Self Improvement

Something Can Always Be Done – As long as you are alive you can do something worthwhile.
Pre-Written Paths – Learning what God has in store for you.
Choices And Paths – The choices that you make and how they affect your life.
Good Choices – The choices that you have and what difference it makes in your life.
The Effects Of Right Or Wrong Choices – Make sure you are doing your best in all part of your life.
Staying On The Right Path – Keeping on target.
Faith – Examples of how you had faith in yourself in the past and how you should have faith in yourself now.
Remove The Rough Edge – Take away those bad thoughts and words from your life.
Planning Patterns – Planning your day can help you become more relaxed.
Our Word Of Honor – Keeping your word.
Your Self Worth – About you and how you can believe in yourself with the help of God.
Use Misery To Spur You On – The miserable feeling that we get can actually be an asset when trying to move forward.
Self Encouragement – Ideas about encouraging yourself.
Visualise – Make a mental image of what you want.

Something Can Always Be Done

As long as you can use your hands, feet, think or talk you can do something about your situation in life. This sentence reminds me of those wonderful people who send me Christmas cards every year. The cards have paintings on them from people who paint with their feet or their mouth because they have no arms. The paintings are beautiful and when I first found out how they were painted I was amazed and stared at the paintings in astonishment. These painters are very good at what they do and they show a real courage that many people who have all their facilities and limbs are often lacking.

Have a good look around you, inspire yourself to do something. A positive attitude and the help of God can make big changes in your life and future. If you have a home that is run down then get to work and try to fix what you can. What you can do may be small but every bit helps in getting your home back to order. Try putting a few dollars or cents aside every week to buy something that can help fix up your home. A good place to look for cheap good quality equipment, paint and nails and the like is at a garage sale. Look in your local paper for information about people selling goods in their garages on weekends, and an other sales that sell secondhand materials.

Try to do something to help your family, find out if your children need help with school work. If you know that you are not able to work for a few years you could consider home schooling, now that is a real challenge – I did it, and the rewards far outshine the hassles.

There is always something that you can do to give you that feeling of self worth back and be helpful to others at the same time. And remember “Keeping busy, keeps your mind active” on positive things.

Pre-Written Paths

First when we are small children we have no real path because we follow the path our parents guide us on. We are not decision makers at this period of our lives. We make small decisions but those are mostly made within the boundaries set by our parents or guardians. At this time we are learning how to grow and learn to take charge of our lives. By the time we get into our early teens we start to make more decisions for ourselves, we make more choices which influence our lives. This is the period when our paths start to develop.

These are the early stages which will affect us according to how we react to different situations that are presented to us. Many temptations will be offered as well as many good opportunities. I was not in an ideal family when I was a teenager and many temptations were thrown at my feet, sadly I took a few of them up. But I can also remember good opportunities which were available to me, some I ignored and a few I took up. It is easy for us who are not teenagers now to have regrets about this period of our lives when we remember the good opportunities that we passed up.

From 0 to 12 years old a child needs a good solid spiritual foundation under them. This foundation gives the child courage, faith in life, faith in God and parents, and faith in oneself, and the much needed courage to get safely through the teenage years. Abuses and a toxic upbringing can cause a child to lack courage, faith, hope and confidence.

This can be the most vital part of a persons life, being a teenager. This is the period where we are guided toward many good things, if we are “blinded” by distractions then we will find that we will not see the good things being offered to us or the full worth of them. When I look back on my teenage years I am sometimes amazed that I ignored some options that would have been easy to have taken on, but ignore them I did. It is no good looking back and wondering “What could have been?”, it is far better to use what we learned to help teach our own young not to make the same mistakes. Many good opportunities I ignored because my friends would think I was square or because I was scared to take on the challenge. I wanted to be popular just like everyone else did. We all have some excuse for not taking the right option but I am pleased that I am somewhat wiser now.

So my statement here is that the teenage years is the period when we form our first branch of paths for the future. According to the decisions that you make or the choices that you choose at this period of your life you will head in the direction “of your own choice”. This is when we get confused at life and some of the challenges that are presented to us. If they are bad or hard to overcome we blame them on fate, bad luck or God. The reality is that we have come up against something that we don’t know how to deal with, so we have to learn to deal with it in a positive manner. If we choose a negative course then we will take a path that will bring that event up or something similar to us again. This is much the same as being in a car and going around in circles over and over again.

Have you ever wondered why you or someone else always seem to be dealing with the same problems over and over again? Have you noticed that some peoples lives seem to be just one big struggle? Or why some people never change their lives and they always seem to have nothing ever happen to them, they seem to be stuck in a time warp. This is why people say:

“If you do nothing, then nothing will ever happen to you”
“If you don’t try then you will get nowhere”
“How can you succeed if you don’t take a chance?”

