I wanted to take a few minutes to expand upon why I chose today’s Walt Disney’s quote for Daily Positive Points. I realize that a lot of people struggle when they go off on a new quest and end up giving up. That is why today’s quote is so special to me. Here’s the quote again: “The difference in winning and losing is most often… not quitting.”
It was one year ago that I was about ready to call it quits and shut down my work with the site and Daily Positive Points. I had tried unsuccessfully to launch my book, STINKIN’ THINKIN’ STINKS on three previous occasions. It was as if I was pushing a rope trying to get it ready to launch. I felt I was doing all the right things, practicing all the right mental techniques and staying focused on my goals but it wasn’t working.
I woke up and was in a lousy mood. Something happened with my Daily Positive Points email where I believe I had a few un-subscribers. I logged into the database to see there wasn’t a whole lot of positive movement with the list size for the previous 3-4 months. It was also time to start on the next month’s Daily Positive Points messages and I started asking a few very self-defeating questions. They were, “Why am I even doing this?”; “Why can’t I catch a break?”; and “Why me? I’ve given up so much to help others and now this?”
Yea, I know, pity party for sure. Those kinds of questions and thought patterns will get you nowhere and nowhere fast! I then realized that those questions will result in nothing. Asking lousy questions returns lousy answer. I changed my thoughts and I then asked, “What message am I missing?”
The next day I got the answer. I realized what I was missing. It was fear. Yep, my old lost buddy, fear. I was afraid that I would fail in my book launch dooming me to mediocrity. If any of you know me at all, you know that I do not take defeat very well. Whether it was in sports or business. I have always excelled at both but somehow doubt had crept in and was fogging up my mind. Having awareness and accepting that I wasn’t quitting based upon a fear, I then asked, “How may I serve?” and “What can I do to help reach a bigger audience?”
And then, out of nowhere, Tony Robbins retweeted one of my tweets that day! Really? Within an hour, I had picked up about 100 new followers. I got close to 500 retweets and over 300 favorites. This small thing helped me realize that things can change in a single instant. About a few weeks later, Tony retweeted another one of my tweets and I got similar results.
I am now not only a bestselling author, but an international bestselling author. I maintained #1 rankings in 5 categories on Amazon and went all the way to #317 on Barnes and Nobel’s overall book ranking! Just think what would have happened if I quit?
This was a great reminder to never give up. You may need to change strategies but never give up. Ask better questions and you will get better answers.
With gratitude,
Bill
Here was today’s Daily Positive Points for reference:
Today’s Message
Sometimes when everything seems to be falling apart, just sticking with it a little longer is the perfect solution. That goal that seems out of reach right now will be tomorrow’s headlines if you just hang in there.
Today’s Quote
“The difference in winning and losing is most often… not quitting.” ~ Walt Disney
5 Tips for Setting Goals That Stick
I am very big on setting personal goals for both my professional and personal life. I believe they are a way to help me stay focused on the job at hand. Slowly, day-by-day, I inch toward my goals. No matter how slowly they are being achieved, I know that each day I am moving one step closer to a celebration.
It’s easy to set goals but making them stick is quite another. Sure, you can write down five goals you want in your life right now and that would be good. That is the first step. However, we need to find a way to keep us engaged so that we follow through to achieve them.
Here are 5 Tips for Setting Goals that may help you set and achieve them.
1) Create goals in 3 areas of your life – Personal, School/Work, & Giving. Identify at least 3 goals for each one of these. For personal goals, write down goals that would make you FEEL great. For School/Work goals, write down 3 goals that focus on helping you grow in knowledge. For the Giving goals, identify 3 goals that you could attain for helping others. This one is key because I believe it guides the other two.
2) Rank Your Goals – From the list of the goals, rank them 1-9 making sure that there is at least one goal from each of the 3 categories in the top 5.
3) Identify tasks for your top 3 goals – Rather than try to figure out each task for each goal, write down 3 action tasks for the top 3 goals. This helps you focus on the 3 goals at a time.
