Half Time Team Talk – What’s Your Goal Tally?

Half way through the year is a great time to reflect and take stock of our goals and progress so far. Did you start the year full of hopes, dreams and expectations? How are these working out? It’s time for a half time team talk.

A great business maxim is that ‘what gets measured gets managed’ and the same can be true of life. If you want to lose weight for example you need to know where you are now, if you intend to create more wealth, again you need to know your starting point. A vague notion of wanting to be a bit fitter or to have some more money lacks the specificity required to power your dreams.

The wheel of life is a popular coaching tool which enables you to examine the key areas of your life, health, finance, careers, relationships and so on. It not only measures current or intended ratings but also shows areas which are out of balance.

You may like to print the diagram below and mark your current rating.

A client was experiencing some money worries and scored a 4 in Finances. Rather than becoming negative about ‘only a 4’, we switched energy by assessing what factors had made it a 4 rather than a 3, 2 or 1. By doing so he became grateful for his job, his ability to have a bank account, credit cards etc. Even though he may have wanted more, being firstly aware and secondly appreciative of the current position is an important starting point.

Setting clear and effective goals is a great way of putting your request into the universe. Almost immediately, via your brain’s Reticular Activating System, you will begin to notice new opportunities and resources to help achieve your goals.

Something important to consider is how the goal makes you feel. If setting a goal to lose 20lbs or 10kg makes you feel dispirited then perhaps a smaller goal like 5lbs would be a more motivational place to start. Law of attraction teachers tell us that desire plus emotion plus action equals results. Therefore your goal should feel possible, even if you are not sure exactly how it will be achieved.

“You do not need to see the whole staircase, just take the first step in faith” Martin Luther King Jr.

Other great tools in achieving your goals are the use of affirmations and visualisations. By mentally rehearsing having already succeeded, you are training your subconscious mind to go to work on your behalf.

Regular use of positive, empowering, present tense affirmations, such as “I am feeling fit and healthy at my ideal weight of xyz”, will condition your brain to support your goal.

Visualisations help because the brain works in images. Find a picture of the former slimmer you and put it on the fridge or next to your bed. Perhaps use an image from a magazine, but remember to consider how it makes you feel. If you chose a ‘perfect’ model type figure, does that inspire you or depress you into the biscuit tin?

Finally reward yourself for your progress. Follow these simple steps:-

• Measure
• Set goals
• Take action
• Review
• Reward.

The reward will enable your brain to associate pleasure with the progress towards your goal, which in turn, will make even more progress come quickly and easily.

A simple, fun tool to help with the setting and acheivement of goals is The Goals Workshop Program -  goal setting software.

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The Reasons Why Affirmations Work

Have you ever driven a familiar route, only to arrive with no real recollection of how you got there? Scary when you think about it isn’t it? Yet while we were learning to drive, it took all our powers of concentration to coordinate our hands and feet, not to mention negotiate a busy junction.

All the things we do on a daily basis without even thinking about are stored in the subconscious part of our minds. These include the way we brush our teeth, the way we tie our shoes, the way we drive and so on. All the things we do without thinking now, that we once had to think about, have become a deeply ingrained habit.

Think of the subconscious mind like a footpath through a cornfield. Constant traffic has created a path, so most trips that cross the cornfield will just follow the same trail. If you want to go somewhere else it’s going to take a bit of effort. You have to get yourself out of the old path and then create a new one.

This need not be as hard as it seems. New pathways are created the same way the old ones were – by repetition. It took effort to create those original paths. You had to think about it and then repeat it until it became easy. This is how affirmations work. The repetition of affirmations is part of the process of creating new habits, new routines, and a new path for your mind to run on.

In addition to the effect of repetition, here are three reasons why affirmations work.

Why Affirmations Work 1. The mind cannot differentiate between what’s real or not

Our brains aren’t limited by the concept of reality. That is why you can feel worried or upset by just thinking about something, regardless of whether it actually happened or not. It also explains why you can get really scared at movies, which cause actual changes in your physiology, such as making you jump or your hairs stand on end. And why today you still feel “I can’t do Maths” just because your teacher said that, maybe 30 years ago.

By practicing self affirmations you are continually verbalizing & visualizing what you desire. When done with intensity and repetition, your mind will treat it as reality and you will begin to develop a new belief.

When that happens, your idea of your potential will increase and your subconscious mind will find a way to make it happen. To make what it perceives as real become your reality.

Why Affirmations Work 2. Your thoughts become things

According to quantum physics, everything in this universe is energy, water, air, soil, light, the stars, even us. Just like everything else, your thoughts are made of energy.

Our physical universe is ‘shapeable’. When you have a thought, it carries (or rather is) energy and goes out all the way to the universe. This energy contains the contents of your thoughts and the Universe starts to manifest it. Due to the relatively low vibration level of the physical plane, there is a lag to the manifestation. It doesn’t happen immediately; therefore you will need patience and faith.