To deal with a problem that keeps resurfacing again and again you have to treat it differently than you have in the past. Make a decision and try something new, something positive and take note and see if the problem arises again. If it does then you have to try something else, don’t worry it will disappear and when it does new challenges will surface. But as you knock away more challenges you will notice that they seem to get easier to remove from your life. There are two reasons for this:

You become stronger mentally. You have shown that you have the courage to deal with the problem.
Your choices have led you onto a more happier path.

Never feel like giving up with those resurfacing challenges, take them on and work to overcome them. It is in your best interest to keep trying. You will not regret doing this

I believe these pre-written paths come from heaven. This is Gods way of saying to us that we are the ones that choose our own destination in life, we can also choose our own destruction if we do not choose wisely. Sadly mankind often has panicked when challenges have been presented to him and he or she makes a mistake and instead of learning from the mistake which teaches him or her to make another choice, he or she starts looking everywhere to lay the blame for the mistake. This is where we can blame God, fate or luck. We become weaker inside each time we lay the blame elsewhere and each time we fail the challenge. Internally we know the truth and who really is to blame. Humans don’t like to face their own weaknesses and faults. But isn’t it so much better to have failed and tried again, than to have failed, blamed and become stagnant? Humans need to face challenges to build up their self worth, if they do not then they just whither away with time.

When we pray we should consider thanking God for the good paths that we have been given. God clearly lays the paths of a good life before us. The bad life paths are ours to take should we choose to. We can direct ourselves in either direction depending on the things that we do during our life and the choices we make. During your life when you have chosen good paths you may not have realised that God put them there for you because He loves you and wants you to choose them, pray and let God know that you are thankful because it is the kind thing to do. When you pray for Gods Guidance you will be guided toward good paths that will help you and help others. Also good paths will lead you to do Gods will amongst the people on Earth.

The hard path, the path where you have to turn down temptations, is the best path to take for it will surely lead you to happiness. It is always easy to do bad, but the result is a bad life. It is hard to always do good because you have to turn away temptation, remember temptation doesn’t always look bad, but the result is still a bad life. Don’t be fooled into believing that money or power over people means that a person will have a good life or is having a good life. Take up the offer from Jesus Christ and take his hard path to happiness. Once you get there you will never regret it.

Choices And Paths

Your life is about the choices that you make, some choices you make out of habit, some because you think that a particular choice is the right choice to make at that particular time in your life. If you make a bad choice its not the end of the world, but we do have to live with the result of that choice. Often when we look at the result of a bad choice we may find some good in it, we may also find a better way to deal with the result of a bad choice. Bad choices are mistakes and mistakes are normal for all living creatures, animals would never be attacked, killed and eaten by other animals unless they made some sort of mistake. An animal will not make itself another animals lunch because it want to be its lunch, will it?

We humans make mistakes often, some affect our lives in major ways and some have little effect at all, some may even lead us to good fortune. Some mistakes may appear to have little or no affect on our lives, but further down the road of life something may change. We need to accept that mistakes are normal, and that better choices are the way to move away from the bad mistakes that we have made. With mental, physical and spiritual growth we will be able to make less mistakes and learn more about dealing with the past and future mistakes that affect our existence.

It is the after effect of a mistake that makes us unhappy, the result is not what we expected and we now have a new challenge to deal with or a situation that we feel very sorry about. We have to deal with a situation that we, unwillingly helped to create. This can be hard to mentally handle depending on how bad the mistake effects our life and the lives of others. We can change the after effect (feeling) of mistakes by looking at the mistake in a different manner. Once we understand that a mistake is something that we have done unintentionally then we can learn from the mistake and prepare to never make that kind of mistake again. If you do your best to ensure that the same type of mistake never happens to you again then you will not get the bad feeling that came with the first mistake and that’s a good positive thing for your life.

In general we try to make the best choices for ourselves and those who mean the most to us, unless of course we have mean thoughts and we are governed by greed and selfishness. So if we are trying to make the best choices we do it with the knowledge that we have at the time of the mistake. If our minds are not at a good thinking level then we may unintentionally make the wrong choice. So our intention should be to improve our thinking powers and knowledge so that when choices come our way (and they will) we can discern the best choice with a much better chance of success.

If our lives or minds are influenced by people (our choice of friends), drugs, alcohol and the like, we cannot expect to make the right choices for ourselves and for the total good of others. By limiting our influences or ideally removing our negative influences then we can then look at our choices in a much better way, we will be able to see the light at the end of the dark, gloomy tunnel and then react in a positive manner. Sometimes the choices that we have all look bad and we need a clear mind to study our choices and then make the decision carefully. Even then we may still make a bad choice and this would be a mistake, this is where we need a good clear thinking mind to honestly realise that the choice was a mistake and that’s all, no matter how bad the result was. How you react to the mistake is very important to your mental well being. Be positive that you can overcome any mistake.

