I found this great video that I think is worth sharing with all of you.

It takes a look into the mindset of Will Smith and what makes him the great success he is today.

He speaks words that will benefit every individual greatly when applied and used in their own lives.

Enjoy!

Taking action. It’s the connecting link between GOALS and RESULTS. If we don’t take action, we don’t get results.

Think about it for a minute, have you ever got something without taking any action at all? Have you ever gotten full just by looking at food? Or did you have to take the action to pick up a fork and eat the food? Action was necessary, right?

How many times have you done this? Set goals, got excited, but never took action on it? I think we’re all guilty on that one. We can even have a brilliant plan set up but we still don’t have the motivation to take action. There’s a famous quote, “If you fail to plan, you’re planning to fail”…..but the truth is, you can have a plan but you’re still going to fail if you don’t take action to implement that plan!

How can you persuade yourself into taking action? There are three powers you can use to master the art of persuading yourself into action.

1. The Power of Self-Talk – Auditory Learner

2. The Power of Imagination – Visualizer Learner

3. The Power of Authority – Kinesthetic Learner

Now depending on the type of learner you are, one method might be more powerful than another. If you’re good at learning by seeing things, then power of imagination typically works best for you. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try the other methods though. You might find one more useful than the other. Experiment with them and see which ones you push you to taking action.

The Power of Self-Talk

To describe the power of self-talk, I will use jogging as an example. Let’s say you made a great weight loss plan and today’s the day you have to jog. You’re watching T.V. and you know you should be jogging instead but you’re just so comfortable! This is the typical thought pattern, “Missing one day won’t hurt much, I’ll just run tomorrow to make up for it. The weather isn’t all that great either to be jogging. Yeah, I’ll just run tomorrow. I don’t want to do it today, but tomorrow for sure!”

This type of self-talk usually never leads into action. These are the two types of self-talk that will get you where you need to be.

1. Persuasion through benefits

2. Persuasion through questions

Persuasion through benefits is simple and very powerful. Talk to yourself like this…”I could miss today, but if I jog instead, I’ll feel better after I finish it, I’ll lose weight faster, and if I do it today then I’m more likely to do it next time too. Jogging now would be a better decision for me. I’m getting up to jog right now.” Now isn’t this type of talk more likely to lead to action? Many times we just need a reminder of WHY we’re doing what we’re doing to motivate ourselves into action.

Persuasion through questions is another powerful method of self-talk. It goes something like this..”What’s going to make me lose weight? Watching T.V. or getting up and jogging? Do I want to be overweight my whole life? If so many others can do it, then why can’t I? There’s nothing stopping me at all. I can do this and I’m starting now!” You ask yourself these questions to gain control of the situation. It’s up to you to take action. You have a responsibility that you must follow through on.

To be able to implement these two styles of self-talk, first acknowledge your feelings of not wanting to jog. Make a conscious effort to change it around. Don’t TRY too hard. Just start one of the persuasion methods and action will follow. If you don’t make this conscious effort, then you’ll automatically lead yourself into making excuses why you can’t jog.

The Power of Imagination

Using our imagination means seeing with our minds instead of just our eyes. Most of the time though, we’re only seeing with our eyes. To understand the power of imagination, here’s two things to remember.

1. What you see is how you feel

2. How you feel is what you see

To keep things simple, I’ll continue to use jogging as my example to describe the power of imagination.

When you’re watching T.V., you’re observing that moment with your eyes and your mind. In return, you get feelings that relate to this experience. What you see determines how you feel. Jogging will be the last thing you’ll probably want to do because it doesn’t match with feelings of relaxation and laziness.

How can you use the power of imagination to get yourself to jog? You have to close your eyes and imagine yourself jogging. Picture it as detailed as you can. Feel the sweat dripping down and the energy flowing throughout your body. When you imagine the benefits you’ll get from jogging, your mind takes this false experience and lets you create feelings in relation to jogging. When you feel good about jogging, then you’ll see jogging as a good thing. Your feelings and thoughts match up because how you feel determines what you see.

