How to Make Your Dreams a Reality
August 5, 2009 by Maureen
Filed under Feeling Positive, General, Positive Action, Positive Steps, Positive Thinking, Proactive Action
Ever since we were children, we’ve had dreams. The sad thing is, over the years we convinced ourselves that our dreams could never come true. Because we assumed that they were mere fantasies, we didn’t even try to make them come true.
Believe it or not, your dreams can be reality! However, you won’t get anywhere by simply making a wish. You have to take specific actions to increase your chances of living that life you always dreamed of.
These are some simple techniques that can help you get started:
1. You must possess passion and desire. These two elements are crucial for living your dream. Interestingly enough, you really can’t have one without the other. You must yearn to have something in your life so much (desire) and for the right reasons (passion).
- A good example to illustrate the difference would be if you always wanted to be a professional singer. You know that you have the talent and all you want in life is to sing on a professional stage some day (desire). Your focus isn’t the money, fame, or prestige; you just have a true love for singing. It’s all you think about all-day, every day (passion).
2. Patience. Patience isn’t easy, but in most case, our dreams don’t come true overnight. You need to work hard to achieve your full potential. Though it may take longer than you hoped, once you’re living your dream, you’ll realize that practicing patience was worth the rewards.
- Just remember to remain positive, focus on your dreams, and keep taking action to make those dreams a reality. After all, patience is a virtue!
3. Sacrifice. Achieving your dreams will require self-sacrifice. This is usually where most people can gauge how serious they are about turning their dreams into reality. Whether it is giving up your TV time to work toward your goals, or spending extra hours at work to further your career, you have to be willing to sacrifice something.
- If you’re truly passionate about your dreams, this shouldn’t be too difficult. If you do find sacrifice extremely difficult, it may be that you don’t possess enough desire, passion, willpower, or self-discipline to see your dreams through.
4. Confidence. If you truly want to make your dreams real, you have to believe they can happen. You must possess an intense confidence in yourself and your talents; otherwise, your dreams will remain dreams forever.
- Sometimes your confidence may waiver, but as long as you can focus on your ultimate goal – and you can actually see yourself achieving this goal – you’re heading in the right direction.
Final Thoughts on Achieving Your Dreams
No one can steal your dreams away from you except you. Sometimes we can be our own worst enemy, biggest obstacle, and harshest critic. But that’s not what you need! You need to remember that, by taking action and implementing these simple tips and suggestions, your dreams can come true.
Keep your focus on the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow; it will happen if you only believe it can!
Build Confidence With Daily Affirmations
August 4, 2009 by Maureen
Filed under Feeling Positive, Positive Affirmations, Positive Sayings, Positive Steps, Positive Thinking, Proactive Action, Self Empowerment, Staying Positive
You can build confidence using daily affirmations! Do you suffer from low self-esteem? When something negative happens in your life, do you beat yourself up about it time and time again?
Focusing on phrases such as: “That was stupid,” “I am so fat,” “No one loves me,” and a host of other negative statements can easily zap the happiness right out of your life.
Luckily, this doesn’t have to be permanent. Positive affirmations can turn your negativity around. Affirmations are simply statements or phrases, which focus on the positive rather than the negative.
These mantras can actually reprogram your subconscious thinking and bring you a plethora of good benefits that you’ll enjoy for years to come!
Here are some easy ways to incorporate positive daily affirmations into your life:
1. Affirmations should always be in the present tense. Begin your statements with “I can” “I have” or “I am,” instead of a phrase like “I will” or “I may.”
- Examples of this would be “I have a beautiful body” and “I am so intelligent,” instead of “I will never be so stupid again.”
- Choose statements that focus on the positive attributes you want to encourage, saying them as if you already exhibit that behavior.
2. Address yourself by name when expressing your affirmations. Believe it or not, this does make a big difference. When you say: “I, Jane Doe, am a beautiful person both inside and out,” it makes your affirmation more powerful because you hear the lovely sound of your own name!
- Using your name in the affirmations allows your subconscious to process the words even quicker.
3. Focus on one or two affirmations to start with. Although you possess many positive attributes, it’s best to focus only on one or two when you’re first starting out. If you start with twenty positive affirmations, your subconscious may be overwhelmed or dismiss the deeper meaning.