It can be easy to learn from some mistakes immediately, if you make a mistake and you are hurt in the process, physically or mentally, the pain can burn deep enough into your mind so that you will not make the same mistake again. If somebody else is hurt (maybe someone that you love or a child) then you would feel guilty and this would ensure that you would not make the same mistake again. As you can see these mistakes carry some burden or pain which can cause you to remember easily the mistake that you made and normally how you make sure you don’t make that type of mistake in the future. But what of the mistakes that don’t carry a burden or make you feel pain?

Try to keep away from people who drum your mistakes into your head. Avoid their negative influence on your state of mind, for they will surely drag you down into the pits of despair and bring you unhappiness, which will in turn influence the future choices that you make. Many people like to feel important by offering you lots of free advice, these people may mean well but it has been my experience that they can cause more trouble by interfering, especially if they have not dealt with your particular problem before. These people may be your friends, people that you have known for a long time, these are not the credentials that they need to try to guide you, only you and God can do that.

This is how I listen to people, I hear what they have to say but I don’t react on it to start with, I think about the advice, even if this hurts their feelings. Some people can be deeply upset if they offer you advice and you don’t act on it immediately. They want to feel important and that their influence on your life is good and that you will use their suggestions without fail because you trust them. They may tell you “I only want the best for you”, if that’s the case then they can respect your ability to make the right decision for yourself. You can tell them that you will think on the advice that they have given you, but you need to take time to think about the situation before you can make the right choice. Thank them for their efforts. Try to keep this in mind, these people may never have experienced what you are experiencing now, they may not have learnt from their own mistakes, and the choice that they are trying to guide you to may be the wrong choice anyway.

Sometimes a group of people may try to influence your choices, be polite and thank them, and tell them that you will think about what they have said some more, no matter how much they may try to goad you to doing what they say is best. Be strong, this is another area where mental, physical and spiritual strength will help you out greatly. Their group logic may seem to make sense while you are with them, but it is good sense to get away from these influences and then think about what they have said and what you already know. Remember, your friends will not have to live with the results of your choices, only you will. Taking a long walk in the country, praying and meditating, will help you sort all the thoughts that are collecting in your head over the issue that’s bothering you. Praying for guidance can help greatly, if you give this method the time and patience it deserves you will receive good results.

If you look at big choices more carefully you may avoid some big mistakes during your lifetime.
So the choices that you make will take you on different paths to the future you desire.

If you take the time to think about peoples suggestions and your own thoughts about decisions that you have to make, then find the solution that suits you. You will find that this is a form of education where you learn from mistakes, find a solution from any problems that arise from the mistakes or find a way to stop you making that mistake again in the future. And the next time the same situation comes again you will be ready for it and you will react swiftly assuring that you don’t make the same mistake again. This speeds up your decision making process because you have learnt from past experiences.

Good Choices

I want you to have a good look at the list below. Read each item in the two list and think about the comparisons. Your life is made up of choices, these two lists show you some of the choices or results from choices. Think about them carefully!

Good Bad
Holiness Evil
Happy Miserable
Helpful Unhelpful
Positive Attitude Negative Attitude
Active Inactive
Motivated Unmotivated
Love Hate

As you can see from the two lists above one side is based on good things for you and the other is based on bad things. Your life revolves around the choices that you make which can be from either list. The choice is yours, you can choose items from either list and live with them. Many people seem to think that its okay to do bad things once in a while as long as they do many good things in between the bad things, this is not the case. Doing bad things will “always” guide you onto a path that will keep you from real happiness. Even small bad deeds will run you astray to some degree.

An example is a person leading a reasonably good life but smokes some marijuana once in a while, they think “Hey its cool, its only once in a while.” Then one day they get busted by the police. This person has a perfect police record, but now things have changed, it may seem like a small thing but once a person has been in trouble with the law people tend to think of them differently except those people who don’t do as the law says. The point here is that by doing (what a person may consider a small thing) something bad your life changes and not for the better. This person now has the choice of continuing to do bad things or to try to get their life and self respect back in order.

Another example is when a person gossips. This person which we will call Jane has made some new friends. These are good honest people and they have moved in next door to Jane, they trust Jane because she has shown them that she is a caring Mother and wonderful wife and a great hostess when they visit. The relationship between Jane and her new friends Mary and Ben, grows. One day Jane is told something personal from Mary. Jane is one of those people who sadly seems addicted to gossiping. The next day Jane’s friend Betty visits and Jane spills the beans, not only does she tell well known gossiper Betty all about Mary’s problems but she also “adds” some additional details and exaggerates the story. Finally word gets out and Jane loses a very good friend and what’s worse for Jane is that Mary is her next door neighbour and she has to put up with scowls from Mary everytime she sees her. Jane’s life has changed from very good to unhappy.

