learning just how much to open up emotionally to someone you learn more and more about yourself and exactly how much you are worth. You are worth so much more than you think, so stop giving people discounts, but don't give up on love.

When you learn to accept yourself for being the amazing person you are nobody will be able to break your heart. You will know instinctively when it is time to go your separate ways from someone, that includes friends, family and the people you love.

2. I'm not good enough

Effectively what you're saying here is 'I can't be bothered to take the time and become good enough.'

That sounds a bit harsh, but think about it for a second, nobody was good enough until they put in the time and effort to become good enough. This goes for everything in your life whether you want to write a book, become an actor, start a business, or raise a child.

You are good enough to be where you are right now. if you want to be in an elevated position in a specific area of your life, then you keep on working at it. You will find that when you get to the top of your specific area, there will always be a way to become better.

So, you ARE good enough, a better affirmation to use then would be "I am getting better at (insert your specific area here) e.g.

I am getting better at writing
I am getting better at loving myself
I am getting better at loving others
I am getting better at being a mum/dad/parent
I am getting better in my job

3. I don't have enough time to do that

Okay if we're being really honest here, you're really saying 'This is not important enough for me to give it my time.'

I am terrible at sending out birthday cards on time and I always make the same excuse 'I'm just so busy with other stuff that it slipped my mind.' which is utter rubbish, I have everyone's birthday on my calendar in my kitchen, but I keep putting off getting that birthday card until the last minute. So I am effectively saying your birthday is not as important as all the other stuff I have going on in my life, which is a selfish.

So now if I ever miss a birthday I drive over to the person's house which can be 50 miles away and give them their card, which is just mental

You make time for what you prioritise, don't ever make the excuse of not having enough time as that is insulting to yourself and to the person you're making the excuse to.

4. I wasn't born with the talent to do that

Nobody is born knowing how to play the piano, or knowing how to play golf, or how to write. Yes, some people have a natural aptitude for doing certain things, but they're not born with the knowledge.

If you really want to do something in life which requires a degree of skill, and I mean really want it, you need to put in the effort to master that skill.

Do not think about how well you're doing or what the outcome is, keep working at your skill until you become unconscious competent (Four stages of competence)

5. I will put my dream on hold until I have done (insert something here)

If you're not living your own dreams you're helping someone else live theirs. Your dreams are an important part of living life to the full and without them, you might just wake up on your 70th birthday and think 'Shit, I wish I had chased my dream, instead of working all those hours for someone else.'

Don't put off your dreams until something else happens e.g. I will go to university when the kids are grown (newsflash, your kids will always be kids until the day you die).

6. What if I fail

So what if you fail, at least you've have learned something along the way. When you jump a net usually appears to support you. Not doing something you want to do for fear of failure is failure itself.

Ask yourself this one question every time you think a thought like this:

What is the worst that can happen? When you have figured out what the worst is then you will probably see it's not actually that bad.

Now when you have figured out what the worst that can happen is, you now have to flip and ask: What's the best thing that can happen if I do this.

7. It's too difficult

Nobody ever grows inside their comfort zone. What that means is if it's not challenging then it's not worth having, you won't learn anything. Imagine for a second if everything you wanted in life came to you easily: you wanted to become an Indie 500 driver, boom you got it, you wanted to write a best selling novel, boom you get it on your first try. Pretty soon you would become bored with life and nothing would challenge you. We need things to be difficult in order to appreciate the journey we took to reach our goals.

8. They were so lucky to get to where they are today

This is a biggie. I used to think this a lot before I started my online business. I would look at people like Eben Pagan, Frank Kern, Jeff Walker and my other online heroes and think 'Yeah but you started at a time when it was easy' or 'yeah but you've got the personality to pull that off' or other excuses for me not being able to become a success. As soon as a realised just how hard these people worked to get to where they are today, I changed my whole way of thinking and got off my arse and worked harder until things started happening.

9. My life is shit

Please! Get off the 'poor me' train, and believe me I've been on that train many times in my life. You have so much to be thankful for it's just not real. you might say, you don't know my situation, and that's true, but whatever way you look at it you can always find a ton of reasons to be grateful for the life you have.

10. It's just not the right time

So many relationships, businesses, dreams, and goals have been broken with this one little thought. There's never a good time to start anything. The important thing is to start it with a good heart and keep going and give it your very best shot.

11. I'm too old

Eh! No you're not.

12. People don't like me

Sorry, you're not a mind reader, you can't possibly know if people like you or not. This is all to do with feeling uncomfortable in your own skin. Work on yourself so that you're so comfortable with yourself that you just don't care what others think of you, at least this way you're being true to yourself.

13. One lie is not that bad

One lie leads to another to cover up the first one, and then it snowballs from there. Practice being radically honest, if someone asks your opinion about something ask them first if they really want to know what you think, that way the people who really want the truth will value what you have to say. Don't lie to cover up your embarrassment of a situation, come clean, take the consequences and move on, at least you'll gain some respect for being honest.

14. I wish I was intelligent enough

Big secret here: you're as intelligent as you believe you are. If you believe you're a not intelligent then guess what, your brain looks for ways to prove you're not intelligent. If you want to start to believe you're intelligent, start feeding your brain intelligent material, and it sure as hell isn't watching the latest episode of 'The Real Housewives of 'I've got so much money and bored that I'll make a TV program about it'

Over to you

I've just read over this list again and it comes across as being a bit harsh, but I hope you take it in the way it's intended which is a gentle kick up the arse

Leave a comment below to let me know what you think about the list and add any more that you have come across

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12 Ways to Forgive Your Parents for Doing Such a Crummy Job of Raising You

Ken Wert — Sat, 19 Jun 2021 11:00:58 GMT

Updated 19th June 2021

"Children begin by loving their parents; after a time, they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them." ~ Oscar Wilde

Childhood Pain

Have you been holding onto childhood pain? Do you harbor deep-seeded resentment for the way your parents raised you? Do you blame them for the circumstances of your life today?

Obviously, not everyone has been blessed with a happy home with patient, loving, attentive parents.

If you are one of the oh-so-many who harbor pent-up feelings toward mom or dad and those pent-up feelings affect you today, you are not alone. Nor are you condemned to a life plagued by the energy-sapping, happiness-stunting emotions of deep-seeded anger and resentment.

It's time to let go and move on! And not because your parents necessarily deserve it, they may not! At all. But YOU do! You deserve to be free of such emotional poison. It's time to let it go.

12 Ways to Let Go and Move on

Following, are specific steps you can take to unpack the baggage of blame and anger and resentment and, perhaps, begin to establish a new kind of relationship with your parents, or at least be able to let the past be buried in the past so that you can begin moving forward untethered to the pull of yesterday.

1. Redefine Your Relationship

Allow people to evolve and change. And remind yourself that parents are people too. Some parents were horrible at parenting but not so bad as friends to their adult children. So be it. Let that be the redefinition of your relationship. Try not to judge the current reality against the context of the past. Instead, try to accept things as they are today.

2. Be Grateful for the Blueprint of what NOT to do Raising Your Kids

We don't come with owner's manuals. And yet, we are far more complex than any piece of furniture or computer program we have ever had to put together or install.

We are also all-too-familiar with the problems that can arise with do-it-yourself projects. Pieces don't fit. Installations fail. It's at those moments we are glad there are trouble-shooting instructions or FAQ pages provided.

Well, guess what! Your parents' mistakes are now effectively your trouble-shooting guide and FAQ page. "What happens if I scream and shout at my kids?" you might want to know. "Oh yeah, my parents did that to me. I know exactly what happens!"

3. Forgive Them for Being the Only Thing They Knew how to Be

Impatient, unkind and punitive parents aren't impatient, unkind and punitive simply because you were unworthy of their patience, kindness or compassion. They were that way because they are impatient, unkind and punitive people. In other words, how you were treated is all about them, not you.

So, here's the point I'm trying to make: All our parenting is done out of the context of who we are and what we know. Each one of us is limited in giving love by the limits to our capacity to love. Your parents were likewise limited. That understanding can lead to compassion which can lead to forgiveness.

4. Recognize They are likely Products of Their own Parents' Mistakes and Flaws

We reap what we sow. And we also "reap" the traits that our parents "sowed" as they raised us. We are products of both parental successes and mistakes.

And while we can always learn and grow, most people seem to live on automatic pilot. So, most of us are something within a stones throw of our parents' behaviors, attitudes and habits. Likewise, mom and dad are products of their parent's parenting too. Forgive them of that.

5. Write it Down

Sometimes we bury our feelings where they fester and decay, and then begin to infect other parts of the psyche as well.

Sometimes, like the body expelling poisons, the soul also needs to vomit emotional toxins. Doing this on paper helps sort out feelings and make sense of things. There can be a cleansing quality to putting pain to paper too. Be as explicit and detailed as you can. Dump everything onto the page. It may take several days to get it all out. That's okay; take the time.

When you're done, read it as a solemn recognition of the past. Then light the thing on fire and burn it. Let its ashes float away on the wind or up the vent. As the smoke lifts, feel the emotional baggage float away with it. Feel it rise with the ashes and smoke and disappear and be gone.

And then be done with it. I would suggest this be a one-time expulsion of pent-up emotional poison. Doing this repeatedly can have the unhappy effect of amplifying, rather than muting, the past's continuing influence as you keep swimming in that polluted pool.

6. Learn from Parental Strengths and Weaknesses

Your parents were not just your parents. They, like all of us, are complex beings with a mixed bag of character strengths and flaws. Perhaps you ended up on the receiving end of their flaws. But they are not likely without redeeming qualities as well. See that in them. And commit to learning from both their strengths and weaknesses. And be grateful for the life-lessons learned.

7. Read the Book, A Child Called It, then be Grateful

If you've read this autobiographical work by Dave Pelzer, you likely know your parents may not have been all that bad after all. Be thankful they at least had something going for them.

This idea is something reminiscent of the principle so powerfully reflected in the Persian proverb: "I wept because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet." So too, we weep for having flawed parents until we read books like A Child Called It and see that at least ours had some "feet."

8. Let the Work You do in Your Own Home be the Salve that Heals the Wounds in Your Heart

If you grew up without love, smother your children with it. If you grew up with family secrets, don't have any. If you grew up with harsh criticism and ridicule and impatience, then be sure to compliment, love, and exercise patience with your children.

Let the example of decency and compassion you share with them be the focus of your emotional healing. But be sure not to commit the sin of overcompensation. Your role here is to love, not spoil.

In a sense, you will be parenting yourself with the love and compassion you wish your parents had shown you as you shower it on your own kids, in some way, making amends for what your parents failed to provide.

In other words, parent yourself vicariously through parenting your own children. Extend to them what your parents failed to extend to you and allow the love flowing from you to your children to heal the wounds from the lack of love flowing to you as a child.

9. Take Responsibility for Your Life

This can be a hard pill to swallow. Still, it's important to stop blaming your parents for current problems. Did they lay the foundation for the problem? Perhaps. But it's yours now. That's the inescapable bottom line of it.

You make the decision every day to hold on or let go. That's your decision only. Accept that as fact. Own it completely and release your parents from the responsibility you've pinned to their shoulders for too long.

Don't get me wrong, here. I am not suggesting your past is your fault. I'm saying that your present is the result of choices you have made, as you have allowed your past to influence them.

This step is admittedly difficult, but it is empowering and liberating once it's fully accepted and internalized.

I am who I choose to be. I feel what I choose to feel by choosing what thoughts I choose to harbor and how I choose to think about things. I choose to learn ways to change my thinking and interpretations of life or I choose not to. These are all my choices. And they are yours too.

Final word on this point: Your parents may be responsible for creating the emotional context. You are responsible for keeping that context alive. So stop feeding it and let it wither on the vine.

10. Talk to Them

Not out of rage or to guilt or shame them. Just talk. Be dispassionate. Simply ask them what in the world happened and why. Then listen. Let's be clear, though, it may make things worse. But then again, it may lead to some kind of resolution.

Of course, you know your family dynamics; I don't. So use good judgment as to whether this would be a viable step, but consider it. Depending on circumstances, a neutral location such as a restaurant might be a preferable place for "the talk." But try to listen and question without judgment.

Remember, you're not there to vent. You're there to learn and understand and seek closure. Venting will put your parents in a defensive posture and will not likely meet your purpose for arranging the talk in the first place.

11. Stop Putting so Much Stock in How You were Raised

Instead of constantly peeling away the scabs of life to see how things are healing underneath, decide what you want out of life, what traits are required to obtain what you want, and then act. Work at overcoming emotional obstacles and other personal obstructions without worrying so much about where they came from. Just get on with the work of living well.

The past is the past. Let it die there, and stop unburying the dead and move on. Trying to drag the corpse of yesterday through life will make each moment of today a bit more difficult to manage. So find purpose and passion in life and move forward, looking back only long enough to learn from it.

12. Assume Good Intent

Assume the best motives behind what very well may have been the worst practices. But assume they did the best they knew how (similar to #3).

We sometimes have the habit of ascribing pure motives to our own flaws and evil intent to others. Instead, try being as magnanimous about their flaws as we hope others will be about our own. When we assume good motives behind misguided practices and weak wills, it is often easier to overlook and forgive their failures.

Afterthoughts

Sometimes out of a sense that justice must be served, or anger at the unfairness of how we were raised, we keep the pain and anger center court, at arm's length, always in view. It's time to stop. It's time to grow. It's time to forgive and let go and be free!

So, what do you think?

Have you had success or failure trying to forgive mom or dad? Please share what you've learned.
What could be added to this list to help overcome the pull of parental mistakes on your life today?
We would LOVE to hear from you in the comments below!

The post 12 Ways to Forgive Your Parents for Doing Such a Crummy Job of Raising You appeared first on Change your thoughts.

7 Traits of Highly Sensitive People

Melissa Schwarz — Mon, 14 Jun 2021 11:00:04 GMT

Updated on 20th June 2021

Recently I discovered that I am a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP), possessing an "innate sensitiveness" as Carl Jung originally coined it.

In 1996, Dr. Elaine Aron's groundbreaking work confirmed that 15-20% of the population has this trait of high sensory processing. The work of Dr. Ted Zeff explores how the trait of sensitivity, specifically in boys, has been received in cultures around the world. Through these pioneers I have discovered a false belief I carried for a long time; the lens through which I experience life is not "wrong". The validation that sensitivity is neither an asset nor a flaw has given me the ability to reframe the way I perceive life.

Do you sometimes get overwhelmed with emotion on some days? Do you ever walk into a room feeling like there's something wrong with the energy but you don't quite know why? Do you sometimes know what people are feeling before they tell you or do you get a little overwhelmed being in crowds and feel the need to be on your own?

You are in a minority of people who feel like this. Highly Sensitive People or HSPs or Empaths make up about 15-20 percent of the population.It can be tough to navigate through life as an HSP or Empath but it might be a relief to know that there is nothing wrong with you and you might just need to change your perspective on what it means to be you.

7 common traits of Highly Sensitive People:

1. HSPs intimately experience the subtle details of life.

Delighting in color, design, texture, visual expression and music are all ways that this trait manifests itself as an absolute blessing. Many HSPs discover the depths of appreciation through animals, nature and the universe. There is often reverence and awe for the myriad ways life is experienced through the senses.

2. HSPs pick up on things that might go unnoticed by others.

Subtle sounds like the buzzing of lights, radio or TV static, air fresheners or scented candles, or even attuning to "bad vibes" can nudge an HSP into overload. I am particularly sensitive to clothing tags, fabrics and seams. I am also mindful of the cleaning and hygiene products I use since my skin and body are incredible sensitive to chemicals. The taste, smell and visual appeal of food has been an ongoing challenge throughout my life. As an adult it is wonderful to be able to shop at a local market that offers fresh, organic fruits and vegetables. It is of utmost importance for an HSP to eat well and lovingly care for their body.

3. HSPs experience a more saturated range of emotions.

It is not uncommon for HSPs to experience both positive and negative emotions more deeply than non-HSPs. Many HSPs tend to be "big reactors". There is a legitimate struggle on the part of many HSPs to be in control of their emotions. I have no doubt that one of my soul's journeys during this incarnation as Melissa is to learn how to be a master of, rather than beholden to, my emotions.

4. HSPs have strong intuition.

We all hear our inner wisdom in different ways. Most HSPs have an inner knowing that speaks from a place of love, trust and surrender. This personal guidance is what allows for the most serendipitous of relationships and experiences. Many people, non-HSPs included, have been "talked out" of their guidance by well-meaning parents and adults. If you feel shut down to your own personal truths it's within your power to reconnect in whatever way feels best to you. You might want to cultivate a meditation practice, begin working with a coach, or consider working with a professional therapist specialising in Highly Sensitive People.

5. HSPs need time alone.

It is easy for an HSP to dip into overload after an afternoon of running errands or a dinner party with friends. Often a bit of alone time to read, meditate, daydream, garden, create, stretch, nap or simply "be" is all that is needed to get grounded. Without taking care of yourself you will not have anything to give to others. It is crucial to find a modality of self-connection that works for you.

6. HSPs avoid violent movies and TV shows.

The media is often permeated with gory, scary or gruesome imagery. HSPs might do well to eliminate extraneous violence from entertainment sources and avoid overindulgence in news.

7. HSPs make wonderful coaches, therapists and healers.

Many HSPs are natural caregivers since they are so often in tune with the needs of others. Frequently sensitivity and empathy travel together, therefore it's common for HSPs to pick up on the emotions of others. Friends in need of a shoulder to cry on might call upon their HSP friends because of our innate ability to love and soothe. HSPs must be mindful not to read too deeply into things or give away so much love that they themselves become depleted. It is a delicate practice to beam love onto another while maintaining your own well-being.

Blonde woman listening to her therapist taking notes at therapy session

Understanding how you "work" as an HSP is a necessary step towards becoming a self-actualized being. Lovingly establishing routines and boundaries that honor your temperament is a highly personal process. As you cultivate your practices and become more comfortable embodying the most "successful you" , a newfound appreciation for the trait of sensitivity is sure to follow.

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How to Lose 10 Pounds in Ten Days

Steven Aitchison — Sun, 13 Jun 2021 06:09:00 GMT

Updated 7 days ago

This guide will show you how to lose 10 pounds in 10 days very easily.

I wrote this guide a while ago now and came back to it as I wanted to test it out again since we are all practicing social distancing and not getting as much exercise.

I can tell you the plan still works and has been great over the last few weeks for keeping my weight in check.

I want to start this article by letting you know that I am not a health guru, I'm not a fitness freak, I don't even go to the gym, and I'm not a medical expert in any way. I am an ordinary guy who wanted to lose a few pounds and accidentally discovered a way to do this, and I am so excited to share what I discovered as I know it can work for you too.

What I am going to tell you is not rocket science and it's not a new discovery, many people have already benefited from the information I am about to share with you. However, I discovered this for myself completely by accident without reading any books, without consulting a health guru and having no previous knowledge of this method for losing weight.

The simplicity of this method is what makes it so very easy for you to lose your first ten pounds. Please do not be put off by its simplicity and please, please, please don't dismiss it before you actually try it. When you try it, you will see results within 1 week and after 2 weeks I know you will have lost at least ten pounds, depending on your weight to begin with of course.

Okay, let's start by telling you the story of how I discovered this simple weight loss plan.

The story behind the guide

Only a few months ago I was struggling to keep my weight to under 212 pounds (15 st 2 Ibs), which is not that heavy but nearly 14 pounds (1 stone) heavier than I was 3 years earlier. I had been sitting around the 210 mark for about 1 year and decided I wanted to do something about it and get to the weight I was 3 years earlier. The only exercise I was getting was walking every day for 2 miles, and I didn't fancy going to the gym every day. I am extremely busy with my online business and spending time with my family, which is very important to me.

I tried all kinds of diets in the past; the atkins diet, 5:2 diet, low carb diet, high carb diet you name it and just the basic diet of eating less. Yes the diets works, but they don't help you keep the weight off unless you make that diet a part of your every day life. We all know that the less we put into our mouths the more weight we will lose, but our minds throw up all kinds of excuses for eating less, the main one being 'I'm bloody hungry, so I need something else to eat'.

My huge downfall is biscuits. I can eat a pack of biscuits in one sitting, dipping up to 10 digestive biscuits into my cup of tea would take a few minutes. A few minutes to shovel 700 calories into my mouth, that's 1/3rd of my recommended intake!

The accidental discovery

About 9 weeks ago I discovered something that helped me lose 8 pounds within 1 week. I was flabbergasted, and so was my wife. I looked at exactly what I had been doing different. I wasn't exercising any more than normal, I wasn't any more stressed than normal, I didn't have a bug of any kind. And then it hit me what I had been doing differently – Drinking water. Now before you go and send me an email saying 'Oh' I know this already', just read this guide to find out exactly how I managed to lose 8 pounds in 1 week and go on to lose 12 pounds and keep the weight off, without any real effort on my part.

I started drinking water as a way to cleanse my body, as I started feeling sluggish in the mornings. I get up very early, around 4.30 – 5am, and always feel alert and ready to write as I am always excited to start the day online before getting ready for my day job. For a few weeks I was still getting up at 4.30, but I was feeling a little sluggish, which wasn't like me. I felt bloated, and felt like I needed a good detox. I was going to try fasting for a few days per week, just to rid myself of all the crap inside my body, but then decided I would start drinking water to clear my insides, aid my digestion and just generally feel healthier. I was used to drinking water throughout the day, but not in any planned way, and sometimes skipped the water a lot of the days.

So I made a concerted effort to drink water every day. I started drinking water as soon as I got up, about 500ml, and again 1 hour later I drank another 500ml, during the day at lunch time (500 ml) 30 minutes before every meal I drank 250ml and another 250ml a few hours before going to bed. Great! It worked. After a few days I felt less sluggish and less bloated throughout the day – job done, just keep drinking water and I would be back to my normal energetic self. That's what I thought, until I weighed myself 1 week later and discovered I was down to 204 pounds (14st 8Ibs). Obviously I thought the scales were playing up and stepped off the digital scales to wait for 'error' to show up on the little screen, but no, everything was okay. I stepped back on, and again the reading was 204 pounds – I shouted for my wife, who weighed herself and sure enough the scales were working okay, no anomalies, no battery losing power, no slopes in the bathroom floor to skew the results. Could drinking 2 litres of water a day really help me lose weight?

I then started to experiment. I stopped drinking water for 1 week, only occasionally drinking it when I felt thirsty, just as before. 1 week later I was back up to 209 pounds (14st 13Ibs). Words can't describe how I felt, you'd think I'd discovered the lost city of Atlantis (quite fitting really). I then went on to experiment more and ask lots of questions and done a hell of a lot of research on the many benefits of water.

As I write this, I am down to 200 (14st 4Ibs) pounds, a full 12 pounds lighter than I was a few weeks earlier. I have even hit 198 pounds (14st 2Ibs), which is what I weighed 3 years ago, totally amazing. You can probably tell I was, and am, excited about this. You have to understand I haven't changed my diet in any way, I was still eating the biscuits, and coming up to Christmas there's always goodies in the office to munch on.

During my research it turns out that A lot of other people have discovered the many benefits of drinking water, including to help keep their weight down. But, I want to give you an exact plan, a very easy plan that will help you lose weight and help you keep it off. Not only will you lose weight but you will have more energy, feel healthier and feel more alert. All this by not really changing your lifestyle and drinking a few glasses of water every day, even if you are not exercising, not dieting, and still eating your Big Macs.

The Daily Plan

This is an extremely simple plan and one which I have followed now for around 6 weeks with huge benefits and little downside.

If you are from the US and use Oz instead of ml you can download this PDF file which a very kind reader, April Gaskins, has made up for us.

Click here to download the PDF that April made

The weight you are will obviously have an impact on how much weight you lose with the water plan. A woman who is 150 pounds will not lose as much as a man who is 300 pounds, however the amount of water you drink should not change.

Why the water plan helps you to lose weight

You might be asking yourself why such a simple, plentiful, substance such as water can help you to lose weight.

In the plan you'll notice that I've said as soon as you get up to drink ½ litre of water. This is to kick start the metabolic process. You brain does not distinguish between food and water, and treats water as food. This means that the metabolic process is kick started as soon as you drink water in the morning and will start to use the energy to process the water.

There are many forms of metabolism going on in your body right now, but the one we are concerned about is the metabolism of fat. This is actually something that the liver does when it converts stored fat to energy. The liver has other functions, but this is one of its main jobs.

However the liver is also a close friend with the Kidneys, which need plenty of water to function properly. If the kidneys are not getting enough water the liver goes into overdrive and does it's own work as well as pick up the slack from the kidneys, which lowers the functioning of the liver. The liver then can't metabolize fat as quickly as it should therefore fat is stored.

We often mistake hunger for thirst and the more water we drink the less hungry we will feel which means we eat less which means we hopefully lose more weight or not put as much weight on, depending on the amount of exercise we get.

There's a lot more to it than that, I just wanted to give you one of the areas where water affects the body and how it can change our bodies.

Resisting the temptation not to try it

A lot of you might be thinking 'I know that already, I've tried it.' The key to using this is to keep using it, no point in doing it for a couple of days and then stopping; make it a habit.

The first few days of drinking more water will have you running to the loo more times than you'll like, however if you stick with it you will see some amazing benefits. Your body has been storing water for years, and the more fresh water you drink the more flushed your system will be and it will get rid of the water it was originally holding onto. That means less water retention, less swelling of the ankles, hips and thighs and even from around the stomach area. You will not only be flushing the body out but you will excreting all the stored water as your mind and body realize it no longer has to store water as it is getting all that it needs. You'll also increase your ability to hold the water and return to a normal loo routine.

Other benefits

Drinking plenty of water is also great for your skin. It flushes out all the impurities which will leave you with a glow and a great complexion. You'll also notice your skin looking younger and healthier.

You also notice a difference in muscle tone. You can lift all the weights you need, but if your muscles are not hydrated you won't see a big difference in your appearance. When you muscles that have all the water they need. they contract more easily, making your workout more effective, and you'll look better for it.

There's a million reasons to drink more water, but I wanted to make this about losing weight with water so I will leave it at that.

As always I would love to know what you think about this.

Other resources that might help you

7 Reasons Why You Should Drink More Water

5 Warning Signs That Your Body Just Needs Water

6 Things You NEED To Know About Drinking Water

10 benefits of drinking hot water that no one told you about

11 Reasons to Drink More Lemon Water

Fifteen benefits of drinking water

HOW DRINKING MORE WATER CAN HELP YOU LOSE WEIGHT

Can water help you lose weight?

How Drinking More Water Can Help You Lose Weight

This Is How Much Water a Doctor and a Health Coach Say to Drink Daily

10 Unexpected Reasons to Drink More Water

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3 Foolproof Ways To Make Any Good Habit (That Actually Stick)

Rochi — Tue, 06 Apr 2021 08:53:21 GMT

Your life is essentially a sum total of your habits.

Habits determine your physical health, your mental wellbeing, and your personal growth. Essentially, all behavior modification boils down to a change in your habits.

But, how do you transform your bad habits into good ones? Or how do you install new habits into your jam-packed day?

There are already a ton of blogs and books out there on this topic repeating the same washed-up advice. Most of this information isn’t easy to digest or implement.

I have learned through trial-and-error of every possible habit-building method and found 3 simple steps that actually work to make a habit and make them stick..

1. Don’t Go Big, Go Long

The biggest mistake most people make when making new habits is they rely on motivation alone and go too big on the first few days. Let’s say someone is motivated to get in shape and thus decides to do an hour of a workout every single day.

They do great the first week, but by the second week, they are exhausted and their motivation has been drained. “Life” gets in the way and they go back to not exercising at all.

Sound familiar?

