What is the one thing that truly successful people have in common that others do not? It’s not that they were born with special abilities or talents that set them apart from others. The essential difference is that they know and utilize the power of their thoughts. The good news is that you can learn to do the same.
In order to know how to succeed in life, you must understand the great power you wield with your thoughts. Your potential for success is determined by your thoughts about yourself and your goals. When a person has negative thoughts such as the ones listed below, their energy is dissipated and their efforts to succeed are undermined by their thinking.
I fail at everything I try. No one believes that I can succeed, and they’re probably right. If I really try and then I fail, I won’t be able to recover.
Can you see how thoughts like these might lead to procrastination or thoughts of giving up? Can you see how they would seriously work against your efforts to succeed?
How to Succeed in Life: The Key Is To Change Your Thoughts
The first thing to do is to learn to recognize when you are having negative thoughts
such as these. Most people, even those who feel generally confident, will have some latent negative beliefs that emerge when they reach for a new goal. We are so used to our habits of thinking, we are not even aware of them most of the time. That’s why it is important to develop a new habit of paying attention to your thoughts, particularly when you feel negative emotion.
This process will help you discover the negative beliefs that are undermining your success and then change them:
1. Write down your goal and say it out loud.
2. Now, listen for the negative feelings and thoughts that come up in response.
3. Write these negative thoughts down on paper. These are the key beliefs that are holding you back from success.
4. Take the time to look at these negative beliefs and decide whether they are really true for you. Explore other ways to look at yourself and your life that feel more positive and empowering and write down these new beliefs.
To clarify what I mean, let me give you an example. Let’s say you find that you have this negative thought: I never succeed at anything. You would now want to explore examples of how this is not true. Remind yourself of times when you did succeed in small or large ways. Next, come up with a new belief that feels good to you. Here’s an example:
There are other times that I have succeeded at goals I set out to achieve. All I need to do is stay focused on my goal and not give up. If I do that, I am sure to eventually succeed.
It does take some focused effort to get into the habit of recognizing your negative thoughts and changing them to more empowering, positive beliefs. However, you will be richly rewarded for your efforts. And if you do not, those underlying negative thoughts will continue to keep you from the success you desire.
Once you get into the habit of recognizing and changing your negative habits of thinking, you will find yourself becoming more confident and sure of yourself and your ability to succeed. You will be able to fully embrace the ideas and opportunities that will move you towards your goal. I hope you can see by now that developing positive habits of thinking really is the key to your success.
A Faster and Easier Way to Develop Successful Thoughts
Although challenging these negative thoughts and replacing them with more positive, empowering ones can be very powerful, it does take some effort. I have found that there is an even easier way to release these negative beliefs and replace them with positive, empowering beliefs. It is called Emotional Freedom Techniques, or EFT. It is a bit unconventional, but it works more rapidly and permanently than anything else I’ve ever seen.
One of the advantages of EFT is that you can use it to let go of negative beliefs even if you don’t know what they are. You simply focus on the negative emotion you are experiencing and release that. As you do, your negative beliefs are cleared as well. It is quick, thorough, and simple to do. And it is very effective.
As you may already know, I have developed a self-help program which uses EFT to release the negative beliefs that are interfering with your success. It then replaces the negative beliefs with positive, empowering beliefs will support you in your success.
You can try out a free EFT recording I have created that will help you change your negative thoughts on the homepage of my website: CreatingConfidenceandSuccess.com. You can also sign up for my free Quick Start Guide to EFT for Confidence there and learn more about my program that shows you everything you need to know about how to succeed in life from the inside out.
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I’m writing this post a few days before Thanksgiving and some helpful ideas have been on my mind that I’d like to share with you. I want to do what I can to help you have a wonderful holiday season this year. So I want to remind you of the wonderful resource you have that can help you to make this the most enjoyable and peaceful holiday season you’ve ever had.
Oh, Those Holidays
I know Thanksgiving and the holidays that follow can be a wonderful time to reconnect with family and friends and feel our many blessings.
But…
It can also be a very stressful time when we feel like we don’t have enough time or money to do all the things we feel we want or need to do.
Old Family Stuff
It can also be a time when lots of old unresolved personal and family issues we may have can arise. Maybe you get triggered by the way your parents ask you about your career or your relationships. Perhaps they (or you) compare you to your siblings and as a result you feel inadequate. It might be that you find yourself falling into old family patterns that lead to anxiety, shame, anger or any other negative emotion. 
Loneliness
And if you find yourself alone during the holidays, it can also bring up a lot of sadness and painful feelings as well.
What To Do About It
If you have learned and practiced the EFT process that I taught you through the Quick Start Guide to EFT for Confidence (click this link and scroll down the page to sign up for your free copy if you don’t have one yet) or the Creating Confidence and Success Program, you already have the most helpful tool that I have found for quickly and easily letting go of the difficult feelings and old patterns of thinking that may come up during the holiday season: EFT.
Feel Good From the Inside Out
Although it may feel like the difficult feelings you are having are caused by things that are happening outside of yourself and so they are beyond your control, if you take the ti
me to tap on the negative feelings, you’ll be surprised how much better you feel.