4) Schedule your tasks – Now that you have the top 3 goals and tasks for each one, on your calendar, schedule 3 tasks to be started on this week. Then, each week, schedule the next 3 tasks for that week. As you start on your goals to accomplish them, you will notice new things come up all the time. All you have to do is keep adding tasks as you think of them. Continue reflecting on these goals and the actions needed to accomplish them until you succeed in completing them.
5) Celebrate the Achievement – Once you have accomplished your first goal, schedule a celebration. I don’t mean just throw your hand in the air type celebration. Find several people to go out and have a formal celebration. You will find that when you do this, others will be so excited for you that they may even help you with the next goal.
Each time you achieve a goal, be sure to find the next one on the list and start the process over again with #3-5 above. It is important to have 3 goals on your list that you are actively working on. Also, be sure to replenish the goals after you achieve them. Always keep 3 goals in each of the 3 categories. So for example, when you accomplish a personal goal, repeat #1 above by identifying one more goal in that area. You will then go to #2 to re-rank them and then keep repeating.
It doesn’t have to be hard to create goals that stick and make you want to accomplish them. You have to start somewhere but organizing them into 3 categories, picking the top 3, identifying 3 tasks for each one and scheduling smaller chunks will be just the ticket you need to succeed. This builds momentum and as you build more and more momentum, you are certain to achieve success you never thought was even possible.
If you have any questions about setting goals, please comment or send me a message through the website or social media.
With peace and much gratitude,
Bill
Hope – Yea, I Got That!
I was reading a quote by Martin Luther King Jr the other and it reminded me that so many of us give up hope way too often. I have been reading more information about bullying and it too seems that so many of them give up hope. I believe the message is to always keep hope alive for there is always a reason, no matter how bad the circumstances are, that hope can carry us through our dark times. I realize that we are certain to experience disappointment from time-to-time, but that doesn’t mean that we have to give up hope.
Martin Luther King, Jr. said it best, “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” Nuff said!
With peace and gratitude (and a lot of hope),
Bill
Five Tips for Maintaining a Positive Attitude
Attitude affects every aspect of our lives. It affects how we start our day, how we get to work or school, how we act while we are there, and how well our evenings become. The best way to have a positive attitude is to choose to have it right now. Make it your intention and then maintain that thought throughout the day.
Here are a tips to get and maintain a positive attitude during your work day:
With these simple 5-steps you can have and maintain a positive attitude today. Just remember to take it one day at a time and when things don’t go as planned, simply start the next day off with the intention of positivity.
With peace and gratitude,
Bill
Focus Equals Fate
I say it all the time. You have heard it all too often. What you focus on EXPANDS. This is a core belief of mine and many others. So why do most people not get it? While I cannot answer that question because everyone is uniquely different and at different stages in their lives. However, what I can tell you is that whatever you put your focus on often turns into a belief. The key is whether that belief is a positive one that supports and helps you grow or is negative and holds you back.
Here’s what I truly believe. Most of us see things WORSE than they are, instead of how things REALLY are. Ugh, I know! I recall talking to a friend of mine who practices this with a passion. What he tells me is that if I see how the worst it could be, I am prepared just in case this happens. So it is a survival technique all too many of us practice. The problem I see with this is that you are looking for the WORST it could possibly be and by thinking and focusing on the worst it can be, it can actually draw that to you.
I call this sort of thinking, STINK Eye thinking. Whenever you look at something and turn it to something bad or negative (often times it really isn’t) you have caught the STINK Eye. Not to worry, there are several techniques I teach to help my students focus on what the positive. In fact there are three things that can turn it around quickly. They are:
1) Focus and Visualization
2) Setting Goals
3) Look at setbacks as Opportunities
Focus and Visualization is the easiest and quickest way to dilute the STINK Eye. Simply try focusing on something positive in your life. If you have trouble with that, visualize a positive outcome or simply go back to a time that you were on top of your game. That simple technique can help drastically.
