Daily affirmations are something you’ll commonly see recommended in pop-psychology books. Each day you verbally affirm your goals as if they’re already accomplished. However, you usually won’t get any results at all with this approach — in most cases it’s an utter waste of time.

Why is this? Because every thought is an affirmation. If you spend 5 minutes a day saying to yourself, “I am a nonsmoker,” but 100 other minutes include thoughts that re-affirm your identity as a smoker, such as periodically lighting up and seeing the smoke rise in front of your face, you just won’t make a dent.

The basic idea of trying to condition yourself to think in new ways is sound, but verbal affirmations for a few minutes each day are a lousy way to accomplish that.

If you want to make some big changes in your life, you’ll need to shift your identity and your habitual way of thinking. In previous posts I discussed behavioral conditioning, which focused on shifting your behavior, assuming your thoughts will follow. Now I’ll tackle a different approach, which is that changing your habitual thoughts can lead to a change in your behavior.

Chances are if you’ve been stuck in your current situation and have been unsuccessful in your attempts to grow into a new role that you really want to achieve, your daily thoughts are continuing to reinforce your old role. Many people who want to take this leap can’t seem to do it, and one reason is that they spend too many hours per week reinforcing their old identity while investing much less time thinking about their new identity. So if you want to start your own business, but your full-time job causes you to spend 40+ hours per week thinking of yourself as an employee, it will be tough to make the shift.

Let’s bring this concept down to earth with a real-life example. One of my goals for this year was to shift my career from game publishing to writing and speaking. But of course I have an existing business which reinforces my old identity in the games business. In order to successfully make this shift, I have to change my thoughts and my behaviors. I have to stop thinking about selling games and put more thought and energy into writing and speaking. Duh.

But what happened when I tried to make this shift initially? I started out my day as usual and got caught up in the mindset of game publishing. I worked in the same office, communicated with the same people, visited the same forums, had to deal with the same kinds of emails, and so on, and after several weeks I was still on the old track. My environment was reinforcing my old identity, my old thoughts, and my old behaviors. For a few hours here and there I’d work on the new path, but very quickly I’d get sucked back into game publishing work.

I had to change my environment to stop reinforcing my old identity and start reinforcing my new one. So I joined Toastmasters and started attending weekly meetings. I shut down the popular game developer forums I was running and worked to transfer the community to another site, and then I stopped reading those forums completely. I automated my games business as much as possible, so it doesn’t require much maintenance at all. I decided not to renew my Association of Shareware Professionals membership for 2005, even though I’ve been a member since 1996. I declined an invitation to speak at the Game Developers Conference in 2005, even though I moderated a popular roundtable there for several years. I altered my office to reinforce my new role. I cleared out the top drawer of my filing cabinet to make room for speaking and writing files. I removed all programming-related shortcuts from my Windows desktop and rearranged my web browser favorites to add links to speaker sites while cutting game-related links. I stopped reading game and shareware blogs and found new speaking and personal development blogs to subscribe to. I cut back dramatically on the amount of game-related email I handle. I switched around the people I communicate with most frequently, such that now I spend more time talking to people who think of me as a speaker in training vs. a shareware or game publisher. I started going to new seminars and workshops on speaking. I started this blog. I discussed the change at length with my wife, so we’d both be prepared for what to expect. And so on.

Some of these may seem like drastic steps; most are minor adjustments. But the net result has been that I’ve been able to flow through this transition to where I now think of myself 90% as a speaker/writer and only 10% as a game publisher. My environment is now reinforcing my new role instead of my old one. The momentum is building in a new direction to the point where it would be hard for me to go back.

All of these adjustments create new thought affirmations. By removing most of the links to my old identity, I remove those triggers that would cause me to think in the old ways. And on top of that I’ve added new triggers to affirm my new career path. And these new thoughts affect my actions; my daily routine is now very different than it used to be. A year from now things will be even more different as the results begin to accumulate.

I must say it was hard making some of these changes initially. What helped me was to start with the small changes, like rearranging my office. Then after a week or two, I was better able to make the medium changes. And after some time, I was able to commit to bigger changes. Now my sense of identity has shifted so much that when I run into something that would reinforce my old role, it’s a lot easier to say no.

