Success – It’s All A Matter Of Mindset!

by Maria Khalife
“The way we see the problem is the problem.”
~ Stephen R. Covey

Each one of us has an internal monitor which keeps track of what is going on in our lives at all times. It functions like a judge, a courthouse consultant, and a jury. But sometimes, the interpretation of events can become a bit skewed, and our sense of events drains off into negative feelings, like anger, depression or superiority.

What happens inside of your mind is called a mindset. It’s the sum total of the thoughts you think, the feelings you feel, and the self-talk you generate as a result. If your mindset isn’t governed and guided, your success can be seriously limited.

An undisciplined mindset can sit in judgment on you and here’s what that looks like inside your mind. “You lost the opportunity in that deal. This means you are a loser.” “My boss’ criticism is stinging. This means I’m not good enough at what I do.” “John talks like a fool sometime; this means I’m better than he is.”

When you are focused on Be the Change, your mindset switches to growth mode and it sound like this inside your mind. “Her presentation looked more professional than mine. What can I learn to improve?” “My teammate isn’t making his quota this month. What can I do to help him do better?”

If you traditionally permit your mindset to be in Judgment Mode, I’d like to encourage you to Be the Change and switch to the Growth Mode style. You will be able to maintain the motivation and thus achieve your goals more easily. You’ll become a business success in less time. Here are some ideas to help you achieve the switch.

Step 1. Tune in to Your Inner Voice

When you encounter a challenge at work, does your own inner voice tell you things like “Your boss will think you’re incompetent” or “It’s going to become obvious really quickly here that you have no clue what you’re doing” or “Keep a low profile and they’ll never know how incapable you are.”

Listen to what your Inner Voice is saying to you. Write the words down. See if you can classify them objectively – like, critical, accusatory, blaming or fearful. You don’t need to do anything yet, simply observe and classify.

Step 2. Make Yourself Aware that Your Thoughts Can Change

Once you become aware of how you are talking to yourself, and if you realize it’s some form of judgment, you can make the decision to sweeten things up by consciously deciding to learn how to switch into Growth Mode. Simply ask yourself “How would I view this if I was trying to learn from it?” “Or what is the I-can-grow-from-this lesson for me here?”

Step 3. Practice Making the Switch

Here are a few examples of a Judgmental Mindset reaction and the change to a Growth Mode mindset.

JUDGMENT: We’re in an expansion mode and I’m so pushed for time!

GROWTH: I’ve got additional responsibilities these days. I wonder how I can streamline some other processes, or maybe delegate responsibilities to others on the team to meet the expansion goals?

JUDGMENT: Joe’s behavior is dragging the team down. Can’t he see how he’s holding us all behind?

GROWTH: I can see that Joe doesn’t understand how he’s impacting us. I’ll take him out to lunch and find out what the real problem is. I’ll bet I can help him catch up.

JUDGMENT: Our Fourth Quarter Sales forecast is falling behind. What did the boss have in mind setting it so high in this economy?

GROWTH: It’s obvious we’re coming in short on the forecast for this quarter. I think I’ll get the team together to brainstorm innovative ways to exceed it that we haven’t thought of yet.

Step 4. Creating the Growth Mode Mindset habit
I you consciously adopt this Be the Change from judgment to growth, your mindset will form a new habit. Over time, you’ll work more from a “Let me have that challenge. I can do it” perspective. You will be in full learning mode. Your job will reflect how you are willing to give it another go and improve on your first attempts.

As a member of the senior staff, you can see the value of employing more of a Growth Mode mindset. I want to remind you that it isn’t necessary for you to go it alone. All corporations have staff that supports the vision of the CEO. For you to play the best role you can in this, simply determine that you will be a learner, that you will persevere, that you will always be improving your contribution at work and that you’ll help those down line from you to learn this too.

“The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.”
~ Stephen R. Covey

9 Ways to Curb Your Appetite

by Maria Khalife

A well governed appetite is the greater part of liberty.
~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Our appetites come from an inner urge that tells us to enjoy.  Food brings enjoyment.  So do lots of other things, but in our world today, food seems to have ascended to the priority when it comes to fulfilling our urge for enjoyment.  You can use the following tricks, tips and techniques for curbing your appetite to stay in balance.