Practice using your imagination and experience for yourself it’s power. If you’re down, picture the happiest moment in your life and relive it like it’s real again. See how good it will make you feel.

The Power of Authority

The people who learn “hands-on” will have the most success with using the power of authority. Before you can use this power, you must realize one important thing.

1. Only you have control over your life and the decisions you make

With this said, you must practice your authority regularly. What do I mean by this? I think Nike said it best with “Just do it”. That’s all there is to it. Don’t think too much about taking action because if you’re not in the mood to do it, then your thought pattern will match with your mood. Tired people think tired thoughts. Happy people think happy thoughts. Angry people think….well, you get the idea, right?

When you take charge of your life,  you break your thought patterns and create new ones by taking action on a regular basis. If you’re in a lazy mood, you’ll be able to get up and exercise and create a mood complete opposite of lazy. That’s because you know that you have control over your life and you decide what actions to take.

There isn’t a step by step technique to the power of authority. Once you accept that you’re in control, then you can start to use it. Just go and get it done. That’s all you need to know.

Building confidence can be a life long challenge for people. I don’t blame them. Almost every source I’ve found on building confidence approaches the topic incorrectly. Walk fast, speak loudly, and stand straight are the most common advice given and while they are great advice, they are not where confidence really begins.

You see, to really understand how to build confidence you have to trace it to it’s roots. Confidence comes from your thinking and the way you think derives from two things:

1. What you’ve experienced

2. What you haven’t experienced

Your current level of confidence has a lot to do with everything you’ve experienced. The thoughts you think, the world you observe, and the things you hear all get stored inside your brain. This is what creates your belief system and your beliefs are what determines your capabilities.

If you grew up in a wealthy family, always mingled with wealthy friends, and observed a wealthy lifestyle throughout your entire life…..would you be more confident in your abilities to create wealth than a person living in poverty?

A person living in poverty has never experienced wealth in their lives. This lack of experience shapes their belief system and determines their capabilities. Based on this, they approach the matter of wealth with less confidence than someone that’s experienced wealth all their life.

Now it’s evident that confidence is built by what you have and haven’t experienced yet. Using this knowledge, how will you be able to build confidence?

The real meaning of confidence

Experience builds confidence. How do we typically measure experience? By the number of months or years, right?

To measure experience in only that one way is inaccurate. For example, what if two people have the same years of experience in a management position but one person knows more about managing than the other person? The person that has more knowledge is more confident even though they have the same years of experience.

Let’s say you and I had the same job selling computers. You helped five customers over five days and I helped five customers in one day. Don’t we have the same amount of experience even though you worked more days than me? I learned the same amount as you in a shorter period of time. Learning is what really builds experience and experience builds confidence.

You’ll need to become good at learning to build confidence. The best way to learn is through repetition. Enough repetition can store information in your brain permanently.

How to build confidence

First, let’s recap everything we learned so far.

1. Confidence comes from how we think.

2. How we think comes from our experiences and lack of experience.

3. These experiences create our belief systems and determines our capabilities.

4. Experience is truly measured by learning.

5. Learning is best done through repetition.

To build confidence, you need to work your way from number five to number one. I will use this scenario to help explain how you do that:

Mark lands a job as a salesperson but he doesn’t have any experience in sales. He’s fearful and nervous about his first day. He wants to replace this fear with confidence but his lack of experience keeps holding him back. Here’s what he does.

Mark starts to build his confidence by reading sales books. He takes as much notes as he can and reviews them until it’s stored in his memory. Mark knows knowledge is only useful when you apply it so he starts to role-play with his friends. He practices until he feels comfortable. Mark doesn’t stop there. He meets his uncle who’s a successful salesman and watches him work. Mark also imagines himself being successful in his new position. He visualizes building meaningful relationships with people and meeting sales quotas.