One of the gifts of EFT is that you can use it to bring yourself back to a state of unconditional well-being. This means that no matter what is happening on the outside of your life, you can always choose to feel peaceful on the inside.
Use EFT to Relax Before You Get Started For the Day
It’s a great idea to do some anticipatory EFT before you find yourself in a stressful situation. Before you even leave your bedroom in the morning, you can start your day of shopping or cooking or visiting by doing a few quick rounds of EFT. Notice any stresses or negative emotions that come up when you think about the day ahead and tap on these feelings right away. This will really help you feel more relaxed as you go through your day.
Oops!
I meant for this to be a short post. I just can’t help myself once I get started! OK, I’ll post the rest tomorrow.
So, tomorrow I’ll write about the steps to EFT and how to use them to have a wonderful, relaxed, and peaceful holiday season this year, from the inside out.
May you feel your blessings in every moment,
Laura
Live an Inspiring Life with the Creating Confidence and Success Program
Do you wish you felt happier and more confident in your life? If so, I’d like to share with you a couple of simple, fun techniques that you can use right now to help yourself feel better. If you take the time to practice these techniques regularly, you will soon find yourself feeling much more positive and confident in every area of your life. Before I go into what they are though, it’s important for you to first understand what’s really causing your to feel less positive and confident than you would like.
The Real Reason You Don’t Feel Confident In Your Life
No matter what you may have heard, there’s really only one reason that you feel negative and uncertain about yourself and your life. Once you know what it is, you will realize you have the power to change your life for the better because it’s something that is completely in your own control.
The real reason that you don’t feel as confident as you would like is this: you have learned to think negative, critical thoughts about yourself and your life. It’s not because of something that happened many years ago that you are powerless to change. In every moment, you have the power to recognize that you are feeling bad, notice the negative thought that caused it, and then change that thought pattern to one that feels better. And I’m going to show you how in two fun and easy steps.
First Step: Don’t Believe the Crazy Monkey
The first step in changing your negative habits of thinking is to recognize them and remind yourself that your thoughts are not reality. They are just thoughts, ideas that you have in your head about what you think about a situation. To help remind you of this fact, I encourage you to imagine that your negative thoughts are coming from a crazy little monkey sitting on your shoulder, whispering negative opinions and ideas into your ear. This will really help you to put a little distance between yourself and your thoughts and will help you to not take them so seriously. Once you are able to do that, you can take a moment to consciously think of more positive ways to look at whatever situation you find yourself in. I’ll go over a fun way to come up with more positive thoughts in the next step.
Second Step: What Would Your Best Friend Say?
When you really think about it, don’t you find it strange how negative and mean we can be to ourselves with our thoughts? Whenever we’re feeling less confident or feeling any negative emotion for that matter, we are subjecting ourselves to a barrage of self-criticism, predictions of bad outcomes, and negative opinions of all kinds. Most of us would never be so mean to anyone but ourselves. And we wouldn’t tolerate that kind of treatment from a friend. So, once you recognize that you are having a negative thought, the next step is to come up with a more positive way of thinking about the situation. This will really help you build your feelings of self esteem and confidence right away. To get there, as yourself:
What would my best friend tell me about myself and this situation? 
This is a great technique to use to come up with more positive ways to think about yourself and your life and using it regularly will result in feelings of greater confidence and well-being. You know your best friend would be supportive, encouraging, and would believe in your ability to solve any problem that came up. You can give that same gift of support to yourself.
Here’s another related approach to generating more confident, positive thoughts. Ask yourself:
What would I say to my best friend if they were having this problem?
Chances are, you would be much more positive and constructive with a friend than you are with yourself. Imagine your friend experiencing insecurity, self-doubt, or whatever negative emotion you’re feeling. What would you tell them to help them feel better?
Be Your Own Best Friend
Take all these positive perspectives you’ve come up with and give them back to yourself. Write down whatever you come up with and read it out loud a few times to yourself. Even if you don’t fully believe these positive statements to begin with, you’ll find that you start to feel better when you say them to yourself over and over. Once you do, you will have discovered the power of shifting your thoughts from negative to positive.
All it takes after that is practice. Pay attention to how you are feeling and when you feel bad, use these two simple, fun, and easy steps to get your thinking back on track. If you use these techniques regularly, it won’t take long before you find your habits of thinking shifting more automatically to the positive. And when you do, you’ll be on your way to experiencing confidence and well-being in every area of your life.
Laura Lawson Boatman is a licensed therapist and writer. She is the author of The Creating Confidence and Success Program, an innovative program that uses a powerful new technique to help people quickly and easily transform negative habits of thinking and experience their natural state of confidence, well-being, and inspiration. For her free guide that will help you use this technique to quickly increase your self confidence, please visit http://www.CreatingConfidenceandSuccess.com. You can also try her free confidence recording online and experience the transformative power of her program for yourself.
Hello and welcome to my blog. This is where I will be posting a variety of helpful articles I have written relating to feeling more confident, achieving your goals, and using the many wonderful resources in the Creating Confidence and Success Program.
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Thanks for visiting and I wish you all the best in your journey to feel true confidence and live a life of well-being and inspiration.