I recently popped into an old games forum I stopped reading months ago just to see what my perspective on it would be now. It was a strange experience; the discussions seemed familiar but also alien. I got a sense of just how different my thinking is today than it was six months ago. It’s like the feeling of going back to an old class reunion, when you realize that the people you knew back then are totally different people today.

I think this process can work with many other kinds of changes too. If your environment is reinforcing an identity you’re ready to shed, how can you change it? A few little changes won’t be enough to overcome inertia. But if you can keep building those changes so that you shift more and more of your environment to your new role, that probably will work. You’ll shift the balance of your thoughts from affirming your new identity only 5% to pushing it to 50% and beyond. Many people get started on this process, but they don’t take it far enough to see results.

Look around your home and ask yourself objectively, “What kind of person lives here?” If I didn’t know who lived here, what would I conclude about the inhabitant? Do the same for your office: “What kind of person would work here?” Then make a list of the six people with whom you spend the most time, and ask, “What kind of person would associate with these people?” Are your answers to these objective questions congruent with the kind of person you want to be? If not, then what kind of environment would that person have? What kind of friends? And how can you begin gradually shifting your environment towards the new one? Maybe you can’t immediately get a whole new house or a new job, but what little things can you change right now — today — that would start you moving in that direction?

Copyright © Steve Pavlina

Steve Pavlina
Personal Development for Smart People
http://www.stevepavlina.com
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog (blog)
http://www.stevepavlina.com/articles (articles)

Steve is intensely growth-oriented. He trained in martial arts, ran the L.A. Marathon, and graduated from college in three semesters with two degrees. He can juggle, count cards at blackjack, and make damn good guacamole. Steve is also a polyphasic sleeper, sleeping just 2-3 hours per day and only 20 minutes at a time. So chances are good that he’s awake right now.

At the beginning of the year, there’s often an orgy of goal setting. People get into a collective frenzy about setting personal and professional goals.

Traditional goal setting often doesn’t work because we are not in vibrational harmony with our goals. The feelings we have about our goals aren’t aligned with our thoughts. So we often effort and take too much action before we’ve properly aligned our feelings and beliefs.

Here are 4 Steps to Inspired Goal Setting.

1. Know why you want the goal

Many of us to becoming specific about our goals way too early. We haven’t felt the essence of why we want what we want. We really need to feel our desire about our goals.

What is it we really want; more time to spend with loved ones, space, a sense of aliveness, pleasure, joy. If we don’t know why we want what we want, then all the action in the world won’t make any difference.

You could also call it the Vision Thing. To have a bigger vision regarding our lives puts goal setting in context and makes them far easier to achieve. If your goal is a "have to" "must" or an "ought to", then it aint gonna happen. You joined that gym because you "had to" lose weight and how often did you go?

2. Gain clarity about your desire

Haven’t you already done that? Well, partially. You can only set personal and professional goals for yourself. If your desire isn’t there, then it aint happening:.)

If your goals aren’t crafted with your true desires in mind, then they’ll go unfulfilled and/or self sabotage is often the result. It’s important to be excited by the possibilities that working towards your goal will bring.

Also, cultural and social expectations often shape our goals as to what we think we can have as opposed to what we actually want - so need to gain clarity about what is truly your desire and what belongs to other people.

You’ll never be able to do enough to satisfy other people, so stick to satisfying yourself.

3. The Specification

Once you’ve ramped up your desire and feelings about the goal, here is where the SMART model (S = Specific, M= Measurable A= Action orientated R= Realistic, T= Time based) comes in. Write down your specification in rich feeling detail and then…………

4. …………. Let Go

That’s right. Let go of your judgements, your timing of when it should happen, your attachment to the outcome looking the way you think it ought to look.

Letting go means that you stop efforting and yearning and waiting. This frees you up so that you are not wedded or attached to a specific outcome, but let the Universe deliver.

From here you start to use your intuition and take inspired action. Inspired action is effortless. You take action from a place of feeling good.

