October 8th, 2008
Difficult, trying times reveal just how positive you really are. Think about it. What’s the virtue in being positive when you’re on a roll, when everything is clicking for you and falling your way?
In this second of my two-part blog (scroll down to see part one, posted yesterday) I am sharing some proven, practical methods for staying up when most are down…
9. Schedule Four-Minute Positive Injections Every Two Hours
Think of these as Positive Pit Stops. Review your goals or mission. Practice affirmation or visualization. Pray. Read the Bible. Relive a positive memory. Write a thank-you card or send an e-mail of appreciation to someone important. Ask 4:8 Questions. (See page 33 in that smiley face book)
10. Simplify and Declutter to stay U.P.
Complexity is negative. Simplicity is positive. Room by room, drawer by drawer, try tossing one tiny item of clutter every day for thirty consecutive days. My 1% clients love this one and so will you, because doing even a small task will help you to feel more positive. Break your jumbo-sized goals into sub-goals and milestones, and then splinter them into even smaller pieces if necessary to spur you into action. Renegotiate or downsize existing commitments to lighten your load a bit for the next thirty days.
11. Get to Bed Sixty Minutes Earlier for Ten Straight Days
Fatigue, especially chronic fatigue, invites negativity and cowardly thinking. During periods of intense or prolonged stress, extra sleep will help your brain remain an ally in the war against mediocrity. Cut something out of the evening schedule (maybe the bad news) and drift to sleep with visions of victories dancing in your head. Your body, mind, and spirit will thank you.
12. Take a Twenty-Four-Hour Mental Fast
Become Ultra-Positive one day at a time. You can rid your attitude of toxic thoughts through the practice of mental fasting. Read and reread The 4:8 Principle if you want to master this simple, relevant, powerful and biblically-based mental technique. During your fast, abstain from all complaining, fear-mongering, criticizing, excuse-making, gossiping, and worrying whatsoever! Start with a twenty-four minute fast and gradually discipline your mind to repel all negativity for a whole day. Focus on progress. Rinse and repeat as necessary.
13. Stay U.P. and Watch Your Favorite Funny Movies
Laughter is fabulously positive. Research indicates that people who laugh more actually have more fun. Isn’t that surprising? Consider building your own comedy library on DVD. Save funny movies on TIVO. Watch often. You’ll stay healthier, more creative, and less stressed–and that’s a great alternative to the medicine cabinet.
14. Have a Counter-Attack Plan U.P. and Ready
Become hypersensitive to your thought life. Since you can be negative only when you’re thinking “8:4 thoughts,” you can quickly become positive by thinking “4:8 thoughts.” This is called the Principle of Substitution. The split-second you notice any negative thought running through your mind, replace it emphatically with something like, “I am responsible” or “I trust God” “God is with me” “This is temporary” or “I can do it.” Repeat, repeat, repeat! Be ready with your comeback before the heat of the moment. Make negative, limiting thoughts unwelcome in your mind.
15. Re-Engage an Old Hobby to Stay U.P.
Involve yourself in a positive activity that used to be important to you but may have gotten squeezed out of your life due to other priorities. This will be both therapeutic and rejuvenating. Consider it a gift to yourself.
16. Intentionally Cultivate Ultra-Positive Company
This one is mandatory. It’s next to impossible to become or stay U.P. when the people you live and work with are petty, “8:4 thinkers.” Nothing equals the influence of your habitual associations. Especially now, be purposeful about which people are close to you on a regular basis. The people you hang out with influence your outlook on life. As you become more optimistic, you will attract more optimistic people in your life, and that’s good.
17. Help Someone Else U.P.
Donate your money. Donate your time. Volunteer. Simply serve someone less fortunate (and there are a billion or so to choose from) or contribute your talents and gifts to a worthy organization. Helping those who need help reduces self-centeredness and puts your own challenges into a much more positive perspective.
The key to staying U.P. is to remember that every situation can indeed be positive when you view it through the lens of Philippians 4:8, as an opportunity for spiritual growth, character refinement and the redistribution of joy.
Instead of adding to the gloom and doom hype, join the magnificent minority who spread joy…simply because it’s the right thing to do.
Coach
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October 7th, 2008
Difficult, trying times reveal just how positive you really are. Think about it. What’s the virtue in being positive when you’re on a roll, when everything is clicking for you and falling your way?