If you follow me or know me at all, you know that I am very, very goal driven. I believe it is my competitive nature but they are a major part of my life. I use them to take complex, nearly out of reach goals and break them up into smaller ones so I can create momentum. Once the positive momentum starts flowing, things change very quickly for me. Take for instance the issues today involving bullying and low self esteem. I have read enough information about bullying and self esteem in kids to realize there are a lot of different techniques people teach. I decided to try a different approach. I asked “what can I do to help kids deal with the negative influences and issues they are faced with today?” and that lead to a new book (STINKIN’ THINKIN’ STINKS). Once I had the goal of building self esteem as a way of combating bullying and other negatives, I created project plan for the book. That project plan consisted of 173 steps. It seemed overwhelming at first but breaking things into mini goals ultimately kept the momentum moving forward with the book launch.
Another area that can change your thoughts is to look at any setback as an opportunity. I saved this for last because it is one of the more difficult ones to practice. However, it can have the biggest impact. Looking at setbacks or problems as opportunities take you out of the victim mentality, which does nothing but deliver negative outcomes while looking for the opportunity that lies within them is very empowering. This is why I teach that setbacks are often transformational.
In summary, each of us posses the ability to focus on what we want and filter out the negative things around us. A lot of people look for the bad and that expands while others look for what is good and that expands for them. When you catch yourself with a bad case of STINK Eye, try three quick techniques to clear it up: 1) Focus and Visualization, 2) Set Goals, & 3) Turn Setbacks into Opportunities.
With peace and gratitude,
Bill
Beliefs: How to Challenge Them Now
When I was younger, I thought that beliefs could not be changed. My “belief” was that once I had a particular belief, I was destined to carry it my entire life. I then realized I was dead wrong on that matter. In fact, changing a negative, self-limiting belief can be changed almost instantly.
But before I dive into changing beliefs, let me give you a little background about beliefs and where they come from.
Beliefs are only thoughts held to be true. They are not right or wrong, true or false, just VERY strong opinions. So, why is it important to constantly challenge your beliefs? The reality is that you will always act or not act in accordance to your predominate beliefs.
We need to distinguish ideas and beliefs so we can understand how to change them. Beliefs start out as just an idea that grows powerful as we put more focus and energy to it. Tony Robbins said it best; ideas are like a table with no legs while beliefs are the legs that hold up the table or idea. Remember that beliefs are not right or wrong so we can easily create beliefs that do not serve us. One other key thing to mention is that two people can have go through the same experience and leave with two completely separate beliefs.
What we need to do is become aware of when we are putting “legs” under that table. One quick way I have found is understanding the power of our vocabulary. The most powerful words we can speak are “I am.” You can say that confirming “I am” puts more legs under the idea (table) whether it is right or wrong. This means we can easily create powerful beliefs about ourselves that are completely self-limiting.
Here’s an easy four-step process I developed for changing those negative beliefs:
1) Awareness – become aware of what we are thinking
2) Thoughts – change our negative thoughts
3) Re-Program – re-write or re-program the thought
4) Vocabulary – change the words you are staying on a consistent basis
Most of the time we focus on what is not working, what is not right or what we feel we cannot change. By becoming aware of what we think, change negative thoughts to positive ones, re-program the thought or idea to empowering ones and this can be easily accomplished by changing a negative vocabulary to a more positive one.
With peace and gratitude,
Bill
Just Don’t Quit
I wanted to take a few minutes to expand upon why I chose today’s Walt Disney’s quote for Daily Positive Points. I realize that a lot of people struggle when they go off on a new quest and end up giving up. That is why today’s quote is so special to me. Here’s the quote again: “The difference in winning and losing is most often… not quitting.”
It was one year ago that I was about ready to call it quits and shut down my work with the site and Daily Positive Points. I had tried unsuccessfully to launch my book, STINKIN’ THINKIN’ STINKS on three previous occasions. It was as if I was pushing a rope trying to get it ready to launch. I felt I was doing all the right things, practicing all the right mental techniques and staying focused on my goals but it wasn’t working.