It opens you up to receiving ideas, opportunities and different kinds of assistance. You may find yourself drawn to call someone, or someone contacts you out of the blue. For some reason you take a different route to work and you see something that gives you an idea.

You do less as more comes to you. You stop "having" to do things and end up effortlessly achieving your goals.

And if you don’t achieve your goal(s)……………………..

Reframe it - maybe the Universe was telling you that this wasn’t the right path and was leading you to something better, even though you didn’t always see it at the the time. Hasn’t that often happened in your experience?

Follow the above process and you’ll find yourself achieving your goals with much more ease and joy.

Julie Plenty helps creatively self employed people prosper by using the Law of Attraction, because they ARE their business. For more self empowerment and Law of Attraction articles, and to sign up for her Life Design newsletter, visit:

http://www.self-empowerment-zone.com

Finding out how far you have got in your music career is all down to what you want to be and how close you are to reaching that goal.

Is your goal to perform regularly? Is your goal to practice with your band? Is your goal to meet various musicians? Is your goal to learn to play different styles? Do you want to attract regular performances? Do you want to build better audience rapport? Do you want to be more confident?

How you want to be is down to what you believe and what you want. In order to review how far you have got so far, let’s spend a while discovering what you really want from your music…

Please take some time to answer the following questions for yourself. Spend time being specific and detailing your answers.

(1) Why are you a musician?
(2) What do you want to be doing as a musician?
(3) What level do you want to be performing at?
(4) Where do you want to play and perform?
(5) With whom do you want/aspire to play with?

This forms the basis of understanding what you really want to get out of your music career. Now let’s move on to the real stuff – seeing how far you’ve got!

Spend some time answering the following questions.

(1) Up till now, where have you performed?
(2) What measures have you taken up till now to get yourself performances?
(3) What things didn’t seem to go your way?
(4) What setbacks have you experienced?
(5) What understanding have you gained from your past “failures?”

Great stuff! Before we continue on our path of reviewing your journey, there’s one more thing I want to share with you…

“There are no failures”

Yes, that’s right! There are no failures whatsoever and the reason is this: If you do something which you may term as ‘failure’, think back to it and ask yourself if you’ve learned something from it. If you have, it’s definitely going to aid you in your future pursuits, right? And if it’s helped you in your future pursuits, then how is it a failure?

So in order to successfully review your personal music journey, understand that there are no failures and that everything you’ve done successfully or not too well acts as a learning curve in your future attempts. You NEVER fail until you stop trying.

Go back and look at your answers to the first five questions. These are the goals you are out to achieve. Now look at your answers to the next five questions.

How far on a scale of one to ten (10 being your goal achieved) do you think you are from your goal?

Why do you think that you are in your current position? What can you be doing to move forward and closer to your goal? What actions will you now take to move closer to your goal? What are your next steps?

Congratulations, you have now briefly reviewed your journey.

Working with a coach to achieve your goals is one of the best moves you can make. If you would like more information, simply drop me an email at info@coachkavit.com

© Kavit Haria, The Musicians’ Coach

Kavit Haria is The Musicians’ Coach. Kavit is the director of InnerRhythm, a company that prides on providing success solutions for musicians worldwide. Kavit sends out a musician development newsletter to over 2000 musicians in 16 countries every fortnight to help them achieve their desired results. Sign up now and experience the huge benefits from www.innerrhythm.org

What gives rise to your goals? What determines whether you even set goals at all?

I believe the answer is your context. Your context is your collection of beliefs about reality. It’s the soil in which your thoughts grow.

For example, if you have very materialistic goals and have become skilled at achieving them, then you probably have a very materialistic context. Your beliefs about reality are rooted in materialism.

This is just common sense, right? You will tend to take actions that seem reasonable to you. And the question of reasonableness is answered by your context. What is reasonable to you depends on how you happen to view reality.

You don’t actually make any decisions based on reality itself, do you? You make decisions based on your interpretation of reality. Your sensory input, your memories, and your thoughts and beliefs comprise your map of reality. You ultimately base your decisions on this map.

So where does context come from?