- For example, if you meet someone who goes on and on about how great and beautiful you are, what’s your reaction? Usually after the second or third compliment, you tend to wonder if this person is actually being sincere! The same principal applies to practicing many affirmations at once.
- Focus on one or two, and when they’re firmly planted into your subconscious, you can move on to more.
4. Practice your affirmations as often as possible. Our subconscious mind is more open to suggestions when we first open our eyes in the morning and then again when we’re ready to fall asleep at night.
- The more often you recite your affirmations, the faster you’ll experience lasting changes.
5. Don’t fret if you’re having trouble writing your affirmations. There are many books and self-improvement websites that include hundreds of good, daily affirmations. You can then pick out one or two that you’d like to focus on and get started.
- Don’t let something as insignificant as not being able to compose a positive mantra hold you back from making changes and incorporating happiness into your life!
Low self-esteem is something that holds us back from living the life we deserve. You can rebuild your confidence and self-esteem with daily affirmations and experience the joy of life you’ve been missing. Try it and you’ll love it!
Discovering Happiness in Your Life
July 16, 2009 by Maureen
Filed under Feeling Positive, General, Positive Action, Positive Steps, Positive Thinking, Self Empowerment, Staying Positive
Happiness is a choice. It’s true. You can choose to let life’s circumstances get you down or you can choose to be happy no matter what challenges life brings.
Happiness is already within each of us and we are born to be naturally happy! For example, have you ever noticed how infectious a baby’s giggle is? So why is it that, as we get older, we forget where to find happiness within ourselves and, instead, allow outside forces to determine our happiness?
You can determine your own happiness by following these simple strategies:
- When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Cliché, I know, however it’s so true. You don’t have to let life’s troubles and problems get you down. Yes, there will always be troubles because no one is perfect, but you can choose your reaction to situations. Look at the positive side of things and work hard to see the good in people and circumstances.
- Find something you love to do and do it. Do you have a lifelong dream or desire? If so, start working toward it. Taking baby steps towards a dream or goal will help you feel like you’re accomplishing something. You’ll find drive and determination to reach that goal when it’s something you love to do.
- Do you have a gift or talent you’re not using? One reason so many people are unhappy is that they’re not doing what they’re called to do with their God-given talents. Each and every one of us has a purpose in life. You have natural gifts and talents to help you achieve your purpose, so use your gifts effectively!
- When you’re feeling down, don’t wallow in your sorrows alone; do something about it. Call a friend who you know is positive and cheerful. Talk about your feelings and listen to their advice. So often, people allow themselves to go deeper and deeper into self-pity or depression because they think it has to be that way. The truth is, you don’t have to be sad and you shouldn’t be. You can decide to be happy. You just have to make up your minds to do so.
- Think about all the things you have to be thankful for. Often you get so caught up in what’s wrong with your life that you forget to look at what’s right and good. Take a step back and reflect on your life. How far have you come from, say, six months ago?
- Do you have children or family to be thankful for? Yes, they may not be everything we’d like them to be, but imagine life without them. Now, be thankful that you have them in your life.
- Do you have a job? Maybe it’s not your dream job, but in today’s economy, those of us who have a job should be thankful for it.
- When you’re feeling down, journal your thoughts and feelings. Often you’ll find that just getting your feelings down on paper will allow you to work through them, helping you to feel better about yourself and your beautiful life!
If you’ve been prone to look at life negatively, then you’ll have to put more effort into seeing and choosing happiness. But don’t let that stop you from being happy! You, too, can learn to be happy.
Practice the steps above and train your mind to focus intensely on the positives. When you feel a negative thought coming on, or your mind gravitates toward the negative, learn to recognize it, stop it in its tracks, and then start thinking happier thoughts.
Starting from this moment onward, make the conscious choice to be happy!
Create a Winning Attitude
June 11, 2009 by Maureen
Filed under Feeling Positive, Overcoming Obstacles, Positive Action
Your attitude can make or break you. It’s virtually indisputable that your attitude determines how far you’ll go in life and a positive mental outlook can help you achieve optimal success.
Having a positive mental attitude helps you cope with challenges. When you’re put to the test, you’re more likely to find your inner strengths to overcome adversity, and that strength just might be your winning attitude. Whether or not you have the tools, skills, knowledge, or resources, your attitude can get you through tough times and come out on top.
On the other hand, an attitude filled with negative overtones makes everything much harder. You can’t win when you go into the contest prepared to lose! If you expect to do well, your attitude will create positive, winning thoughts that help you succeed.