I woke up and was in a lousy mood. Something happened with my Daily Positive Points email where I believe I had a few un-subscribers. I logged into the database to see there wasn’t a whole lot of positive movement with the list size for the previous 3-4 months. It was also time to start on the next month’s Daily Positive Points messages and I started asking a few very self-defeating questions. They were, “Why am I even doing this?”; “Why can’t I catch a break?”; and “Why me? I’ve given up so much to help others and now this?”
Yea, I know, pity party for sure. Those kinds of questions and thought patterns will get you nowhere and nowhere fast! I then realized that those questions will result in nothing. Asking lousy questions returns lousy answer. I changed my thoughts and I then asked, “What message am I missing?”
The next day I got the answer. I realized what I was missing. It was fear. Yep, my old lost buddy, fear. I was afraid that I would fail in my book launch dooming me to mediocrity. If any of you know me at all, you know that I do not take defeat very well. Whether it was in sports or business. I have always excelled at both but somehow doubt had crept in and was fogging up my mind. Having awareness and accepting that I wasn’t quitting based upon a fear, I then asked, “How may I serve?” and “What can I do to help reach a bigger audience?”
And then, out of nowhere, Tony Robbins retweeted one of my tweets that day! Really? Within an hour, I had picked up about 100 new followers. I got close to 500 retweets and over 300 favorites. This small thing helped me realize that things can change in a single instant. About a few weeks later, Tony retweeted another one of my tweets and I got similar results.
I am now not only a bestselling author, but an international bestselling author. I maintained #1 rankings in 5 categories on Amazon and went all the way to #317 on Barnes and Nobel’s overall book ranking! Just think what would have happened if I quit?
This was a great reminder to never give up. You may need to change strategies but never give up. Ask better questions and you will get better answers.
With gratitude,
Bill
Here was today’s Daily Positive Points for reference:
Today’s Message
Sometimes when everything seems to be falling apart, just sticking with it a little longer is the perfect solution. That goal that seems out of reach right now will be tomorrow’s headlines if you just hang in there.
Today’s Quote
“The difference in winning and losing is most often… not quitting.” ~ Walt Disney
How to Make a Difference Today
I often ask myself, “How can I make a positive impact on others today?” This is an empowering question that often leads to great ideas. To make a difference in the world, it will always involve helping others. There are several ways to help others but there is one way that is often overlooked. That way is to continue to grow ourselves because we can’t help someone if we are not in the right mental place to do so.
Kindness, whether it is with others or yourself, will always make a difference in the world. When practiced daily, kindness will have a major positive impact on the world. It doesn’t always have to be practiced for others because when we offer ourselves kindness, we are teaching others to be kind to themselves too. Let’s teach something powerful today. Take the Every Day Kindness Challenge and start making a powerful impact today.
While kindness doesn’t solve all of our problems, it does help us stay positive and more optimistic. Just think of the consequences if we all practiced kindness daily? I bet there would be a big impact on negative thinking, depression, bullying, anger and so much more.
Teach kindness. Help others learn kindness. Learn kindness. These are the keys to a positive outlook on life.
With peace and gratitude,
Bill
Affirmations: Who Needs Them Anyway?
If you have read anything about me or my work, you will certainly know that positive affirmations are an important part of my work. Where I may differ from others is that positive affirmations alone are not very powerful. Sure, they are better than negative affirmations but we need a little more to make them stick.
I put them to the test back in summer as I read something from Napoleon Hill in which he stated that you should do them 12 times a day. I have always tried to practice them at least 3 times a day and then when I think about it during the day. In the July time frame, I grabbed an index card and marked on it each time I did the affirmations. I did at least 12 affirmations each day for six straight months.
Was it worth it?