For the most part, we inherit it. We learn our contexts by absorbing the contexts of other people. We’re conditioned by our upbringing, education, family, community, government, media, the Internet, etc. The people we meet, the books we read, the things we see on TV — these all contribute to our context. They help us determine how to interpret reality. Even this web site is making a small contribution towards shaping your context.

For example, what is marriage? Is it a legal arrangement? A religious sacrament? A connection between soulmates? Dependent on the couple? How you answer this question will depend on your context. Ask different people and you’ll get different answers.

After reaching adulthood most people don’t change their context much. It’s possible that you may set and achieve many goals but barely question your context at all. It’s like being a farmer who grows crops year after year in essentially the same soil, the same plot of land. It seems very natural and normal to do this. It’s simply a matter of doing what you’ve always been doing.

You can achieve some interesting results in life just by living within your current context. But if you learn how to manipulate your context as well, you can gain access to an even greater field of experiences.

Every context is a lens through which you view reality, and each lens will enhance some parts of your life and weaken others. The problem is that most people have grown so used to their current context that they forget they have one. Thus, they mistake their context for reality itself rather than seeing it for the lens it is. Over the next few weeks, I’m going to help you to better understand your own context and to give you the tools to make changes at that level.

Sometimes external events can jolt you into a new context. After 9/11 many Americans experienced a context shift. Others were largely unaffected. Have you ever intentionally undertaken a context switch, however? Have you ever intentionally changed your interpretation of reality just for the experience? For example, do you ever say to yourself, “I’m going to try a different religion this year?”

Switching contexts in this manner is something I’ve been doing for more than a decade, and later this week I’ll share some things I’ve learned along the way. I think you’ll find it interesting.

Copyright © Steve Pavlina

Steve Pavlina
Personal Development for Smart People
http://www.stevepavlina.com
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog (blog)
http://www.stevepavlina.com/articles (articles)

Steve is intensely growth-oriented. He trained in martial arts, ran the L.A. Marathon, and graduated from college in three semesters with two degrees. He can juggle, count cards at blackjack, and make damn good guacamole. Steve is also a polyphasic sleeper, sleeping just 2-3 hours per day and only 20 minutes at a time. So chances are good that he’s awake right now.

Is your life on purpose? Does just the question stop you in your tracks? Have you been so caught up in the pace of our world that you’ve not even thought lately about whether or not your life is going in the right direction?

Of course, living a life on purpose starts with knowing what your purpose is. Are you crystal clear about what the purpose of your life is? If you aren’t sure, then you’ve just identified the place at which you should start a new life of purpose. Start by getting clear about what your purpose is. Don’t feel bad if you don’t already have this clarity. In a recent survey of more than 3000 people when asked the question, "What have you to live for?" 94 percent said they had no definite purpose for their lives — 94 percent! That leaves only 6 percent of us who know why we’re here. It’s no wonder we’re not a particularly happy society.

How can you know if you’ve hit your purposeful stride? The life you lead should be a full expression of your purpose. Those of us on the outside looking in should be able to figure out atleast the broad scope of your purpose just by looking at your actions. The person you are should be a reflection of your purpose.

Knowing your purpose however is really only the start. Many people feel they know their purpose but also realize that their life doesn’t reflect it. In other words, they aren’t living true to it. When you’re living your purpose your life and the person you are become perfect reflections of it.

The good news is that it’s not too late. It is possible to start living on purpose immediately, even before you clearly know your purpose. Because asking yourself, "who am I and what is my life for?" begins to move your life into a new direction. It all starts when you ask the question. Don’t stop with just asking the question. Answer it as well. Then get busy becoming.

"Seek and you will find. Ask and it will be given unto you."

Make this week really count. Discover and start living your purpose.

Thanks for sitting with me.

Live some. Love some. Learn some. Everyday.

C…

Clyde Dennis, a.k.a. "Mr. How-To" has been writing and publishing Articles and Newsletters online since 1999. Clyde’s company EASYHow-To Publications provides "How-To" information on How-To do, be or have just about anything one can imagine. For more information visit http://www.EASYHow-To.com. Email correspondence for Clyde should be sent to: cdennis@easyhow-to.com

I guess I found some hot buttons last week eh? Thanks for a week full of real good feedback.