In both cases above both people lose their self respect and the respect of others. I believe that we must always work at being good, we may make the odd mistake and accidentally offend other people but as long as we have goodwill in our hearts we can make amends for these small errors. Aiming to do good wherever we go will bring rewards and with those rewards the respect of others. When we do wrong deliberately we have to deal with the pain of having a low self respect of ourselves.

Have another look at the two lists above and aim for the list that will make your life better as well as others, you will be loved and cherished for your kindness and good deeds. One of the strongest feelings humans have is a strong desire for respect of others, we all want respect and we are so disappointed when we don’t get it. Respect has to be earned and it takes time to acquire respect and once we have it we have to keep earning it. But once we have the respect of others its not hard to keep it as long as we do as we have always tried hard to do, just be a good person. And when we have the respect of others our own self respect grows in leaps and bounds. And if our own self respect in ourselves is strong then we think of ourself in a better light.

Effects Of Right And Wrong Choices

It seems that we need a way to explain why some people who seem to do bad things often appear to have successes in other areas of their life. Some people believe that God is treating bad people well. But this cannot be the case if your life is in your hands and your life is based on the choices that you make, not by any interference from God. God will help you ‘if’ you make good choices but if you make bad choices then you are on your own until you decide to change your ways. I believe it comes from the Choice System that I have previously mentioned. When you are a child your parents may make bad choices for you, but once you have grown into adulthood its up to you to make the best choices for yourself.

If a man is a very successful businessman and owns a thriving company he can do well. We will call this man Bill. Bill has a problem, he has some bad habits when it comes to his private life. Bill has some un-moralistic habits where woman are concerned. He is living with a woman that he has not married and he has a few woman on the side. Bill sees himself as a big success but his personal life does not seem so good. Often he has woman trouble, yet he does very well with his company. If Bill were to clean up his act in the woman area he would have a very happy life. But because he has these bad habits he will never find true love or a faithful wife. Would you be a happy faithful wife to somebody who treats woman as Bill does? Of course not.

The above example shows that we can do well in one area and fail in another area of our life. The reason that we fail is simply because we fail to be honest and good in that area of our life due to the bad choices that we make. In the above example it looks like the man called Bill is being rewarded for being a womanizer, this is not the case. Bill is rewarded for his good business practises, he is failing in his personal life due to his bad choices in that area of his life. All it means is that Bill has not learnt to respect woman and live and marry only one woman. People could say “Hey that Bill, look at the way he treats woman. How can this bad man succeed so well when he treats woman that way?”, “How can God let this man get away with what he is doing?”

You have to realise here that God is not running Bill’s life, Bill is running his own life and making his own choices. At work Bill works hard and treats his workers well, but at home he treats his life differently. This is why life seems to people to be unfair at times. If you are failing in a part of your fife then you are being unfair to yourself, you are letting yourself down. You might be in poverty and look at Bills work success and his private life and think “How can God treat this evil man so well?” First you need to look in your own back yard and see what it is that you may be doing wrong before you can comment on what you ‘think’ Bill is doing wrong.

If you worked as hard as Bill did and had a good private life then you could have all that Bill has and a happy home with a loving family.

The same occurs when we look at the life of Tim. Tim owns a plumbing company. Tim is often trying to overcharge his customers and will do all he can to make money. His workers do not like him. His company is often struggling, but he keeps on trying. He often complains “Why is life so hard, I work hard but I never can seem to get anywhere?”, “My workers are slack and I often catch them lousing about. When am I going to get some decent workers?” Tim’s home life is very good. He has a loving wife and children. Tim’s wife homeschools their children and when Tim gets home from work he loves to go for long walks with his children and the family dog. Tim’s children love him dearly. Tim’s wife thinks the world of him and Tim thinks the world of her. One area of Tim’s life is good, while another is hard. Bills is living by the choices he makes.

The above examples may not be exactly the way you see other people that you know, but you can see how your choices can affect different parts of your life. We need to try to make good choices for all the different areas of our life. This is not easy by any means but we should always try and do the best that we can. Be a good positive critic of your own life before your even consider criticizing other peoples lives.

Staying On The Right Path

Once you feel that you are on the right path to a good life you will want to stay there. This is not as easy as it sounds. The path we want would be a path with these attributes:

Honesty
Happiness
Willpower
Inner Strength
Self Respect
Courage
Love

The path we want to avoid is like this:

Dishonesty
Depression
Struggle
Distress
Lack Of Willpower
Fear
Dislike

The world in which we live in has many temptations to help guide you off the path of a joyful wholesome life. We are looking at negative temptations here and how they can affect your entire existence. The type of temptation that can lead you in the wrong direction to where you want to be. You may consider the thought that the above statement is pure imagination, but I ask you to open your minds eye a little wider and look all around you at the crime and other negative activities in every country in the world.