The same story repeats with any good habit you’re trying to build if you go too big right at the beginning. I’ll tell you straight: Motivation is fickle. It won’t last long enough for you to stick to the habit.

Taking action: Go small if you want to play the long game. Instead of working out for an hour every day, work out for 20 minutes. Or work out for an hour only 2 days a week. The point is to make it ridiculously simple to show up for implementing the good habit.

After you’ve built momentum, increase the pace very slowly. After two weeks of sticking to the habit, you work out 40 minutes everyday or workout for an hour 4 days a week. Continue building momentum for this addition and then increase it again.

This is how I now wake up 2 hours earlier than I used to 3 months ago. I continued getting up just 15 minutes early every week and then increased the pace as I built momentum.

2. You Will Fail, Plan For It

I’ll tell you a big secret: Even the self-development gurus have a slip in their habits. It is human to slip.

You get sick and so you discontinue exercising for two weeks. Work gets too much and so you haven’t read more than 10 pages in the last month. There’s an important event that disrupts your sleep schedule.

Life happens. You need to plan for it. The key is to get back on track as quickly as possible. Don’t let the slump get to you.

Taking action: Don’t try to be perfect. Plan for emergencies. Give thought to what might get in your way of implementing the habit and eliminate distractions. Plan on how you can move past the hurdles and stick to the habit. Maybe it means reducing the frequency of the habit or diminishing the intensity of the habit.

When I have a huge to-do list, I still exercise. But only for 10 minutes. When I am too tired, I’ll read only 1 page instead of 30. Instead of getting up later, I will make time to nap in the afternoon.

There’s also a two-day rule you can use for this problem: You are just not allowed to miss implementing your habit two days in a row. This means you can just go to the gym on alternate days, but you aren’t allowed to not go two days consecutively. This ensures you minimize your chance of getting in a slump at all.

3. Use Existing Habits To Your Advantage

It’s a common complaint to not have the time to implement new habits. We want to read more, but who has the time? We want to go to the gym, but who has the time?

You don’t need more time. We just need to use the time we already have wisely. You might not notice, but you already have existing good & bad habits. You just need to use them to your advantage.

Use your habits to complement creating another one. It will create a domino effect sooner than you think. For bad habits, simply replace them with a good habit until you are conditioned.

Taking action: If you already have a habit, say brushing your teeth every night, complement it with reading a good book’s few pages (remember #1: go small for the long game).

And if you already have a bad habit, say scrolling on social media, replace it with reading or any other good habit. Whenever you’re tempted to scroll, pick up a book instead. After a few conscious efforts, it will come automatically to you.

This process has helped me get more reading done and spend less time on social media with, honestly, minimal effort. Two birds with one stone.

Conclusion

Habits are something that can make or break your life. Good habits can hone an easy way to self-improvement while bad habits can downgrade the quality of your life.

Fortunately, building habits is simple. It is just not easy. You need to stay consistent and find smart strategies that make you last in the game.

I hope this article helped you in finding ways to build a lasting good habit. What habit are you currently trying to build? Tell me in the comments below!

The post 3 Foolproof Ways To Make Any Good Habit (That Actually Stick) appeared first on Change your thoughts.

7 Ways To Be More Spiritual Without Being Religious

Steven Aitchison — Wed, 27 Jan 2021 05:12:00 GMT

Updatd on the 27th January 2021

Every time I get into a religious debate of some kind and I am asked whether or not I believe in God, my answers often confuse people. You see, I do not believe in God in any sense of the word however I am very spiritual. How does that work then?

Well, my definition of spiritual is; We are all connected in some way by an invisible, energetic force. This force can be tapped into when we raise conscious awareness of ourselves and others.

Some of you will be thinking the force I am talking about is God; no, the force I am talking about is not governed by laws and dogma, it is created and enhanced by the energy of everybody around us and raising our consciousness can make this force and energy flow quicker.

In order to raise our consciousness, our thinking should not be stifled and diminished by dogmatic ways, mainly religion. Religions tell us what to believe, they don't allow room for questioning or thinking freely therefore our consciousness cannot be raised to as high a level as it could.

Religion plays a huge part in people's lives and I understand the social aspect of it and understand why people would want to believe in a God of some kind. I also understand the need to be part of something, to belong to something, and in this sense religion is a great help to a lot of people. But, when religion tries to control and do your thinking for you it's time to think for yourself.

What Is Spirituality?

So what is spirituality anyway?

Well it means different things to different people but here's a good way of explaining it.

"Spirituality involves the recognition of a feeling or sense or belief that there is something greater than myself, something more to being human than sensory experience, and that the greater whole of which we are part is cosmic or divine in nature."^[1]

7 Ways To Be Spiritual Without Being Religious

1. Make a conscious effort to love the people around you, or at least tolerate them more

Sometimes we forget to love the people around us such as family and friends. We can get so caught up in our own thing that we have not given time to someone else. When we spend less time inside our own heads we are raising our consciousness that little bit more and connecting with the energy that surrounds us and also raising the consciousness of others we love.

Try and tolerate that pain in the arse' work colleague, or the neighbour whose dog fouled your garden last week. I am not saying love everyone, there are just some people you cannot love or tolerate and their consciousness is so low that it would be dangerous for you to try and connect with them to love them, we are talking the real nasty people in life. What I am saying is don't let the small things get in the way of a friendship or a work relationship.

2. Make small connections with your higher consciousness every day

Your higher consciousness is the person you ultimately want to be and be living the life you want to live. Living the life you want to live requires you to be thinking about yourself a lot, lowering your consciousness. However you can marry the two things together and raise your consciousness at the same time by thinking about your goals in short bursts and doing it often. For example, when you're sitting in traffic or on a bus, think about the person you want to be. When you do this you are connecting with your higher consciousness and dropping out all the noise of life. When you do this 10 times a day for 5 minutes, it allows you to still concentrate on other people and daily life but give you the thinking time to reach your higher consciousness.

"A life that is more spiritually attuned is one of greater inner and outer peace.

A worthwhile goal, therefore, is to find ways to bring more peace into the things you do, the relationships you have, and the thoughts that float around in your mind." ^[2]

3. Do something you love to do.

By doing things you love to do you are freeing your mind of clutter, work, and worry and you become more excited about life therefore reaching your inner spirit. It will lift you from the burden of just existing. I love to write, although other things are getting in the way of that just now I try and write a little each day and the fog around me just lifts while I am writing, I am in another place altogether and I feel much more positive and my spirits are lifted.

4. Do something for others without expecting anything in return.

There is no better way to reach a spiritual high than helping others without expecting them to do anything for you. It's like the feeling you get at Christmas when you give your kids what they have wanted all year, just to see their faces on Christmas day is amazing. You can do this in your normal day to day life with simple little things like opening a door to someone, letting someone out at a junction in rush hour traffic, give someone a hand in the workplace, buying your wife some flowers (got to watch this one as your wife might become suspicious that something you are up to something). There are lots of little things you can do every day to bring you into a spiritual place.

I love this quote from Lori Deschene of Tiny Buddha

"Some people say there’s no such thing as a selfless act—that any time we do something to help another person, we get something in return, even if it’s just a warm fuzzy feeling.

I’ve spent a lot of time playing with this idea in my head. It doesn’t really bother me to know it feels good to help someone else. That, to me, is a completely acceptable type of selfishness. What give me cause for concern are the underlying expectations we often have when we give “selflessly.”"^[3]

5. Turn the TV off.

I understand that TV can be a way to unwind from a hard day at work but watching soap operas etc puts you right back into a mindset of drama, crisis, death, backstabbing, and can sink you lower than you felt before. There is no doubt that you can get caught up in the stories involved in soaps and your mind, whether you realise it or not, is saying This is just a soap but it happens in real life', so now your mind has the belief that this is what life is really like and it can compound your belief that people are nasty, life can be shit and it doesn't do anything at all to lift your spirits it has the opposite effect. However watching educational programs can be a great way to lift your spirits, learning something new is a great way to lift your mind into a higher place.

6. Read books that will lift your spirits and leave you feeling excited about life and human nature.

I have read hundreds of books in my lifetime and the ones that got me really excited are the ones that have lifted my spirits and made me think about what life really is and how I can make it better for myself. Good books lift your spirits, great books force you into action to change your life for the better. I remember when I first read some of Stuart Wilde's books it forced me into a new way of thinking, although I think he's a bit of a fruitcake his writing style and the way he engages with the readers is fantastic.

Reading is great for your brain too:

"What exactly do human beings get from reading books? Is it just a matter of pleasure, or are there benefits beyond enjoyment? The scientific answer is a resounding “yes.”

Reading books benefits both your physical and mental health, and those benefits can last a lifetime. They begin in early childhood and continue through the senior years. Here’s a brief explanation of how reading books can change your brain — and your body — for the better."^[4]

7. Take 15 minutes per day to connect with yourself.

Many people do this by simply meditating. There is some mystery surrounding meditation and there shouldn't be. All you do is sit quietly for 15 minutes per day, preferably at the same time every day, and quieten your thoughts. Doing this will change your brainwaves and put you into a different state of mind and has lasting effects throughout the day. I hear a lot of people saying they don't have time to sit quietly for 15 minutes, you know this is not true, everybody can make 15 minutes for themselves. If you do this every day I can guarantee you, you will feel like a different person after a few weeks. It is literally a fast track to your higher consciousness and spiritual self.

I am a very spiritual person and practise the above on a daily basis but there are no rules, there is no person preaching to me what I should and should not be doing and how to live my life. I instinctively know how to treat people, I know what is wrong and what is right. We live our lives by our thoughts and actions and if your thoughts and actions are coming from a higher place by practicing being spiritual then you can have a great life without feeling guilty about anything.

We do not need religion to be spiritual

Links to references in this article

^Royal College of Psychiatrists: What Is Spirituality? A Personal Exploration
^A Conscious Rethink: 8 Spiritual Goals
^Tiny Buddha: 20 Ways to Give Without Expectations
^Healthline.com: Benefits of Reading Books: How It Can Positively Affect Your Life

The post 7 Ways To Be More Spiritual Without Being Religious appeared first on Change your thoughts.

Enneagram Test – What Type Are You?

Steven Aitchison — Tue, 19 Jan 2021 07:40:00 GMT

Updated 21st January 2021

This enneagram test will help you discover which personality type you are. This is really just for fun but you might find that it is quite accurate in finding your hidden personality type.

The Enneagram is a nine-sided figure used in a particular system of analysis to represent the spectrum of possible personality types.

From one point of view, it can be seen as a set of nine distinct personality types, with each number on the Enneagram denoting one type. It is common to find a little of yourself in all nine of the types, although one of them should stand out as being closest to yourself. This is your basic personality type.

G. I. Gurdjieff is credited with making the enneagram figure commonly known (see Fourth Way enneagram). He did not, however, develop the nine personality types associated with it. Oscar Ichazo is generally recognized as the principal source of the contemporary Enneagram of Personality. Ichazo's "Enneagon of Ego Fixations", together with a number of other dimensions of personality mapped on the figure, forms the basis of the Enneagram of Personality.

Since its introduction into the world of psychology, the Enneagram has been partially validated through experiential and empirical studies (for a summary see Sutton (2012) and cross-referenced with other constructs of psychology such as the MBTI). Enneagram teachers have also drawn on the work of psychologists outside of the Enneagram community to enhance the understanding and application of the framework. An example is the work of Karen Horney on psychological forms of defence which has led to Riso and Hudson developing the fractal pattern of the Hornevians or social styles. ^[1]

The 9 Types of Personality in The Enneagram

The Reformer

The Rational, Idealistic Type: Principled, Purposeful, Self-Controlled, and Perfectionistic

The Helper

The Caring, Interpersonal Type: Demonstrative, Generous, People-Pleasing, and Possessive

The Achiever

The Success-Oriented, Pragmatic Type: Adaptive, Excelling, Driven, and Image-Conscious

The Individualist

The Sensitive, Withdrawn Type: Expressive, Dramatic, Self-Absorbed, and Temperamental

The Investigator

The Intense, Cerebral Type: Perceptive, Innovative, Secretive, and Isolated

The Loyalist

The Committed, Security-Oriented Type: Engaging, Responsible, Anxious, and Suspicious

The Enthusiast

The Busy, Fun-Loving Type: Spontaneous, Versatile, Distractible, and Scattered

The Challenger

The Powerful, Dominating Type: Self-Confident, Decisive, Willful, and Confrontational

The Peacemaker

The Easygoing, Self-Effacing Type: Receptive, Reassuring, Agreeable, and Complacent

What Type Are You?
Take The Enneagram Test Here

I hope you enjoyed taking this enneagram test. Let us know in the comments just how accurate it was for you.

If You Liked This Enneagram Test You Might Like These

There are 6 Types Of Wisdom, Which Do You Possess?
The First Letter of Your Name Reveals A Lot About You
How Rare Is Your Personality?
This Abstract Image Test Will Reveal Your True Self

Links to references in this article

https://www.integrative9.com/enneagram/history/

The post Enneagram Test – What Type Are You? appeared first on Change your thoughts.

100 Ways To Develop Your Mind

Steven Aitchison — Thu, 14 Jan 2021 19:36:00 GMT

Updated January 14th 2021

There are lots of ways to develop your mind and you can find a lot of information scattered on the internet. Today I want to bring you one article with 100 ways to develop your mind.

I was originally inspired to do this by Dragos Roua who wrote a great post 100 Ways to Live a Better Life and who was inspired by Mike King in this great post 100 Ways To Be A Better Leader who was inspired by Armen Shirvanian: 100 Ways to Show Boldness who was inspired by the maniac who started it all Luciano Passuello and his post Tackling Any Issue With A List Of 100

100 Ways to Develop Your Mind

1. Do the Thing You Fear the Most.

If there's one thing that will change your thoughts quicker than anything else, it's facing your fears.

2. Stand up For Yourself

A lot of people have difficulty in standing up for themselves. The first time you do it can be very empowering and your thoughts about yourself will change forever. See Dealing With Confrontation

3. Stop Talking

It's great to be silent for just a little while. Our thoughts turn inward and we begin to appreciate ourselves just a little more.

4. Strengthen Your Strengths

Sometimes we focus too much on trying to strengthen our weaknesses when we should be concentrating on strengthening our strengths.

5. Take A Walk Around an Art Gallery

You might not appreciate art or participate in it but it's great to see the thoughts of others on canvas. It can give us a tiny glimpse of what goes on in other people's minds.

6. Blindfold Yourself for a Day

Walk in the shoes of a blind person for 1 full day, it will forever change the way you think about life.

7. Stand on a Chair for 5 Minutes Per Day

Building self discipline is a great way to take control of your mind and your thoughts. If you just get up and stand on a sturdy chair your mind will be wondering what the hells going on and try and force you to get off the chair. Disciplining your mind is a great way to start changing your life. See Self Discipline

8. Dance When There's Nobody There

It's a strange sensation to dance on your own, although when I have done this I look like a dog having a seizure, nonetheless it's a great way to let go of your inhibitions.

9. Give Money to Someone Unexpectedly

Whether it be on the internet, or in the street, just give a larger than normal donation to someone. This again is liberating and your thoughts about money will change for a few moments (that's all it takes to start the process of changing your life.)

10. Strengthen Your Thoughts About Yourself

Reinforce your thoughts about your good points. If you are good at talking to people, tell yourself this often. If you are good at maths, tell yourself often. This has the benefit of reinforcing and strengthening your self image.

11. Take A Risk

Life would be boring without ever having taken a risk in your life. Do something that you didn't want to do because you thought you wouldn't be any good at it. This totally smashes the boundaries of your comfort zone and your life could change forever. Read This Post by Robin Easton

12. Talk To A Stranger

Again this is breaking our comfort zones, but just saying hi to stranger in the street or good morning can have an enormous impact on your day and the person you said hi to.

13. Walk Around The House Naked

I can almost feel the shock at this. I don't mean when you've got guests in, I mean when everybody is out. Lock the door and totally liberate yourself and your thinking of what's right and what's wrong. I wouldn't advise doing it all the time, but from time to time, it's a great feeling.

14. Read A Book By An Author You Most Avoid

reading books by authors we avoid gives us a chance to take control of our minds and lets us see another side to our thinking. We've got to ask why we avoid them in the first place, is it something within us that we are avoiding?

15. Write An Article About Yourself

Imagine a newspaper has asked you to write an article of 1000 words or less about yourself and your life and they want to know what motivates you in life, now write the article. This helps put your life into some perspective and gets you thinking about your childhood and growing up.

16. Stop Contact With Your Down People

If you have people in your life who constantly drag you down, or are negative all the time, drop them. Honestly drop them from your life, you are not serving them and they are not serving you and they are dragging your thoughts down. Read This Post by Dan And jennifer

17. Believe In Yourself

A lot of people believe their life has been pre-destined and there's nothing we can do to change it – absolute rubbish. YOU are the only person who controls the universe, yes I did mean universe. Your universe is different from mine so you control your own universe, think about that and start acting upon it.

18. Meditate Every Day

Another powerful thing that has the power to change your life and your thinking for good. Retreating into your mind for a few minutes every day will do you a power of good. Read How To Meditate

19. Ask For A Discount

When you buy anything from a shop that is over $100, ask for a discount. Tell the salesman you'd like a 10% discount on the item. Most people are so afraid of doing this but it's a great way to empower yourself and let go of another inhibition, what's the worst that can happen?

20. Risk Embarrassment

Imagine if you had seen the person of your dreams on a bus, or at the store and you didn't do anything about it how much would you kick yourself. If this happens to you, do something about it, don't keep it hidden. Just say to them you thought you would come over and say how attractive they looked and felt you had to tell them. You never know what will happen and how much your life could be changed. Obviously don't turn into a weirdo and do it with every good looking person on the street.

21. Work Toward, What You Think, Is An Impossible Goal

If you work toward a goal without expectation you don't care about the outcome as much. When you don't care about the outcome, you don't have as much expectation.

22. Practice Gratitude

We all know what we don't have in our lives because we spend a lot of time wishing we had them, but are we really thankful for what we have? Spend time every single day being thankful for the good things we do have in our lives. read The Post at ZenHabits on Gratitude

23. Do Something Nice And Don't Tell Anyone About It

We tell others about our acts of kindness to let them know how nice we are and to seek approval. If you keep your act of kindness to yourself without ever telling anyone the feeling of positive energy lasts much longer.

Everybody has a skill of some kind. When you share it you not only have the power to help others, but you enhance your own skill by owning it.

25. Don't Talk Just Listen

Enhance your listening skills by not talking when someone is speaking to you. Resist the urge to speak your views when someone is talking to you, just listen to them and ask them more open ended questions at the appropriate times. This has two benefits: a) You can really listen if you are not formulating the stories in your own head when someone is talking b) you will make the other person feel great as you are actively listening to them.

26. Write Your Future Life Story

Start from the age you are just now and start writing your future life story as you'd like it to be. Be as outrageous as you want and just write about your ideal life and how you interact with it. Words on paper are powerful and can help shape your goals.

27. Give Someone A Gift For No Reason

We always assume someone buys us a gift for a reason whether it be a birthday, christmas or special occasion. Buy someone a gift just because you know they would like it.

28. Pass On Your Good Books

If you've read a book and it changed your thinking or life in some way, pass it on to someone else who might benefit.;

29. Spend More Time With Your Kids

Your kids will grow up very quickly, spend as much time as you can with them.

30. Forgive Behavior

The way we behave doesn't necessarily reflect our true thoughts. Remember this when someone acts out of character and behaves in a way you don't approve of.

31. Allow Yourself To Be A Lazy Git

We are so used to filling our time with useful things to do and being productive we have forgotten the art of laziness. Being lazy is good every ONCE IN A WHILE and it allows our mind to slow down and relax.

32. What Is Your Best Quality Today

Every morning for 10 seconds just state, out loud if you can, what your best quality is. Try and change it every day. This reinforces your strengths and weakens your perceived weaknesses.

33. Write A Comment

If you visit a blog you like, leave a comment and join in the community of people. Or, if there is not much of a community, be part of starting it.

34. Tell Your Friends And Colleagues How Good They Are

If a friend or colleague does something good, tell them how good they are at that particular task. This reinforces someone else strengths or strengthens their weaknesses and makes them feel good about themselves.

35. Make A Video Of Yourself And Post It To Youtube

Why on earth would you do this? Just because you can!

36. List All Your Worries

Make a list of every single worry you have at the moment. You will notice that you don't have as many worries as you thought. Worrying consumes our thinking and we think our whole life is one big worry. When you get it down on paper it's extremely surprising that you don't have as many as you'd thought.

37. Work On Each Worry In Turn

Now that you have all your worries listed. Go through them and start acting on them in turn. If you find worries you cannot act upon it means there is nothing you can do to change the outcome of that worry, so forget it, why waste mind energy on something you cannot control at all? Read This Post for More Info

38. Read About Successful People

If you want to change your thoughts and change your life read about people who have already done it and use them as guides.

39. Tweet Your Moods

If you use twitter why not tweet your moods daily and see if there is some kind of pattern after a few months.

40. Stop Watching Soaps

Soap operas actually have the power to alter your state of mind. People get so caught up in the emotions of the soap that they experience what the actors and actresses are doing.

41. Have A News Break

What would happen if you never read a newspaper for a week? nothing at all, your life wouldn't change, you wouldn't run out of things to talk about, you would still be as up on the world as everyone else. Newspapers sell because of their doom and gloom, read it and you are buying into it.

42. Do Something Spontaneous

Jump on a bus without looking at the destination, book a holiday, take time off work, take your partner away, buy your kids a gift; do anything and make sure it's out of character, (expand that boundary).

43. Write To An Author

Authors are people just like you and I and they love getting feedback about their work. If a book touched you in some way or changed you, take time to write to the author and thank them. Don't look for a reply, just thank them.

44. Follow your instincts

We don't trust ourselves nearly enough as we should. Follow your instincts more and pay attention to the signals your body is picking up and see where it takes you. You might find that your conscious brain gets in the way of your body signals a lot of the time. Read This Post for More Info

45. If You Find Some Money Give It To Charity

If you find money in the street don't pocket it, give it to someone who is homeless or better yet buy them a meal with it. If it's a suitcase full of money, that's obviously a different story.

46. Your Thoughts Really Do Have Power

When you realize this, it will change your thinking in so many ways. I can't tell you that it's true you have to experience it for yourself.

47. Always Admit It When You Have Made A Mistake

Don't blame others or hide behind someone else. Hold your hands up and admit you made a mistake, no matter what the consequences are. You will be much more respected this way. However, don't take the blame for others.

48. Do Something Every Day To Improve Your Mind

Learn a new word, do an anagram puzzle, sudoku your mind, read a book, read a stimulating blog post, anything that will help your mind just a little. Just a little turns into something huge.

49. Change Your Thinking Style

If something is not working out, try and change your thinking style and come at it from another angle. This is true of everything in life.

50. What Do You Really Want To Do In Life

You will find most people cannot answer this question simply because they are plodding along with life. When you know what you really want to do with your life then your life takes another path. read This Post by Dragos Roua

51. Pass On Your Knowledge

Knowledge is for sharing, let others know what you know if it's appropriate.

52. Ask For What You Want In Life

If you don't ask you won't get. Asking for your wants puts it out there. I mean literally ask and metaphorically ask. When you want a big house or a mansion, ask out loud and send it out there. When you want the smaller things in life, ask for them from people who can give you them. Always pay it forward.

53. When Someone Does You A Good Turn Pay It Forward

If you receive a compliment, thank the person and look for an opportunity to give someone else a compliment. If you receive a gift, give a gift to someone else at an opportune time.

54. Always Have A Good Breakfast

We underestimate the power of food to keep our brains healthy and our minds alive with energy. If you don't eat that much, make sure you have a good breakfast to set you up for the day. Read this post on eating by Vin Miller

55. What Would People Say About You If You Died

This is not a morbid thought, but I often think about what people would say about me at my funeral. The thing is the ones who might say something bad, I can't really not invite because I'll be dead. However, the important people are ones I would care about most and I would like to develop my life's values based on what people would say about me at my funeral; he was a caring man, he was a family man, he always told the truth no matter how hard it might seem, he had integrity etc.

56. Sing Your Heart Out

I love to sing, I hopeless at it, but I love it. We have a radio station over in the UK called gold http://www.mygoldmusic.co.uk/ and it plays music from the 60s, 70s and 80s and I sing at the top of my voice as there is always something on that's good. My sons are not very pleased about it though

57. Love The One You're With

Always let your partner know how much you love them by telling them and showing them. This way your mind is focused on them for at least part of the day.

58. Pacing Whilst Studying

This has helped me a lot over the years. I paced my way through university. My theory is that the body and mind is being stimulated with the exercise you are doing whilst walking, this makes the blood flow. Blood flow to the brain help you to study and remember.

59. Make New friends

Whether it be online or offline. Keeping yourself busy socially is stimulating for the mind and lets you see the world from others peoples perspective.

60. Make Love Regularly

Releasing the feel good chemicals, endorphins, into your bloodstream is a great way to stimulate the mind. I have to admit to feeling much more creative after making love.

61. Listen To Music

This stimulates the mind and can have tremendous benefits for your thoughts, therefore your life. I love listening to Baroque music whilst driving at night, I love rousing rock driving during the day and dance trance music at the weekend whist driving

62. Listen To A Book Instead Of The Radio

Getting downloadable books from Amazon.com or Audible.com is a great way to spend long journeys and learn something at the same time.

63. Have A Sleep In

I am not a big fan of sleeping longer than I have to, but sometimes it's great to lie in bed for a few hours longer than normal. It helps the brain recuperate.

64. Turn Off The TV

There's nothing more brain numbing than having the TV on all day every day. Exercise your mind and read a book, or at least watch something educational. Read this post by Vin Miller

65. Look For Evidence Of Your Beliefs

This will develop your mind and your critical thinking. If you look for evidence of your beliefs such as 'what is the evidence that sea water is blue or green', you'll discover some great information on during your research.

66. Take Micro Naps

Taking a micro nap for 10 minutes a few times a day does wonders for your brain energy. read this post on Micro Naps

67. Travel Often

Travel really does broaden your horizons especially if you really get into the local food and culture.

68. Tidy House Tidy Mind

There really is nothing better than clearing your house or office space to clear your mind. When the house is not tidy there is always a niggling at the back of your mind. When the house, office and workspace is totally clean and tidy it frees your mind to concentrate on work or your family at home. read this post at DumbLittleMan

69. Exercise Your Mind Not Just Your Body

We all know the benefits of exercising the body but exercising the mind by doing crosswords, maths puzzles, playing chess, reading, anagrams, sudoku etc, all help to increase the minds capacity for learning.

70. Read Philosophy

the beauty of philosophy is that there is no right and wrong. However, reading different philosophers views about the world will stimulate your mind. Read this post by Tim Ferris

71. Ditch The Credit Card

We have forgotten how to wait for the things we want in life, if we see something we like we want it now and using a credit card is too easy. Make the object of your desire more precious by saving up for it. This will discipline your mind as well as your money spending habits.

72. Watch A Motivational Video On Youtube First Thing In The Morning

This is a great way to start the day. Just type in motivational into youtube search box, sort by view count and watch a few videos.

73. Keep Up To Date With New Theories

Whatever field you are interested in keep up to date with new theories and discoveries. New theories in psychology are especially interesting albeit quite thin on the ground.

74. Take One Action Toward Your Goals Every Day

Your Self confidence, self esteem, and goals can only be reached by taking action. The more action you take the more your mind will help you to keep going.

75. Never Let Your Mind Go Out Of Fashion

Keep up to date with the latest research on health, beauty and intelligence. Only those whose thoughts keep searching will stay intelligent for life.

