Personal Growth and Development

High self esteem is an extremely important characteristic of all highly successful people. Without building high levels of self esteem you are unlikely to see yourself as being worthy of success or happiness, and as a result will never truly try your hardest to achieve it.

High self esteem will give you the courage to keep going when things get tough, and believe in yourself when others say you will never accomplish anything. Developing and building self esteem is therefore one of the most important and valuable things you could ever do for yourself. Unfortunately, the value of self esteem is often overlooked, yet the truth is we could all improve our level of self esteem in some way or another.

Have you ever given the phrase, “What you believe, you can achieve” much consideration? If that is really true then why are so many people not living the life they truly want?

One of the reasons that most people aren’t really living the life they truly want is because they don’t understand how their beliefs got into their heads in the first place. Why do you believe what you believe?

You may think that enthusiasm and motivation go hand in hand, but that’s not necessarily true. You can be incredibly enthusiastic about your goals, but not sufficiently motivated to take action so it does you little good.

One good way to get motivated is by observing others that are successful in life. Seeing or reading about people overcoming challenges can give you the urge to push forward yourself, and that’s a great way to pump up your motivation. However, external motivation is temporary in nature - especially when you encounter an intimidating obstacle - leaving you constantly seeking more and more inspiration from others.

Have you ever heard of positive imagery? A lot of people use positive imagery to help motivate themselves to do well in any situation, no matter what they are going through or how unmotivated they feel. You can use this sort of imagery when you are at work, at home, or just about in any situation. The idea is to picture yourself, your surroundings, and the way that you will react and respond to certain things in a positive manner. For instance, if you are having a bad day and you want to just run away you can picture yourself in a calm and soothing environment, allowing for those sensations to take over the negative ones.

Why develop a positive mental attitude?

Well, if you look around at the high achievers in this world…in any field, you will find nearly always that they display a positive mental attitude to their field of success. They may do this knowingly or otherwise but simply put you will get much more success if you do the same.

Here are a few qualities that successful people with a positive mental attitude display which you can emulate with a bit of effort:

The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitude of mind. - William James (1842-1910)

My favourite understanding of the word attitude is a mental filter through which we process our thoughts and view the world. People who filter their thoughts through a negative screen will view the world as a dark, hostile place filled with doom and gloom. Filter those exact same thoughts through a positive screen and all of a sudden the world becomes a bright happy place filled adventure and opportunity.

Our attitudes towards things

You don’t realize it yet, but in a few short minutes you are going to know what makes a genius tick. First, a simple quiz…which genius made all of the following statements?

• “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
• “Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won’t work.”
• “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
• “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.”