Cause and Effect
It’s important to realize that for every effect in our lives, there’s a specific cause. Through positive thoughts, we can control these causes and change effects or outcomes.
- In order to change your future for the better, you must first alter your thoughts in the present.
For every positive seed you plant, your thoughts will grow and reward you with a positive harvest. Negative seeds have the opposite effect. They’ll grow, but result in a spoiled and fruitless crop. You can’t plant negative seeds in your mind and expect positive results. It just doesn’t work that way.
A vivid and defining difference between people who are successful and those who aren’t is the way they think. Successful people visualize their goals and take action to make them happen.
Unsuccessful people dwell on the negative, spend their time and energy complaining, and worry about things that are unimportant. This negativity wastes time and energy that could be harnessed toward achieving your goals.
Practice Makes Perfect
If you hone your positive thinking skills and develop the mental attitudes of a winner, you’ll be able to overcome challenges without giving up. No matter how discouraging things may get or how intently others may try to dissuade you, with your winning attitude, you will be unstoppable!
A positive outlook enables you to focus on your goals with a tunnel vision that eliminates negative distractions and keeps you on a chartered course to success.
- Train your mind to focus on the good. Develop a positive mantra or affirmation to help you overlook the negative and realize the power of optimism.
Train Your Mind
We often worry about our physical fitness, but do we think much about the fitness of our minds? Just as we train our bodies for peak performance, we must also train our minds by coaching ourselves to think winning thoughts.
An effective way to train your mind is to look at challenges as opportunities instead of obstacles. A problem is only a problem if you allow it to be one. With each challenge comes an opportunity to learn and improve. So if you search for solutions, you’ll find them.
When you internalize this mindset, you’re sure to develop a winning attitude for a lifetime and reap the rewards of true success and happiness.
Feel Postive – Feeling Positive
May 27, 2009 by Maureen
Filed under Feeling Positive, General
Do you want to feel positive? Are you looking around you for someone or something to come along that will help you with feeling positive? Most of us have things right in front of us every day that could make us deliriously happy if only we would let them. Could this be you?
The feeling of being positive doesn’t need to be created for us. It exists within us, and it’s up to us to choose to feel positive or not.
Happiness is attainable by anyone, so long as they want it. If you don’t want to be happy you won’t be. If you really want to change your life and find the happiness you’ve been searching for, you can do just that!
A great way to begin feeling positive each day is to give yourself permission to dwell on the positive instead of the negative. It takes practice, but once you become skilled at it, the rewards are pure joy!
Happiness Affirmations and You
Happiness affirmations are one tool you can use to help you feel positive.
What are happiness affirmations? The idea is a simple one, really, and it all starts with a list of positive statements and the desire to change your life.
Affirmations work a lot like mental imagery techniques where you visualize yourself doing something great. Instead of being visual, though, affirmations are spoken.
This works because the words we speak have the power to evoke our emotions and activate our minds to accomplish great things. You could program your mind with positive thoughts that enable you to achieve your goals and live the life you dream!
For instance, when you’re having a moment where you doubt your right to be happy, you can say to yourself, “I find reasons to laugh every day,” or something as simple as, “I give myself permission to be happy.”
Every time you use these statements you’re reaffirming the thought and programming your brain to be happy and feel positive when the opportunity presents itself.
When you’re always in pursuit of happiness, you may find that it’s elusive because, while you want to be happy, you may also give yourself reasons to be unhappy.
Reminding yourself of the negative aspects of your life or the things that aren’t perfect makes it hard to find true happiness and will hinder your ability to feel positive.
Who Can Use Happiness Affirmations?
You can! With the help of affirmations you can change your life, one happy thought at a time. You’ll be amazed at how quickly you can integrate affirmations into your life and how soon they can make a change.
Some people may think that affirmations don’t apply to them because they’re so unhappy, but these positive statements can help people from every walk of life, no matter how bad things may seem.
When you use positive statements, you push out the negative thoughts, leaving no room for them in your life. When you remind yourself that you have a right and a reason to be happy, you’ll feel happier, and life will suddenly become so much more enjoyable.
Even if you think your life is so far gone that affirmations couldn’t possibly help you, you may be wrong, and end up feeling positive, full of happiness and joy! It’s certainly worth a try to see if you can change your life one statement at a time!


