I Have Reduced My Frustration. I avoid lots of frustrating situations because I plan around the. If I have covered the frustrating details, I can go through a lot of the day on “autopilot” and spend my time thinking and creating.

I Have A Sense Of Achievement. When you cannot measure your progress, you will feel like you are going nowhere. I have a time management plan that includes smart goal setting techniques and effective time management skills that allow me to achieve and measure my progress toward a goal.

I Enjoy A Sense Of Increased Self Esteem. It was the “shoulds” that always kept me feeling as if I was failure. As I implemented my time management system, I learned to overcome procrastination, to set goals and prioritize them. As I consistently performed I developed the desire to do more and be more. I have greater confidence and have learned how to improve low self esteem.

I Have An Increased Energy Level. The cost of worrying about undone things, is taxing on my mind and body. As I have implemented various time management tips, I have increased my productivity. I carry around less mental baggage which results in less of that feeling of unfinished business. I feel better and want to do more each day.

Unlike chores, getting projects done has a long term, positive effect, on my quality of life. As I have gotten more of these projects accomplished, I have been able to achieve a greater quality of life for my family as well.

It is my hope, that with a little time management training, you can develop a time management system and reap similar rewards to those I have set out here.

Why not give it a try?

Related posts:

1. Creating A Powerful Time Management System
2. Need A Time Management System? Use These Tools For Effective Time Management
3. Time Management Tools Increase Productivity

In Part One of this series, we examined how we could alter our feelings by simply changing the way that we stand, speak and smile.  Motion creates emotion.  In Part Two, we discovered that whatver we focus upon, real or imagined, creates the feeling associated with it.  Feelings, over time, manifest themselves as reality.

Today, we will examine the need to set aside some time each day to work on yourself.  Each day, you are bombarded with negative feedback from friends, co-workers, bosses, the media and yourself.  You have to set aside some special time each day to cleanse yourself of all the crap heaped upon you by this world. 

How Much Time Do You Give Yourself Each Day?

I guess a better question would be ask how much time to you give to others each day?  

In our culture, we suffer under the delusion that there is not enough time in the day to give to ourselves. 

I am so busy.  I don’t have any time for myself!!!

 I hereby throw the red “BULLSHIT!!” flag.

 How much time do you give each day;

•  To the job?
• To your friends, their problems and projects?
• Watching reruns on TV?
• Surfing porn?
• Updating Facebook?
• Playing online poker?
• Playing Warcraft?

Now, all of these activities seem to be worth a certain amount (perhaps a lot) of your time. Right?

You mean to tell me that the advertiser sponsoring the rerun of Third Rock is more worthy of your time than you (or your family) are????

(Hold on, let me get out my spare red “BULLSHIT!!!” flag.)

Okay.  I didn’t think so.  Therein is the myth of not enough time.  You have enough time but choose to give it to others instead of yourself.  However, If you give all of your spare time to others and reserve none for yourself, you are going to run out of anything to give.  That is when your work, your relationships and your self esteem begin to suffer.

How Can You Increase The Awareness Necessary To Change Your Feelings?

You have to take time each day to examine how well you are doing with respect to the things that we have discussed above.  Let’s review, shall we?

• How do I carry my body?  When I look in the mirror, do I look and sound like the kind of person I want to be?
• What am I focusing on?  Am I focusing on my problems or my solutions?    Am I focusing on what I want, or what I don’t want?
• What am I saying to and about myself. What kind of questions am I asking of myself?  What kind of affirmations am I using?

Once you have figured out how you are and what you are doing, you need to consciously practice creating the state that you want instead.  During your personal time each day, you will consciously decide how to stand, speak and act.  You will create a positive focus by focusing on what you do want instead of what you lack.  You will adopt an attitude of gratitude, ask solution oriented questions and substitute negative affirmations and self talk with empowering ones.

Give yourself the gift of thirty minutes to an hour each day to work on implementing some of the concepts that we have talked about here.  In the interim, keep an eye out for my series on how to structure and spend this quality time.

Related posts:

1. The Science Of Feeling Good: A Ritual For Success (Part Two)
2. The Science Of Feeling Good: A Ritual For Success (Part One)
3. How to Turn “I Have No Life” Into Success

How Do You Carry Your Body?

Let’s pretend we are in community theatre for a moment.  If I, the director, asked you to play the role of a depressed victim, how would you play it?  I would take a slumped over posture, cast my eyes downward and speak in a soft, slow voice.  How about you?

What if I asked you to play a happy, confident hero.  I would expect you to stand up straight, speak loudly with confidence and smile most of the time.  Wouldn’t you agree.

Tony Robbins says that “…emotion is created by your motion.”  The manner in which you carry yourself will generate the emotions associated with it.

But, I don’t feel like doing that.

Quit making excuses for yourself and…..For God’s Sake, JUST DO IT.

Eventually, you will feel like doing that. It all has to do with muscle memory.