76. Confronting Your Stressors

Whatever you are stressed about the most tackle first. The less stress you have the less your mind has to cope with. Tackle the biggest stressors first and work your way down. Read this post by Jonathan Wells

77. Drink Coffee And Tea

Despite evidence to the contrary coffee and tea have been shown to help the brain. Antioxidants and/or caffeine may help fight the onset of Alzheimer's by 30-60% drinking 30 cups a day is obviously not good but 3-5 cups per day is okay.

78. Carry Yourself With Confidence

People can tell by the way you walk if you are confident or not. Walk with purpose and have a purpose to walk. Read this post by Brandon Lindell

79. Make Up Your Own Mind

When reading or listening to the news, do your own research and make up your own mind. The government and large corporations, whether deliberate or not, is a propaganda machine feeding you information to manipulate your thinking.

80. Take Up Yoga

This is meant to be one of the best ways to relive stress and exercise both mind and body. watch this video to get you started

81. Change Your Hands

Practice doing this with your less dominant hand. If you are right handed start doing things with your left hand and vice versa. If you are ambidextrous, start doing it with your feet

82. Eat Plenty Of Fish

There is an abundance on new evidence that eating fish is great for our brains and keeping them healthy.

83. Reduce Your Alcohol Intake

I had to say this, I am an addiction worker. Don't cut it out just reduce it to the recommended safe level.

84. Quit The Smoking

Yep it can be one of the hardest drugs to give up but it is worth it. I feel so much better for giving up smoking and have a lot more energy than normal and my mind can function a lot better.

85. Practice Deep Breathing

Getting plenty of oxygen to your brain is key for a healthy mind, deep breathing can help with this.

86. Get A Dog/Cat

If you live alone why not go to one of the pet rescue centres and get a dog or a cat. People who have pets are shown to be less lonely, more active, and show fewer signs of stress. read this article by elizabeth Scott

87. Break your Pattern

If you are the one who always goes shopping swap the routine with your partner. Or if you always go to a particular store, change it and go to the same store in another area. Do anything to break the patterns you have in life. This way your mind is kept more active.

88. Try New Food

We have trained our palettes over the years and have gotten used to eating certain foods day in and day out. Try new foods and train your palette to eat better foods.

89. Stimulate Your Brain By Going To A Concert

Whether it be a rock concert or am orchestral concert, getting out and hearing music live and being with people who enjoy the same music stimulates your mind and your emotions.

90. Join An Internet Group

Join an internet discussion group to further your education on topics of interest. Want to start a business? join a group and get ideas for best practice. Want to know more about tropical fish? join a group. This educates your mind, gives you ideas and lets you meet people who are interested in the same topics as you.

91. Volunteer To Help Others

Volunteering is a great way to give back to the community and help others learn the skills you have. Even if you don't think you have skills you can still help someone out in your community just by talking or doing their shopping for 1 hour per week.

92. Read The Tao Te Ching

Has to be one of the best books, in my opinion, for developing your mind. read this blog byNaoto Matsumoto

93. Practice Patience

Waiting in queues, traffic jams, on a telephone call can be very frustrating sometimes. If you use the time to develop your mind and focus on your goals your frustration will dissipate very quickly. Use free time like this constructively instead of getting angry and putting yourself in a bad mood.

94. Practice Divergent Thinking

This is the practice of looking for multiple solutions to problems or issues that arise in your life, whether they be at home or at work. Don't judge your solutions just put them down on paper until you can't think of any other ways. get others involved in this as well. Read this article on divergent thinking

95. Put On A New Hat

Edward De Bono wrote a book called Six Thinking Hats in which he proposed you to put on a different, mental, hat for each area of your life. For example you put on your parent hat when talking to your kids, you can also put on your child hat for playing around with your kids. mentally putting on different hats allows you to better go in and out of different roles in your life.

96. Stop trying To Multitask

Multitasking can't be done except with unconscious processes such as walking and talking. If you try to consciously multitask like make the kids lunches, have a telephone conversation and try and get the kids ready for school it can't be done nearly as effectively as doing each task separately. Multitasking stresses out minds and helps to produce bad results. read this article by Dave Crenshaw

97. Write A Short Essay On The Books Your Read

Doing this will keep your mind active and helps your to read in a different way as you are analyzing books instead of just reading. this way you retain more information and in a few years time you don't embarrass yourself by saying 'yeah, that was a great book but I can't remember what it was about.'

98. Allocate Time For Worrying

If you are a recovering worrier and you need some help, allocate a certain time each day to worry about everything. Once you've done the time of worry, leave it until the next day.

99. Stop Faffing And Just Do It

Faffing is the art of doing small things to avoid completing a bigger task. I am constantly getting on at my son and saying 'Stop faffing!'. We spend too much time faffing instead on concentrating on the task at hand. Read this Article at Lifehack.org

100. Read The Dictionary

Learning a new word every 2 -3 days will increase your vocabulary by 120 – 170 words per year.

101. Always Over deliver On Your Promises

If you say your going to do something, don't just do it and get the job complete, make sure you over deliver on everything you do.

Your thoughts?

Why not leave a comment about this article or add to it by giving us your thoughts.

The post 100 Ways To Develop Your Mind appeared first on Change your thoughts.

12 Romantic Things You Can Do For Your Wife

Rachel Pace — Mon, 11 Jan 2021 13:00:00 GMT

Updated on 11th January 2021

Do you still do romantic things for your wife?

Remember when you were first together and you would have done anything to make your wife smile? Surprise flowers 'just because' and heading out on a whim to get her favorite treats used to be a regular occurrence.

Romance in marriage isn't about seducing your wife into sex or looking after your own personal gain, it's about making her smile and reminding her of your love for her.

When was the last time you romanced your wife? Don't let displaying your love to your sweetheart become a thing of the past. Here are 12 romantic things you could easily do to impress your wife.

1. Keep Dating your Wife

One of the best romantic ideas for your wife is to keep dating her. What does this mean? Exactly what it sounds like: Go on dates!

Once or twice a month, plan a romantic evening out and act like you did when you were first dating. Open the car door for her, ask 'get-to-know-you' questions, and be a gentleman.

Not only is this sweet idea completely romantic, it also helps build sexual chemistry, boosts your libido, and affords you and your wife some quality time together away from the hustle and bustle of your regular routine.

2. Surprise Her with a Gift

The next time you're coming home from work, why not grab something to surprise your wife with? You can easily pick up some flowers or her favorite chocolates at the corner store before heading home. Some other great ideas for surprise gifts are:

Bring home her favorite coffee
Wine or champagne
Get her something from her online wish-list
Bring home dinner so she doesn't have to cook

3. Write Her a Love Letter

Make your wife fall deeper in love with you by writing her a love letter. This builds deeper intimacy between the two of you. It's also great for those who have trouble vocalizing their affections.

Make a list of all the things you love and appreciate about your wife and then, e-mail it to her. You can kick it up a notch by hand-writing the letter and leaving it out for her to read.

4. Look Out for Exciting Events

Being romantic doesn't always mean being an ooey-gooey, lovestruck couple. Make your date-night fun and romantic by looking out for exciting events happening near your that you wife might enjoy. Pick a band, artist, play, or any other event your wife has been looking forward to and snag some tickets. She'll be thrilled with the surprise and touched that you thought of her.

5. Give Her a Massage

One romantic idea for your wife is to give her a relaxing massage after a long day.

The next time she's propped her feet up on your lap or is exhausted after a long day, use it as an opportunity to spoil her with relaxation.

It's always nice to receive a massage in return for your hand's hard work, but don't expect it! The sweetest thing about giving your wife a massage is that you're entirely focusing on her. Your goal is to make sure she feels amazing.

6. Take Care of Yourself

Looks aren't everything. Still, everyone wants to be physically attracted to their mate! One way you can bring romance in marriage is by taking care of your appearance. Work out regularly and eat well. Care for any body hair, practice good personal hygiene, and dress to impress when you're taking your sweetheart out.

7. Make Her Life Easier

Sometimes the most romantic ideas for your wife are the simplest ones. You can show your wife you really care by doing some simple things that will make her life that much easier. Some great ideas for daily romance include:

Offer to take care of the kids so she can go out with her friends
Do the dishes
Clean up around the house
Make her breakfast
Pick up some groceries
Mow the lawn
Fill the car with gas

8. Take it to the Bedroom

One fantastic way to include romance in marriage is by spoiling her in the bedroom. Studies show that now only does regular physical intimacy lower stress and increase trust, it also bonds couples closer together through the love hormone "˜oxytocin'.

Make your sex life romantic. Set the mood with candles and music and let your wife know there's no hurry. Take your time together kissing and building intimacy. Engage in foreplay and have fun!

9. Take a Weekend Trip

One great way to build romance with your wife is to plan a surprise getaway! Couples who travel together experience deeper intimacy. It's also exciting to explore a new place together. Romance your wife with a romantic B&B getaway for the weekend.

10. A Night Designed for Her

Have fun and show off your romantic side by planning a night that's just meant for your wife. Go to a restaurant she loves and then do an activity she's crazy about such as ice-skating or going to a movie she's been dying to see.

11. Cook for Her

Women love to be doted on and they love to eat. Combine these things together and you get a romantic night in for two with food cooked by the love of her life.

There's nothing more romantic than showing off your culinary skills with a fantastic meal for your lady-love. Set aside one night this week and surprise her with her favorite meal.

You can make this as simple or as elaborate as you like. It all depends on what you're comfortable with. A three-course meal complete with her favorite dessert surely isn't going to hurt. But odds are she's going to be equally impressed with some simple pasta and garlic bread.

12. Be Physical

Many women respond positively to physical touch. Without taking things into the bedroom, physical intimacy can still be a powerful and romantic way to express your love to your wife. Start your romantic journey by holding hands every day, passionately kissing more, and cuddling to your heart's content.

Being romantic shouldn't mean planning complicated grand gestures. Instead, keep dating your wife, cook for her, give her a massage, or look for ways to make her day easier. By using these romantic ideas for your wife you'll successfully keep the spark alive in your marriage.

What do you think?

What Is Your IQ – A Genuine IQ Test

Steven Aitchison — Thu, 17 Dec 2020 10:58:07 GMT

How do you find out what your IQ is?

You take a test to discover what your IQ is. Some of the online tests are just not that good but I have found a great one that will really tax your brain and I challenge you to get 15/15 for this one. If you do take a screen shot and post it in the comments.

I took this for the first time and thought oh it's just another one of the easy ones, but I spent about an hour thinking about all the questions and had a notepad to take notes.

What is your iq quiz is at the bottom of this post so take it now and find out what your iq is.

What is Your IQ Test

Some other quiz posts you might enjoy

What Is Your Personality Type?
What Type Of Person Am I Quiz
Numerology Quiz What Were You Born To Do?
What Is Your Power Animal

The post What Is Your IQ – A Genuine IQ Test appeared first on Change your thoughts.

What Is Your Personality Type?

Steven Aitchison — Thu, 17 Dec 2020 08:05:06 GMT

We all have different traits that make us stand out. However, when you put all the different traits together you have an overall personality type.

Based on the Myers Briggs personality type you can get a rough guide as to what type of personality you have and what it means to be that type.

Myers-Briggs theory is an adaptation of the theory of psychological types produced by Carl Jung.

It is based on 16 personality types, which Jung viewed as stereotypes. They act as useful reference points to understand your unique personality. At the heart of Myers Briggs theory are four preferences. Do you prefer to deal with:

People and things (Extraversion or "E"), or ideas and information (Introversion or "I").
Facts and reality (Sensing or "S"), or possibilities and potential (Intuition or "N").
Logic and truth (Thinking or "T"), or values and relationships (Feeling or "F").
A lifestyle that is well-structured (Judgment or "J"), or one that goes with the flow (Perception or "P").

This quick test will give you a rough estimation of what your personality type is and has eight types:

The Giver
The Idealist
The Executive
The Visionary
The Doer
The Caregiver
The Inspirer
the performer

Which one of the above are you?

Take The Personality Type Test

You might like these personality quizzes

What Type Of Person Am I Quiz
Numerology Quiz What Were You Born To Do?
What Is Your Power Animal

The post What Is Your Personality Type? appeared first on Change your thoughts.

Miniature Cows – Belted Galloway Cows How Adorable

Steven Aitchison — Fri, 11 Dec 2020 22:53:43 GMT

When I was browsing Pinterest the other day looking for ideas for blog posts I came across some images of small cows.

I thought they were kinda cute being all wooly but then I realised how small they were, about 42 inches in height, 3ft.

So I naturally got caught up looking at more images of Belted Galloway Cows or 'Belties' and 'Oreo Cows' as they're known, for obvious reasons.

Miniature Belted Galloway

The Belties, as the Miniature Belted Galloways are often called, are a very hardy breed.

The distinct and ancient Galloway cattle were in Scotland originated in the old counties of Kirkcudbright and Wigtown area of south west Scotland. While black was the favoured colour, they could also appear as brindle, red, dun, white, brocket faced and eventually as white middled or 'belted.'

They have a double coat, with the coarse outer coat designed to repel water.

Their under coat is not so much hair as wool, and it’s to insulate the cow against the cold.

Belted Galloways tend to have a solid color but with a white belt around their midriff.

At maturity, their height at the most reaches 42 inches at the hip bone.

Coming to America

The Belties have become popular in rural America.

Ask any local in Rockport or Camden where the “Belties” are, and they’ll point you to Aldermere Farm, long one of the area’s popular attractions, especially for kids longing for a look at the famous black and white colored “Oreo cookie” cows.

From Scotland to Maine

In 1953, the Aldermere herd of Belted Galloways was established when Mr. Chatfield purchased a bull and six cows from Harry Prock of Pennsylvania.

Mr. Chatfield subsequently brought more stock to the farm from Scotland.
Click Here for more info

The Oreo Cow is Adorable

The Belties have become popular in artwork and there are a growing number of fans all around the world.

What's not to love about these miniature cows.

What are your thoughts on these adorable cows?

What Type Of Person Am I Quiz

Steven Aitchison — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 09:34:50 GMT

Colors can affect our mood drastically. Interior designers and artists know this all too well and often have certain colors to evoke different emotions within us.

When asking the question: What type of person am I, color will have a big effect on the answer. Have you ever felt anxious in a black room? Does the color blue make you feel calm and relaxed? Does yellow and orange make you feel happy?

Color is a powerful communication tool and can be used to signal action, influence mood, and even influence physiological reactions. Certain colors have been associated with increased blood pressure, increased metabolism, and eyestrain. So how exactly does color work? How is color believed to impact mood and behavior?

Why is color such a powerful force in our lives? What effects can it have on our bodies and minds? While perceptions of color are somewhat subjective, there are some color effects that have universal meaning.

Colors in the red area of the color spectrum are known as warm colors and include red, orange, and yellow. These warm colors evoke emotions ranging from feelings of warmth and comfort to feelings of anger and hostility.

Colors on the blue side of the spectrum are known as cool colors and include blue, purple, and green. These colors are often described as calm, but can also call to mind feelings of sadness or indifference.

It's no surprise then that color can affect our personality.

So when you ask What Type of Person Am I this color quiz will help you find out what type of person you really are based on your color choices.

What Type of Person Am I Quiz

Some other quiz posts you might enjoy

What Is Your Personality Type?
What Type Of Person Am I Quiz
Numerology Quiz What Were You Born To Do?
What Is Your Power Animal

The post What Type Of Person Am I Quiz appeared first on Change your thoughts.

Numerology Quiz What Were You Born To Do?

Steven Aitchison — Thu, 29 Oct 2020 10:23:39 GMT

Do you ever ask yourself What was I born to do?

I believe most people go to their grave not knowing what they were born to do and that is such a shame. Part of the reason we were put on this earth is to find out what we are here for, to find out our purpose in life. Once we've found our purpose then we can begin to really live life the way it was supposed to be lived: with joy, with passion, with caring, with heart and in the service of others.

Usually when we find what we were born to do we bring our joy and passion to others either by performing, teaching or sharing.

I have found my purpose in life through writing, and teaching others and I would love for you to find out what you were born to do.

This numerology quiz is to get you thinking about what you were born to do. It's a bit of fun but has a more serious reason and that is to help you find your purpose.

After you take this fun numerology quiz throughout the day and every day ask yourself: what was a born to do?

You'll find that answers start coming to you in strange and wonderful ways but you have to be open to the signs. So go ahead take this quiz and then maybe it will be the first step on your journey to finding out what you were truly born to do in life.

Take The Quiz Now

What Is Your Power Animal

Steven Aitchison — Wed, 28 Oct 2020 08:35:04 GMT

Many cultures believe in a spirit animal of some kind. It's usually a messenger, protector or teacher in the form of an animal. You might know it by other names such as power animals, spirit animals, animal helpers, they're one and the same thing.

Your power animal, it is believed, has chosen you and not the other way about.

It is there to provide you protection, wisdom, counsel and lessons throughout your life. For thousands of years shamans have sought the the guidance and wisdom from their spirit animals.

Some Things To Know About Your Power Animal

1.You can have one or several power animals throughout your lifetime. They can come in and out of our lives to give us guidance, teach us about ourselves, and help us maintain balance. The timing and direction we are headed on our path, a specific occasion that may arise, phases of life, or tasks that need to be completed along our journey will dictate what animal steps forward to help.

2. Our power animal can bring us a message in several ways. We may physically cross paths with the animal, we may dream about it, it can visit us in our meditations, or we might have it as a pet.

3.Your power animal often represents qualities and attributes that you may see in yourself. On a base level, you want to understand the general vibe of the animal and look at it as an archetypal figure in your life; a symbolic representation of you. You may never personally interact with your animal, like a tiger or whale. But pay attention to the details like specific behaviours, character traits, habitat, diet, social status. Are you group oriented, a loner, nomadic, sedentary, etc.?

What is Your Spirit Animal?

Did We Nail It? Let us know in the comments below

The post What Is Your Power Animal appeared first on Change your thoughts.

Your Celtic Tree Sign and What it Says About You

Steven Aitchison — Sun, 13 Sep 2020 19:15:25 GMT

What is Your Celtic Tree Sign?

Celtic Astrology was created by the Druids sometime around 1000BC. The Druid religion was based on 3 basic strands of belief: the first was to remember their ancestors and the past; the second was to have an understanding of nature so that they could work with it, not against it; and the third was to explore the connection of everyday reality with that of the spiritual realm.

In Celtic astrology, the zodiac is based on the trees that the Druids held sacred. It was believed that the trees themselves expressed personal characteristics that could then be associated with particular months of the year. This was done by connecting the tree to a lunar month through the use of the consonants in the Celtic alphabet. 13 of the consonants form the calendar of seasonal magic, and the 5 vowels represent complementary seasonal stations.

Unlike the Greco-Roman zodiac, the Celtic calendar has 13 astrological signs based on lunar months. Each month contains 28 days, except the last one which only has 24. However, the Celtic zodiac isn't confined solely to the lunar cycle. The Druids split their years into 2 halves: the dark half and the light half to represent the recurring cycle of birth, life, death, and rebirth. As a result the Druids developed a zodiac rooted in both the lunar and solar cycles of life.

Find Out What Your Celtic Tree Sign Means

December 24^th "“ January 20^th

Birch Tree

Those born under the Celtic Birch Tree sign are said to be highly motivated people who love to take chances and achieve their life goals. They are always striving for more and are often natural-born leaders. You like to motivate others with your drive and ambition. You are compatible with Vine and Willow.

January 21st "“ February 17^th

Rowan Tree

You are very passionate and creative, with a philosophical mind. You often find yourself misunderstood by others who don't quite understand your imaginative ideas, and this can make you slightly distant. Your inner passion motivates you, you are influential in a quiet, less obvious way and people admire you for your unique qualities. You are compatible with Ivy and Hawthorn signs.

February 18^th "“ March 17^th

Ash tree

Those born under the Ash Celtic tree sign are naturally artistic people. People around you are inspired by your artistic talent, not just in pieces of art, but in your writing and scientific mind. You are very inspired and in-touch with nature. People often mistake you for being slightly reclusive, however, this is not the case as you are simply in your own world full of free thinking, vision and design. You are compatible with Reed and Willow.

March 18^th "“ April 14^th

Alder Tree

You are a sociable, confident person with many friends. Your passion and charm means you find it easy to get along with everybody, no matter what their personality. Everybody enjoys your company, your confidence and self-assurance is prominent and people love this about you. Your pet hate is wasting time! You are most compatible with Birch and Oak Tree Signs.

April 15^th "“ May 12^th

Willow Tree

Those born under the Willow Tree sign are thought to have strong psychic abilities. These people are incredibly intuitive and can often sense things or pick up on situations that other people cannot. You are intelligent, creative and patient, with a natural ability to retain knowledge to share with others. You are most compatible with Birch and Ivy.

May 13^th "“ June 9^th

Hawthorn Tree

People born under this sign often surprise us! They may not always be what they seem, or behave how you expect them to be, teaching us to never judge a book by its cover. You will be a fantastic listener and have a natural curious side to you, keeping you interested in a wide range of topics. You are good at adapting to change and seeing the wider picture in life. You are most compatible with Ash and Rowan.

June 10^th "“ July 7^th

Oak Tree

You are incredibly wise, with an amazing strength and ability to cope with situations others would not be able to handle. You are nurturing, generous and helpful towards others, and are often known as a gentle giant! You always have a positive perspective on life, believing that everything will work out for the best. Oak Tree's often make wonderful teachers for their ability to share their knowledge and strength with others. You are compatible with Reed, Ash and Ivy.

July 8^th "“ August 4^th

Holly Tree

You are most likely to find someone born under the Holly Tree Sign in a position of leadership and power. You love a challenge and take on obstacles with ease. Confident in your abilities, you can sometimes be mistaken for arrogant. You are also someone who is extremely intelligent and generous, people look up to you! You are most compatible with Ash and Elder.

August 5^th "“ September 1^st

Hazel Tree

You are naturally intelligent and have excelled academically throughout your life. Your excellent memory is one of your strongest skills as you can accurately recall subjects you have memorised with ease! You have a great eye for detail which you have to keep in check as this can easily become compulsive. You are always organised and are exceptionally skilled with numbers and analytics. You are most compatible with Hawthorn and Rowan.

September 2^nd "“ September 29^th

Vine Tree

Those whose birth falls under the Vine Tree were born within the autumnal equinox, meaning their personalities are often unpredictable! You are incredibly indecisive, but are wonderful at always seeing both sides of the story. You have a taste for the finer things in life, and enjoy good food, music, and art. You love luxury! You also have a natural poise and charm. You are most suited to Willow and Hazel.

September 30^th "“ October 27^th

Ivy Tree

Those born under the Ivy Tree sign are known for their compassion and loyalty to others. You make a good friend, and are always there for those you care about. You can find life difficult at times, however, you have a great ability for overcoming the odds. You are in touch with your spiritual side and are likely to be passionate about your faith. You are most suited to Oak and Ash.

October 28^th "“ November 24^th

Reed Tree

You love to investigate! You are someone who loves to search for hidden truths and are not satisfied until you find the answer, digging deep to find the real meaning behind situations. You must be careful not to be drawn into idle gossip and scandals because you love a story and a bit of excitement. You are most suited to other Reeds, Ash, or Oak.

November 25^th "“ December 23^rd

Elder Tree

People born under this sign are often outspoken and are known for speaking their minds. You live life to the fullest and are seen as a thrill seeker, living life in the fast lane. Deep down, you are thoughtful and philosophical beneath the wild exterior. You are considerate of others and strive to help those in need. You are most suited to Alder and Holly.

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Happy Marriage – This ONE Question Holds The Secret

Steven Aitchison — Thu, 10 Sep 2020 12:13:22 GMT

Have you ever met a couple who seem head over heals in love? They just seem to have the ultimate happy marriage?

Even after being married for years they still seem to adore each other.

In fact it can be quite sickly being in the presence of this couple as it's clear they are just so in love – cringing!

To be honest I haven't met many couples like this. It seems nowadays that it's okay for couples to put each other down in the company of friends and family.

I have also watched TV programmes like 'Couples come dine with me' where they are positively rude to each other in the company of guests. Some of them are outright hostile to each other.

It baffles me why couples would be in a relationship where they clearly don't really respect their partner.

Well, I have to say I am part of a couple where we just adore each other. We're not gushy, and pawing each other all the time. We just have a huge respect and admiration for each other.

I honestly think my wife is the most intelligent, most loving, sexy, funny and fun person in the world, and I love spending a lot of time with her. She genuinely is my best friend.

We've been together now for 18 years.

To be honest I never understood the whole concept of marriage. I couldn't understand why you would commit yourself to one person for the rest of your life, how boring and constricting would that be, I thought marriage was an outdated concept and seen myself as being either single or in a long term relationship.

That changed when I met my wife, I finally understood why people got married.

Don't get me wrong I still think marriage is an outdated concept and we might be the last generation where marriage is the norm. I think for millennials, it will be unusual for couples to get married. instead they elect to commit to each other through action and not with a piece of paper under religious pretences.

That said I love being married but I could equally say I love being with my partner it wouldn't make that much difference.

I digress slightly.

A lot of people say you have to work to have a happy marriage and to an extent that's true. What people are really saying there is you have to stop being as selfish and think about someone else as well as thinking about your own needs.

There's thousands of books that have been written about having a happy marriage but I have managed to whittle EVERYTHING down to just one question.

If you ask this one question every single day when you wake up and take action on it you will have a much happier marriage than you may have thought possible.

The ONE Question For A Happy Marriage

Every morning as you get out of bed ask yourself this one question:

'What can I do today to make my partner happier?'

That's it. That is literally all you have to ask every day.

However, you've got to take action on that question.

The things you do to make your partner happier don't have to be huge sweeping gestures, in fact the smaller things often make your partner smile the most.

I'm talking about small things like:

Moving the car closer to home so your partner doesn't have as far to walk in the morning when they're going to work.
Making breakfast before they go to work.
Doing a chore they hate doing.
Preparing their lunch.
Texting them just to tell them you're thinking about them.
Running a bath for them coming in from work.
Recording their favourite TV programmes.
Buying them a book by their favourite authors.
Tell them you love them
Ask how their day went at work today and actively listen.

You see it doesn't have to be big things you do as long as you ask the question and take action this will truly help you have a happy marriage.

You might think this is too simplistic and being married is much more complicated than this and there's lots of dynamic pieces to it.

Not true.

We make it complicated.

All you have to do to have a happy marriage is think about your partners needs instead of your own and if you do this every single day then you genuinely will have a happy marriage.

And by the way a lot of people reading this might be thinking 'Well if i think about my partners needs all the time, when do my needs get met?'

All I am asking is you start your day thinking about your partners needs.

A few other articles you might enjoy about having a happy marriage:

7 Things to Give Up Immediately for a Happier Marriage.

12 Romantic Things You Could Easily Do for Your Wife

A Simple Guide to Better Relationships

Newly Married

The Happy Couple

A simple guide to improving your relationships

What do you think?

Let me know in the comment below what you think about this.

The post Happy Marriage – This ONE Question Holds The Secret appeared first on Change your thoughts.

A Quick Test To Reveal Your Innermost Thoughts

Steven Aitchison — Wed, 09 Sep 2020 11:48:00 GMT

I read a great article over at Oliver Pemberton's Blog He wrote an article about how to reveal your innermost thoughts in the space of 5 minutes.

I think this game highlights just how much we live in our subconscious minds and how the subconscious controls us without us ever realising it. However there are ways to reach the subconscious mind, which I'll discuss over the coming weeks.

I thought this was really interesting and would be great to share here on the blog, so here goes with this interesting game:

The 5 Minute Game

I want you to imagine a desert, stretching out as far as your eyes can see. In this desert is a cube.

Your first task is to describe the cube. What does it look like? How large is it? What is it made of? Where exactly is it?