Your potential for business excellence, excellence in your marriage, and excellence in your family life demands that you master the skill of staying U.P. (Ultra-Positive) even when–and especially when–everyone else isn’t. There is a tendency in tough times to zero in on the things that are “out of whack” and forget about all that is working in our lives and in our country. This is easy to do, especially if we are not strategically insulated from the continuous downpour of gloom and doom reports of “breaking bad news.”
When you’re Ultra-Positive, you’ll be more creative, productive, energetic, attractive, and most importantly, receptive to God’s will. Here are eight practical options to build your momentum. Nine more are coming tomorrow. Pick your favorites and get started today. Then spread the joy to others.
1. Make the Decision to Stay U.P.
Nothing of consequence happens until you promise yourself that you’ll become the most positive person you know, even in light of challenging circumstances. Raise your standards! Become an inspiration to others. Everything else flows from this key decision to separate yourself from the herd mentality, from the vast majority who blame, whine, gossip, and predict the sky is falling. Life is short. Refuse to buy into this mass hypnotism…Take a stand, starting now.
2. Start U.P. then end U.P. every day.
One of the simplest ways to reduce stress and anxiety is to begin and end each day with what I call Positive Mental Nutrition™. Feed your mind with inspirational ideas, spiritual truth, or motivational nuggets for ten to fifteen minutes immediately upon awakening each morning and right before drifting to sleep each evening. During these two time periods, your mind is extremely susceptible to programming, so make sure your inputs are positive, healthy, and goal-directed. Read, visualize, affirm, pray, and rewrite your goals…and practice feeling thankful for what you do have!
3. Summarize Each Day’s Victories, Large or Small, in Writing.
This one practice alone can zap fear and generate quantum leaps in self-confidence. Start logging your accomplishments each evening in a notebook, hardbound journal, or on your computer. What a great, 4:8 habit!
4. U.P. your Physical Exercise
Another pillar of Ultra-Positive living is consistent, moderate exercise. This includes aerobic work to burn fat and improve heart health; weight work to tone and strengthen your muscles and elevate metabolism; and flexibility work to stay loose and limber. Exercise more. Exercise a lot more! Face the facts. When you’re in terrific shape and feel better about yourself, you feel better about your life and more optimistic about your future. You’re positioned to live U.P. to your full potential.
5. Break U.P. the Big Four
Negative thinking leads to negative emotions, which in turn trigger more negative thinking. The vicious cycle becomes engaged. The top four negative emotions include fear, worry, blame, and guilt. These terrorize your potential and immobilize your efforts toward becoming Ultra-Positive. When you begin experiencing results you didn’t want or expect, it’s easy to get scared and start thinking more about potential losses than potential gains. This mind-set triggers worry or what I call reverse goal setting, where you vividly imagine what you don’t want. To transfer the burden of worry, you will often blame someone or something outside of yourself. Alternatively, you may exaggerate your role in the negative events and experience guilt. Consider negative emotions to be lies from the enemy. Deal with them directly by refusing to entertain the thoughts that fuel them. This is a point very much worth reinforcing: Invest your time thinking about what you want instead of what you don’t want.
6. Forgive Someone, Including Yourself, Daily
Harboring grudges and hostility against anyone, including yourself, tends to attract more circumstances to be upset about. Practice forgiving somebody every day for real or imagined transgressions. The better you become at forgiveness, the more positive you can become as a human being. If you skip this one, I’ll even forgive you.
7. Quarantine Negativity if You Can’t Dissolve It
Carve out a particular time and place to worry (worry time) and to complain (issue time) each week. This is extremely effective because then the rest of your week isn’t diluted with the minority of negative circumstances that can infect otherwise healthy days. When you cut the spontaneity out of negativity, you severely weaken it.
8. Focus on God. He’s U.P.
Remind yourself of everything you know to be true about God. God is all-powerful. God is love. God is sovereign. God is always with us. God is absolute truth. God never changes. And so on. Thinking about God is good, really good! And the bigger you make God, the smaller your problems become.
Check back tomorrow for more!
Coach
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September 26th, 2008
No, The Sky Is NOT Falling!
Now more than ever, all of us should heed the advice of the Apostle Paul offered in Philippians 4:8! Despite the unconstructive hyperbole, there is much to be grateful for, both individually and collectively as a nation.
At a minimum, be thankful that there has not been a terrorist attack on our soil since September 11, 2001. Dwell on that for a bit.