Just as a martial artist repeats side kicks, over and over, you train yourself to stand, speak and smile in a certain way by training the facial, back and chest muscles necessary to stand, smile and project a happy confident demeanor.

What Do You Focus Upon?

As a man thinketh, so is he. – James Allen

Let’s play pretend.  I want you to, just for a moment, to pretend that a close friend, elative or child has died and you are staring at them in the casket.  If someone you love HAS recently died, my condolences.  Think back to when you stared down at him in his casket.

Dwell on it.

Visualize every detail.

A little longer.

Now…..

How do you feel?  (Not how DID you feel.  How DO you feel right now?)

I’ll bet you are sad and depressed.

This is because whatever you focus on, real or imagined, generates the associated feelings.  If you hold onto those feelings long enough, your body and mind respond, at a subconscious level, to make those feelings a reality.

Focus = Feelings = Create reality

This is why people can make themselves sick (and well).  This is why when you are feeling bad, you tend to spiral downward, out of control.  This is why anti-depressants work (or don’t work).  A psychiatrist friend of mine described it like this:

Antidepressants don’t make you happy.  They either give you the ability to change your feelings so that you spiral in the right direction, or they don’t work because your beliefs and feelings are too deeply seated.

Most people focus on their problems such as:

Why am I such a fat ass?

When they should be focusing on the solution to the problem:

What can I do to lose weight?

The problem is that when you constantly repeat the wrong questions to yourself over a long period of time, you develop a habit to think in terms of your problems which are self defeating, instead of the solutions, which are empowering.

Another empowering technique is to focus on what you love instead of what you hate.  This is commonly referred to as:

An Attitude of Gratitude

What are you excited about?  Who do you love?  Visualize that which makes you happy.  It may be hard, but recite aloud the things for which you are grateful even if there aren’t very many(yet).

When you are talking to yourself, what kind of words do you use?  Depending on the word, you can create positive or negative feelings.  For instance if I were to say to you:

You seem like a real asshole.  You made a stupid mistake.  Dumb ass!!

How does that make you feel?  Perhaps you are angry, upset, sad, embarrassed.  What is, instead, I said:

You seem like you are having a bad day.  Maybe you made an error in judgment?

I doubt you will respond with the feelings of anger you expressed in response to the first statement.

Whether these statements come from a third person or you say them to yourself, the feeling that you elicit are, nevertheless, the same.  Remember,

Whatever you focus on, real or imagined, generates the associated feelings

As a result, to begin to change the way you feel about your circumstances, you use positive words and ask solution based questions.

In addition to the questions you ask of yourself and the words you use in doing so, you need to examine what kind of affirmations that you use on a daily basis.  Now you are probably saying:

I don’t use affirmations

Yes you do.

You just don’t realize it.

Take a look at these and see if any of them sound familiar:

• Dammit.  Everything I touch goes wrong!!!
• No matter how hard I try, I always lose.
• I’m too stupid to ever have a job like that.
• I’m way too ugly to ever go out with a hot babe like her
• I can’t seem to stop eating
• I can’t stop surfing porn
• I think my wife is falling out of love with me.

Yes?  They all sound familiar in one way or another, don’t they?

You see, everyone has affirmations and they repeat them to themselves day after day.  These affirmations can either victimize or empower you.

Where your affirmations victimize you, take charge of them in the following manner:

Stop yourself whenever you catch yourself repeating a negative affirmation;

1. Turn it into a positive, solution based affirmation; and,
2. Supplement it with intentional positive affirmations that you choose based upon the things that make you happy.

For example:

1. Dammit!!! Everything I touch goes wrong.  STOP.
2. I have had some bad luck in the past, but this time I will read the instructions and get help so that my project turns out as planned.
3. I have plenty of friends to help me and I am thankful for them.

By reframing negative affirmations into positive ones, you generate a feeling of hope and empowerment instead of helplessness.  As with any exercise, at first it will seem difficult to do.

But try this:  Find a picture of yourself as a small child.  The next time you say something mean and nasty to yourself, say it again to that little child.   I’ll bet it seems pretty mean to say that sort of thing to a small child.  Well, that small child is you…..and he/she doesn’t deserve that type of verbal abuse, right?

Start with your feelings.  If you are feeling bad, ask yourself what you are thinking about right now.

• Are thinking of a problem or a solution?
• Are you using positive or negative words to describe yourself?
• Are you ritualistically using negative affirmations to reinforce the negative feelings?

In Part Three, we will examine the need to set aside some time each day for you to work on yourself.  Before reading Part Three, I would ask that you take some time to determine where you are spending your time now.  How much time do you set aside for yourself each day?  How are you using that time, if at all?

Back to The Science Of Feeling Good:  A Ritual For Success (Part One)

Related posts:

1. The Science Of Feeling Good: A Ritual For Success (Part Three)
2. The Science Of Feeling Good: A Ritual For Success (Part One)
3. Controlling Thoughts With Expectation