An easy way for me to prove this to you is for you to look at your own past, temptation is a chap with an eager look on his face while he tries to talk you into something that you may find questionable. He doesn’t have many scruples, but he lives to turn you towards The Dark Side, you can imagine that he looks like Darth Vader if you want or even The Devil. His only mission in life is to steer you on the opposite path of happiness so he can watch you destroy your life and he can laugh at the self destructive person you would become if you listen to him. You may laugh at Christians because they name the evil or bad in their lives, they call it the work of Satan or the Devil. This is actually a great advantage to them. They can name their adversary, they can name the cause of their troubles. This is why it is easier for Christians to be good. All they have to do is look at temptation as the work of Satan trying to seduce them into doing things he wants and not the things that God wants for them. Because Christians want to be good as God has suggested to them, they will easily repel any bad thoughts that come their way.

How can we deal with temptation? First we need to teach ourselves to recognise temptation in all its disguises, and there are many. As we grow older we get many samples of what temptation has to offer, first they start out small. Like bribes of lollies from friends or family members, sadly in many cases this can start with the parents of a child, the person the child loves and trusts best. If you currently do bribe your child (or children) consider changing from bribes to rewards. As we get older the bribes become bigger, with bigger temptations attached to them. If you bribe your children now while they are young you could possibly be setting them up for a grand fall, unintentionally of course.

I would suggest that you get a pencil (or pen) and paper and write down some of the temptations that you either succumbed to or temptations that came your way during your life. You will notice that most (if not all) temptations start of as fun (or at least they seem to be fun) and end up as something that can harm us. Look at this list items carefully, notice the way in which they once looked (at least at the time when you met them) tempting. Do you see any similarities between the items on the list. Write down what you did when you turned temptation down, write down why you turned temptation down. Study what you have written. Learn from your mistakes.

If we are not physically harmed we may be mentally shamed from the ordeal if we accepted temptation. To help combat temptation we need to learn how to say no even if we really would like to dip our finger in the delightful pie of temptation. This is the hard part, when temptation is right there in front of us we need to have the courage to say no and mean it, then physically turn away because of the harm we know that temptation will eventually lead us to.

A hard thing to do is turn away from temptation while all our friends are taking part and they try to talk us into joining in, some people may even make snide remarks to goad us into joining in. Its takes real courage to say no in this instance, but it must be done. You have to remember that you are an individual, you may be a part of the group of people, but you are still a single human who has to look after itself whether other people like it or not. If you are shamed or hurt those other people (our friends) will not suffer the same shame or hurt that we suffer and we have to also live with ourselves after the event. Say no and save yourself a lot of harm and keep your self respect. Call on your inner strength, pray, do whatever you have to do to turn away.

To take an interest in any temptation which we know is bad, is to start our life’s path in the wrong direction. Head for happiness, not a headache. My advice is for you to turn away from temptation now if you already haven’t.

Faith

We all need to have a deep, trusting faith in ourselves to be happy. Without this faith, life would seem hard to cope with. Look back on your life and see all the things that you had faith that you could do. Things that you succeeded in and you new without doubt that you would make it, the conquests that you had. We are looking at all the good things that you didn’t fail at. And there were many.

Did you lack faith when you tried to crawl? No you had great faith. You sure did! You watched all the other people around you move from one place to another and you were determined that you would not be rooted to the spot where you were put down on the floor. So like the brave little youngster that you were you kept trying until you succeeded to your total delight. Did you lack faith when you tried to walk? Of course not, you had seen all those people bigger than you walk on two legs and this proved to you that you could do it as well. You had a complete faith, after every fall, that you would succeed. Such is the power of faith in action on a little mind that hadn’t been filled with the doubts society has filled us adults with. Your faith was total and complete. You knew that you could do it.

The same applied when you tried to ride a bike, even if you fell off and hurt yourself, your confidence was dented but you had faith that someday soon you would get on that bike and ride it without training wheels and without anyone else’s help. And of course you did it, such is the complete faith of a young child, yet to be tainted with the worlds negative put downs and doubts.

And the same applies now. Our faith in ourselves wavers when other people make negative comments which collect in our minds until we start to wonder if we really have what it takes to make it. Sometimes we make one or two attempts and we fail so we give up. We may even think that everybody was right about us being a failure – but they are wrong! You have a life of successes that you new that you would not fail at, some were miner, some were big, but your faith carried you through. And it would be very good for you to remember them, maybe even write them down and study them with pride.

This would be one of the reasons that people who have had successful sports careers on the field (or wherever) have gone on to having happy, prosperous business careers. They had faith that they were good at their chosen sport and they had faith that they were able to make it in the big world of business or whatever field they chose to work in. They are preprogrammed because of their success in sport. Many had faith that God would help carry them through.