As you practice self affirmations, you are sending thoughts out and the more you do it, the stronger and faster the manifestation. That’s the second reason why affirmations work. Now you might ask ‘If it’s that easy, why haven’t I gotten my Ferrari yet?’ Read on.

Why Affirmations Work 3. Consistency vs. inconsistency

At this point it is easy to be sceptical based on your ‘reality’ in this moment. For example if this is all true, why don’t I see a million dollars in my bank account? Where is my Ferrari? Realize that in the physical world, there is a lag time to the manifestation. The thoughts you give out now will not manifest until later in the future. But what have you been focusing on in the meantime?

If you are not consistently holding the positive thought, then the energy & momentum gained in the manifestation will gradually dissolve. Let’s say you lost focus along the way and you started to doubt the possibility of achieving it. Before your initial desire can be manifested, the change in your thought energy stops that manifestation process. Instead, now you are sending out the thought/message that it cannot be achieved.

That is why you must maintain strong faith & belief. Don’t lose hope. Even though you cannot see the results yet, it doesn’t mean that underneath the surface great things aren’t happening.

This explains why most people who are successful are usually those that stick to their thoughts and rarely change their minds.

This is why affirmations will work if you practice them consistently.

This video offers further explanation of the power of positive affirmations

Interesting Blogs

• Positive Affirmations to Help Boomers Lose Weight | Applied Creative Evolution
• How To Use Affirmations And Visualization To Create Wealth | Business Wealth Job Creation Personal Wealth Systems
• The Secret To Attracting Money With Affirmations « Law of Universal Attraction
• Law of Attraction | Wealth, Money and Abundance Affirmations | Abundance Creation Nation
• Sanskrit Mantras vs Affirmations and English Mantras for love, health, wealth, stress, etc | xForce Articles
• Sleep On It — How Your Subconscious Mind Works For You — Silva Method Life
• Who is in Charge the Conscious or Subconscious Mind?

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How to create positive affirmations

Like many things we don’t fully understand, it would be easy to dismiss the power of affirmations, but there are sufficient respected and highly successful people that recommend them, that they deserve investigation.

Regrettably, many of us grow up with a set of beliefs about ourselves that are less than empowering. As we grow up we begin to put ourselves down for any slight failure, whether real or imagined. Our parents, teachers and other influential adults can inadvertently create a diminished self image and install a number of limiting beliefs. This is compounded by the numbers of times we think or talk to ourselves everyday in negative terms. The use of positive affirmations is a powerful technique to change that negative self-talk into something more positive.

Leading thinkers and researchers on the use of affirmations include Jack Canfield and John Assaraf. Research on the effectiveness of positive affirmations as a life enhancing tool has led to the formation of the following eight step system for setting positive affirmations.

1. Affirmations should start with the words I AM. These are two of the most powerful words in the English language as they send a command to the subconscious part of our minds.
2. Positive – our minds like to work in pictures, therefore we cannot not think about something. So trying not to think of a pink elephant will undoubtedly bring up an image of a pink elephant. An affirmation such as I am enjoying breathing clean air will be more effective than I am no longer a smoker.
3. State in the present tense. This sets up an imbalance in the subconscious which it will then seek to correct. For example if you want to gain a particular position at work, state I am the regional sales manager, rather than I want to be or I will be.
4. Specific – Our subconscious minds require clear specific instructions which allow them to accurately pursue what we have programmed in the form of positive affirmations. So “I am rich” is not specific enough, better to say “I am earning $100,000 per year”. You may also like to add the phrase this or something better, because if you are too limiting in your desires, such as “I want to marry Susan”, she might not be interested, available or the best match for you.
5. Contain an active verb – without getting into high school grammar mode, an active verb is a do-ing word such as living, having, achieving, earning and so on.
6. Contain a feeling – this magnifies the power of your affirmations by adding the fuel of emotion. Consider including feelings such as joyful, excited, thankful or freedom
7. Keep it brief- to be most effective, your affirmation should be easily remembered and repeated often. By keeping it brief you are far more likely to remember it. As a fun exercise you could consider trying to make it rhyme. In this way, similar to advertising jingles, your affirmation will stick in your head.
8. Make it personal – your affirmations should be about you. You will not be successful in trying to change another person, neither are you likely to be fully engaged with words that someone else has suggested for you.

A suggested format might look something like this:

“I am so thankful for the freedom that being a millionaire brings me” or “I am so proud to be accepting my diploma in front of my family and friends”

The final thing to remember about positive affirmations is that they must be repeated frequently to reprogram your subconscious into accepting they are true. Some teachers suggest 100 times a day, others recommend putting your affirmations on your bedside table and reciting first thing in the morning and last things at night.

Here is a free video on the power of positive affirmations

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