Know that our capitalistic system, while not perfect, is at this very moment, creating great opportunities for economic wealth in the years and decades to come. And capitalism includes both failure and success. It’s ok to experience failure now and then as long as success is promoted and failure is allowed to happen. Could you imagine a child being protected and bailed out of every problem he created for himself. He’d never grow up, would he?
Acknowledge that our political system, while quite irritating at times, is the best ever created. Recognize the truth that “this too shall pass” for this nation will most certainly bounce back, and far more quickly than the media predict. Believe it.
Individually, do a quick inventory and itemize the people and things that you are pleased with in your life. Emphasize the people who love you and support you. If need be, expand this list to include things that you are grateful “aren’t wrong with your particular life” at this moment. Invest 8 minutes to do this right now. Remember, whatever you appreciate grows in value. This weekend, appreciate what is right with your life.
There is a tendency in difficult times to zero in on the things that are “out of whack” and forget about all that is working in our lives and in our country. This is easy to do, especially if we are not insulated from the continuous downpour of gloom and doom reports of “breaking bad news.”(The BBN)
In the news world, far too many events and situations are deemed “a crisis.” The 4:8 Principle is not about ignoring problems. Far from it. It’s about disciplining your thinking so that you remain in a problem-solving frame of mind, where you actually generate creative breakthroughs and wise decisions.
However, in the last week, the emotion-provoking language used by politicians and reporters has reached a grotesque elevation that does not contribute in the least to rationale solutions, but rather to mood-driven expediency and panic based moral compromise. We need solutions based on sound principles that factor in the long-term as well as the short term and incentivize the right behaviors.
Refuse to get caught up in this gloom and doom chatter. Abstain from most news for a few days. Get picky about what you read, watch and listen to in the next week. Say “NO” to grumbling, complaining, whining and the people who incessantly engage in it. The sky is not falling and if it were that would be an outrageous, horrific, atrocious, shocking, appalling, unspeakable, CRISIS that I could not bear to discuss with you here.
Instead, I prefer to consider and dwell upon the words articulated by the apostle! What about you? What do you think?
“Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating
on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the
worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse.” Philippians 4:8 (MSG)
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September 8th, 2008
The principles you live by create the world you live in. When you begin to organize your thought life in a manner consistent with Philippians 4:8, you kick off a series of life changes that will both surprise and encourage you. When you begin to drop the repeated negative references to past experiences, you begin your ascent into a brighter future. When you resolve to weed out the mediocre influences in your life, you accelerate your progress toward your most important goals. And when you start giving more attention to the good things in your life, you’ll start noticing even more things to be grateful. The life you’ve dreamed of is far closer than you think… Take the challenge, http://www.the8daychallenge.com/
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July 25th, 2008
That’s right. Almost 6000 4:8 thinkers participated in this very revealing experiment in April. Now it is available and ready when you are. It’s free, it’s fun, and it feels fabulous…really!
Presented in eight consecutive daily emails, you will see just how easy it can be to bring out the best in others, maximize your joy and live life at the highest level more consistently than ever before!
Click here to trigger more joy for the next 8 days and beyond.
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July 24th, 2008
We recently posted some videos where I am discussing both Success Is Not an Accident and The 4:8 Principle. To see the 4:8 video, recorded in Raleigh, North Carolina this spring, click here.
To view a number of other Success clips, click here to watch the “Americas Success Coach” video introduction on YouTube.
Think 4:8!
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July 24th, 2008
Etched Memories are one of the most powerful and popular concepts of The 1% Club. Maybe you’re thinking, “What exactly are Etched Memories?” Well, they are special, unique, wild, or maybe even atypical experiences that get engraved upon your memory banks. Etched Memories strengthen relationships and contribute to positive and deeply connected family cultures.
I know what I’ll remember about this summer! Late in June, I took my two older boys on a surprise trip to Northern California including sightseeing in San Francisco and white water rafting on the Klamath River just south of Oregon. Neither of my sons knew of the trip until I woke them up, told them their bags were packed and we needed to be at the airport in 45 minutes…I encourage you to deliberately and proactively create Etched Memories, not just with your kids, but in your marriage as well. Etched Memories strengthen relationships and contribute to positive and deeply connected family cultures. Etched Memories may stretch you, inspire you, get you out of ruts, or simply cause you not to take yourself so seriously. While some fantastic memories will happen spontaneously, many more will happen when you plan them and the only limitation is your effort and creativity!