I believe that there is two types of faith that a person needs to survive in this world and be content, happy and fulfilled. You should have total and complete faith in God and Gods Love for you, and also Gods Guidance. A person should also have total faith in themselves. Most Christian people have a total and complete faith that God will guide them and help them through their lives, this faith is stronger than any other belief that they have. Its part of their strength as people. You can have this faith as well, all you need to do is pray for Gods help.

Life can have many ‘letdowns’, these appear mostly (or are noticed more) when things are not going so well. If you are feeling down and you feel that you need something to “pick you up’ you can be easily devastated or will feel down when these letdowns appear in your life. They appear in many disguises’s and can feel heartbreaking. Your faith in God needs to be stronger than your belief that life (or people) have let you down. Be assured that if any letdowns appear in your life they are not the working of God. Be also assured that by having God at your side you can put these letdowns aside and move forward with the full confidence that God will see you past them and will help you overcome life’s letdowns with future successes. Let your faith in God be total and complete and nothing can stop you living a happy life.

Remove The Rough Edge

Many of us have what I call a Rough Edge. The rough edge is the part of our nature that uses bad language or tells rude or untasteful jokes. We in today’s society seem to think this type of behaviour is acceptable. But to most other people it makes us look rough and unlikable. Even small comments that are rough in nature can give people an impression of us that will lead us to be not trusted or possibly even disliked. You would at some time have visited somebody and been surprised when somebody said something shocking or untasteful or vulgar.

Most people like to be with other people who are like minded in action and thought. Do your friends have a Rough Edge? If so then look at yourself. Its not attractive and no fun to be like this. Many people want to stay as they currently are simply because it is easier and families to them. But don’t let thoughts like that hold you back from becoming a new person. Change can be a hard and scary thing to do. But life was meant to change. The earth changes often, and you as an inhabitant of Earth also change with age and time. Make the change for your better. Make the change for the better of all people that you know. Don’t let your old self hold you back, move forward and remove the rough edge.

My experience is that people really don’t like people who show their rough edge. It shows a great lack of respect for people. If you are one of these people who think that nobody cares what you do or say I can tell you that you are greatly fooling yourself. To prove it, ask your friends, parents or relations. Be prepared for a bit of a shock. And then do the positive thing and remove that rough edge.

Planning Patterns

People live happily when they use planning patterns. If we design our day in a set pattern then we are comfortable with what we have to do. If we write a list of all the things we have to do during the day, but we leave some time for relaxation, we have a planned pattern that we can live by in an easy manner. How could this make our lives better?

The human mind likes to know what it has to do, it wants to be busy but not stressed out, it needs to feel comfortable with its daily chores and then work on its more urgent tasks. The human mind does not like to guess every hour what’s next, it doesn’t want to think higgly piggly what’s next in a confused manner. If we use a set planned pattern then our day is mapped out for us and we can do the things on the list repetitively, this means that we won’t have to think about what we have to do because these things become a habit. This frees up our mind for the more challenging things that we have to do.

By using patterns we become more organised, by being more organised we can physically do the things that we have to do and let our minds rest for a while. If we get our children into simple planned patterns then they know what to expect of you and what to expect everyday, and what you expect of them, children need this kind of planning. If your children are not sure what it is that you want of them everyday then they become a bit nervous waiting to find out what you are going to tell them to do every hour, get them and yourself to relax by planning their day as well as yours. They also need the odd break in this type of planning, like a day at the beach to break the monotony of it all.

People are more relaxed when their day is planned out.

Our Word Of Honor

One of the golden rules of a dignified life is for us to “keep our word”. Our word of honor is like a religious thing, it is “with honor that we keep our word”. We show pride in our word and a belief that when we speak, those words are “our truth”. They say that “A man who keeps his word is a man of strength”, he is strong for the word that he has spoken and will now keep in the path of truth. Amen.
(Amen means “Let it be so!”)

The word of mankind has weakened in recent times, today written contracts have taken the place of mans word, due to the dishonesty that has crept into society and dished out punishment to those who once trusted mankind and peoples word of honor. Whether or not you have to deal with contracts or lawyers and like minded people always keep your word and end the agreement with a honest hearty handshake, and a verbal commitment to the agreement that has just been made.

Make this a habit and you will surely be known for your honesty and truthfulness. It makes no difference whether you were known for your word in the past, this is now, a time for you to revise who you are and try a new path. Practise diligently and at every chance keep your honesty at the highest level. Sometimes it is tempting to break our word for we may gain from this dishonesty, but it is far greater to have lost in some small way than to lose the faith and honor of others that trusted us.

Your word of honor will take you many places and all of them will be good. Should you fall in minor disgrace people will surround you and protect you because they believe in you. When this minor disgrace is found to be false your friends will be vindicated for their efforts on your behalf. You will find as time goes by that you will attract others who keep their word and their honesty will embrace you and protect you.