1. Eat a high protein breakfast. Protein will give you energy that will last for many hours, and in some University studies, eating a high protein breakfast allowed the dieters to eat fewer calories throughout the day.

2. Take the stairs. Keep tempting foods downstairs in a basement storage or upstairs in a small fridge.  Often, the idea of walking upstairs or downstairs helps you to make a wiser choice. 

3. Get plenty of sleep.  If you’re not getting enough sleep, your hormones will fluctuate inordinately and will affect your appetite, making it harder to satisfy.  Get some sleep.

4. Smell something pleasant.  Here’s an interesting scientific discovery: when scientists scanned people eating different foods, they discovered they reacted the same way to a pleasant aroma as they did to fat in their mouths.  Sniff something wonderful! 

5. Use a new, smaller plate. And no heaping it up.  Eat the smaller amount and sit with it for a moment. You’ll be surprised at how satisfied you feel. This is a great tip for curbing your appetite.  And when you’re at a restaurant, pack half the meal to take home before you begin to eat the rest.

6. Tell a story.  When your food arrives, let your friends begin to eat while you entertain them with a fabulous story.  Once they’ve finished eating, you quit too.

7. Sit down. Make even snack times a formal occasion. Sit down, use a plate and utensils. You’ll either opt out, or if you do eat the snack, you’ll want less at the next large meal.

8. Super soup. Begin each lunch or dinner with a small cup of soup.  It automatically satiates your appetite, and will decrease the amount of calories during your meal.

9. Limit your choices. When you see too large of a variety of choices, you want to try more things. An example of this is a smorgasbord.  You know what I mean.  Keep it more simple.

You can truly enjoy yourself, enjoy a wide variety of foods and flavors without overeating.  Keep the idea of enjoyment alive as you eat, and you’ll be curbing your appetite and becoming satisfied a lot sooner than you did in the past.

Controlling The Chemistry of Emotional Eating

by Maria Khalifé

There was a time in our civilization when eating was done only for survival. In our times, eating is so plentiful that it’s led to eating inappropriately, called emotional eating because we are angry, bored, stressed, frustrated, down in the dumps, watching TV, too busy, and not busy enough, getting together with friends. It’s no longer about survival; it’s about emotion these days which involves brain chemistry. Brain chemicals influence your emotions but your reason for eating as well, for example:

Norepinephrine: This is the fight-or-flight chemical.

Serotonin: This neurotransmitter makes you feel good and is targeted by antidepressants.

Dopamine: This is the built in pleasure and reward system. It’s keenly sensitive to addictions; because it helps you feel no pain.

 GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid): This amino acid anesthetizes you so that excess weight can disappear responsibly.

 Nitric oxide: This neuropeptide helps calm you. It relaxes the blood vessels of the body.

Balancing these chemicals requires a balanced diet. But if you have a diet in which sugar predominates, for example, you’ve got a good chance for becoming addicted to serotonin.

If you become more aware of your emotions, and you work to eat a more-balanced choice from all of the food groups, your hormone level will stabilize and your desire to eat the wrong foods will automatically return to normal.

Here are some tips to help you achieve normalcy:

1. Use foods to your advantage. Foods have different effects on your mind and your digestive system. Try turkey to cut carb cravings. Turkey contains tryptophan, which increases serotonin to improve your mood and combat depression and helps you resist cravings for simple carbs. Try salmon for moods. Omega-3 fatty acids, which are found in certain fish (including salmon, canned tuna, halibut, and mahi-mahi), have long been known as brain boosters and cholesterol clearers, but they’ve also convincingly been shown to help with depression in pregnant women. Depression contributes to hedonistic and emotional eating.

2. Savor the flavor. If you’re going to eat something that’s bad for you, really get into enjoying it. Take a piece of dark (70% cocoa) chocolate, for example, to relieve stress and to reward yourself with something sweet. It’s OK to eat what you think of as “bad food” occasionally.