Think 4:8!
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June 19th, 2008
In coaching a couple recently at The 1% Club, we began discussing problems and perspectives as it relates to marriage. It is truly amazing how a change in perspective can open up a whole new field of possibilities whether in business, in marriage, or in life. Often times, “ah ha” moments are initiated with the words, “Why don’t you look at it this way…” or “have you ever considered…” or sometimes the “ah ha” seemingly comes out of nowhere. Here’s a breakthrough perspective that this particular couple happily said, “created a fresh start in our relationship.” It really is so simple it is easy to miss, yet it is so important it can revolutionize a relationship almost overnight.
Too many married couples have been conditioned to believe that “we can have a strong relationship once we solve our problems.” Then they go to work trying to deal with their issues. Sounds like a logical approach, doesn’t it? The challenge with this common approach is that while your relationship will, of course, be better without the problems, it will be near impossible to permanently resolve those problems until you are in a stronger place mentally. Underestimating the importance of healthy thinking in productively solving problems leads to all sorts of stubborn relationship relapses and the accompanying frustrations that go along with them.
When you’re struggling with a relationship, the first step (after prayer, of course), with Philippians 4:8 as your guide, is to make the effort to get your head right. Step back and acknowledge your blessings both related to the relationship and independent of it. Accept responsibility for what you’re feeling at the moment. Understand that your feelings, whether healthy or unhealthy, are the result of what you’ve been dwelling upon most recently. It’s hard to be a great problem solver when you’re overcome with negative emotion.
As needed, eliminate distortions, embellishments, exaggerations and self-centeredness as it applies to this relationship. Often a wise friend can help you see the situation with much greater clarity and impartiality. For additional ideas and methods for dealing with Really Awful Thoughts (RATs), check out Chapter 6 in The 4:8 Principle (Head Games).
When you are thinking accurately, without the distortions caused by excessive emotional intensity , you naturally demonstrate the necessary tools for a healthy, close, and satisfying relationship. Some of these qualities include a clear intention, deeper understanding, a sense of humor, compassion, and creativity. And each of these tools starts with a 4:8 thought.
When you activate 4:8 in relationships, you’ll find that many of the things you previously perceived as problems will no longer seem like problems. And the issues that do remain become much easier to handle. Without the tool of 4:8 thinking, you are left to face the challenges of building and maintaining a strong marriage with an incomplete toolbox. It is possible to still succeed, but with the 4:8, it will be much easier to make things great.
On demand! The 8 Day Challenge is now available ON DEMAND. Visit www.the8daychallenge.com
Check out new 4:8 video, now playing on Godtube!
Think 4:8 in 2008!
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June 10th, 2008
Hey 4:8 thinkers,
From my research, it is clear to me that God wants us to experience rich joy throughout our lives, and joy founded in His love and His promises.
As part of our free will, we will always have the choice to pick a joy-producing thought or a junk-producing thought. Our emotions, whether resentment or joy, reveal what we have been dwelling upon. I like to think of this as part of God’s built-in quality control device.
If we are feeling rotten or stressed, we know we have been dwelling on frustrations, disappointments, loss, and the like. If we feel terrific, we know that we have been dwelling on progress, achievements, blessings and so forth. Our emotions serve us by allowing us to feel what we’ve been dwelling on; thereby, equipping us with the feedback we need to make adjustments in where we are steering our thought life.
Remember, the intent of the 4:8 principle is not perfection, but the continuous improvement of your thinking. And each upgrade sets the stage for added joy.
If you’d like to test your joy, please visit www.the8daychallenge.com !
Coach
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June 3rd, 2008
Hey 4:8 thinkers,
Here is a very powerful destressor and attitude enhancer!
Schedule quick 4:8 injections every two hours. I recommend that they be four minutes or less. Seriously, you can accomplish a lot in a small bit of time if you get ready in advance. So schedule these four minute breaks for tomorrow right now, and put them into your calendar. Think of these as Positive Pit Stops. Review your goals or mission. Practice affirmation or visualization. Pray. Read the Bible. Relive a positive memory. Write a thank-you card or send an e-mail of appreciation to someone important.
And if you would like to join the thousands who’ve already taken the 4:8 plunge, visit www.the8daychallenge.com.
Coach
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