This is not about holding your head high because you consider yourself greater than others for being honest, that’s the self opinion of a snob. No this is about being genuinely honest and wanting to deal with other people in a way that they will always know where you stand and that your business and personal dealings will always be blessed with honesty and your well known ability to keep your word.

If you have a past of dishonesty please don’t let that stop you from progressing as a person. Today is a new day and as every new day should be treated it is a new beginning, and with your new faith it can be a new beginning for you. It is your choice whether you want this new beginning, if you take on this challenge then your rewards will come in time. It may take a while to chisel your new personality into your soul and you will have to stick to this commitment with the courage and desire it deserves, but the results in the long run will be worth the time and commitment that you put into it.

Your Self Worth
(Tracy should I change self worth to self confidence?)

If your self worth should fail then you would crumble and fall. The negative affects and feelings that would arise from this discovery would lead a person to seriously consider ending their life, because all that they had previously believed in had failed them. I believed in many things that I had been told in school and from my parents and other people I knew, all my efforts to follow their advice failed and now I only believe that God will guide me to a happy life and a good fruitful future. My faith is with God, and that has helped me rebuilt a new positive opinion of myself and believe in the world once again.

A persons self worth grows as they grow, it becomes what it is from a persons perceptions and experiences through life. If a persons experiences are negative and painful, then their self worth is not good, they don’t believe in themselves and they don’t much believe in life itself.

Many peoples self worth is based on outside (out of the soul) experiences. An example of this would be a person who believes in themself because they have always had great grades at school, they never fail, their confidence grows with each success. When they start working they continue up the ladder of success. But should anything go wrong that would make their molded ball of self worth shudder or crumble then this person would have lost their faith in themself at speed. Sometimes students get great grades and then suddenly they fail a few assignments, their self worth starts to struggle they wonder if they really had what it takes. They worry. If their grades continue to fall then they collapse in despair wondering what happened.

Our self worth is not supposed to come from how we are looked at by mankind, its supposed to come from inside of us. Not from the physical world. If our feeling of self worth comes from inside us then it cannot be shattered, it can be shaken when we are feeling unconfident but not destroyed. This is one of the reasons that religion has saved so many people because their self worth comes from within, from the Holy Spirit, from God – not from the world at large. When you know that God believes in you, you believe in yourself – but from the inside. When you have a strong belief in yourself and things go wrong you don’t blame God, you don’t criticise people, you take up the challenge because you know that God is there and you will get over it and succeed. Failure is not an option with the creator at your side guiding you.

We can set goals and try to build ourselves up in the world, we can try to be big in other peoples eyes. But we really need to feel good in our own eyes, not the worlds. If we believe in ourself then the world will believe in us as well.

To remove worldly self worth you need to look at our lives and make a big effort to see where we get our own self worth from. Are you a member of a club and the other members build up your self worth? Do you prey on situations that bring many people together that you know will build up your self worth? What about at work? Inside you is the answer. Worldly self worth cannot be relied on one hundred percent of the time, internal self worth can, and God can be relied on everytime.

Use Misery To Spur You On!

When a person is beaten down by misery or unhappiness they suffer a great feeling of failure, even if they did not create the position that they are currently in. This is a sad situation that can be reversed with the right attitude, positive thinking, God and all seasoned with some good old fashioned determination and love. We can teach ourselves that whenever we feel miserable that it is a sign that things are not going the way that we want at present, but we must continue onwards even though things have gone bad for us at present. Better things are coming as they always do. It is good for our sanity to remember that good events and happiness will be coming our way in the future.

When things are going bad or have been bad for a while you can use the miserable feeling to spur you onto greater things. The human mind is very capable, it has strengths that are seldom talked about in the worlds teaching institutions. If you read through the worlds history you will find many cases of people who have been down into the pits of despair and have lost their fortune or were brought up in poverty, these people forged ahead with a deep desire to move away from the things that held them down. History books are a huge bank of motivational information, use your local library to learn about people of the past and how they achieved their goals even though they lived in poverty or miserable lifestyles.

The people of the world may change their clothes and other material things with the latest fashions, but in many ways the people don’t change. What I mean is that my clothes, shoes, tools, music, motor vehicles may be different from people of the past, but in essence my struggles are not much different from theirs. In fact many are the same, and this is my point, you can learn from other peoples mistakes, so that you don’t make the same mistakes and you can learn what invisible power drove these people onward from the miserable existence that they had at one stage in their lives. Learn from their thoughts in their personal biographies, read what their friends said about them, read what they did to move ahead. When reading biographies I tend to keep away from negative biographies about people because of the negative message, I suggest that you do the same.