3. Get enough sleep. This can really help control appetite. If your body doesn’t get the seven to eight hours of sleep it requires each night, it has to find ways to compensate for neurons not secreting the normal amounts of serotonin or dopamine. And it does that by craving sugary foods that will give you an immediate release of serotonin and dopamine.

Use these tips to get your emotional eating under control and you’ll be on your way to a more balanced way of life.

Controlling Personalities

By Maria Khalifé

There is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so. ~ Wm. Shakespeare

When you understand that life is one of the most luscious learning experiences, that all you experience comes from how you think, that you can improve the level of what you think about and improve this experience, at this point you become relaxed, in a harmonious state, peaceful about your life and happy with everything because of your conscious recognition about what is really happening. This is something controlling personalities need to learn.

Without this understanding, you live a life with much fear, hard work, and the struggle to gain security, harmony, and well-being through living in the box of control. You will work hard to maintain this control. You will exercise this control over the money you earn, the relationships in your life, the status you find acceptable, or, you may find this understanding through your inner world using mental practice and discipline.

Some people are control freaks, and rigidly control “things external” to themselves because they don’t understand their thought governs all they experience. Control freaks might appear wealthy and healthy and happy, but I know they live in constant fear of losing control.

Real understanders (described in the first paragraph) isn’t obsessed with control because they know that through persistence, they’ll get whatever they think about to the point of the absolute conviction they already have it. They exercise “control” over themselves and they have no fear of losing control.

Controlling personalities expend tremendous time, energy and peace of mind striving hard to stay invested in keeping control over all their stuff – to keep all those plates spinning and not crashing to the ground because they think their peace, freedom and success stem from these controllable things.

There is a new world of possibility outside this box of control, if we could train ourselves to see it. Krishnamurti wrote about the box of control:

Let us for a moment, imaginatively at least, look over the world from a point of view which will reveal the inner workings and the outer workings of man, his creations and his battles; and if you can do that imaginatively for a moment, what do you see spread before you?

You see man imprisoned by innumerable walls, walls of religion, of social, political and national limitations, walls created by his own ambitions, aspirations, fears, hopes, security, prejudices, hate and love. Within these barriers and prisons he is held, limited by the colored maps of national boundaries, racial antagonisms, class struggles and cultural group distinctions. You see man throughout the world imprisoned, enclosed by the limitations, the walls of his own creation. Through these walls and through these enclosures he is trying to express what he feels and what he thinks, and within these he functions with joy and with sorrow.

So you see man throughout the world as a prisoner, imprisoned within the walls of his own creation, within the walls of his own making; and through these enclosures, through these walls of environment, through the limitation of his ideas, ambitions and aspirations – through these he is trying to function, sometimes successfully, and sometimes with hideous struggle.

And the man who succeeds in making himself comfortable in the prison we call successful, whereas the man who succumbs in the prison we call a failure. But both success and failure are within the walls of the prison.

To someone thinking inside of the control box, actual freedom looks a lot like being out of control and it scares them. When you begin to explore the freedom of the understander instead of this being-in-control stance, you learn to adhere to life’s rules and the fear dissolves.

Letting go of our old way is frightening. Richard Bach wrote about letting go in his wonderful book “Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah.” Just read Chapter One here, and you’ll see what I mean.

My wish for you is that you become an understander; that you discover life’s laws so that you can escape what other controlling personalities cannot, and enter into greater health, wealth, success and harmony. Christmas is a time that exemplifies this bettered condition, and one of the Great Teachers around whom Christmas is celebrated has left us plenty of proverbs, parables and examples of how to enjoy life as it was intended.

Choosing Mental Freedom

By Maria Khalifé

How would you define mental freedom? What does it feel like? What would it take to live your life with mental freedom as your foundation? Do you know what it takes to achieve such self-mastery? If you have not defined what mental freedom means to you, how it feels, what it’s like to have it as your foundation – if you don’t have full self-mastery, you are living a slave’s existence.

You can change.

