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Becoming the hero of your own life
In
Building Self-Confidence for Dummies you are
introduced to the idea of becoming the hero of your own life. This may strike
you as odd but if you write down a brief summary of your life to date you are
likely to find either that you are not the hero, or more likely that the story
of your life has no hero, yet!
1. Decide that you are going to take on personal
change to enable you to achieve the things you want in life, and get into
action. There is nothing wrong with you today,
nothing is broken and you don't need to be fixed. BUT, you may have been
settling for second-best. Once you decide to raise your personal standards and
accept the need to make the changes necessary to live the life you would prefer
to be living you have taken the critical first step.
2. Decide where it is you are going, or what it
is that you really want. The physician Maxwell
Maltz taught us that human beings are goal-seeking organisms. Our mental and
physical apparatus are designed for goal achievement and we operate at our best
only when we have clear aims and objectives. You get to decide what your aims
and objectives are going to be. Take advantage of this immediately and heed the
advice of another great teacher Henry David Thoreau: in the long run you will
hit what you aim at, so aim high.
3. Plan your work and work your plan.
When you have decided on your destination you will need
to plan your route. Time spent in planning is rarely wasted (as the saying goes
"fail to plan and you plan to fail") but don't expect life to work out the way
you have planned it. In combat every soldier is taught that no plan survives
first contact with the enemy, but you need the plan to work with. Never stop
thinking about where you are headed and adjust as life and opportunity dictate
as you go along.
4. Don't compete; create! This is the great secret insight to most
people. We live in a competitive age. We are taught to compete at school and are
incentivised to compete in work through adulthood. We compete through the cars
we drive and the homes we create, even through the relationships we form. When
we get too old or too unhealthy to compete physically we compete vicariously
through our children and the teams or players we support. Suppose there is
another way. Suppose the only person worth competing with is yourself, and the
way to win is to create ever new, more elegant and more effective ways of living
in all aspects of your life. In this world you can never lose, never be beaten,
you can only improve. This leads to what the Japanese call Kaizen: authentic,
continous, incremental improvement over your lifetime. This is a life of growth
towards everything you want for yourself and your loved ones.
5. Pay attention to your lessons before you apply them.
There is so much advice out there, not all of
it consistent and not all of it helpful. If you begin to view your life as a
work in progress, with a clear set of goals and ambitions, you will have a far
better basis for deciding what advice to adopt and make your own, and what to
ignore or avoid. Even when you do find a new idea or tool that seems helpful you
should think about how to fit it into what you have already adopted or committed
to. If you do not then you may be setting yourself up for conflicts or
disappointment. But if you do decide to adopt a new idea or strategy, and you
can see how it will help you to achieve the life you want, then go for it and
fully commit changing anything else that may be necessary to accommodate the new
idea...
6. View the world as a whole.
Even the greatest heroes live in a world populated by
others, this is where their heroism shows up and makes a difference to the
world. Recent psychological studies have begun to measure the degree to which
our personal fulfillment depends upon having life goals that are greater than
the satisfaction of our personal whims and desires. Our grandparents new this
and our generation needs to rediscover it. Don't forget to include others and
the world in your your story, you will be the greater for it.
7. Listen to your inner coach.
The most sage advice of all. Most of the world's great
spiritual traditions teach that you have a knowing wisdom inside of you, a spark
of the divine that guides you and keeps you safe, provided you listen to it. The
problem in our world is that we too often don't have the time or the quietude to
learn to recognise this voice, and to trust it. Quiet reflection or
contemplation is an essential first step to effective action. As you learn to
trust your intuition question everything to learn how you feel and don't do what
you know to be wrong.
Follow these seven simple guidelines to see the epic in
your life today and to create an even more compelling and exciting future for
yourself. This is the life you were born to lead.
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