There are no right answers here, only your answers. Take a moment before you continue "“ the detail is important.

As you look at the desert and your cube, you notice there is also a ladder. Your second task (there are just five) is to describe the ladder. What is it made of? How big is it? Where is it, in relation to the cube?

Now imagine that in the scene there is a horse. (Yes, horse. I didn't say this desert made sense). Your third task: describe the horse. Most importantly: where is the horse, and what is it doing? Where, if anywhere, is it going?

We're nearly there now. In the scene before you are flowers. Your penultimate task: describe the flowers. How many are there? What do they look like? Where are they, in relation to the horse, cube, ladder and sand?

Final question. In the desert there is a storm. Describe the storm. What type of storm is it? Is it near, or far? What direction is it headed? Does it affect the horse, flowers, cube or ladder?

If you've been playing along, this is going to be fun. If you didn't, I must warn you: the next part ruins your ability to play this game ever again. If you won't want to ruin it forever, go back now. Trust me.

Ready? There's no going back.

What the symbols represent

The Cube – Your Ego

The size is ostensibly your ego: a large cube means you're pretty sure of yourself, a small cube less so.

The vertical placement of the cube is how grounded you are. Resting on the sand? You're probably pretty down to earth. Floating in the sky? Your head is in the clouds.

The cube's material conveys how open you are: transparent cubes belong to transparent people, opaque cubes are more protective of their minds. Glowing? You're likely a positive person, who aims to raise the spirits of others. Made of granite? You're likely protective and resilient.

The trick here is that when asked to describe a blank, abstract entity "“ a cube "“ your imagination will tend to project its own identity onto it. This trick is as old as time, but it's about to get more interesting.

The Ladder – Your Friends

Are your friends leaning on the cube? Your friends depend on you, and are close. Is the ladder frail, or robust? Tall or short? Does it lead inside the cube? Or is it cast to one side, lying unloved on the sand? By now you should be able to draw your own conclusions.

The Horse – Your Dream Partner

The type of horse reveals a lot about what you yearn for in a partner. Some people see a steady brown workhorse, others a shining pegasus or unicorn. Make of these people what you will.

Is your horse nuzzling your cube affectionately, or taking a bite out of it? Is it far from your cube, or walking away? This can represent a current partner, or an aspirational one, but the results are often a mix of touching and hilarious.

The Flowers – Your Children

The number of flowers relates to how many you imagine having. Some people see just a single, withered daisy; others a resplendent garden covering the cube and desert beneath. (Guys: watch out for those).

The colour and vitality of the flowers can speak to their health and presumed prosperity. The placement "“ particularly in relation to the cube "“ can reveal interesting relations; I met one woman whose horse was eating their flowers.

The Storm – Threat

This speaks to the current state of the person, and how they perceive risk in their life. Some may see a distant storm, on the lip of the horizon, fading from sight. Others may view themselves in the midst of a thunderous apocalypse, hailstones the size of tennis balls pelting their fragile cube and horse. Chances are those people have some immediate trauma in their life.

Obviously this is just a little bit of fun and is not a true psychological tests, but it is interesting nonetheless.

How did you get on? leave a comment below and let us know.

Source:
http://oliveremberton.com/2014/how-to-connect-deeply-with-anyone-in-5-minutes/

The post A Quick Test To Reveal Your Innermost Thoughts appeared first on Change your thoughts.

A Walk in The Woods – Relational Psychology Quiz

Steven Aitchison — Mon, 07 Sep 2020 11:50:40 GMT

I love this type of relational psychology quiz so I decided to add another one this week. You can view the other one I posted last week at Innermost Thoughts

So let's get started with this one.

Read the following scenario and questions, try and visualise yourself actually in the scenes and write down, or remember, the first thing that comes into your mind as you read the questions. Don't think too much about them, just read and let your intuition flow:

A Walk in The Woods

1. You are walking in a beautiful woodland area, as the sun shines through the trees and a gentle breeze flows over your whole body. It's a beautiful day. You are walking with someone:

Who are you walking with?

2. As you walk through the woods, up ahead you see an animal in front of you:

What kind of animal is it.

3. What happens with you and the animal, and what interaction takes place between you and the animal?

4. As you walk deeper into the woods, you come to a clearing, and in the middle of the clearing is a your perfect house.

Describe it's size

5. As you walk closer to the house and see more of it, is it surrounded by a fence?

6. You tentatively walk to the front door of this house and enter as the door is is slightly ajar. As you walk in you walk through to the dining area and see a table.

Describe what you see on and around the table.

7. As you finish looking around you exit the house via the back door into the garden area, which has a large area of grass. In the centre of garden, in the grass, you see a cup.

What material is the cup made of (ceramic, glass, porcelain etc)

8. What do you do with the cup?

9. As you walk to the bottom of the garden you find yourself standing at the edge of a body of water.

What type of body of water is it (river, lake, pond etc)

10. As you think about how to get back home you have to cross the water.

How do you plan on doing this?

Now scroll down a little to see what your answers really mean

This has been a relational psychology test. The answers given to the questions have been shown to have a relevance to values and ideals that we hold in our personal lives. The analysis follows:

The person who you are walking with is the most important person in your life.
The size of the animal is representative of your perception of the size of your problems.
The severity of the interaction you have with the animal is representative of how you deal with your problems (passive, aggressive).
The size of your dream home is representative of the size of your ambition to resolve your problems.
No fence is indicative of an open personality. People are welcome at all times. The presence of a fence is more indicative of a closed personality. You'd prefer people to not drop by unannounced.
If your answer did not include food, people, or flowers then your are generally unhappy.
The durability of the material with which the cup is made is representative of the perceived durability of your relationship with the person from number 1. For example, styrofoam, plastic, and paper are all disposable and you don't really value the person long term. Glass, and ceramic are a little more precious and means you have a strong but fragile relationship; metal, wood, and plastic indicate a strong, long lasting relationship.
What you do with the cup is representative of your attitude toward the person in number 1.
The size of the body of water is representative of the size of your sexual desire.
How wet you get in crossing the water is indicative of the relative importance of your sex life.

Remember this is only a bit of fun so don't take it too serious

The post A Walk in The Woods – Relational Psychology Quiz appeared first on Change your thoughts.

10 Destructive Habits That Unhappy People Have

Steve Roy — Mon, 07 Sep 2020 11:00:00 GMT

It is said that happiness is a state of mind and to a certain extent, that's true. But I believe that whether we are happy or unhappy is more about the habits we have. Unhappy people tend to have destructive habits in their lives.

It's a sad fact, but a mere 33% of Americans consider themselves to be happy. Why is this? We live in a land filled to the brim with opportunity where anyone can choose to live the life they want.

But they don't.

Instead we see unhappiness at every corner. From the impatient person standing behind you at the grocery store, to the teller at the bank who looks like she would rather be anywhere else at that moment, to your neighbors across the street, who never look up and say, "Hello."

The only difference between the person you see happily walking down the street seemingly without a care in the world and the person next to them consumed in misery is the choices they make each and every day.

And of course each choice repeated becomes a habit. Habits dictate everything from our experiences to our outcomes and everything in between.

Below are 10 destructive habits that unhappy people have:

You live to please other people.

This is a devastating habit to possess because you choose to live your life trying to make everyone happy and in turn, fail to make yourself happy. One of the best things you can do for yourself is to figure out what really drives you on a deep emotional level and then do it.

You have an overwhelming fear of criticism.

From his book, Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill stated that a fear of criticism robs man of his initiative, destroys his power of imagination, limits his individuality, takes away his self-reliance, and does him damage in a hundred other ways. Most people spend their days worrying about what others think about them and will go to great lengths to look good or save face. The ironic part is that those same people are so consumed worrying about what you think of them, that they aren't actually thinking about.

You engage in negative self-talk.

All actions derive from what we tell ourselves on a daily basis. Unhappy people have the habit of telling themselves things like "I don't know how", "It's too hard", and "I can't do it". The key to change is to begin rephrasing these into positive thoughts. It takes practice and you'll catch yourself being negative many times, but if you want to be a happier person, you have to start making those changes.

You are a glass half empty person.

Being a pessimist is the result of negative habits developed over a number of years. This habit is very hard to kick because it becomes so ingrained in your mind, that itÃs second nature. In any situation, your first thought or reaction is a negative one. Becoming an optimist will require you to develop new mental skills and retrain your entire thought process to see opportunity instead of struggle. This can be done gradually by consciously looking at your attitude and choosing to see opportunity instead of difficulty.

You let the past dictate your future.

If you happen to have a past riddled with negativity and bad experiences, chances are your personality mirrors this. You can't change your past and allowing yourself to stay attached to it will only drag you down. Learn to let go of things out of your control and focus on today. What can you accomplish today?

You are sedentary.

It's a fact that people who exercise regularly are happier than those who don't. Sitting at a desk all day only to follow it with sitting on your couch is not conducive to being happy. Get up, move around, go outside, take the stairs, take a walk, join the gym, ride your bike. The endorphins released during activity play a big role in your mood, so if you're not active, get active!

You are a worry wart.

Worrying is a choice like everything else. Most of you are familiar with the worry wart and many of you probably grew up with one in your household. Worry is such a waste of time yet causes so much unhappiness. Worry is nothing but fear and fear is nothing but a bulls**t excuse not to embrace something. Do not waste another minute of your life worrying about things you have no control over. For example, worrying about your plane crashing is an unjustified fear. Statistics show the likelihood of that happening is smaller than being hit by lightning. In either case, you are sacrificing your ability to relax and be happy for something extraneous and out of your control.

You cannot forgive and forget.

Harboring ill feelings towards someone or something is like carrying a 10-pound weight in your pocket. We all have had bad experiences that have left a sour taste in our mouth. Forgiveness is the solution and is an incredibly powerful concept. Maybe you have been wronged or made a terrible decision in your life. Learn from it and move on.

You are a perfectionist.

We all know someone who considers themselves a perfectionist. Maybe it's even you! Trying to pursue perfection in all that you do may sound like a good thing, but taken too far, can be highly detrimental to your emotional health. Perfectionism can lead to a host of mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and chronic unhappiness. Remember that everything can be done better by either you or someone else, but it's OK if it's not. Your goal shouldn't be perfection, but rather improvement and personal growth.

You define yourself by your job.

It's a fact that more than 70% of us don't like our jobs. In a society where we tend to view ourselves by what we do for a living rather than who we actually are, it's a fundamental problem and leads to the inability to separate ourselves from our professions.

Happiness is a choice, but we must first choose to adopt good habits and rid ourselves of bad ones. This takes practice and time, especially if you are a lifelong cynic. If you find yourself guilty of any of the preceding habits, take a hard look at the quality of your life.

You just might want to make a change and choose happiness.

The post 10 Destructive Habits That Unhappy People Have appeared first on Change your thoughts.

29 Ways to Increase Your Feeling of Self Worth

Steven Aitchison — Fri, 04 Sep 2020 04:42:52 GMT

Self worth comes from within, you won't find it by having more money, having more friends, having a fancy car or a big house. It is something intrinsic and something we can't gain extrinsically, meaning we won't find self worth from external factors. Here are some things you can do to increase your feeling of self worth.

29 Ways to increase your feeling of self worth

Write down 7 minor goals for the week and tick one off each day as you achieve it.
Read a book a month. Reading a book is actually an achievement in this technology and media driven world and reading a full book is a great way to achieve a sense of accomplishment.
At the end of each day before falling asleep write down something you feel proud about, either on the day or in the past.
Tell someone else how much you appreciate them, being able to be open and honest is great for self worth.
Say no! Learn the skill of saying no without offending the person asking.
Everything you do, do to the best of your ability even if it cleaning the toilets or something equally as mundane, develop a reputation as someone who takes pride in their work.
Walk tall and proud. walk as if you've got somewhere to go and you need to be there now, never run just walk tall and quickly.
Dress as smart as you can for each occasion, whether it be work, meeting a friend, or going for an interview. Take pride in your appearance.
Do something for yourself every day.
Learn a new skill or take up something you've always wanted to and stick with it.
Speak up for yourself in every area of your life, this might be hard to do at first but the first time you do it will be immense and if you carry on your self esteem and feelings of self worth will soar.
Sing at the top of your voice, not outside but in the house and really give it loads (I love singing Free Fallin' by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers at the top of my voice, ah! such a good feeling.)
Forgive yourself! (You know what I mean)
Get rid of the people who are dragging you down (I don't mean kill them, I mean just stop having them in your life.)
Work on your strengths. A lot of people focus on building up their weaknesses, instead get better at what you are good at.
Take a walk in the rain………..Why?………..because you have the power to decide!
Listen to other people and what they are saying.
Reward your successes. As soon as you achieve something reward yourself.
Never let anyone force you to break your core values.
Stop the gossiping!
Don't read a newspaper for a week and gauge how you feel about yourself and the world around you.
Help other people who need it.
Always, Always, Always be honest with yourself and others. There is no need for lies and the energy it takes to continue a lie is unbelievable.
Take a chance and take a risk or two. You don't have long to live so just get up and do it.
Listen to your self talk and slap the little person criticising you, I mean it, imagine there are two people one on each shoulder, the one who criticises you give them a slap or a punch in the mouth and start to pay attention to the one who is praising you.
Don't be afraid to accept help from other people, it means they respect you enough to help you with something.
Start changing your thinking to be more optimistic about yourself, instead of '…I can't do that….' say '..I've never tried it, but I'll give it a go…'
Face your fears. Nothing will send your self esteem soaring more so than facing your fears and eventually conquering them.
Always leave comments on a blog you like

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7 Types of Pain Directly Linked to Your Emotions

Steven Aitchison — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 08:00:20 GMT

We often suffer all kinds of pain and think nothing about either ignoring it or self-diagnosing it without really taking the take to figure out exactly what is causing the pain. How many times have you thought that pain in your back is simply a result of twisting the wrong way in bed the night before? Eventually you realize that pain is still there, two weeks later, but you just brush it off, take two more Advil's and carry on with your day. At what point do you decided it's time to investigate further to see what that pain is really all about?

When did we suddenly stop taking care of ourselves, physically, spiritually and emotionally? Why do we think we're invincible when we're really not and we do, in fact, actually have to listen to our body's pain signals? I've compiled a small list for you to show you how some of those aches and pains you have been experiencing are probably more than a pulled muscle from a month ago.

1. Headaches.

These pains are the body's way of telling you it needs something or desperately needs you to do something right away. Migraines and other types of headaches could be you need to not stress so much, you need more water, food, less of something or more of something but first and foremost, most headaches are caused by stress. Your body is telling you it's time to start chilling out and learn to relax more.

2. Neck.

Having a pain in the neck is more than just your neighbour getting on your last nerve. If you are suffering from pain here all the time this is your body alerting you of all the guilt you are carrying around and you need to start letting it go. If you are having a hard time forgiving yourself from something maybe you should take time to use a guided meditation or seek help in order to release this guilt. Guilt serves no purpose. Let it go.

3. Upper back.

This is our need for or the feeling of lack thereof, of emotional support. Either you are feeling unloved or you need to start showing more love to the people in your life. The upper back pain is all about our emotions that have to do with love and being supported. Maybe it's time you start reaching out to the people you love and strengthen those bonds a bit more. Or maybe you are single and looking for love? Go out more and socialize. You never know who you might meet.

4. Lower back.

This is our core so it resonates with having a solid foundation or feeling grounded or sure of our financial stability. This pain, however, is usually tied to finances or the lack thereof. If you are feeling broke or upset about money or your job, these feelings will show up as a pain in the lower back. Try to sort through your money problems and see if they can be resolved. Maybe try spending less on things you don't need or giving more so you can keep the flow of abundance going.

5. Shoulder pain.

The term shouldering a problem rings true here. A lot of us who carry burdens, or problems, will carry the brunt of that pain in their shoulders. It's almost like a monkey on your back kind of feeling. It's there, it's heavy and it puts pressure on you but you don't think you can do anything about it. Well you can, learn to let go of problems that you can't do anything about. In other words, don't worry so much about things you have no control over.

6. Hip pain.

If you constantly feel a pain or tightness in your hips it could be a sign that you are stuck in life somewhere or you are really afraid to change or move forward with something. Stepping out of your comfort zone isn't anything you want to do. It also could be a sign of not wanting to make a major decision about something. Facing fear and being brave is a hard thing to do but when you've done it once and see the results, you will want to do it more. Do it once. You'll see.

7. Knees.

Your knees hurting all the time? Check your ego and see what it's saying to you. Having pains in your knees is a sign that you like things your way or no way, that you have the best ideas and everyone should listen. You aren't open to giving away recognition nor do you want anyone else to take credit for anything. Pains in the knees is your unwillingness to bend. Think about that next time your knees hurt and see what situation is going on in your life at the time. Could be it's time to bend.

Our bodies deserve a lot more credit than we give them. They hold secrets and deep meanings to tons of different stories from our emotions. Pay attention. These are only a few but there are a slew of health related problems that can easily be fixed by checking where we are in our lives. Have a look.

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9 Things That Will Happen When You Embrace Being Alone

Steven Aitchison — Wed, 02 Sep 2020 09:05:00 GMT

There is a huge difference between being alone and feeling lonely: Being alone is the choice to spend time with yourself and feeling lonely is the need to be in the company of others.

I didn't meet the woman of my dreams until I was 32 years old and up until that point I loved being alone. I had my own flat, went out when I wanted, stayed up until 4am and got up at 8am, I had friends to go raving with, friends to go to the cinema with, friends to have a coffee with, relationships with other women, one night stands with other women, dabbled in drugs, played the stockmarket, got a degree in Psychology, quit a few jobs on a whim to go travelling, found out the difference between dancing at a rave and truly feeling the music flow through me, and dancing at a nightclub and feeling self conscious, found out what I truly was looking for in an ideal partner, and discovered what I really wanted to do in life.

It all sounds like a very hedonistic lifestyle, but underneath it all was the conscious choice to spend a lot of my time alone. I love my own company and treasure the moments I get a bit of time to myself.

Now, I have Sharon and my two sons and I treasure the times we have together, but I have continued my alone time by setting up a business from home and basically spend around 9 hours per day completely alone in my office with my dog. But, I am not lonely, far from it. I chat on skype with some great people I have met related to my business, I go out with friends and family, I interact with readers on Facebook, and occasionally travel around the country to attend various seminars and masterminds, meeting some amazing people in the process. I used to consider myself to be an introvert, but now think I am more of an ambivert. I have the perfect balance in my life.

Some people cannot embrace this alone time, but when you embrace this time of being alone you will never again feel lonely in your life.

9 Things That Will Happen When You Embrace Being Alone

1. You get time to exhale

So often we are busy running around at 100 miles per hour at work, and with friends and family, we hardly get time to take a breathe. When you spend time alone, you get time to take a deep breathe and exhale slowly, letting all the dramas fade from your mind.

2. The fog in your mind begins to lift

Have you ever felt that you are so busy with life that you just can't seem to see things clearly? Being alone offers this fog of busyness to lift from your mind, and clears the way for clearer thinking.

3. Reflect on your own life

We don't often get a chance to reflect on our own life as we're so busy involved in the lives of others. Getting this time is essential if you want to answer the big questions in life: What do I want? What can I do to make myself more happy? What can I to to contribute? What the hell am I doing?

I know in the past I have gone with the flow of life, which is great, but then three years later have realised I am stuck in a shitty job I don't like and wonder why the hell I am doing it, or got stuck in a relationship that was just happening and not growing. This time alone gives us a chance to stop and think about the things that really matter.

4. Spend time doing things you love

There are so many things I have learned by embracing being alone, like learning to build websites, write code, learn the guitar, writing, learning how to make videos, and learning more about myself through reading.

When you embrace being alone you have the choice of doing anything that you feel like doing, there's no restrictions, nobody to say 'Oh that's just silly' (or if you're in Scotland: 'That's bloody mental'). Imagine if you had the chance to learn anything, what would it be?

5. Get more things done

When you're away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life and everyday dramas you tend to get a hell of a lot more done than normal. You get the time, free from distractions, to get your head down and get on with it.

6. Become more confident

There's a quiet confidence about people who have learned to embrace their own company. They don't talk for the sake of being heard, they tend to talk only when there's something to say, but more than that, they don't feel self conscious about not talking and feel very confident in the company of others. This is because they have a deep inner confidence that only comes when you have learned to embrace yourself fully, which comes from spending more time alone.

7. Feel a lot more independent

When you stop craving the company of others and start doing things you wouldn't normally do unless you were with someone else, like eat out at a restaurant, go to the cinema, or go for a long drive. When you start to do these things alone, it can be extremely empowering.

8. Get in touch with your emotions

You can't know your emotions when you are trapped in the energy of other peoples dramas. only when you get time to be yourself can you truly get in touch with your emotions. You will gain a deeper insight into the things that make you truly happy.

This comes with understanding yourself more which can only come with a little bit of me time.

9. Feel connected to something deeper

There's something amazing that happens when you have a little solitude in your life. You start to ask the bigger questions; What is my purpose, why am I here, what can I do to contribute.

This seems to be an inbuilt program in the human mind, and we can't truly reflect on these questions unless we have a bit of solitude.

I have spent many hours thinking about the bigger questions and formulated my own beliefs and thoughts about the world when I have spent time alone and these beliefs and thoughts have permeated my daily thoughts and interactions with others in my life.

So it's not just about being alone in the moment. It seems that spending quality time alone can have a lasting effect on everything that you do and also have an effect on the relationships you have in life.

Some links that might help you

29 Ways to Increase Your Feeling of Self Worth

The Root of Self-Worth: 8 Ways to Honor Yourself

9 Signs You’re Lying To Yourself Without Knowing It

This Color Quiz Will Reveal What You Love Most About Yourself

What is Self-Reliance and How to Develop It?

Self-Reliance

Self-Reliance Is The Secret Sauce To Consistent Happiness

The Myth of Self-Reliance

Let me know your thoughts about this, would love to hear what you think.

The post 9 Things That Will Happen When You Embrace Being Alone appeared first on Change your thoughts.

11 Reasons to Drink More Lemon Water

Steven Aitchison — Tue, 01 Sep 2020 05:55:01 GMT

Did you know that we are made up of 50-75% water? Think about that for one minute. More than half of us is water. That's incredible. We only start to feel thirsty when we have lost about 2-3% of our water and many of us actually ignore the signs of thirst. Your body needs water for a multitude of reasons. Here are just a few:

Flushes out toxins
Helps the nutrients get to your organs and tissues
Regulates body temperature
Protects joints and organs

You can see how water is pretty important to drink. We get 20% of our water through food so what about the other 80%? It's up to you to provide your body with that and it should come from water. But water is boring to drink. It's bland. You have a hard time pouring a glass of water and drinking it straight up. In fact, you hate is so much you'd rather just not drink it all.

Well you don't have to drink boring bland water anymore to get that 80%. Grab a lemon and start slicing and squeezing. Move over blah water. Hello lemon water. Is it good for you? Safe to drink? Better than you think. Here are some reasons why you should be heading to the grocery store and stocking up on these cute little yellow fruits.

11 Reasons to Drink More Lemon Water

Natural Vitamin C.

Remember your doctor telling you Vitamin C is pretty darned important for healing wounds, providing nutrients and creating collagen for your body just to name a few things. This vitamin does not get stored in your body so you need to replenish the supply daily. What better way than to drink it naturally.

Potassium please.

Lemons have potassium too. This mineral is good for the heart and helps lower high blood pressure and reduces your risk of stroke.

Clean that liver.

We all know that our liver has a big job. It filters and flushes out crap. Drinking water is important in aiding the liver to do that but did you know that water with lemon lowers the toxins in your body so the liver doesn't have to work quite as hard?

Digestion aid.

Lemon water is great for helping with digestion. Try squeezing some lemon into some warm water, not cold, and drink it after a meal. Chances of having an upset stomach after dinner will be slim.

No more sore stomach.

And speaking of upset stomachs, lemon water will naturally soothe a sore stomach and relieve indigestion.

No thanks, I'm not hungry.

Trying to lose weight or maintain your figure? Try drinking lemon water before a meal or before going out to eat. It is a great appetite suppressor. You will feel fuller, sooner and longer and won't eat as much. No pig outs for you!

Clearer skin.

We all know that drinking lots of water keeps our skin soft and supple but did you know that putting some lemon in that water will help keep your skin clearer too? Of course, remember it is flushing toxins out of our body better and because of that, better skin.

Say aaaaah with more confidence.

Lemon water gives you fresher breath so you won't have to be embarrassed by bad breath again. The sweet citrusy drink cleanses your palettes and your breath naturally.

More energy than coffee?

Absolutely. Try replacing your regular morning coffee with a cup of warm water and lemon for a week and see what happens. The first two days you may feel a slight detox from the coffee but I guarantee you will feel better the rest of the day.

Start the day right?

If you don't think you are ready to give up coffee just yet, that's ok. How about having a nice glass of lemon water while you're coffee is brewing? Your body has been asleep and without hydration for almost 8 hours so it desperately needs water upon waking. Remember, even though coffee is made of water, it will not rehydrate you. In fact, it will do the exact opposite. Do it a favor, give it some water.

A wonderful natural flavor.

Put away those horrible drink crystals that claim to enhance the taste of your water naturally. There isn't anything natural about them. Anything that says sugar free means chemical shit storm. Remember that. Do not put that in your body.

If you aren't so convinced just yet, why not try a lemon water test for a week and see how you feel. Can you think of any other benefits of lemon water that I may have missed? Share them below.

The post 11 Reasons to Drink More Lemon Water appeared first on Change your thoughts.

Quizzes Why They Are So Popular And The 37 Amazing Personality Quizzes

Steven Aitchison — Sun, 05 Jul 2020 15:15:26 GMT

The quizzes on the Change your Thoughts blog have been shared over 5 million times on social media.

I think the reason for their popularity is that I totally love quizzes myself. I remember have a personality quiz book when I was younger, where you had to add up all your scores and find the meaning at the end of the book.

So I dig up the best quizzes I can find on Playbuzz and share them with you here on the CYT Blog.

Ever since I introduced quizzes on the blog they were a huge hit and immediately were shared all over social media.

The most shared quiz ever on my blog is the Enneagram Type quiz, which has been shared over 3.7 million times on Facebook alone.

Why do we love personality quizzes so much?

Well, It's not because we are self obsessed.

One of the big reasons we love personality quizzes is that it helps us to understand ourselves better and find our place in the world. We want to know we belong and that includes belonging to groups. Personality quizzes gives us a quick insight into ourselves and the groups we might possibly belong to.

Ultimately, pop culture-based labels assigned from online quizzes can be vague, and they often rely on stereotypes. But they do serve a purpose. They give us a way to talk honestly and earnestly about ourselves, using a common cultural vocabulary. In assigning us labels, online quizzes allow us to easily relate to each other. ^[1]

“People love an easy way to gain insight into their unique patterns of thoughts, feelings and behaviours,” explains psychologist Mary Hoang from The Indigo Project. “For the same reason some people love astrology, some people love the sense of categorisation personality quizzes provide as they allow us to know ourselves and others a little better.”

When you take a quiz and are given a label or group to fit into, you not only feel understood, you also feel like you’re part of a club. “Some people can feel a sense of belonging and this makes sense,” adds Hoang. “It’s comforting to know that you’re not the only one thinking, feeling or behaving the way you do.” ^[2]

Can personality quizzes actually help us?

Think about it, we rarely get the opportunity to answer questions about ourselves. So playing these quizzes, however trivial some of them are, like What is Your Hippie Name? gives us a chance to stop and ask ourselves questions about what we like and what we don't like. It's a form of self reflection, something that we wouldn't otherwise take time out of our day to do.