That being the case I’d like to follow along with last weeks theme of Living your purpose. Getting into one of the key elements to doing just that.

Living with Courage.

I believe living a life of Purpose begins and ends with Courage. It takes courage to open up and face your truth, to be honest with yourself.

Clearly, there are many hindrances and roadblocks along the path of purposeful living. In my own life the biggest has been fear. The fear of showing vulnerability. The fear of being judged. The fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of being alone, fear of the unknown and uncertainty. There was fear everywhere I turned. Until one day I just got sick and tired of living in fear.

In a conversation about some of the worlds great revolutions with a friend who grew up in Russia the point was made that one of the conclusions an oppressed people must come to is they "just can’t live this way anymore." This is the point at which the pain of being oppressed becomes greater than the pain of facing the fear. Fear is an oppressive bully and thief. The way to conquer it is to face up to it with confidence and courage. The feeling comes over you that something has got to change and it has to change now! Perhaps you’ve known this feeling.

I have come to the conclusion (and of course you must arrive at your own) that no one, no situation, no experience, is going to deter me from living the rest of my life on what I believe is the course of my PURPOSE. Eventually, one way or another I will die. But, in the process of living, I am the one responsible for identifying, connecting to and living my own purposeful life. To live any other way would be to not live fully.

What courage do I need to call on? I summon my courage to let go of perceived past wrongs, of regrets, hurts. Things that are done, are done. I look and live forward. I let go of blaming and anger, release jealousy, envy and any feelings of scarcity, helplessness or hopelessness. I’m continually building and healing myself. It takes courage to accept responsibility for my own success and happiness. The courage to live on Purpose. The courage to be real. The Courage to be me.

You decide when you’re ready to move to the next step in your purposeful evolution. Look around. You’ll find a book, a friend, a coach, a spiritual guide or teacher to help you uncover your own true connection to yourself, your truth and your purpose. Maybe you’ll even be that friend, guide or teacher for someone else, which will be part of your own journey.

I am truly grateful for others who showed me through books, stories and in the way they live their life that I can live on purpose and be happy. The key ingredient, as I’ve learned, is Courage.

As always, Thanks for hanging out.

Live some. Love some. Learn some. Everyday.

C…

Clyde Dennis, a.k.a. "Mr. How-To" has been writing and publishing Articles and Newsletters online since 1999. Clyde’s company EASYHow-To Publications provides "How-To" information on How-To do, be or have just about anything one can imagine. For more information visit http://www.EASYHow-To.com Email correspondence for Clyde should be sent to: cdennisat@easyhow-to.com

"Life is not easy for any of us. We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained." - Marie Curie

Perseverance is not rocket science. You can master this goal setting tool, with just a little thinking and concentration. Think about the thing you want to do, focus your efforts on the smaller steps and you will be amazed at what you can achieve.

In real terms, perseverance is a matter of doing something step-by-step. When we have confidence in what we do, perseverance can become a habit. And it is a good habit worth having.

When you consider a world class athlete, perseverance is essential in his or her performance.

As Madam Curie said, "life is not easy", but life is here to be lived, and when we use the right tools, it can be exciting. Using this quote as a daily affirmation is an excellent goal setting tool.

When we "believe that we are gifted for something", as Curie said, our energy levels rise astronomically. When you attain success at the smaller things, your level of confidence rises proportionally.

The dictionary defines perseverance as "maintain effort". Thus perseverance is nothing more than taking it step-by-step. Even the smallest steps will result in success.

Take it one step at a time, and you will be amazed at what you can achieve.

Make it your goal to…

Identify what you are passionate about. When you know what your passion is, you will find the energy to develop perseverance. And when you become tired, take time out - take a break - you will find you become recharged.

About the Author
Colin Dunbar’s eaziGOAL is the ultimate goal setting program created especially for working moms and dads. "There is no reason we working moms and dads cannot reach our dream." Full details available at http://www.eaziGOAL.com FREE newsletter.