When we are children, we depend solely on the input from our parents, siblings, family, friends, teachers, etc. to guide and protect us. During these formative years, we sometimes form ideas that only serve us then. But some of us carry these formative year ideas into our adulthood, and then become upset because they no longer work.

One of the things about which we are frequently unaware is the power of our thinking. During childhood, we entertain thoughts of fear, of distrust, of resentment – and, this kind of thinking melts into the background of our lives. We add big goals to the mix and needless to stay, regardless of how sublime our goals are, they don’t mix with the old habits of fear, etc. They only set up a big conflict. It’s a bit like thinking the love of money is the root of evil and still desiring to become fabulously wealthy, eh? It’s a massive conflict. You would have to consciously numb out your mind to achieve success with that negativity in your foundation.

The majority of parents have not been told about this kind of interference, so most children aren’t mentally aware of the dichotomy inside themselves. It takes self-discovery to, shall we say, wake up and smell the roses? When you find that right book, work through that right therapy, listen to that right person share their ideas, you tend to smack yourself upside your head and say “Now why didn’t I figure this out earlier?” That’s fruitless. You learn it when you learn it! Be grateful when you learn it. That gratitude will help you take the next steps.

Your limitations and your successes are only controlled by you.

No one can give you mental freedom except yourself. Oh, there are claims out there, but unless it’s you doing the work, nothing’s going to happen. If you have hope, courage and determination; if you persevere in your dreams and honor your own wishes, wants, and desires, you are fostering mental freedom. And, if you are experiencing depression, anger, anxiety, worry, that’s because of only you, too. Once you understand this, you will auto-magically know that mental freedom is not about how you look, where you live, what you know, who your family is. Mental freedom is only about you making choices for yourself regardless of what is your right now condition happens to be. You can decide to exercise your creativity, inspiration and determination now or you can decide not to.

If you’d like to experience more mental freedom, try answering these questions. Am I opening myself up to new experiences? Do I appreciate my right now moments? Do I allow my own sense of limitation hold me back? Have I been making excuses for a life that is less-than? Am I prepared to meet defeat in order to enjoy success? Your answers will tell you want you need to do and once you do it with brutal honesty, mental freedom is yours.

Hidden Factors in NOT Reaching Goals

The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul.
~ G. K. Chesterton

Do you know what the core skills are for successful goal creation?  Here are some clues:

• Identifying what you want
• Create action steps for creating it
• Analyze the results you get
• Make a renewed plan based on your results

So if you were doing all that, why might you still not reaching goals on schedule? One of the main reasons folks are not reaching goals is very simple: They don’t realize how long it takes!

Persistence (or perseverance) is one of the key elements in goal achievement. And, luckily for us, we were born with the capability to persevere (or persist,) so I’m hoping that since you now know this, you will strongly consider how long it might take for you to achieve your goals this year.

Will you have to change strategies, adjust time frames, turn in a different direction, or even change jobs to achieve your goals? Yes, of course! All of those are possibilities, but because you are one heck of a persistent person, you take all those in stride.

Here are some ways to help you to persevere for all the time it may take you to achieve your goals:

1. Ease up on yourself! 

Now that you know it’s going to more than likely take more time than you thought, why not give yourself so much time that you’ll surprise yourself and get it finished ahead of time?

Your goals aren’t the be-all, end-all, do-all. They’re just a target to keep you on the path; to keep you focused on achieving; to be sure you are using all that you are capable of using. Being the fullness of what you presently understand your current self and its level of unfoldment to be is so much easier than slaving away for some arbitrary time line, don’t you think?

2. Double your time frame

We’ve led up to this one: you aren’t giving yourself enough time which creates stress and a sense of failure. So give yourself double the time you think, or heck, triple the time! With a sense of ease, who knows what kind of strategies might come up in your imagination?

3. Focus on Enjoyment

I believe that the quickest way to earn future rewards is to be sure you are enjoying each one of your right-now moments. And if your mind just said “nah nah,” I challenge you to spend one week focused on enjoyment. You might be pleasantly surprised to discover goal achievement while you’re having fun! Instead of focusing on not reaching goals, you’ll be enjoying goal success.