What we are doing when we take these quizzes is answering questions about ourselves without any thought of judgement from others. So we tend to be more honest than we otherwise would if someone else was asking us the same questions.

Bruce Carter, a professor of human development and family science at Syracuse University, echoed that sentiment. He said that we gravitate to online quizzes in an effort to answer what he calls the fundamental question of humanity: "Why do people act the way that they do?"

The social aspect of personality quizzes

With the likes of facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media sites, the sharing of quizzes is extremely easy and quick. This is also another way of helping us to find out what groups we belong to.

How many posts have you seen on Facebook declaring that "I am an INFJ, What Are You?' type of post talking about the Myers briggs personality quiz. Actually, the Myers Briggs is not just a fun quiz it's actually used to determine your personality in some work places, so there's a more serious aspect to personality testing as well.

The gamification of quizzes is what has made it so popular on social media.

The other reason personality quizzes are so popular is the fact that quizzes only take a few minutes to take.

That being said lets get to the 57 most popular personality quizzes ever and the number of times they have been shared on this blog.

The 37 Most Shared Personality Quizzes

Personality Quiz Name	No. Of Shares
Enneagram Type	3.7 Million
This Abstract Image Test Will Reveal Your True Self	592,500
How Good Are You At Reading People?	305,900
What is Your Strongest Mental Ability	271,600
Quiz – Pick A Door to Your Future	226,900
What Colour is Your Aura	218,200
A 5 Minute Test That Will Reveal Your Innermost Thoughts	179,400
The Way You See Images Can Determine Who You Really Are	175,700
What Is Your Energy Vibration?	174,700
What Is Your Actual Birth Name?	150,400
Crystal Personality Quiz	133,400
A Walk in The Woods – Relational Psychology Quiz	110,000
Numerology Reading – What Your Birthdate Says About You	97,031
Only 1 In 50 Women Can Pass This Men's Test	82,200
Personality Quiz – What Type of Spirit Do You Have	79,800
What Are Your Five Dominant Traits	76,500
What is Your Dominant Character Trait	74,900
Which Intelligence Is Your Most Dominant?	71,500
What is Your Psychic Power?	69,600
Personality Quiz The Pictures You Choose	64,600
What Type Of Spirit Is With You	60,200
What Crystal Colour Are You Vibrating?	59,500
Can You Pass The Perception Test?	58,300
Your Celtic Tree Sign and What it Says About You	50,500
Who is Your Mask and The Person Behind It?	49,400
Are You An Ambivert	45,900
How Rare Is Your Personality?	45,400
What Colour is Your Soul	44,500
How Mentally Strong Are You?	42,100
This Eye Test Will Determine What Kind Of Person You Are	41,300
What Kind Of Unique Person Are You?	40,100
What Is Your Emotional IQ	39,200
What Is Your Guardian Angel Trying To Tell You?	38,000
What Colour Represents Your Personality	37,500
What Are Your 5 Dominant Personality Traits Based On Your Visual Preferences?	37,400
Who is Your Guardian Angel?	35,800
This Abstract Image Test Will Determine Your Dominant Personality Trait	35,300

Conclusion

So personality quizzes have their place from a psychological perspective and and from a self reflection perspective.

Quizzes can help us to sit down and think about ourselves and answer questions honestly without anybody judging us.

Let me know in the comments which of the personality quizzes you like the most and why you like doing the quizzes.

Links to references in this article

The post Quizzes Why They Are So Popular And The 37 Amazing Personality Quizzes appeared first on Change your thoughts.

Eye Contact – The Definitive Guide

Steven Aitchison — Thu, 02 Jul 2020 07:46:00 GMT

Eye Contact: Why Is It So Important?

Have you ever spoken to someone and they seemed to shift uncomfortably, looking at their shoes and failing to make eye contact with you? They maybe look you in the eye then immediately dart away looking at their shoes again.

For the more adept among us that type of behaviour is a bit odd.

If you know what I am talking about by avoiding eye contact with others, you'll know just how debilitating it can be when communicating with others.

Eye contact is important as it conveys an inner confidence. However, the trick to eye contact is making it a subconscious behaviour. If you become aware that you're not making enough eye contact or you're making too much, you become self conscious and that weird behaviour kicks in; you stare at one eye too long, making the speaker feel self conscious, you might stare at the chin too long if you are using a triangular approach to eye contact.

The truth is mastering the art of eye contact is not as easy as you might think.

You might think it's just a matter of looking people in the eye when you are talking and looking at people when you are talking, it's not that simple.

Eye Contact Exercise

To find out just how comfortable you feel with eye contact I am going to show you a video of someone who is just looking at the camera.

Look at this person as if you were talking to one of your friends and feel how comfortable or uncomfortable you are with making eye contact.

How did you get on?

Did you feel self conscious? Did you feel you couldn't look her in the eyes? did you find yourself laughing nervously? Did you feel attracted to her?

It's important to know what you feel like when making eye contact in order to become better at it.

Eye Contact in Infants

A 2019 study, looking at the affects of eye contact in babies from 9-10 months old, found eye contact led to an elevation in the infants' heart rates (HRs) and that HR during eye contact was predictive of later gaze following. Furthermore, increases in HR predicted gaze following whether it was accompanied by communicative cues or not. These findings suggest that infant gaze following behaviour is associated with both communicative cues and physiological arousal. ^[1]

Unlike adults, who mostly know instinctively to break eye contact to help concentrate on what they’re saying, children will tend to maintain gaze even when asked a difficult question. Developmental psychologists have shown that children can benefit from being trained to avert their gaze to help them think things through more clearly. ^[2]

Eye contact is deeply rooted in our DNA and can help in every area of our lives, from the partners we choose, the jobs we have to the friends we have. You are reading this article just now as your parents had some flirty eye contact that led to one thing that led to you being here nine months later.

Eye contact provides social information to the person you are listening to and talking to. Too much eye contact and you could be seen as aggressive, too little eye contact and you can be seen as having no interest in the person speaking. It is an often overlooked skill to have and an under utilised skill when communicating with people. You can see masters of eye contact in great sales persons, politicians, and good public speakers, and of course when you're naturally attracted to someone.

I realised the importance of eye contact when I was counseling people face to face. I noticed when I broke eye contact the person would stop speaking. When I maintained eye contact the person would continue talking knowing that I was interested in what they had to say.

Research shows that "gaze functions to provide information, regulate interaction, express intimacy, exercise social control, and facilitate service and task goals." ^[3]

Your Eyes Will Give Away What You Are Thinking

Your eyes can tell a lot about you and tell others even more simply by the way you use them. Eye communication is a great skill to have and eye contact is a great tool to master. We all use it and we all give away vital clues as to what we are thinking with our eyes.

References are made to our eyes in everyday conversation such as 'she has bedroom eyes', 'don't give me those puppy dog eyes', 'giving me the evil eye' and many more such phrases.

If you can learn the skill of reading eye signals and mastering the art of using eye contact it can make a huge difference in your personal and business life.

The Pupils

Your pupils and the size of them will give away a lot of secrets, and it's something we can't do much about. The pupils will either constrict or dilate depending on our state of mind. If we are aroused by something, or someone, our pupils will dilate and if we are turned off by something or someone our pupils will constrict.

Skilled street traders across the world look for the size of the pupils when bartering with their customers. If a customer sees an object and their pupils are fully dilated, then the trader knows they can keep the price of the item at the higher end.

When we are excited by someone we like, our pupils will dilate, and when we are in the company of someone we don't like, our pupils will constrict.

Take a look at these two photos. Which one do you prefer?

The first photo shows the pupils constricted and the second photo shows the pupils dilated. The one with the pupils dilated would normally be the one that people picked, as it is more seductive and deemed more attractive when the pupils are dilated.

Next time you are talking to someone pay attention to the size of their pupils, don't go right up to their face and make a nuisance of yourself, but just casually watch the size of their pupils. This will tell you what excites them when they are talking, it might also tell you if they like you or not as we can rarely hide our emotions with our eyes.

Different Types of Eyes

Wandering Eyes

Have you ever noticed when you are talking to someone that their eyes are looking everywhere and not at you. This in itself is an obvious sign of distraction or boredom however, it also means that the person is looking for a way to get out of your space. Looking out a window when someone is talking to you could mean they would rather be outside.

If you do this, be careful of the signals you are giving to the other person, unless you specifically want them to know you don't want to be with them.

The Angry Eyes

When we are angry our eyes become narrower, brows are furrowed and our pupils constrict. It's quite easy to tell if someone is angry when they have all of the above. what if they don't show the above body language signals? Well, we have to look for other body language clues such as constriction of the lips, flared nostrils, staring, clenching of the jaw etc.

When you are speaking to someone who is displaying signs of anger you can either back down or stand up for yourself, depending on what the situation warrants.

If you stand up for yourself you should be holding eye gaze and not break it. This shows the other person that you are not intimidated by them. If you are the one to break eye contact in a heated argument you have all but lost the argument.

The Seductive Eyes

It's quite easy to tell if someone likes us by the size of their pupils. In a well lit room, if you are speaking to someone face to face you can see the size of the other person pupils. If the eyes start to dilate they are interested in what you have to say or they find you attractive.

However, this is not so true in a darkened room like a nightclub as the size of our pupils will dilate to let more light in, in order to see better in the darkened room. So be careful to read the signals correctly before making a fool of yourself.

There are other ways to seduce someone with your eyes. The classic Lady Diana look with her head down and eyes looking up was one of the reasons so many people warmed to her. This type of look makes the observer feel more maternal or paternal and also brings out the protector in men which made Lady Di more attractive.

Your Gaze

When we are talking to our friends and in social situations, and are looking and talking with another person for some time we unconsciously gaze at the persons face in a controlled manner. However, if we have lost confidence or we are not yet socially adept we can lose this ability. Here is a quick guide on where to focus your gaze when talking to someone.

Social Gazing

When you are speaking in a social setting you don't want to stare into someone's eyes as this is a bit strange for someone to do, and a bit off-putting for the talker. To get over this, use a triangle approach. First look at one eye of the talker, then look at their mouth, briefly, and then move onto their other eye. This shows you are still interested in what they have to say as you have not looked away from their face.

The Flirty Gaze

When we flirt with each other the eyes still move in a triangular way but with more range, downwards. I know the women reading this will have experienced men who think you are talking from your breasts, which is quite disconcerting, and I'll explain a possible reason for this, apart from the obvious. However, we all do it, men and women, only women are better at it.

It has been shown that when we are walking toward each other from a distance, men and women, automatically check each other from head to foot. First time to check the sex of the person and second time to check the sexiness of the person.

Men are more likely to get caught checking out a females body, rather than looking them in the eye, because they have less peripheral vision than women. Women can look you in the face but still look at your body because their peripheral vision is much better.

Our eyes contain two types of photo-receptors; rods and cones. Rods are responsible for scotopic vision, dark adapted vision. They also predominate the peripheral vision and women have more rods in their eyes than men do; hence why they have better peripheral vision and are better at seeing in the dark.

In Mark Manson's post, The levels of Eye Contact he suggest level six eye contact is The Smile:

"The sixth level of eye contact is The Gaze plus a smile. If the gaze is a clear sign telling you that they’re interested, throwing a smile on top of it may as well be a neon flashing billboard. If someone you find attractive gives you Level 6 and you don’t talk to them, not only are you an idiot, but you probably have some serious anxiety going on." ^[4]

The Controlling Gaze

If you are looking to intimidate someone when you are talking to them, or are trying to control the conversation look at the area known as "˜the third eye' which is the spot just between the eyebrows.

Many men do this to try and intimidate the people they are talking to and to try and control a conversation.

Can You Tell if Someone is Lying With Their Eye Movements?

Short answer to that is no. However, by looking at other body language signals and looking at their eyes you can get a good idea if someone is lying or not.

With the work of Bandler and Grinder and their excellent work on NLP we have an idea of how our eye movements relate to how we access information from the brain, which can help to tell is someone is lying or not. ^[5]

Visual Accessing Cues

(VC) Visual Construction : Looking up and to the left. The person is accessing information from their imagination and might possibly be making it up. For example, if you asked someone what their dream home would look like they would, more than likely, look up and to their left.

If someone is lying about something and making stories up they might be using this eye movement.

(VR) Visual Remembering : Looking up and to the right. This is when we are actually accessing a memory and picturing it in our heads. It is more than likely that this is a memory that actually happened. Ask your friend what they had for dinner yesterday and they will most likely look up and to the right.

(AC) Auditory Construction : Looking middle and to the left. This is where our eyes might go if we were constructing a sound in our mind. For example if you asked a friend to think of what their voice will sound like when they are 80 years old, they would more than likely look in this direction.

(AR) Auditory Remembering : Looking middle and to the right. This is where our eyes might go if you were remembering a sound that you have heard before. For example ask your friend what the sound of their partner sounds like and they will more than likely look in this direction.

(K) Kinesthetic :Looking down and to the left. This is the direction your eyes might go if you were accessing your actual feelings about something. For example, if you ask a friend about their feelings on the issues of capital punishment their eyes might go in this direction.

(AD) Auditory Digital : Looking down and to the right. This is the direction our eyes might go when we are talking to ourselves. We do this all the time and it is called self talk. Believe it or not we talk to ourselves a lot and we can learn a lot about ourselves by paying attention to our self talk, but that is for another article.

The information above represents the majority of people, but it may be different for some. However, it is still possible to work out a persons representational system by observing them when you ask them questions.

Using the information above should get you started on the road to being able to read people using their eyes as signals. Remember, as with all body language signals, that they should be read together and not separately.

Everyday Conversation and Eye Contact

We will use eye contact every day of our lives so it makes sense to learn the best ways to use your eyes to your advantage.

Certain situations demand different uses of the eyes. For example if your are arguing it is seen as strong if you can hold your gaze. If you are deferring to someone it is better to lower your eyes, if you are loving someone it is good to stare into the pool of the eyes.

6 Ways to Improve Your Eye Contact Skills

Talking to a group

When talking to a group of people it is great to have direct contact with your listeners. Don't make the mistake of maintaining eye contact with just one person as this will stop the other members of the group from listening. To get past this, focus on a different member of the group with every new sentence. This way you are talking to all of the group and keeping them all interested.

Talking to an individual

It is great to maintain eye contact when talking to a person however it can become a bit creepy and uncomfortable if you stare intensely at them. To combat this, break eye contact every 5 seconds or so. When breaking the eye contact don't look down as this might indicate the ending of your part of the conversation. Instead, look up or to the side as if your are remembering something. Try it just now: don't move your head, and think about the first time you started school. You will notice your eyes might move up or to the side as you try to remember this. So when your listener sees this they will think you are trying to remember something and keep on listening to you.

Listening to someone

When you are listening to someone it can be off putting for the talker if you stare at them too hard. The technique I use when I am counselling someone is to use what I call "˜The triangle'. This is when I look at one eye for about 5 seconds, look at the other eye for 5 seconds and then look at the mouth for 5 seconds and keep on rotating in this way. This technique coupled with other listening skills such as nodding, occasional agreement words such as "˜yes', "˜Uh "“huh' "˜mm' etc is a great way to keep the talker talking and to show them you are interested in what they are saying.

Arguing

Arguing with someone is a skill in itself and if you want to compete in an argument holding the gaze shows strength. If you look away when arguing with someone you have all but lost the argument. Obviously this depends on who you are arguing with but in general it is better to hold the gaze whilst you are making your point and also when you are listening to the other person. We have all come across the person who is great at arguing and making you feel small, you will notice that everyone who is like this try to stare you out. Stare back, it will surprise them, piss them off and put them off what they are trying to say. Staying silent and staring at someone who is trying to rile you is also an effective way to win an argument without saying a word.

Attracting someone

When you are trying to attract someone and show them you are interested you can talk and listen with your eyes. When a person you like is speaking use the whole face as your focal point. Look at their eyes, listen to what they are saying, smile in the appropriate places, raise your eyebrows in the appropriate places. If you feel you are staring at them move to their other features such as their lips, their cheeks, their nose and then back to their eyes. Smiling when listening to someone is a great way to show you are interested in them, obviously don't smile when they have just told you their pet died last night. You have to listen with your ears as well as listening with your eyes (yes I did mean listening with your eyes, you listen to someone's body language with your eyes).

Loving someone

My wife and I often share a prolonged gaze into each others eyes and it is a very special thing to just stare without talking. My wife's pupils will dilate and she can see my pupils dilating. It creates a strong bond between us. To make your pupils dilate even more you can try this: as you are staring at your partner imagine yourself going inside their body and your two souls making love. You are trying to touch their very soul. This will release adrenalin and make your pupils dilate even more.

Conclusion

You can see just how influential and how important eye contact is. It affects every area of our life and becoming a master, or at least knowing more about it, will definitely help your social skills.

Timeline Perspective

Steven Aitchison — Thu, 25 Jun 2020 19:52:00 GMT

Timeline Perspective

Are you happy with all the different areas of your life? What about the old you, would they be happy with the way your life is just now?what about your future self?

Here's a different approach to try to find out how happy you are with the different areas of your life.

The Timeline perspective is learning to look at all the areas of your life from all of your different timeline perspectives. It is looking at yourself from the past, the present and the future.

Why?

Why would you use the timeline perspective of yourself?

I believe consciousness is an amazing aspect of human life and I also believe we can access consciousness from all ourselves; past, present and future. It may have a memory which we can tap into. I see consciousness as being a split up into different clouds and each consciousness cloud can be tapped into, should we wish to use its knowledge.

I am working with the theory that these clouds of consciousnesses can be tapped into simply by thinking about tapping into them. For example, if we want to tap into psychic consciousness all we have to do is think about having psychic experiences, we have to believe that it will happen, read about it let it consume us and sure enough psychic experiences will come.

I believe this is how the 'Law of attraction' works. We think that the law of attraction works, we eventually believe it will work and eventually it will work. It takes a giant leap of faith to believe
it but once it starts to help us in our day to day lives the law of attraction will work a lot quicker. So we are tapping into the law of attraction cloud.

Timeline cloud

Just as there may be clouds of consciousness for everything we can think of and some we have yet to think of we have clouds which pertain to us specifically. Within these clouds we can access our past consciousness, our present consciousness and our future consciousness.

I will discuss these clouds of consciousness in future posts as I am playing with the theory and trying to experience it as much as possible before formulating any concrete belief. This is the beauty of checking out all of my current beliefs it's great to play with them , dismiss them and formulate my own, instead of someone telling me this is what you should believe and anything
else is just stupid or crazy.

We are all under someone else cloud of consciousness to one degree or another. We have a cloud of consciousness from the government and we are expected to play by certain rules. We have a cloud of consciousness in our social groups and are expected to behave in certain ways.

Why not make our own cloud of consciousness.

Try it out

Okay here's an example to play with and check out the timeline perspective.

Look at one specific area of your life just now for example your career.

Ask yourself these questions and be as honest as you possibly can. Let the answers come to you if you can and try and let everything that comes into your mind come out onto the paper or the computer. I will use my answers by way of an example. I am currently a support worker for the homeless; I have not yet made the transition to full time life coach or seminar speaker and internet entrepreneur.

My example

Are you happy with your current career? Yes, I am extremely happy where my career is just now as a writer and online trainer.

Think back to yourself 1 year ago, would that person be happy with your current career? – I think they would be very happy.

Think back to yourself 5 years ago, would that person be happy with your current career? Yep, I always wanted to become an author and help others.

Think back to yourself 10 years ago, would that person be happy with your current career? Yep. They would be a little shocked as it was hard to think doing what I loved would be a possibility.

Now think of yourself 1 year from now, is that person happy with your current career? Yes, but he wants it to move on and to write more books and possibly start a business with his wife.

Now think of yourself 5 years from now, is that person happy with your current career? Still happy but he knows there are more books to write, and needs a more solid business plan for his own business. Also the business with his wife should be well underway by now.

I think you get the picture now.

What I found most interesting about this exercise is that I believed I would be happy with this career in all aspects of myself: past, present and future. However when I came to answer the questions about different aspects of my life it was really surprising what my past thought about my present and what my future thought about my present choices.

Accessing our future self

Now you might think 'how the hell can we access our future self'. For a moment think about what you are going to do tomorrow, possibly get up to go to work, think of the work you will do, the people you will talk to, etc etc. You have just accessed your future self. You always have to
access your future self at some point. The moment you wake up you are accessing your future self you have to think about what you are going to do before you do it.

This was a great revelation to me when I discovered it, and it is by no means a new revelation:

You ALWAYS have to think about your future before you do it.

I will leave this post here for now as there is so much more to say on this subject and I will be talking about it a lot in the future.

Some other articles you might like on reality

Roundup on reality – New Scientist
What Is The Nature of Reality?
Nature of reality

The post Timeline Perspective appeared first on Change your thoughts.

7 Secrets To The 55 x 5 Law Of Attraction Method

Steven Aitchison — Sat, 20 Jun 2020 10:52:21 GMT

Imagine having a desire in your life and someone gave you the magic formula to make it happen. Think about the 55×5 law of attraction method a bit like the magic formula.

If you're into the Law of Attraction you've more than likely heard of the 55×5 Method or the 33×3 method. But have you actually tried it out?

Both of these techniques require that you write down your desire for 55 or 33 times for 5 or 3 days, depending on the method you prefer. I will show you exactly what to do in this article to make it work for you.

It’s one of the most powerful law of attraction techniques around – anybody can do it! Even if you’re totally new to the law of attraction and don’t believe it works.

All you need is 10 to 20 minutes a day.

Whilst explaining exactly what to do with the 55×5 law of attraction method I will share with you the 7 secrets that will make it really powerful for you.

What is the 55×5 Law of Attraction Method?

To put is very simply it's taking ONE of your desires, turning it into a positive affirmation statement and writing that statement down 55 times for five days. That's it!

However, there's a few secrets that will make this magical manifestation technique work even better and even quicker for you.

Also please don't think your desires will come about within the 5 days of doing this. A lot of the time it will, but what we are really doing here is focusing our energy on a desire and making it laser focused ~ Energy flows where attention goes.

What we are doing is sending messages to our subconscious mind about the desire we wish to manifest and we're instructing it to start working on that desire. If we did not focus on it so intently for 5 days the subconscious mind would not be as focused on the desire. Subsequently the desire might not come about as quickly as we intended.

7 Secrets to The 55×5 Law of Attraction Method

1 – Think Bigger

What a lot of people do when they try the 55×5 law of attraction method is they test it. By that I mean they think 'I will try this with a small desire to see if it really works.' don't do that. The law of attraction works just as powerfully if you are asking for a very small desire to happen or a bigger desire.

Now, that is not to say that you can ask for £1 million to come into your life and it will be just as easy as asking for £1 to come into your life. Why is that?

It's a simple case of Cognitive Dissonance which means that you cannot hold two opposing beliefs in your mind at the same time. So if you tried to manifest £1 million you just would not believe that could happen, your subconscious mind would just baulk at the possibility of this happening and the stronger of two opposing beliefs would win the day.

That is not to say you cannot go big.

The secret is to have a stretch belief, meaning that you think about something that is just outside your grasp just now but not that much that it makes it almost impossible to reach.

To find your stretch belief I want you to try the ESM Exercise: Easy, Stretch, Moonshot exercise.

When it comes to money ask and answer these questions:

How much more money could I easily make this week?
How much money could I make that would be harder for me but achievable?
How much money would be a moonshot goal for me this week?

So with question 1 start small and work up e.g. Could I easily bring in an extra £1 in my life this week? £10 per week? £100 this week? £250, £500, £1000

Pretty soon you'll come to a figure that is not easy but you think you could just about manage it. When you reach that figure that is the start of your stretch belief which is question 2.

Do the same for question 2. So your last figure from question 1 might have been £1,000, so your stretch question starts at £1,000. Now keep going up until you start to think 'Nah! there's no way I could do that.' that's when you've reached your limit of your stretch belief.

Then it's question 3. Your moonshot belief is something you'd love in your life that you think is virtually impossible but possibly still achievable if you had the right skills, knew the right people, had a little luck and everything was perfectly aligned.

Answering question 3 is not about plucking a number out of your head it's about saying to yourself I could achieve that one day but not this week. You might be thinking £1 million is achievable in your lifetime but just not this week, or you might lower it to £500,000 or £100,000. Could you get an extra £100,000 this week? it's possible if you sold your house or sold everything you owned or sold your pensions everything. So £100,000 is not as impossible as it sounds. Find your moonshot belief.

So the figure you use is around the middle of the stretch belief figures e.g. if you went up from £1,000, then £2,000, £3,000, £4,000, £5,000. £5,000 might be the start of your moonshot beliefs. So the middle is £3,000 and that's the figure you would use as your stretch belief.

The great thing about doing the Easy, Stretch, Moonshot exercise is that it literally stretches your beliefs about what is possible. this therefore makes you think bigger in everything you do and gives you more motivation. I will write another article on this in full later on.

So, do not test the 55×5 law of attraction method by going small. If you do this you will do it half heartedly and it will not work. You have to go in giving it your all so make your desire a stretch desire, something that is achievable but just outside your grasp at the moment.

2 – Make It Your Desire

Another mistake a lot of people make is that they create a desire that is outside their control or they try and use the law of attraction to manipulate other people e.g. 'I would like [someone] to fall in love with me'

Make your desire yours and something that gives you complete control and power. If you desire someone else to fall in love with you you are giving all your power away and effectively saying I cannot be happy until this person loves me. You see what you are doing here?

The 55×5 law of attraction method is about giving power to you and helping you to believe in your own power. We all have seemingly magical powers, but a lot of the time we waste it or give it away to other people which diminishes its effectiveness. The more you give your power away the less power you have for yourself.

Check this article out: 7 Irrational Thoughts That Disrupt Your Life

3 – Starting To Believe

The first thing you have to do is prepare your mind to believe in the 55×5 law of attraction method. I know I said you don't have to believe in it for it to work, however setting up your mind to believe will make it work faster for you.

I spoke about cognitive dissonance earlier on in the article and if you use the 55×5 law of attraction method thinking it is never going to work then it won't work. This will strengthen your resolve that the law of attraction just doesn't work. So, I am not asking you to believe me 100% I am asking you to try the belief on and see if it works for you that way.

To try a new belief on all you simply do is tell yourself that you're going to try this new belief that the 55×5 law of attraction actually works. You're telling yourself you're giving it a go and keeping an open mind. If it works – fantastic, if it doesn't work then no harm no foul.

This way you are instructing your subconscious mind to be open to the possibility that the 55×5 law of attraction might actually work. otherwise your subconscious mind just shuts down to the possibility of this method actually working.

4 – Set Up a Start Date

To prepare yourself for actually using the 55×5 law of attraction method a great way to do it is to set a start date for using it.

What you are effectively doing is something called delayed gratification.

What a lot of people do when they hear about the 55×5 method is they start it straight away and after one day get bored with it and discontinue it.

When you set a start date you are preparing and organising you mind to have much more success with it.

What you are also doing here is creating excitement around the whole exercise and creating a desire to make it happen. when you do this you are more likely to finish the method than someone who starts it immediately.

So set up a start date, whether it be tomorrow or in a few days. in the meantime read as much info as possible about the 55×5 law of attraction method, I'll give you some great articles and some videos to do your research at the end of this article. This will create even more excitement around the whole process.

5 – Take Action

Here's a huge secret that no one really speaks about.

You have to take action when you're using this method. You see, what will happen is that you will spend 20 minutes per day for five days writing down your affirmation desire and then just sit back and wait.

The whole point of doing this is to start listening to the ideas and information that comes from your subconscious mind. When you are instructing your subconscious mind your particular desire is happening just now, your subconscious mind has to align with what you're telling it and what is actually happening in your life.