So in this example, Mark lacks confidence at first. Then he begins learning about sales. He reads books, role-plays, observes his uncle, and imagines himself being good at sales (#5). This repetition creates experience for Mark that gets stored in his brain(#4). Even though he’s never worked as a salesperson, he’ll be more experienced than all the other rookies at his job.

By gaining this experience, do you think Mark’s belief systems have changed? Do you think he has more faith in his ability to be a successful salesperson(#3)? The experience he gained created confidence and replaced the fear he had from lacking experience(#2). This change in his belief system directly impacts the way he thinks. He thinks with more confidence (#1).

Does it take time to build confidence?

The time it takes to build confidence depends all on you and how you approach it. If you’re focused and passionate about your intention to build confidence, then confidence will come fast. If you are more focused on your fear and keep running back to it, then you will have trouble building confidence.

The best advice I have for you is to take advantage of the power of your emotions. This takes us back to what we learned. Learning is the starting point of building confidence. When you want to learn something, mix powerful emotions into it so you learn faster. Do you notice that the people who are really good at what they do are driven by passion and love what they do? Their powerful emotions help them learn more and gain more experience.

When you add emotions, it’s easier for you to learn because you remember faster. Use your own life as an example. What do you remember easily and clearly? The things with the most emotions involved, right?

When you learn faster, you gain experience faster. With more experience comes more confidence. Start by experiencing small success and build on that success with bigger and better success. As you grow, so will your confidence.

This article refers mainly to the relationship you have with that special someone. You’re with your partner because they bring out the best in you. Now that doesn’t mean things are always at it’s best in the relationship. At times things can get a little rough and just feel like its ripping you apart. But that’s only temporary before it gets back to normal.

A successful relationship is one where there’s more good than bad. It’s hard to avoid all of the bad, but it is possible to keep it at a minimal.

Here’s some tips I’ve learned over the years from being in a successful relationship.

Talk to your partner

When we keep our feelings bottled in, it keeps building up until we just explode on the other people. You should talk to your partner about your feelings, good or bad. Communication of this kind also helps bring new levels of comfort in the relationship. Here’s some tips you help you out.

• Don’t yell or try to criticize the other person.
• Before you tell them what bothers you, let them know you’re not trying to offend them or that you hope they’ll be understanding.
• Tell them when the time is right, not when tempers are flaring.
• Use a good tone of voice, serious face, and keep it calm.
• If the person really cares, they’ll listen and understand.

Accept your partner

Everyone is different. That’s a fact. Most arguments happen when we disagree on things.

The best way to avoid this is acceptance. Accept your partner for who he or she is. Don’t judge them or make them feel stupid or insignificant.When you do this, you’re hurting the relationship.

You shouldn’t think your way is right all the time and their way is wrong. This will lead to a lot of problems. My best advice for getting around this is listening. Listen to what they say and try to put yourself in their shoes. That’s how you can understand where they’re coming from.

People have different beliefs. Accept that and learn to deal with it in a positive manner.

Recognize your partner

Attention. We all love it. It can come as a reward or maybe just a compliment. Whatever it may be, it feels good.

Recognize your partner for their strengths. If they’re a good chef, compliment their cooking. Tell them how good they make the food and you look forward to it. When you appreciate it, they’ll do more of it and love doing it for you.

Make them feel special. Its’ not a once in a while thing. This is something you should do everyday. Appreciation is the key. Cheating in relationships happen because people weren’t feeling appreciated enough. They weren’t getting any attention and love. Always recognize your love one and make them feel significant.

Work together

Get involved and work together on things. It shouldn’t be ” The man does this and the woman does that”. You should share the responsibilities of the relationship. It makes the relationship much healthier.

Cook dinner together. Take the kids out together. Finish the yard work together. Time spent doing things together brings you closer.

It deepens the relationships. You’ll learn more about each other. Remember, team work makes the dream work.