You bet it was! I learned a very valuable lesson. Just getting yourself to state the affirmation has an immediate effect on your emotional state. I recall a few times I was upset or down a bit and going through the affirmations helped me feel a little better. I also believe it helped me stay focused on my goals and keep them in the forefront of my mind’s eye.
Are affirmations for everyone?
I believe they are. When you affirm something, it is as if you are changing your belief system by “tricking” it into something that isn’t real, YET. However, just affirming something doesn’t make it so. Oh, NO, not by any stretch of the imagination. You can affirm, “I am happy” thousands of times a day and still by miserable. The key is to make them real enough so you can FEEL them. Here are a few tips for you to consider as you write your affirmations out:
1) Use “I AM” as often as possible. Those words are some of the most powerful words that can be spoken.
2) Keep them clear and concise.
3) Use positive words, not the negative. For example, state “I AM rich both mentally and physically.” rather than “I AM not poor.”
4) State them with conviction.
5) Say the out loud.
6) Say them during activity. Plan them during a walk around the block, exercise at the gym or stand in your room moving your arms and legs to increase the energy of your affirmations.
If you have any questions about your affirmations, don’t hesitate to send me a direct message. Here’s to you and your affirmations!
With peace and much gratitude,
Bill
Why? Why? Why?
There are a number of debilitating words we have to watch out for. The first ones that come to my mind are”I Can’t”, “Why me?”, “I am just unlucky” and words like that.
We have to be very, very careful when we include them in our day-to-day vocabulary. I was on a business trip today in Chicago and while I was having breakfast, the news was covering the school stabbing yesterday (4/9/14). Non stop the news rattled off that 22 kids were stabbed and all I could think was that this is becoming a weekly occurrence. It’s still early in the investigation but I wonder if it is yet another story about bullying or just another kid suffering from depression.
We simply have to do something for out kids. We have to step up and pull together and give them tools to deal with the pressures of life today. When I was growing up there wasn’t any social media, cell phones, smart phones, YouTube videos and ways to get information out quickly to the masses. I believe this makes it much harder for our kids than we were ever faced with. I can’t imagine what I would feel like if others posted hurtful, mean things about me via social networks back then.
I feel I had pretty high self-esteem but I never was tested the way the kids are today. So, instead of asking ourselves, “Why?” Let’s ask a different question, “How?” As in, “How may I serve” or “What can I do to help.” Those are much more empowering words than “Why” because we probably will never, ever really understand what makes people do horrible things to others. I simply do not include “why” in my vocabulary any longer. If I accidentally say it, I usually immediately catch myself and change it on the spot.
Do you want to help kids build high self-esteem to combat the negative things they are bombarded with today? Do you want to make a difference? If you do, join me. Send me a direct email and we can collaborate together to see what comes up.
Together we CAN and WILL make a difference. Join me today!
With peace and gratitude,
Bill
A Negative Mind Will Never Give You a Positive Life
There is only one thing that we truly have control of, our minds. We choose our thoughts every single day whether we like it or not. With our minds producing up to 50,000 thoughts a day, we really need to pay very close attention to them. While we are only aware of about 2,000 thoughts a day, that leaves a lot of thoughts that go unchecked.
Now I know we are all challenged with negative things pretty much every day and there really isn’t anything we can do about it. But, that’s okay. The key is not to stay in that negative state for too long.
One thing is for certain in these times of everyone’s struggles and stories about bullying getting way out of control, we must do something about our thoughts right now. We can no longer ignore the negative thoughts that often dominate our thoughts. That is why I wrote STINKIN’ THINKIN’ STINKS. My thoughts were to create something to help children with their thinking and build positive techniques they can use a lifetime. What I didn’t expect was that so many adults found the book to be a great source to help them. Boy, I didn’t see that one coming!
Join me today in keeping our negative thoughts in check while converting the negative STINKIN’ THINKIN’ to something more positive. Check out my exercise called, Take Out Your STINKIN’ Trash for some ideas about how to track your negative thinking so you can become aware of them. Then change them!
With peace and much gratitude,
Bill