As you are going about your day to day life, you will find that you start to get ideas that relate to your desire. Act on those ideas and start taking action immediately. That is what the law of attraction is all about.

6 – Feeling Your Desire

Another huge secret is the fact that you've got to get in an emotional state of actually having acheived your desire.

As you create your affirmation that you will use for the first 55×5 law of attraction method exercise do this exercise.

Close your eyes and FEEL what it would be like when you have achieved your desire. So if your desire is to bring in another £3000 into your life how do you feel about that, what does it feel like when you tell your partner about it, or your children, or what does it feel like to be able to pay off your debt.

It's your feelings that will truly help kick this amazing method into a powerful manifestation technique that you will use for the rest of your life.

Neville Goddard explains this much better than I can:

“Ideas are impressed on the subconscious through the medium of feeling. No idea can be impressed on the subconscious until it is felt, but once felt – be it good, bad or indifferent – it must be expressed. Feeling is the one and only medium through which ideas are conveyed to the subconscious. Therefore, the man who does not control his feeling may easily impress the subconscious with undesirable states. By control of feeling is not meant restraint or suppression of your feeling, but rather the disciplining of self to imagine and entertain only such feeling as contributes to your happiness. Control of your feeling is all important to a full and happy life.”
? Neville Goddard, Feeling is the Secret

7 – Changing Your Energy Vibration

As you write these affirmations and carry out the 55×5 law of attraction method there are subtle changes that take place, mentally, emotionally and physically.

With the physical act of writing your affirmation desire 55 times per day for 5 days, you are setting an energy in motion that is directly linking to your subconscious mind. As your subconscious mind is helping you to create new ideas to help your desire come to fruition this is a very powerful part of the exercise.

Another powerful thing to do here is to say your affirmation aloud as you are writing them. So as you write each one say it out loud. When you finished writing all the 55 affirmations then go back to the beginning and read it out loud.

This is powerful as it creates a different type of vibrational energy and works to attract like for like. The energy you vibrate attracts energy of the same vibrational frequency. So saying your affirmations aloud will help bring about more of what you want in your life.

As mentioned earlier feeling your desire is going to help dramatically bring about your desire much quicker when you are using the 55xx5 law of attraction method. When you get into the motion of something you are creating a different energy pattern from what you are used to, this is what helps bring about change. For you to change something in your life you have to change something in your life and by changing your emotions that is what helps to bring about the change you desire.

Mentally seeing your desire happen, feeling the emotion of it happening all helps to create in your mind something so powerful that it can't help but come into your reality.

remember your reality is completely different form anybody else's reality and your reality just now will not be the same reality you have tomorrow or the next day.

You literally change your reality every day with the thoughts you think, the actions you take and the feelings you feel. Change these and you change your reality.

Knowing all of this is really powerful as most people change their reality by repeatedly thinking negative thoughts as they don't know what I am teaching you just now. if you keep thinking negative thoughts, feeling negative feelings and taking negative actions guess what your life is going to be a big ball of negativity. Conversely if you do the opposite and repeatedly think positive thoughts, feel positive feelings and take positive actions your life will change beyond measure and that is the beauty of this 55×4 law of attraction method as it helps you to change your thoughts, your feelings and helps you to take different actions.

Conclusion

The 55×5 law of attraction method is really powerful technique but it depends how much you put into.

Does it work – absolutely!

Let me know what you think of this article by writing a comment below and then when you do try this method let me know how you get on with it.

Have a brilliant day

Steven Aitchison

Some other articles and videos you might like on this topic

6 Fun Tools and Experiments to See the Law of in Action
The Magic
Manifestation Magic For Wealth Attraction.
55×5 MANIFESTING RITUAL ?Ancient Law of Attraction Manifestation Technique | How to use it correctly
55 x 5 Law of Attraction Manifesting Method | How to use it & why it works!

The post 7 Secrets To The 55 x 5 Law Of Attraction Method appeared first on Change your thoughts.

Self Publishing Success Story Steven Aitchison

Steven Aitchison — Fri, 19 Jun 2020 12:49:05 GMT

Scottish author, Steven Aitchison first started writing his book The Belief Principle in 2014. He had the title of the book, the book cover design completed and even created a website before he'd written a word.

As he started to write, his other business venture, a social media marketing program, started to take off in a big way and he had to abandon his dream of writing and completing the book in 2014.

It wasn't until 2019 that he finally managed to get some time to do the research and write the first draft of the book.

During the intervening 6 years Steven managed to build up a huge following on Facebook with 3.7 million followers and grew his Instagram, Pinterest, Linkedin, Twitter and Youtube accounts at the same time.

Turned Down A Publishing Contract With Wiley

There was some interest from traditional publishers and Steven was hours away from signing a contract with A Wiley Publishers imprint. After looking at the numbers Steven decided that from a financial point of view he would be much better of self publishing, although recognised that the kudos of being published traditionally would have been good.

Steven advised:

It just didn't make sense to go with Wiley. I was being asked to do most of the marketing myself and I was going to be £0.50p per book with a small advance of £2,500. So I would have to sell 5,000 books in my first year as part of my contract.
With self publishing I would be getting royalties of 70% per ebook and after publishing costs around 40% per paperback book. This is equivalent to around £3.50 per book, a huge 600% more than I was being offered with Wiley and I was doing exactly the same amount of work.
I would have loved to have worked with Traditional publisher at the time but the numbers just didn't make sense from a business point of view.

Launching At End of April 2020

After 2 rounds of editing the book was finally ready to be published and using the pre-sale option at Amazon KDP, Steven Launched his book.

As with many self publishing stories, Steven had a bit of a blip with the self publishing process as he had uploaded the ebook in PDF format which made it difficult to read and no links had been added. Subsequently the initial first few hundred sales may have been wasted.

He had to un-publish the first book and republish with a new ASIN number which put an abrupt halt to sales.

However, he Steven took this in his stride and advised 'I'm in this for the long haul with more books planned, so it's all good.'

As of today June 19th 2020 the book has sold over 500 copies with multiple best selling category accolades.

Where To From Here?

Steven advised he has already started writing the second book in the series and is focusing on promoting his first book and writing his second book.

He had expected to sell a few thousand copies of the book by now, but isn't too concerned at the low number due to the rave reviews.

He is also writing hist first fiction book which he says is more of a hobby at the moment.

Click here to check out his book

Roberta Battaglia: This 10 Year Old Singer Was Crying With Nerves And Then She Started Singing – Wow!

Steven Aitchison — Wed, 03 Jun 2020 11:29:56 GMT

When 10 year old Roberta Battaglia first came on stage she was a quivering bag of nerves. At one point she was crying with nerves.

After being calmed down from the judges she managed to compose herself enough to start singing.

What happened next was one of those moments that you watch all these talent shows for 'The goosebump feeling'. That feeling that brings the hairs on your arms and the back of your neck to attention and the lump in the throat.

That is the souls recognition of raw talent and that's what happened when I listened to 10 year old Roberta Battaglia.

Watch this video of Roberta Battaglia singing as she auditions for Americas Got Talent

leave a comment below and let us know what you think of this.

This Man Grew Up Without A Father Has Gone Viral Teaching Kids How To Do Everyday Things

Steven Aitchison — Tue, 02 Jun 2020 12:18:42 GMT

I seen this story being shown around the net and had to share it, it's very heartwarming and just makes you feel good about humanity.

Rob Kenney goes viral. He only started his youtube channel 'Dad, how do I' 2 months ago.

It has now blown up to over 2.1 Million subscribers.

The dad of two, from Chicago, was abandoned by his own father when he was just 14. Along with his siblings he had to stay with his older brother.

Rob has 2 grown-up kids. His daughter Kristine works with children while his son Kyle is a software engineer.

He started the channel to offer kids 'dad advice' teaching every day things like:

How to tie a tie
How to change a tire
How to unclog a sink
How to put up a shelf

The youtube channel has now hit 2.1 Million Subscribers and is growing every day.

After watching his 'We need each other' video it's clear that Rob is a very authentic, humble and genuine guy. It really is such an amazing thing to see this type of person in the world.

Rob advised 'I didn't do this for the money' and it's clear that this is true, however he is now partnering with a few international companies to help even more kids.

This is the type of story I love to read and it warms the cockles of my heart to see this

Let me know what you think in the comments below.

You might like these articles

A Letter From a Parent
Being a Better Father
7 Ways To Feel Good In Your Home
How to Be a Good Father
17 mamas share the best advice their dad ever gave them

The post This Man Grew Up Without A Father Has Gone Viral Teaching Kids How To Do Everyday Things appeared first on Change your thoughts.

17 Completely Unethical Life Hacks

Steven Aitchison — Thu, 21 May 2020 10:00:33 GMT

We have all read about the life hacks that can change our lives.

On the whole, the life hacks we read about are ethical. However, have you read any unethical life hacks?

Well here are 17 unethical life hacks that I've collected from around the world. Some made me laugh, some made me think that is just wrong and some actually got me thinking

I don't advocate, norNe have I tried doing any of these things.

17 Unethical Life Hacks

1
Deadline Date For Handing In An Essay

If you know you're not going to finish an essay in time, send a corrupted copy of the essay, by saving it as a notepad document instead of a Word document. Keep working on your essay to finish it. Your lecturer will email you back saying there is something wrong with the file you sent.

That should buy you a few days by which time you will have finished your essay and you then send over the completed file with your apologies. (Posted on Quora here)

2
Getting Pulled Over By the Police

If you get pulled over by the police whilst driving too fast…Act deaf! The cops usually let you go with just a warning because it’s too much trouble trying to communicate. (From Quora here)

3
Calling In Sick To Work

If you want to sound sick when calling in to your work, lie on your back while hanging your head over the edge of the bed. You will sound congested! (From Quora here)

4
No Fridge In Hotel Room?

if your hotel room doesn’t have a fridge to keep your beer cold? Call the front desk and tell them you need one ‘To keep your insulin refrigerated.

5
Prove You've Made a Call When You Haven't

If you don't want to make a call but may later need to prove that you, in fact, did make a call but they didn't pick up, turn airplane mode on and make a call. (from Quora)

6
Forgot Your Phone Charger?

If you’re traveling and forget your phone charger, just go into any hotel and sit reading the newspaper for 5 minutes. The staff will think you're staying there. Then go to the front desk and ask for their lost and found saying you have lost your charger. They will be full of chargers.

7
Need New Tyres For Your Car?

Need new tires for your car? Rent a car with compatible tyres and switch your old tyres with the rented cars’ tyres.

8
Get A Discount For Online Shopping

If you are buying something online, register on the site, then add the item to your cart, then close the page. The next day you will most likely get an email that says you've forgot something in your cart and it will include a promo code for a percent off. (Quora)

9
Get A Discount On Your SKY/Cable Subscription

Is your SKY/Cable contract coming to an end. Call the customer service department and advise them you are thinking about leaving for another company. They will usually offer you a discount to stay with them.

10
Get A Discounted Audible Subscription

If you have an Audible membership, click to cancel your subscription and they'll offer you the next 3-months for half-price or get a free credit.

11
Need to Copy An Essay Without Plagiarising?

Need to plagiarise an essay? Copy and paste it into a plagiarism checker and keep changing words until it shows as not plagiarised! (Source: Quora)

12
Taking a Web Based Test?

If you’re ever taking a web-based test, right-click and “Inspect” to pull up the dev code where you can delete all “hidden” input types to show the graphics that display the correct answer. (Source: Quora)

13
Want A New Umbrella?

if it's raining and you don't have an umbrella walk into a coffee shop and tell them that you left your umbrella. they will probably point to a stack of umbrellas. Choose one you like and thank them. (Source: Quora)

14
Do Something So Bad You Won't Be Asked Again

When someone asks you do something that you don't want to do, then do it in a worst way and act like you have done your best and worked hard on it. They will never ask you to do it again. I think my sons used this when I asked them to do their chores in the house.

15
All you Can Eat In The Hotel Fridge

If you are hungry in your hotel room with expensive snacks in the fridge. You can eat any snack you want in the fridge and later buy that from the market and place it back in the fridge. (Source: Quora)

16
Practice Your Interview Skills

Interview for a bunch of jobs that you know you won’t accept. This will help you to build up confidence in interview situations.

17
Use All the Hot Water

If someone is taking too long in the shower, turn the hot water on in another room. They’ll think they used up all the hot water and rush to finish. (Source: reddit)

The post 17 Completely Unethical Life Hacks appeared first on Change your thoughts.

How Do I Discover My Limiting Beliefs?

Steven Aitchison — Sat, 16 May 2020 09:27:35 GMT

How do you discover your limiting beliefs?

Spending a lot of time talking about this always brings up that inevitable question:

We all have limiting beliefs that are holding us back in life.

In order to help us understand how to discover our limiting beliefs we first have to look at what a belief is.

WHAT IS A BELIEF?

The Oxford English Dictionary defines belief as:

“Something one accepts as true or real; a firmly held opinion.”

You'll notice that the above definition means that beliefs are subjective. That means we can believe something that others may not believs is true.

For example you may believe you are not a nice person, but everyone around you could believe that you are an amazingly nice person.

WHAT YOU BELIEVE ABOUT YOURSELF IS TRUE

What I mean by the statement above is that it doesn't matter what other people say, if you believe it then it is true.

For example, you might absolutely believe that you will never be able to lose weight, while one thousand other people will tell you that they know otherwise. However, because you believe that statement, your body will respond in kind and help you NOT to lose weight. That’s a shocker, isn’t it? What you tell yourself, you are really communicating to your body, as well.

The truth is what you tell yourself is true, what you tell your body is true, what you tell your mind is true, but where does the truth come from?

WHERE DOES THE TRUTH COME FROM?

It has everything to do with our conscious and subconscious mind and how we talk to ourselves. We feed the subconscious mind with ideas that are, at best, half-formed, and the subconscious mind tries to prove what your conscious mind has told it.

In a study in 2002 reported in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology by Levy et al., it was found that people over the age of fifty who had more positive beliefs about aging lived, on average, 7.5 years longer than people with negative beliefs about ageing. Nearly eight years longer!! That is the power of the mind. What has to happen for one to live an extra 7.5 years? Obviously, lots of things are going on in the body and the mind, but it shows a clear correlation between the two. (Download the study here: https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/psp-832261.pdf)

That's pretty crazy right. You could live another 7.5 years simply by having a more positive attitude toward aging.

Discover A Limiting Belief

The easy part about changing a limiting belief is changing it. The hard part is discovering a limiting belief.

Fortunately I have a quick way to find out what your limiting beliefs are.

Quick Way to Find Your Limiting Beliefs

First I would like you to think of a goal you have in your personal or business life.

When you have chosen one goal, next ask yourself what would I have to believe to achieve that goal?

Your subconscious mind will then churn out a number of things you would have to believe.

Here's an example.

When I first thought about writing the book The Belief Principle I asked what would I have to believe in order to make that happen:

I have enough knowledge to write the book
I am a good enough writer
I have the discipline to write a book
I have good research skills
I can find the time to write a book
People need a book like this

That's just some of the beliefs I would need to have. I struggled with being a good enough writer to write it and that's the limiting belief I had.

So you see you can discover your limiting beliefs very quickly by asking that one simple question.

So I have to ask you at this point:

What are your limiting beliefs?

Add a comment below and share what limiting beliefs you have or if you have any questions please add them below.

Why Your Beliefs Are Formed By Seven Years Of Age

Steven Aitchison — Wed, 15 Apr 2020 07:55:00 GMT

A lot of people ask me when I've done talks and seminars, when I've said most of your beliefs are formed by seven years of age. A lot of people say, "That can't be right. How can most of your beliefs be formed by the age of seven years old?"

Well, I've told you how beliefs are formed in the first place. Now, I want to go into specifically why your beliefs are formed by seven years of age. I'm talking about your root beliefs, the root beliefs you have about yourself. Your personal beliefs that you have about yourself, and how you look at the world

Brainwave Patterns

From birth to the ages of about seven years old, we have a different brainwave pattern from what we've got just now. So our brainwave patterns, when we are born up until the age of seven years old, goes from a stage of theta to alpha. So, we're kind of going through a stage. Okay, you've got four different brainwave pattern stages. These are the main ones, delta, theta, alpha, and beta.

So right now, you're watching this video. You're probably in a beta brainwave state just now. That means your brainwaves are going like 100 miles an hour. You're thinking about all the things you've got to do, you're thinking about work, about the kids, to pick up the kids, you're thinking about what you're going to have for dinner, you're thinking about going shopping. You're thinking about lots of different things, and you're not relaxed. Usually, it's in a heightened state of awareness, so you're in beta stage. This is not conducive for the formation of new beliefs to be formed nor for getting rid of old limiting beliefs. That's what most adults are in. We're in this beta stage brainwave pattern.

Theta to Alpha Brainwave Pattern

From birth up to the age of seven, we go through theta up to alpha. Now, alpha is a brainwave pattern where we're kind of relaxed, chilled out, almost in a meditative state, and right the way back to theta, where we're in a really relaxed state of mind. And it's like you're almost daydreaming, sleeping. So, that's the stages we go through from birth to seven. Obviously, the older you get, the higher your brainwave patterns start to go through.

This is why children are able to pick up things just like sponges. So whatever you say to them, they remember things. If you give them an iPad or something, they're easily able to remember it, how to use it, and they can work it almost instantly. And they just pick up things very, very quickly because they're in the state of mind whereby everything is just learning for them. They pick it up. They remember it, and it just stays inside their brain.

What You Say to Your Children is Extremely Important

That's the reason it is so important as parents to remember what to say to your kids, not to remember what to say to them, but just be mindful of what you're telling your children. So, never tell your children, for example, "You're stupid. You're an idiot," things like that because it sticks. It stays with them, and they start to believe that and start to develop that belief. Just be very, very mindful of the way you talk to your children, even after the age of seven years old as well, but particularly up to the age of seven years old.

This is to do, as I said, with the brainwave patterns. And the alpha stages from about 7 Hz to about 13 Hz, and the beta stage stages from about 13 Hz to about 30 Hz, and below that, you're going below 7 Hz. This is why children, and this is why we formed most of our beliefs by the age of seven years old because we're like sponges before we're seven years old. And it's to do in conjunction with this brainwave pattern.

This is how we develop our beliefs and how they stick with us as well. And it can be difficult to get rid of them. It's only now are we starting to realise that this is a fact. And only now are we starting to realise we need to change our beliefs if we want to get on in the world. So, it's really interesting when you look into the psychology behind it, but this is why we have the beliefs we have. This is why they've been formed by the age of seven years old.

Your Brainwave Patterns

Here is a graphic to illustrate just what happens in each stage of the brainwave patterns:

Some of Your Personal Beliefs Are Hundreds of Years Old

Steven Aitchison — Mon, 13 Apr 2020 11:38:36 GMT

Welcome back to this series talking about your personal beliefs.

Today I want to talk about the fact that some of your personal beliefs are hundreds of years old.

You might be thinking Steve, I'm only 30, I'm only 20, I'm only 50 or 60 or 70 ro whatever, how can they be hundreds of years old?

Let me explain

Where do your personal beliefs come from?

We have to ask that question as we are not born with a set of beliefs. So, we have to install beliefs from somewhere. Now as we are growing up, up to the age of 10 years old we obviously meet different people throughout our lives but usually the one constant is our caregivers. Our parents or whoever looked after us when we were younger.

Generally that's where we got our initial beliefs from. Most of our beliefs that we have about the world and we have about ourselves are formed by the age of 7 years old. There's a specific reason for that, but most of your beliefs you hold about your senf and the world around you have been formed by the age of 7 years.

7 YEARS OLD!

We don't even understand the concept of what a belief is at 7 years old. But most of your personal beliefs are formed by that age. Usually from our primary caregivers. That could be from our mums, our dads, our parents, your aunty, your uncle whoever it was that mostly looked after you when you were younger. So we get a lot of our beliefs from them, a lot of our beliefs from them.

We also get them from TV, we get it from media, from reading books, online but from a very young age it's usually from our primary caregivers and our teachers and peers etc,.

So you have to ask the question:

If you get your personal beliefs from your parents, primarily, and your primary caregivers:

Where do they get their beliefs from?

Well, they get their beliefs from their parents and their primary caregivers. And then you ask well where did they get their beliefs from and they get them from their parents and their primary caregivers. It's passed down from generation to generation to generation. So a lot of the beliefs we have about ourselves have been passed down from generation to generation.

So, for example our parents, and their parents and their parents before them, probably went through hard economic times, through the depression, through world wars and things like that as well. Their beliefs have been passed down through that generation with the mindset of not having enough money or they've been rationed or forever to buy things and that's been passed down to us as well.

This is why we as individuals have a lot of money worries and we have these money beliefs that are holding us back in life, because it's been passed down. They're not even your personal beliefs and yet we have them and we carry them around with us like a rucksack on our back.

We carry these beliefs that people put into that rucksack, our parents our teachers our peers, our friends, our family who have put more and more beliefs into that ruck sack.

Until finally one day you wake up and go Jeez…

These are not my beliefs, I'm gonna have to do something about it and that is why some of your personal beliefs are hundreds of years old.

Being Single Quotes

Steven Aitchison — Fri, 03 Apr 2020 06:09:00 GMT

I wanted to share some being single quotes with you today as I feel being single has a label attached to it that fosters a 'pity' response, and it definitely shouldn't.

Up until the age of 32 I absolutely loved being single, I didn't care what anybody thought, I laughed when people thought they had to match me up with someone, I laughed when people thought I was gay, and I laughed when people tilted their head to the side in a 'Oh that's a shame' kind of way.

For me being single was a choice. Don't get me wrong I was always looking for 'the one' but she hadn't arrived for whatever reason, and I like to think I wasn't quite ready to settle down at 31 or 32 years of age.

The thing is I didn't panic about getting to a certain age and still being single, I sure as hell wasn't going to settle for second best. So I happily strolled through life, on the lookout but not desperate to find mrs right. She did come along when I was 32 and it was lust at first sight, and then when I got to know her personality it quickly turned to love. We've now been together for 18 years and have two amazing sons.

As I said I loved being single and I could quite happily have lived my life as a single person, but not a lot of people could understand why I was happy being single. It's crazy to think we actually need somebody in our life to make our lives complete.

So here are some quotes about being single that you might enjoy.

49 Quotes About Being Single

“If you are ever asked why you are single, tell them: It's because you haven't found someone amazing enough to change your status”
Steven Aitchison

“Being single is definitely better than being with the wrong person”
Hassan Choughari

“Your single not because you are not good enough for one, it’s that you’re too good for the wrong one.”
Chris Burkmenn

“I’ve been single for a while and I have to say, it’s going very well. Like… it’s working out. I think I’m the one.”
Emily Hunter

“Happily Single” is recognizing that you don’t need or want to be rescued from your life by a handsome prince because your life is pretty awesome, as is.”
Mandy Hale

"Being single doesn't necessarily mean you're available. Sometimes you have to put up a sign that says, "Do Not Disturb" on your heart."
Wiz Khalifa

"My alone feels so good, I'll only have you if you're sweeter than my solitude."
Warsan Shire

"I never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude."
Henry David Thoreau

“I think it's very healthy to spend time alone. You need to know how to be alone and not defined by another person."
Oscar Wilde

"My alone feels so good, I’ll only have you if you’re sweeter than my solitude."
Warsan Shire

"Too many women throw themselves into romance because they’re afraid of being single, then start making compromises and losing their identity. I won’t do that."
Julie Delpy

“Hope for love, pray for love, wish for love, dream for love… but don’t put your life on hold waiting for love.”
Mandy Hale

"I love being single. I can come and go as I please and stay out as late as I want to."
Eric Dickerson

"Being single gives you an opportunity to show yourself just how brave you are, and to know that you don't need anyone to walk by your side, and instead choose the right one to walk with, when the time is right for you."
Steven Aitchison

"I like being single — I’m always there when I need me."
Art Leo

“If you truly want to be respected by people you love, you must prove to them that you can survive without them.”
Michael Bassey Johnson

"Being single used to mean that nobody wanted you. Now it means you’re pretty sexy and you’re taking your time deciding how you want your life to be and who you want to spend it with."
Carrie Bradshaw

"Discover why you’re important, then refuse to settle for anyone who doesn’t completely agree."
Fisher Amelie

"It seemed to me that the desire to get married — which, I regret to say, I believe is basic and primal in women — is followed almost immediately by an equally basic and primal urge, which is to be single again."
Nora Ephron

"Every woman in her late 20s goes through a period where she just doesn’t believe love is out there anymore, but it is. And I think the minute you stop looking for it is when it comes for you."
Kristen Bell

"Being single doesn’t necessarily mean you’re available. Sometimes you have to put up a sign that says “Do Not Disturb” on your heart."
Wiz Khalifa

"I used to think that the worst thing in life was to end up all alone. It’s not. The worst thing in life is ending up with people who make you feel all alone."
Robin Williams

"Being with no one is better than being with the wrong one. Sometimes those who fly solo have the strongest wings."
Nitya Prakash

"The man who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd. The man who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever been before."
Alan Ashley-Pitt

"I love being single. It's almost like being rich."
Sue Grafton

"If you really are going to be a happy single, you have to stop treating being single as the annoying time that you pass between relationships and embrace it. Rather than focusing on what you lack, focus on what you have: You."
Natalie Lue

"There's a huge difference between feeling lonely and being alone."
Steven Aitchison

"If you aren't good at loving yourself, you will have a difficult time loving anyone, since you'll resent the time and energy you give another person that you aren't even giving to yourself."
Barbara De Angelis

"I don’t need Prince Charming to have my own happy ending."
Katy Perry

”Single lady, the man you want might not necessarily be the man you need.”
Martha Macharia

Some links you might enjoy

7 Reasons It’s OK To Be Single

10 Things Single Happy People Want You To Know

Why Single People Are Often Happier

6 Reasons Why You Are Still Single

9 Ways Being Single Can Improve Your Life

The Surprising Benefits of Being Single

Being single

Being Single: What It’s About And Why It May Be The Best Way To Live Your Life

I hope you enjoyed these single quotes about being single. if you have any more to add please leave a comment below and we can get them added to this post.

The post Being Single Quotes appeared first on Change your thoughts.

Quotes About Hope That Might Just Change your Life

Steven Aitchison — Wed, 01 Apr 2020 17:23:30 GMT

I would like to share some quotes about hope that will really lift you somehow, or break that cycle of thinking where you can't see a way out.

There comes a time in our life when we just sit down and despair about life, either a specific part of life or all of it. We feel all is lost or you cannot see a way out of a specific situation.

Speaking as someone who has had more than their fair share of these despair moments I can tell you it's the little things that bring back hope. It could be a moment in a movie, or something a character says in a book , or a smile from a stranger, or a pet who seems to know what you're feeling and wants to be close to you.

I remember going through a particularly hard time in my business and I was really feeling like I was never going to make it. I sat down with my wife to watch a movie and there's a scene in the movie 'The perks of being a wallflower' when Charlie, one of the main characters, asks his English teacher:

"Why do nice people choose the wrong people to date?" After thinking about it and asking something his English teacher replies:

"We accept the love we think we deserve."

That one line just changed my whole perspective on my business. You see it's not just a quote about love, it's a deep quote about life and everything that encompasses: We accept what we think we deserve.

For you to see life differently in times of despair or trouble then a break in your cycle of thinking is what is needed and I hope these quotes about hope will be that break for you.

49 Quotes About Hope That Might Just Change Your Life

“Deep in my heart I know I am a loner. I have tried to blend in with the world and be sociable, but the more people I meet the more disappointed I am, so I’ve learned to enjoy myself, my family and a few good friends.”
Steven Aitchison

“When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.”
Paulo Coelho

“It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.”
Anne Frank

“They say a person needs just three things to be truly happy in this world: someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for.”
Tom Bodett

“If you're reading this… Congratulations, you're alive. If that's not something to smile about, then I don't know what is.”
Chad Sugg

“Life's under no obligation to give us what we expect.”
Margaret Mitchell

“It's amazing how a little tomorrow can make up for a whole lot of yesterday.”
John Guare

“Hope can be a powerful force. Maybe there's no actual magic in it, but when you know what you hope for most and hold it like a light within you, you can make things happen, almost like magic.”
Laini Taylor

“Never lose hope. Storms make people stronger and never last forever.”
Roy T. Bennett

“The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something. Don’t wait for good things to happen to you. If you go out and make some good things happen, you will fill the world with hope, you will fill yourself with hope.”
Barack Obama

“There is a saying in Tibetan, 'Tragedy should be utilized as a source of strength.'
No matter what sort of difficulties, how painful experience is, if we lose our hope, that's our real disaster.”
Dalai Lama XIV

“Shoot for the moon, even if you fail, you'll land among the stars”
Cecelia Ahern

“The road that is built in hope is more pleasant to the traveler than the road built in despair, even though they both lead to the same destination.”
Marion Zimmer Bradley

“Since I was young, I have always known this: Life damages us, every one. We can’t escape that damage. But now, I am also learning this: We can be mended. We mend each other”
Veronica Roth

“Deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific location, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope”
Elizabeth Gilbert

“If you have a dream, don’t just sit there. Gather courage to believe that you can succeed and leave no stone unturned to make it a reality.”
Dr Roopleen

“Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.”
Mother Teresa

“At what point do you give up – decide enough is enough? There is only one answer really. Never.”
Tabitha Suzuma

“Where there is no hope, it is incumbent on us to invent it.”
Albert Camus

“Happiness is always there. You just have to choose to see it. There's no point dwelling in the dark and ignoring the light of the stars.”
Carrie Hope Fletcher

“But you can build a future out of anything. A scrap, a flicker. The desire to go forward, slowly, one foot at a time. You can build an airy city out of ruins.”
Lauren Oliver

“Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.”
J.K. Rowling

“A caterpillar must endure a season of isolation before it turns into a butterfly. Embrace the time you have alone, it will only make you stronger.”
Steven Aitchison

“We promise according to our hopes and perform according to our fears.”
François de La Rochefoucauld

“May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.”
Nelson Mandela

“The thing the sixties did was to show us the possibilities and the responsibility that we all had. It wasn't the answer. It just gave us a glimpse of the possibility.”
John Lennon

“My hope still is to leave the world a bit better than when I got here.”
Jim Henson

“Totally without hope one cannot live. To live without hope is to cease to live. Hell is hopelessness. It is no accident that above the entrance to Dante's hell is the inscription: "Leave behind all hope, you who enter here.”
Jurgen Moltmann

“Hope is a force of nature. Don't let anyone tell you different.”
Jim Butcher

“I think sometimes when we find love we pretend it away, or ignore it, or tell ourselves we’re imagining it. Because it is the most painful kind of hope there is.”
Rae Carson

“The past is made out of facts… I guess the future is just hope.”
Isaac Marion

“Never give up. It's like breathing—once you quit, your flame dies letting total darkness extinguish every last gasp of hope. You can't do that. You must continue taking in even the shallowest of breaths, continue putting forth even the smallest of efforts to sustain your dreams. Don't ever, ever, ever give up.”
Richelle E. Goodrich

“Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.”
Maya Angelou

“Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.”
Helen Keller

“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.

“All kids need is a little help, a little hope and somebody who believes in them.”
Magic Johnson

“We must vote for hope, vote for life, vote for a brighter future for all of our loved ones.”
Ed Markey

“Hope is the companion of power, and mother of success; for who so hopes strongly has within him the gift of miracles.”
Samuel Smiles

“Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.”
Desmond Tutu

“He who has health, has hope; and he who has hope has everything.”
Thomas Carlyle

“Hope itself is like a star – not to be seen in the sunshine of prosperity, and only to be discovered in the night of adversity.”
Charles Haddon Spurgeon

“The difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling stories from the same facts.”
Alain de Botton

“When you have lost hope, you have lost everything. And when you think all is lost, when all is dire and bleak, there is always hope.”
Pittacus Lore

“Strange as it may seem, I still hope for the best, even though the best, like an interesting piece of mail, so rarely arrives, and even when it does it can be lost so easily.”
Lemony Snicket

“Plant seeds of happiness, hope, success, and love; it will all come back to you in abundance. This is the law of nature.”
Steve Maraboli

“Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come, whispering ‘it will be happier’…”
Alfred Tennyson

“I inhale hope with every breath I take.”
Sharon Kay Penman

“When you feel like hope is gone, look inside you and be strong and you’ll finally see the truth- that hero lies in you.”
Mariah Carey

“We need never be hopeless because we can never be irreperably broken.”
John Green

I hope you found these quotes about hope really useful and possibly even life changing for some of you. Never underestimate the power of a quote and how it can bring about a shift in your thinking.

If you have any quotes about hope that you would like to share please leave a comment down below.

Links You Might Find Useful

6 Hopes That Are Ruining Your Life and Why Hope is Not Good For You

7 Irrational Thoughts That Disrupt Your Life

10 Ways To Deal With Criticism

10 Little Secrets of Happiness That Will Change Your Life

The Importance of Having Hope

Why Having Hope Matters

9 Types of Hopelessness and How to Overcome Them

Hopelessness

The post Quotes About Hope That Might Just Change your Life appeared first on Change your thoughts.

Deep Quotes That Will Change Your View Of Life

Steven Aitchison — Sun, 29 Mar 2020 04:30:31 GMT

I'd like to tell you a quick story about how a quote literally helped me change my life.

About 14 years ago I started a blog, this blog, and just wrote about the lessons I had learned in my life in the hope that it would help others. Later on when I truly wanted to leave the rat race and become a full time entrepreneur creating online products, all I could think about was 'How do I get more money, how can I make more so I can leave my job, what can I do to bring in more income?' These are the questions I asked all the time for around 2 years. Don't get me wrong, I was writing great content for the blog and creating products that would help people in their own life but it just wasn't working for me.

Then I came across this quote:

"You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want."
Zig Ziglar

That's when it hit me. Within the space of a few minutes my whole view of my business changed and I realised I shouldn't be asking the question: 'How much money can I make?' I should be asking the question 'How many more people can I help?

That's when I started asking our community what they wanted and what they need in their life to make their life better.

My business changed very quickly and I was able to give up my full time job in September 2012 and I have never looked back since.

Over the years I have collected thousands of deep quotes. Quotes that have changed my thinking, quotes that have made me stop and think and quotes that have literally changed my whole life. That is the power that a few words can have.

Here is a collection of deep quotes that I think could really make you stop and think about your own life.

49 Deep Quotes

Artwork Cameron Gray

"You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want."
Zig Ziglar

"How you do anything is how you do everything."
T. Harv Eker

“You must do the things you think you cannot do.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

"Never too suffer would never to have been blessed."
Edgar Allan Poe

"Don’t handicap your children by making their lives easy."
Robert A. Heinlein

"Honesty has a power that very few people can handle."
Steven Aitchison

"Time is a created thing. To say “I don’t have time”, is like saying, “I don’t want to”."
Lao Tzu

"Maybe you are searching among the branches, for what only appears in the roots."
Rumi

"Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong."
Oscar Wilde

"To be truly positive in the eyes of some, you have to risk appearing negative in the eyes of others."
Criss Jami

“If you’re not comfortable enough with yourself or with your own truth when entering a relationship, then you’re not ready for that relationship.”
Steve Maraboli

“The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing.”
Voltaire

Artwork Cameron Gray

“I want to be like water. I want to slip through fingers, but hold up a ship.”
Michelle Williams

“Being able to depend on someone doesn't mean you're dependent on them.”
Sarah Rees Brennan

“We do not create life, we create death.”
Marie Symeou

“I've hidden memories in boxes inside my head before. Sometimes it's the only way to deal with things.”
Alice Feene

“You are only as free as you think you are and freedom will always be as real as you believe it to be.”
Robert M. Drake

“Challenges are what make life interesting. Overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.”
Joshua Marine

“Those who really know and care about you can hear you even when you haven’t spoken a word”
Steven Aitchison

“I don’t think of all the misery but of the beauty that still remains.”
Anne Frank

“Do not be lured by the need to be liked: better to be respected, even feared.”
Robert Greene

“The more you know who you are, and what you want, the less you let things upset you.”
Stephanie Perkins

“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.”
Winston Churchill

Artwork Cameron Gray

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”
Anaïs Nin

“A thousand words will not leave so deep an impression as one deed.”
Henrik Ibsen

“Dead people receive more flowers than the living ones because regret is stronger than gratitude.”
Anne Frank

“You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger.”
Buddha

“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”
Frederick Douglass

“Always go too far, because that’s where you’ll find the truth.”
Albert Camus

“The people who really make you angry, control you!”
Steven Aitchison

“The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it.”
Thich Nhat Hanh

“The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it but that it is too low and we reach it.”
Michel Angelo

“No matter how many mistakes you make or how slow you progress, you are still way ahead of everyone who isn’t trying.”
Tony Robbins

Artwork Cameron Gray

“Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.”
Bill Gates

“If you realized how powerful your thoughts are, you would never think a negative thought.”
Peace Pilgrim

“I freed 1000 slaves. I could have freed 1000 more if only they knew they were slaves.”
Harriet Tubman

"Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, I will try again tomorrow."
Mary Anne Radmacher

"Mistakes are part of the dues that one pays for a full life."
Sophia Loren

"Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is the eternity."
Henry Van Dyke

"Our lives improve only when we take chances…and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves."
Walter Anderson

"To find your own way is to follow your bliss. This involves analysis, watching yourself and seeing where real deep bliss is – not the quick little excitement, but the real deep, life-filling bliss."
Joseph Campbell

“Your self worth is not found in the opinions of others”
Steven Aitchison

"Life begins at the end of your comfort zone."
Neale Donald Walsch

“Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.”
Plato

“To do two things at once is to do neither.”
Publilius Syrus

“Believe deep down in your heart that you’re destined to do great things.”
Joe Paterno

All artwork in this post is from the amazing Cameron Gray from https://parablevisions.com/

The post Deep Quotes That Will Change Your View Of Life appeared first on Change your thoughts.

Strong Women Quotes

Steven Aitchison — Fri, 27 Mar 2020 15:10:58 GMT

I wanted to collect some strong women quotes for you today as I was reminded just how strong minded my wife is after speaking to her and being so impressed with her tenaciousness.

I totally understand why, throughout history, men have oppressed, ridiculed, put down, and made women to feel like second class citizens. It's because men fear the strength of women and the only way that men could have any semblance of control was to oppress and vilify them.

That being said, look at what is happening today, women are fighting back big time. However, society still has a long way to go until there are equal rights across the board.

Equally so, nowadays what I don't like is this rhetoric that we need to have a certain number of women as CEOs or more women in politics, or more women in this field and that field. What we do need is the right person for the job whether that be female or male but we need the decisions that are made of who is right for the job to be balanced as well.

I used to consider myself as a feminist but I am not I am a humanist and want equal rights for everyone.

That being said here are 49 strong women quotes that I have collected on my social media travels.

49 Strong Women Quotes

“I believe in strong women. I believe in the woman who is able to stand up for herself. I believe in the woman who doesn't need to hide behind her husband's back. I believe that if you have problems, as a woman you deal with them, you don't play victim, you don't make yourself look pitiful, you don't point fingers. You stand and you deal. You face the world with a head held high and you carry the universe in your heart.”
C. JoyBell C

“She has fought many wars, most internal. The ones that you battle alone, for this, she is remarkable. She is a survivor.”
Nikki Rowe

“women don't endure simply because we can; no, women endure because we aren't given any other choice. They wanted us weak but forced us to be strong.”
Amanda Lovelace

“I’ve often thought it unfair that women are expected to stay at home when there’s a fight to be won. If a woman has the strength to bear a child, she can swing a sword as well as any man.”
Karen Hawkins

“Everything is within your power, and your power is within you.”
Janice Trachtman

“Women have got to make the world safe for men since men have made it so darned unsafe for women.”
Nancy Astor the Viscountess Astor

“She wears strength and darkness equally well, The girl has always been half goddess half hell”
Nikita Gill

“You have never been and you won’t ever be wrong for choosing yourself!
Read that again …”
Samiha Totanji

“Fearlessly Be You…Faith feels like your falling off a cliff…but you find the courage you jump anyway!”
Positively Sherry

"Think like a queen. A queen is not afraid to fail. Failure is another stepping stone to greatness."
Oprah Winfrey

"She would rather walk alone in darkness than follow anyone else’s shadow."
R. G. Moon

"The most dangerous woman of all is the one who refuses to rely on your sword to save her because she carries her own."
R. H. Sin

"The world needs strong women. Women who will lift and build others, who will love and be loved. Women who live bravely, both tender and fierce. Women of indomitable will."
Amy Tenney

Give a woman pain and she’ll turn it into power. Give that woman chaos and she’ll create peace."
R. H. Sin

"Do not tame the wolf inside you just because you’ve met someone who doesn’t have the courage to handle you."
Belle Estreller

"You don’t have to play masculine to be a strong woman."
Mary Elizabeth Winstead

“Any woman who understands the problems of running a home will be nearer to understanding the problems of running a country.”
Margaret Thatcher

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”
Anais Nin

“Whatever you do, be different – that was the advice my mother gave me, and I can’t think of better advice for an entrepreneur. If you’re different, you will stand out.”
Anita Roddick

“A lot of people are afraid to say what they want. That’s why they don’t get what they want.”
Madonna

“A woman is like a tea bag – you never know how strong she is until she gets in hot water.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

“The day will come when men will recognize woman as his peer, not only at the fireside, but in councils of the nation. Then, and not until then, will there be the perfect comradeship, the ideal union between the sexes that shall result in the highest development of the race.”
Susan B. Anthony

“I’ve come to believe that each of us has a personal calling that’s as unique as a fingerprint – and that the best way to succeed is to discover what you love and then find a way to offer it to others in the form of service, working hard, and also allowing the energy of the universe to lead you.”
Oprah Winfrey

“A strong woman understands that the gifts such as logic, decisiveness, and strength are just as feminine as intuition and emotional connection. She values and uses all of her gifts.”
Nancy Rathburn

“I want to do is because I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be but a challenge to others.”
Amelia Earhart

“The best protection any woman can have … is courage.”
Elizabeth Cady Stanton

“Because I am a woman, I must make unusual efforts to succeed. If I fail, no one will say, “She doesn’t have what it takes.” They will say, “Women don’t have what it takes.”
Clare Boothe Luce

“The way in which we think of ourselves has everything to do with how our world see us and how we see ourselves successfully acknowledged by the world.”
Arlene Rankin

“The question isn’t who’s going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.”
Ayn Rand

“Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.”
Charlotte Whitton

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”
Alice Walker

“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.”
Maya Angelou

“When you lose a couple of times, it makes you realize how difficult it is to win.”
Steffi Graf

"Life comes with many challenges. The ones that should not scare us are the ones we can take on and take control of,"
Angelina Jolie

"I know my worth. I embrace my power. I say if I'm beautiful. I say if I'm strong. You will not determine my story. I will,"
Amy Schumer

"Don't let the bastards grind you down,"
Margaret Atwood

"I've just never cared what people think. It's more if I'm happy and I'm confident and feeling good. That's always been my thing. And more so now, since having a family—I don’t seek out any other acceptance,"
Kelly Clarkson

"Worry about being respected, never worry about being liked. Because that's the trap,"
Jada Pinkett Smith

"I have chosen to no longer be apologetic for my femaleness and my femininity. And I want to be respected in all of my femaleness because I deserve to be,"
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

"You have to believe in yourself and believe in your ability to prove yourself wrong,"
Erin Foster

“I think happiness is what makes you pretty. Period. Happy people are beautiful. They become like a mirror and they reflect that happiness,"
Drew Barrymore

"If you’re comfortable with yourself and know yourself, you’re going to shine and radiate, and other people are going to be drawn to you,"
Dolly Parton

"You must do the things you think you cannot do,"
Eleanor Roosevelt

"Embrace the glorious mess that you are,"
Elizabeth Gilbert

“Each person is born with very individual qualities and potential. We as a society owe it to women to create a truly supportive environment in which they too can grow and move forward,”
Princess Diana

"The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself,"
Anna Quindlen

Do you have any strong women quotes you could add to this? Please leave a comment below with your favourite strong women quotes. Thank you.

Some other strong women posts you might be interested in

9 Things to Expect When Dating a Strong Woman

10 Things A Strong Woman Won’t Stand For In A Relationship

12 Qualities Women Want in Their Men

10 Reasons Why Being a Strong Woman Is Nothing to Apologize For

10 Things that Make Women Beautiful and Make Up Isn’t One of Them

13 things mentally strong women don’t do, according to a psychotherapist and best-selling author

7 Things Mentally Strong Women Believe

13 Things Mentally Strong Women Don't Do

13 Ways That Mentally Strong Women Stay That Way

5 Things Mentally Strong Women Know

The post Strong Women Quotes appeared first on Change your thoughts.

Kindness Quotes

Steven Aitchison — Wed, 25 Mar 2020 15:52:34 GMT

I wanted to put together some kindness quotes for you today as a lot of people think kind people are a a bit of a pushover. Kind people are thought of as naive in some way or they don't have a handle on human psychology and are therefore more vulnerable to be taken advantage of.

I don't believe this at all and I feel kind people are empaths who are completely in tune with peoples feelings. We therefore have a better handle and can read people better than most. We are willing to give a bit more of ourselves; time, money, thoughts and and actions.

Enjoy these kindness quotes and let me know in the comments below if you have come across any of your own.

"Kindness is a power that cannot be faked"
Steven Aitchison

"Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see."
Mark Twain

"You can be rich in spirit, kindness, love and all those things that you can't put a dollar sign on."
Dolly Parton

"You can be rich in spirit, kindness, love and all those things that you can't put a dollar sign on."
Dalai Lama

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.”
Plato

“Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind.”
Henry James

“Treat everyone with politeness and kindness, not because they are nice, but because you are.”
Roy T Bennett

“The beauty of a woman is not in a facial mole,but true beauty in a Woman is reflected in her soul. It is the caring that she lovingly gives, the passion that she knows.”
Audrey Hepburn

“But remember, boy, that a kind act can sometimes be as powerful as a sword.”
Rick Riordan in the book The Battle of the Labyrinth

"The world shines a little brighter when you are kinder to yourself and kind to others."
Steven Aitchison

“The simplest acts of kindness are by far more powerful then a thousand heads bowing in prayer.”
Mahatma Ghandi

“What I want is so simple I almost can't say it: elementary kindness.”
Barbara Kingsolver

"The one person in the world we really need to practice kindness on is ourself."
Steven Aitchison

“Always try to be a little kinder than is necessary.”
J. M. Barrie

“It's a little embarrassing that after 45 years of research & study, the best advice I can give people is to be a little kinder to each other.”
Aldous Huxley

“Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind. Always.”
Brad Meltzer

“There is no small act of kindness. Every compassionate act makes large the world.”
Mary Anne Radmacher

“Sometimes it's easy to lose faith in people. And sometimes one act of kindness is all it takes to give you hope again.”
Randa Abdel-Fattah

“Because I haven't yet learned the simplest and most important thing of all: the world is difficult, and we are all breakable. So just be kind.”
Caitlin Moran

“I prefer you to make mistakes in kindness than work miracles in unkindness.”
Mother Theresa

“Today I bent the truth to be kind, and I have no regret, for I am far surer of what is kind than I am of what is true.”
Robert Brault

“There is no wrong way to perform an act of kindness.”
Catherine Ryan

“Mean girls go far in high school. Kind women go far in LIFE.”
Mandy Hale

“People will not remember what you did for living,
they will remember how you touched them with kindness and loving.”
Debasish Mridha

“Choose being kind over being right and you'll be right every time.”
Richard Carlson

“Be kind to people and don’t judge, for you do not know what demons they carry and what battles they are fighting.”
Vashti Quiroz-Vega

I hope you enjoyed the kindness quotes and if you have any of your own to add please leave a comment below to let me know.

It really does take nothing to be kind and often times it will lift our spirits as well as the person you are being kind to.

A little challenge for you

For 1 week try and do one act of kindness every day for someone else but also one act of kindness for yourself every day.

Let me know how you get on with that and how it made you feel. I can almost guarantee that you will want to continue doing this every day as it really does give us energy and lifts our spirits.

Click The Book Cover Below Pre-order Steven Aitchison’s new book The Belief Principle: 7 Beliefs That Will Transform your Life

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A Quick Way to Discover Your Personal Beliefs

Steven Aitchison — Tue, 24 Mar 2020 20:09:54 GMT

It might seem like a strange question to ask, but I'm going to ask anyway:

What personal beliefs do you hold about yourself?

I'll give you a few minutes to think about that one, as it's a little trickier than you might first imagine.

Tricky, isn't it!

Slave or Master?

The reason we find it so difficult is that we rarely pay attention to the beliefs we have. However, we have to recognise that either we are a slave to our beliefs or we are a master of them.

If you were to master just a few of your personal beliefs, your life would change beyond measure. Imagine if you managed to install a new belief that you are a supremely confident person. How do you think this one belief would change your life? It would change your life in every way. Simply understanding and mastering your beliefs is going to bring about a massive shift in your life.

Uncover Your Personal Beliefs

You’ve learned the theory of beliefs, how they are formed, why we have them, what role they serve in our lives, and the rules that come from our beliefs. Now it’s time for the good stuff, the stuff that truly helps us to transform our lives.

It’s time to break all the rules.

Okay, so here is the really simple exercise to start uncovering your beliefs. This is going to open your eyes, amaze you, and give you huge insights into your own life that you may not have thought about before.

THE BELIEF WHEEL

No doubt you will have seen something similar to this called the Wheel of Life, which is used a lot in life coaching.

We are going to break your life up into eight sections.

The red area represents all of the areas in our lives. It lets us see immediately what areas we might want to focus on more. The example above shows us that “Recreation” is out of balance with other life areas.

Your exercise for today:

Choose one of the areas in the belief wheel e.g.

Health – This is obviously to do with how healthy you are at the moment: Do you get enough exercise, do you have any detrimental habits that could harm you, do you eat well, do you have a lot of energy, are you stressed?

Think about what is holding you back from having a score of ten in the area you chose.

For example, you might say for health: “I don’t have enough time” “I’m too busy,” “other areas are more important,” “I don’t have the energy.”"I am too stressed to stop smoking"

With the example above, you can easily see that these are things you tell yourself. I used to tell myself that I had no time to go to the gym, and I was making myself believe that, which always prevented me from going to the gym. You do have time – what you don’t have is your priorities in order. I valued my health but not as much as I valued my work, my family, money, or anything else. So I created a new belief that I do have time for my health and set that belief up to make it extremely important. Without my health, my family time suffers, my ability to make an income suffers, my work suffers-so it’s about setting up your beliefs and setting up your priorities.

So you see, by saying simple things like “Oh, I don’t really have the time to do that,” you are creating a belief that prevents you from doing the very thing you need to do.

Go through all the areas of your life and ask yourself why you haven’t scored a ten in each area, and you’ll find out the beliefs that are currently holding you back in general.

Now, I am not saying you need to score a ten in each of the areas; that’s not practical, not necessary, and not realistic. Your belief wheel is not about having a perfectly balanced life, as there really is no such thing. That may sound odd to hear, as we have heard so much about work-life balance, but what it’s really about is working with what you have to do and making the most of what you want to do. We’ll talk more about this later.

Click The Book Cover Below Pre-order Steven Aitchison's new book The Belief Principle: 7 Beliefs That Will Transform your Life

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15 Signs That Prove You Are A Natural Healer

Steven Aitchison — Mon, 23 Mar 2020 09:00:00 GMT

Being a natural healer is to be extremely gifted and blessed. It could mean to be able to heal people's physical illnesses naturally or help them spiritually. Whichever way you heal, you are envied, without a doubt. While many of us reach for our latest bottle of prescription pain killers, you naturally relieve pain, with great success.

Most natural healers already know they possess that gift but there are still a few walking around unaware of their ability and have yet to tap into it. Have you ever wondered if you are one? Do you recognize any of the following signs in yourself?

1. People come to you with all their problems.

They are naturally drawn to you and admire your warm and loving aura. They believe that you have all the solutions to all the problems. They also respect and trust your judgement and advice.

2. You feel people's pain.

Emotionally and sometimes physically. You can immediately pick up on when someone is going through emotional turmoil, even if they are smiling and acting like nothing is wrong. You know better, and you know there is definitely something wrong.

3. You don't get sick very often.

You are generally very healthy and rarely catch things like the common cold or flu bugs.

4. You want to heal people.

Emotionally, spiritually and sometimes physically. You feel their pain and desperately want to take their pain away from them. You know you can but often will hold back on offering as you aren't sure how they will accept your offer.

5. People are drawn to you.

You are the go to person for comfort and mental and spiritual stimulation. People have mentioned to you many times before they feel very comfortable around you and they love spending time with you. It's like a safe zone for them.

6. You come from a family of healers.

The gift has been passed down to you. You know and feel that you are special but always wondered what that feeling was. It's your unique ability to heal people. Time to tap into it.

7. You have a special way with animals.

They are also naturally drawn to you, as are children. They are tuned into your healing abilities and feel safe, loved and nurtured around you. you also feel very relaxed and very much in your element with animals.

8. Exercise for you is usually anything outdoors.

You prefer to walk in nature, go hiking, kayaking, snowshoeing. You would rather get your exercise in this way then go to a gym and endure an hour of an aerobics class with too loud pumping music.

9. You are exhausted at the end of the day.

Usually emotionally. You have been toxically attacked from all the people around you and it has drained you. You've felt their pain, heard their stories and even healed a few. You are wiped out.

10. You rarely see the doctor for anything.

Most conditions you face personally you can heal on your own either through herbs and teas or meditations and/or Reiki treatments. You would rather not take pills for anything and can always find a natural way to heal yourself.

11. You are drawn to healing gemstones and probably already have a nice collect ion.

You own several books on stones and you are always learning and perhaps even gridding your stones. Most of your jewelry is in the form of gemstones as well.

12. You spend a lot of your weekends on holistic retreats.

You are always learning new forms of natural healing. Hot stone massages, Indian head massages, Reiki (if you don't already know it) or any other energy healing modalities.

13. Any pain you do feel comes in the form of headaches or shoulder and neck pain.

That's due to you carrying the weight of everyone's problems. For some of you, you've been bombarded all day with other's issues. By the end of the day, you're heavy with toxicity.

14. You prefer alone time.

You love your friends and family but being home with a good book and a great cup of tea is always your preferred way of spending a Friday night.

15. You feel different from the others.

That's because you are. Very different. You're gifted and no one quite gets it. You aren't interested in office gossip around the cooler or any other negative talk. You are too sensitive for that.

If any of these signs describe you, it's time to tap into your natural healing abilities. You are truly gifted and a natural healer.

The post 15 Signs That Prove You Are A Natural Healer appeared first on Change your thoughts.

12 Little Known Laws of Karma (That Will Change your Life)

in5d — Sat, 21 Mar 2020 07:54:00 GMT

by Raven E. Aurlineus, et al..

What is Karma? Karma is the Sanskrit word for action. It is equivalent to Newton's law of "˜every action must have a reaction'. When we think, speak or act we initiate a force that will react accordingly. This returning force maybe modified, changed or suspended, but most people will not be able eradicate it.

This law of cause and effect is not punishment, but is wholly for the sake of education or learning.

A person may not escape the consequences of his actions, but he will suffer only if he himself has made the conditions ripe for his suffering. Ignorance of the law is no excuse whether the laws are man-made or universal.
To stop being afraid and to start being empowered in the worlds of karma and reincarnation, here is what you need to know about karmic laws.

1. The Great Law

"As you sow, so shall you reap." This is also known as the "Law of Cause and Effect."
If what we want is happiness, peace, love, and friendship, then we should BE happy, peaceful, loving and a true friend.
Whatever we put out in the Universe is what comes back to us.

2. The Law of Creation

Life doesn't just happen. It requires our participation.
We are one with the Universe, both inside and out.
Whatever surrounds us gives us clues to our inner state.
Be yourself, and surround yourself with what you want to have in your life.

3. The Law of Humility

You can't change something if you refuse to accept it.
If what we see is an enemy, or someone with a character trait that we find to benegative, then we ourselves are not focused on a higher level of existence.

4. The Law of Growth

"Wherever you go, there you are."
For us to grow in Spirit, it is we who must change, and not the people, places or things around us.
The only given we have in our lives is ourselves, and that is the only factor we have control over.
When we change who and what we are within our hearts, our lives follow suit and change too.

5. The Law of Responsibility

Whenever there is something wrong in my life, there is something wrong in me.
We mirror what surrounds us, and what surrounds us mirrors us; this is a Universal Truth.
We must take responsibility for what is in our life.

6. The Law of Connection

Even if something we do seems inconsequential, it is very important that it gets done as everything in the Universe is connected.
Each step leads to the next step, and so forth and so on.
Someone must do the initial work to get a job done.
Neither the first step nor the last are of greater significance, as they were both needed to accomplish the task.
Past, Present and Future are all connected.

7. The Law of Focus

You cannot think of two things at the same time.
Because of this, when our focus is on Spiritual Values, it is impossible for us to have lower thoughts such as greed or anger.

8. The Law of Giving and Hospitality

If you believe something to be true, then sometime in your life you will be called upon to demonstrate that particular truth.
Here is where we put what we CLAIM that we have learned into actual PRACTICE.

9. The Law of Here and Now

Looking backward to examine what was or forward to worry about the future prevents us from being totally in the here and now.
Old thoughts, old patterns of behavior, and old dreams prevent us from having new ones.

10. The Law of Change

History repeats itself until we learn the lessons that we need to change our path.

11. The Law of Patience and Reward

All rewards require initial toil.
Rewards of lasting value require patient and persistent toil.
True joy comes from doing what we're suppose to be doing, and knowing that the reward will come in its own time.

12. The Law of Significance and Inspiration

You get back from something whatever you have put into it.
The true value of something is a direct result of the energy and intent that is put into it.
Every personal contribution is also a contribution to the Whole.
Lackluster contributions have no impact on the Whole, nor do they work to diminish it.
Loving contributions bring life to, and inspire, the Whole.

This work Originally Published at (In5D) / CC BY-NC 3.0

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10 Things You Should Drop From Your Life Starting Now

Steven Aitchison — Fri, 20 Mar 2020 12:29:00 GMT

We are all doing things in our life that we should drop immediately in order to live a happier life and be the person we truly want to be.

We have around 70 years of life (on average). 20 of those years are spent learning about people, love, work, money, and living a life of mistakes in order to make the next 50 years enjoyable. The latter 10 years of our life are spent slowing down. So, we really only have around 40 years to really make a difference and truly create a life that we love.

Dropping these 10 things will help you live a much happier, and more enjoyable life…

Drop the negative people around you

We all have negative people around us, and it's easy for me to say just drop them, but you have to find a way.

Negative people are energy suckers, they suck the life out of you until you get down to their way of thinking. I am sure you can think of a few people just now who are like this. If you've ever seen Harry Potter you'll know what a Dementor is, that's what negative people are, Dementors in your life.

It can be tough if you work closely with someone who is like this, or have family members who are like this. Drop them gradually or stay out of their way as much as possible.

Another thing you can do is counteract all their negatives with positives, oh! they don't like that, and the more you do it the more they will avoid you.

Drop caring about the mistakes you have made

Bit of a cliche this one: your mistakes in life serve as a reminder of what not to do in the future, simple as that.

Your mind set about mistakes is what makes all the difference here, you can be in two camps on mistakes:

Camp one: woe is me, I made a mistake I am such a loser, I totally embarrassed myself, I'll never be able to show my face in public again.

Camp two: I made a mistake, sure as hell won't be doing that again, but at least I learned what not to do.

Nobody, but nobody, has ever succeeded in life without failing a few times, so making mistakes is inevitable if you want to live a more successful and happier life.

Drop the past

Let me ask you a question about your past…

Can you go back and change it?

No!

So why dwell on things that have happened in the past when there is absolutely nothing you can do to change it, you can make amends for the past, you can say you're sorry about something you've done in the past but the fact remains the past has happened and it can't be changed.

The more you think about the past, the more your mind lives there, and it can be a hard slog getting back to living in the here and now, and looking forward to the future.

Drop your self portrait image

A self portrait is a painting or drawing of yourself that everyone can look at. Everyone will see something different, just like a piece of art, and so it is in life.

You are not the same person all the time to everyone you meet. You act differently depending on the people you are with at the time, you don't speak or act the same way with your mates as you do with your parents, but really you should. You should have enough confidence to be the same with every single person who shares your life.

When you meet someone who is truly authentic they totally shine above everyone else, there's no airs and graces, you either take them the way they are or you don't, simple as that. I believe that's what we should be striving for in life.

We could take this a bit far and say 'but Steve, I curse and swear when I'm at football matches, you wouldn't expect me to talk to my mum like that would you.' of course not, just quit the bloody swearing

Drop feeling sorry for yourself

Sometimes it's great just to sit on the 'poor me' train and just let it roll into 'Woe is me' station, but the longer you are on that train the more difficult it is to get off it.

Give yourself a shake, you've only got a few years to make a difference in your life, and those around you, so jump off the 'poor me' train and head for 'happyville' central.

Sounds too easy doesn't it, that's because it is easy: buying a ticket for the 'poor me' train is a choice!

Drop saying yes all the time

There are times for saying yes and times for saying no.

When saying yes makes you feel uncomfortable, miserable or stressed, it's then time to say no, however hard it may be, you need to find a way.

The first time you say no to someone, when you usually say yes, will empower you so much that it can turn your life around.

You could take this too far and say no to absolutely everything, but your only criteria for saying no is when it makes you feel uncomfortable, miserable or stressed. So if you're taking on too much work, say no when it becomes too stressful, if you're doing too much in your relationships just say no to pull back a bit.

Drop trying to please everyone

It's impossible, literally impossible, to please everyone, even if you're the nicest, most splendid, most lovliest, most loving person in the world there's always someone who will not like you for some reason.

Let it go, it's okay for some people not to like you, and it's more than okay for you to stop going out of your way to try and please them.

Be yourself, and if someone doesn't like you for being yourself at least you'll respect yourself for being you.

Drop saying the right thing

The world has gone mad over the last few years, talking about what you can't say, what you shouldn't say, and what's a bit risky.

I read on CNN recently that New York wants to ban the words 'dinosaur' and 'evolution' from standardized tests because they are considered controversial – WHAT! It's mental with a capital M.

We shouldn't be censoring what we say because we think someone might be offended, the only reason we think like this is because of our parents, the media, school, co-workers and friends; they are keeping us in check – to comply.

If we have an opinion about something we are entitled to speak our minds. I'm not saying you should try and offend everyone who gets in your way or speak up because you like the sound of your own voice, but if you have a strong opinion about something, speak up and let your voice be heard.

Drop your limiting beliefs

One of the most amazing gifts we, as humans, have developed over the last 100 years is knowing that we can change our beliefs, particularly our limiting beliefs.

We all have them, but a lot of the time we don't recognize them.

To test your limiting beliefs let me ask you:

What do you truly want to do with your life?

If you know the answer, then the next questions is – What's stopping you? Your answers will often reveal your limiting beliefs.

When you know your limiting beliefs you can then work on dropping them or replacing them with alternative more positive focused beliefs that will drive you forward in life.

Drop your limiting beliefs today and start working on new beliefs about yourself.

Drop worrying about the future

If you do your best today, your future has already been taken care of.

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6 Simple Ways to Stay Inspired as a Writer

Adela Belin — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 09:52:10 GMT

Ask a writer what they fear most, and they’ll tell you it’s waking up one day and realizing that they have lost all motivation to write.

Be it an author, musician, lyricist or artist – every creator needs the inspiration to create and get their creative juices flowing.

Contrary to what many think, you cannot sit around, waiting for inspiration to hit you. Finding inspiration is an ongoing process and it entirely depends on what you do to stay inspired as a writer.

What’s that, you ask? Here are six ways to stay inspired and never stop enjoying the process of writing.

1. Read Extensively

We’ve all heard this ‘tip’ before but how many of us actually practice it?

Reading is one of those things we know we should do but rarely ever get to it. The key to ensuring you read extensively is to devote 30 minutes to 1 hour a day to read a book of your choice and fit it into your daily schedule.

Another way to be motivated to read is to start a book club or find a reading buddy to discuss the books you’re reading.

Reading is important because it is a great source of inspiration. Whether it’s learning about new writing styles or enriching your vocabulary – reading is sure to make you a better writer.

2. Maintain a Journal

The best of writers have stated that keeping a journal positively impacts writing.

Journal writing lets you express yourself, organize your thoughts, relieve anxiety and even record learnings and ideas that may come into use at a later stage.

So, whether it’s maintaining a diary or having a personal blog, it helps to be committed to this healthy practice and write everything that comes to your mind. The idea is to not lose touch and write something every day to keep the inspiration going.

3. Network with Other Writers

Writing can get lonely and there will be times when that can lead to a lack of motivation.

To avoid getting engulfed by loneliness, you should consider networking with other writers who are possibly in the same boat as you. It helps to discuss your writing woes with someone else and know that you’re not alone.

Find a writing community around you or join an online group to spark conversations with like-minded people. Sometimes, when you are unable to find the motivation to write from within, getting a push or reason to write from elsewhere might just help you get out of the rut.

4. Know your Strengths

Most of us can go volumes on our weaknesses but when it comes to knowing our strengths, we find it hard to think of any.

Understanding your strengths as a writer is important because it lets you focus on what you’re good at, especially on the days when you’re having a particularly hard time completing a piece of writing.

So, sit back and give it a thought. What are you proud of when it comes to writing? Is it your exceptional vocabulary, the clarity with which you write, your attitude towards criticism or something else?

Make a list of all those qualities that you consider to be your strengths and turn to it when you’re in need of some inspiration.

5. Set Short-term Goals

There is nothing wrong in establishing long-term goals but let’s not forget that setting short-term goals is also equally crucial.

Your long-term goal might be to grow your freelance business into a content agency, but your short-term goal is about what you’re going to achieve this month, this week and this day.

Long-term goals give you direction, but it is the short-term goals that motivate you to reach your final destination. So, get into the habit of setting realistic short-term goals for yourself and tracking progress to avoid getting overwhelmed and take those baby steps to get to where you want to.

6. Take Breaks

We’ve all had instances when we’ve found ourselves procrastinating or worse, pushing ourselves to finish writing something only to realize it needs a lot of work.

At such times, it’s important to listen to our body, give it the rest it deserves and take a writing break.

Watch a movie, go out for coffee or just take a walk to take your mind off what you’re writing. It helps to come back to it the next day when you’re fresh and rejuvenated – this will let you write better and ensure quality work.

So, there will be days when you won’t have the motivation to write or won’t be inspired enough but making these six healthy writing habits a part of your life will certainly help you hold on to the inspiration and teach you how to deal with those difficult days without losing hope.

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How Do Positive Affirmations Work On Your Beliefs?

Steven Aitchison — Tue, 29 Oct 2019 12:27:37 GMT

What are positive affirmations?

Just to make sure we're all on the same page, let's put out a basic definition of what a positive affirmation actually is!

"A positive affirmation is a reminder to our heart, mind and body that optimism IS the natural state of being. In a world filled with cynicism and negativity it can be very easy to forget that each day is a blessing- even if it the whole blessing part seems rather heavily disguised. Pop culture, the news and sometimes even people around us are a constant reminders of the fact the world can be a dangerous and scary place, but positive affirmations help us to create an equilibrium of positive and negative aspects of life."

Instilling positive affirmations into our lives is not as easy as it may seem on the outside, we evolved to mentally emphasize the dangerous things surrounding us. Think back to your cave men ancestors who were living constantly with the risk of being eaten or not having enough to eat. To survive, our ancestors had to learn to detect and prevent danger at all times like most animals. Us humans have psychologically held onto this tendency to worry about dangerous things even though for many of us there is no longer such an urgent need to watch our backs a majority of the time.

Positive affirmations are basically verbal, mental or even physical reminders that life is inherently good, and that we can let go of our cave men tendencies. With positive affirmation we remember the fact that the values surrounding our life and we have reason to hope.

However, positive affirmations are so much more than that as they literally determine what actions we take, what thoughts we think and what values we have. This is because they are inherently linked to our beliefs.

Your beliefs become your thoughts.

Your thoughts become your words.

Your words become your actions.

Your actions become your habits.

Your habits become your values.

Your values become your destiny.
Mahatma Gandhi

You have been using affirmations all your life!

How many times have you said to yourself and others around you:

I'm no good at that!
I can't do that!
I am not very intelligent!
I am not good looking!
I wish I was more like them!
When I have money I will….!

These are all examples of negative affirmations, and we all use them on a daily basis in one form or another.

Your self talk determines the beliefs you will have about yourself, about others and about the world around you.

The affirmations you use in everyday life, whether they be unconscious or not, determine your beliefs and it's your beliefs that will ultimately decide how successful you are going to be in any area of your life.

The importance of beliefs

One of the biggest gifts we could ever be given in life—and I mean this quite literally—is knowing that we can change our beliefs. This is just an amazing piece of knowledge to have, to know that we can actually change beliefs that have been useless and lying unchallenged within us for years.

We have certain beliefs within us just now that are disempowering us, and this is what we want to look at next to show you ways that you can disarm the disempowering beliefs or get rid of them altogether and install new beliefs into you own life.

Our beliefs literally shape our reality. Your reality is totally different from mine. It’s also different from your partner’s, work colleagues’, your kids’ and the people around about you. You’re unique to you; the thing that makes you different are the beliefs you hold about your world. Think about that for a moment—you have created your own world. Yes, we share a lot of constructs, but effectively you have created the world around you, and the person that you are today. That might bake your noodle a little, but if you can get your head around that and really think about it, you’ll realize what it means—that if you have created your life thus far, you can also change it, because you are the creator.

Your physical state is altered with your beliefs

Dr. Bernard Siegel recounts stories of patients with multiple personality disorders who have literately changed eye color and when they have changed from one personality to another. They have also developed physical symptoms such as diabetes within their bodies simply because they have changed from one personality to another, each having totally different beliefs about themselves.

That’s a stark presentation of how deeply embedded our beliefs are, and there is lots of evidence to support this. If you read any of Dr. Siegel’s books, you will realize the power of beliefs. So, this not only shows that beliefs are in our mind and can affect our minds, but they can also affect our physical bodies as well. They are extremely powerful in and of themselves, so it’s important to learn as much about yourself—through your beliefs—as possible. Then, if you feel it’s necessary, change them or install a new belief.

Let’s consider the placebo affect, which basically has two sets of patients who are given two sets of different pills. One of the sample groups receives a sugar pill and is told that the “pill” is going to help with their condition: pain, depression, etc. The other sample group is given genuine medication to treat the condition.

What has been found time and time again since 1955 when the phrase “placebo effect” was coined is that 50–60% of patients respond to the placebo tablet—that is, the sugar pill. So, it has the desired effect of positively addressing the condition. This is the power of belief. This isn’t to say that human beings are stupid—it just means that we are fooling ourselves with the power of the mind by believing that the sugar pill is going to help. This is reinforced within the hospital/medical setting and our “acceptance” that a doctor has prescribed the “pill.”

So what this really means is that a belief—if taken down to its basic function—is something you hold in your mind. It’s a concept—something you know with certainty is “true,” and that creates a deep feeling within.

A belief is a feeling of certainty that something is true.

If you say that you are an intelligent person, what you are really saying is you feel that you are an intelligent person. That feeling of certainty allows you to tap into your inner resources, which will allow you to display a feeling of intelligence and, in turn, to think and take actions in a different way—from the perspective of an intelligent person, or at least your perception of how an intelligent person would behave.

Belief formula

For the purpose of this program, I have come up with a belief formula, based on my psychology degree research (both qualitative and quantitative). The belief formula is:

perception + evidence + repetition + time = belief

Now, to illustrate this formula, I’d like to tell you a story about a girl named Sharon who is 22 years old. Sharon has never really believed that she is attractive, which is reflective of a lot of people in the world today, both female and male.

One day whilst at work, a male friend paid her a compliment and said she looked really good and “hot.” This took Sharon by surprise, but she didn’t really think anymore about it. However, when she went home that night, she looked in the mirror and thought about what her friend had said. And she thought that she was actually looking a bit better than she had been.

A few nights later, when she was out with friends, she was approached by a good-looking guy who asked if he could buy her a drink. Sharon was really flattered but politely refused to take the drink, which caused a little stir among her friends, who joked with her about this. Again she was taken aback by this compliment.

Sharon started to reflect on recent events and began to question and challenge her perception of her beliefs about herself. Other small things like this happened over the next few weeks and Sharon’s (self) belief started to take hold.

A few weeks later, Sharon was out shopping by herself and she saw a nice pair of jeans and decided to try them on. She looked in the mirror in the changing room (which as you know can be traumatic for anyone!) and was able to recognize that she actually looked good. And she acknowledged that she liked what she saw in the mirror.

This was the formation of a new belief about herself. A few weeks later, her mother said to her that over the past few months there had been a marked difference in her appearance, and she was looking wonderful. Now, it was unusual for her mother to pay her a compliment, and she was able to take this compliment in the positive manner in which it had been offered. So Sharon was able to take this belief obtained in the previous few months and let it set in her mind. Sharon had now formed the belief that she was attractive.

Due to the formation of this belief (that she is attractive), which had been reinforced by the compliments of others, Sharon started to act, dress and even walk differently. This was all a result of her newfound belief in herself. She began to dress to accentuate her best assets, and she attended the gym to maintain this attractive figure. This change affected her thinking, and she started thinking more positively confidently. She began to take on bigger challenges in life.

You see, Sharon had a perception of herself and the way she looks. This perception changed as external validation force her to look at her perception. More evidence—again in the form of external factors and internal factors—proved to Sharon that she was attractive. With time and the continuation of building evidence she formed a new belief about herself:

perception + evidence + repetition + time = belief

The story of Sharon is quite simplistic in that a belief may be formed over years depending on what stage we are at in life. If you look at the transition for Sharon, she was able to challenge her misconceived perceptions and beliefs about herself through the aid of external reinforcers.

This is what happens to you. Your beliefs are either positive or negative. If you are the type of person where your world looks bleak and dark and miserable, it’s purely because your beliefs need to be altered in relation to how you really are, and how the world really is.

The event is irrelevant—it is how you react to the event that matters. I know that there will be awful experiences that people will have been through, and the more traumatic the experiences, the more specialist help you will need. However, in general day-to-day life, if you have limiting beliefs in your life, you can turn them around (if you wish) purely by turning your beliefs around. Obviously you have to examine your current belief to know what areas you want to change.

The table of beliefs

Tony Robbins uses a metaphor for building your beliefs called the “table metaphor.” Basically what this means is you have an imaginary tabletop that represents a perception about yourself. In Sharon’s case, the perception may have been planted when the colleague at work paid her a compliment. At this point, it’s just a “tabletop.” It doesn’t have any support as such at this stage. As Sharon traveled through the following weeks she received further compliments that reinforced the positive image in her, which resulted in the formation of the “legs” for the “tabletop,” or her perception. It was now able to support the idea of her positive self-image, and that idea has now turned into a belief she has about herself. This is how we all form beliefs.

Belief formation

When we are young our beliefs are formed from external forces (i.e., parents, teachers, friends, peers and family). If we respect another person, then it is easier to believe what they say—Santa Claus, anyone?

In adulthood, we have transferred these childhood beliefs across, so it’s time to look at your beliefs, evaluate them and identify which ones you want to discard. Whenever you question something it means you are starting to doubt it. This will lead to more questions, which result in you being less likely to believe entrenched attitudes given to you by others.

However, you will be able to retain those beliefs that you actually trust in. Think about the belief that 99.9% of the world population holds true: that the sun is going to rise every morning.

Think about that belief just now, and then question it.

The possibility of the sun rising tomorrow morning is extremely high. How do we determine this? We look to the past. It has always risen in the morning. There has never been one single day that the sun has not risen at a specific time. These times have been recorded and we can trust in our past experience of the previous events. So because of the evidence, we have no foundation to say that this belief is not true.

Obviously there are some people out there who may believe that the sun will not rise. The difference is that this belief will be proved unfounded within 24 hours, when the sun rises again. However, when we question beliefs about ourselves (and not external natural forces), we start to “pick holes” in our beliefs.

When I was about five years old, I was told by significant people in my life (friends, teachers, etc.) that I wasn’t really intelligent—and I believed them. At the time I couldn’t understand that this was correlated to an undiagnosed hearing impairment that appeared to reinforce this viewpoint. I had difficulty hearing the teacher in class (Math, English, etc.) because I couldn’t hear properly.

That carried on for another 10 years or so, and I still believed that I was quite “thick”—this was the phrase I used at the time, and it’s a phrase that I have never and would never use about myself or anyone else again. But the word represents how damaging the belief was. The reason I was so ready to believe this was because significant others in my life told me both verbally and non-verbally that I was “slow,” and I had no understanding or benchmark from which to challenge this assertion at the time.

When I reached 14 years of age things changed. I questioned these beliefs that I had. The reason for this inner challenge was that I had taken a history exam—a topic I was really interested in—and I achieved an “A.” This outcome made me question my beliefs about my intelligence as a whole. I then began to look for evidence—the “legs of the table,” so to speak.

I carried on to achieve good results in English, math, and my geography exams. These were all clear external indications that the conditions of worth and labels that had been placed upon me as a child were wrong. I began to form other beliefs that culminated in me believing that I was intelligent, and I had the audacity to apply to university. Now, to apply to university I had to have some higher level math, physics and chemistry, and when I reflected back to high school I saw that I hadn’t been able to achieve even the most standard grade in any of these subjects. However, because I had changed my beliefs and now believed that I was intelligent, and because I believed I could pass these higher exams, I went on to achieve all the qualifications required of me, on the first try—which allowed me to secure a place in my psychology degree course.

I graduated in 2000. This was one of my biggest achievements in life, purely because of my previous belief that I lacked intelligence. I know that intelligence is not equated to passing exams, as the exam system is inherently flawed, but it is an indication of commitment, belief and a degree of intelligence.

It is this experience that triggered my interest in beliefs, and how they form our reality and worlds. This is an illustration of how challenging our beliefs—and changing them—can change our future reality, and we can start to bend our reality when our current reality’s beliefs are challenged.

How do positive affirmations work?

Positive affirmations basically work by re-training our brain to believe something new or to delete an old belief that we already hold about ourself. Using the formula above an old belief can be questioned, to make that belief 'molten'. When we question our beliefs they automatically lose a little power. However, we start to layer a new belief on top of our old belief and we find evidence to support it, and repeat it often enough and given enough time, the new belief will become a rock solid belief.

This is when positive affirmations come in.

With the repetition of positive affirmations we can choose which beliefs we want to have about ourself.

You might think that is absurd, but think about it:

The beliefs you hold about yourself just now have been passed to you from other people, they're not really your beliefs. Think about your money beliefs: do you always think you will live without ever having a lot of money? this will have no doubt been passed to your from your parents, and their beliefs have been passed to them from their parents, so you see some of your beliefs have been passed down from generation to generation simply with the act of stating affirmations often enough.

Conversely if you think you will always be wealthy, those beliefs have been passed down from generation to generation.

Think about something you believe about yourself just now, something positive……

Now think about why you have that belief. Chances are it's because a lot of people told you e.g. Oh you're so intelligent…. you start to adopt the belief that you're intelligent which will affect your thoughts, and the actions you have in life.

Why do we NEED positive affirmations?

It's not that we need positive affirmations. It's more to do with becoming aware of our old affirmations and choosing the ones we want to have in our life in order to change the limiting beliefs we have and to install new beliefs about ourself.

Once you finally believe in these positive affirmations, you can start focusing on in the grand scheme of what you want to do with your life. What is better, once you start taking the steps to improve your life you create a positive feedback loops, because all of a sudden the values stated in the positive affirmation become more present in your life making it easier and easier to have the energy to continue on your positive journey through this life.

The post How Do Positive Affirmations Work On Your Beliefs? appeared first on Change your thoughts.

Robert Gaston

7 Beliefs That Will Stop You Losing Weight

7 Beliefs That Will Stop You Losing Weight

1. Losing weight is hard.

2. I have to go to the gym to lose weight.

3. People gain weight when they get older.

4. I'm a too busy.

5. I can’t do it.

6. My life will be perfect when you lose weight.

If you want a quick and easy way to change your beliefs about losing weight check out the

7. Losing weight

Conclusion

Seven Practical Ways To Be More Optimistic

1. Take responsibility.

2. Reflect.

3. Make plans.

4. Take pride.

5. Get help from others.

6. Take joy in simple things.

7. Improve your surroundings.

The ESM Method Of Goal Setting

The Easy, Stretch, Moonshot Method

The Purpose of The Moonshot Target

Opening Your Mind

Try It Now

Leave a comment and let me know what you think

7 Things You Don't Want to Learn Too Late in Life

1. Stop shoulding on yourself

2. Facing your fears

3. Small steps for big changes

4. This is your moment

5. Don't make things bigger than they are

6. The world doesn't revolve around you

7. Invest time in others

Final Thoughts

14 Little Thoughts That Can Shatter Your Dreams

Take back control

14 Little Thoughts That Can Shatter Your Dreams

1. I've had my heart broken too many times to love again

2. I'm not good enough

3. I don't have enough time to do that

4. I wasn't born with the talent to do that

5. I will put my dream on hold until I have done (insert something here)

6. What if I fail

7. It's too difficult

8. They were so lucky to get to where they are today

9. My life is shit

10. It's just not the right time

11. I'm too old

12. People don't like me

13. One lie is not that bad

14. I wish I was intelligent enough

Over to you

12 Ways to Forgive Your Parents for Doing Such a Crummy Job of Raising You

Childhood Pain

12 Ways to Let Go and Move on

1. Redefine Your Relationship

2. Be Grateful for the Blueprint of what NOT to do Raising Your Kids

3. Forgive Them for Being the Only Thing They Knew how to Be

4. Recognize They are likely Products of Their own Parents' Mistakes and Flaws

5. Write it Down

6. Learn from Parental Strengths and Weaknesses

7. Read the Book, A Child Called It, then be Grateful

8. Let the Work You do in Your Own Home be the Salve that Heals the Wounds in Your Heart

9. Take Responsibility for Your Life

10. Talk to Them

11. Stop Putting so Much Stock in How You were Raised

12. Assume Good Intent

Afterthoughts

So, what do you think?

7 Traits of Highly Sensitive People

7 common traits of Highly Sensitive People:

1. HSPs intimately experience the subtle details of life.

2. HSPs pick up on things that might go unnoticed by others.

3. HSPs experience a more saturated range of emotions.

4. HSPs have strong intuition.

5. HSPs need time alone.

6. HSPs avoid violent movies and TV shows.

7. HSPs make wonderful coaches, therapists and healers.

How to Lose 10 Pounds in Ten Days

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