Human beings are fighters, we have this great power stuck in our heads that allows us to fight against all odds in order to succeed. When we get beaten down during our lives this fighting power gets put aside in our minds, we need to find ways to get it back. All you need to do is find this power and use it to spur you on to greater things. We all have it. The notion today is for everyone to take it easy and get a job, settle down and relax – this need not be you if you want more out of life. This power is more powerful when you are honest in your business actions, because honesty brings you friends and friends are great allies when the chips are down. Believing in God will help spur you onto greater things, believing in God will help you get past the misery and go forward to a better more peaceful, happy life. Many people use the stories in the Bible to spur them on. Stories where God helped somebody (like Joseph with the colored coat) onwards to success. God helps good people you can count on that.

If you can imagine where you want to be in two years time along with what you want to be then that’s really all you need to start with. It doesn’t matter how you came to be miserable, but you must be aware that it doesn’t have to be your lot in life to stay miserable. If you have a family get them all in on the act, excitement is contagious. If you feel miserable then tell yourself “It will not always be like this. I will make life better for me and my family. Jesus is at my side and will help guide me to better things.” Believe and you will receive. God and Jesus love you. So if something bad is happening in your life they want to help you to make it better. Believe, Trust, Faith, and God – BTFG. With BTFG how could you possibly fail!

Self Encouragement

When everything feels bad and your heart is broken because you have made a mistake or something has gone wrong, and you feel unworthy and totally disappointed in yourself, you find that happiness feels so far away and at the least nearly impossible. You wonder why you do things that you wish that you didn’t. But for some reason you gave in and did it again knowing full well afterwards that you would feel weak and miserable for having done so. And afterwards that’s exactly what happened.

You wish that you knew better and that you had more self control but once again you stepped over the imaginary line of respect and decency that you set for yourself and did stumble onward to the same old mistakes. When a person fails often the repetitive failing can be very depressing. This is when you ‘need’ to know that you are not alone. You are not the only person making these mistakes, all around the world at this moment people are wondering “why”, hearts are breaking with despair, people are walking with sagged shoulders and staring at the ground trying to understand “why?”

You feel helpless in your misery, your strength feels sapped from you when you walk as if you had hardly any energy. These are the results of disappointment, self disappointment. This is more painful than being disappointed with other people because you are disappointed with the one person that you hope that you can trust more than anyone else in the entire world. Yourself. You wonder “How can you lead and help other people if you fail yourself?”

You need and want to believe that you can trust yourself. You want to believe that when you set rules for yourself to follow that you will follow them. Just like you expect others to follow rules that you have set for them to follow. But you stepped to far off the cliff of temptation and did something that you are unhappy with, you feel that you have shamed yourself or just done something wrong. Sometimes you let your mind wander in its misery and contemplate ending your life so that you don’t have to go through all this pain again. These thoughts keep torturing you even though you know that they must stop. You get scared then, you wonder if one day these thoughts will win. You know that you will gain the most unrewarding shame of all, knowing that people will remember you as not having the courage to live out your own life.

At this point some people may try to kill themselves. Some people give up and continue to flounder through life pretending to themself that it doesn’t matter, they give up and continue the life of unrewarding shame and disappointment, to protect themself they ‘pretend’. Other people, the brave ones, the ones who are genuinely concerned that they have failed try other means to succeed. Some people go to God. Besides what some people believe this is a tried and true system that has lasted many centuries. Over time, billions of people have turned to God and asked for forgiveness and with time and patience been saved from the above mentioned stress for the rest of their lives.

I have a suggestion. Why not decide to encourage yourself and not ‘take it out on yourself’. We talk often about encouraging others but what do we say about encouraging ourselves? When you do something that makes you feel disappointed in yourself consider attacking the problem from the opposite angle. If a person is disappointed in themself and they torture themself mentally or feel the agony of defeat that’s the same as mentally torturing another person, or making somebody else dwell in the pits of despair.

Do you torture other people? No, then you shouldn’t do it to yourself. Do you rub other peoples noses in their mistakes and not help them when they are in the pits of despair? No, then don’t do it to yourself. Do you like it when other people try to make you feel miserable? Then don’t do it to yourself. Do you encourage other people when they are down? Then encourage yourself when you are down or when you have made a mistake. Find a way to do it as soon as you have made the mistake, don’t let disappointment get in to deep before you can stop it controlling your mind. You need to encourage yourself to do better. You can be a bit disappointed when you have let other people or yourself down, this is natural because it shows that you are wise enough to feel some guilt or sorrow for what you have done. But you need to find a way to turn the situation around so that you can see that there is a way to control yourself or conquer this problem.

If you are trying to keep of the bottle (booze) and you have lasted three weeks and then one day you give in and you have a drink, after that you get drunk. The next day the feeling of disappointment can be soul destroying. In fact the feeling of disappointment can be more dangerous than having the booze. Suicide kills many people world wide every year, I don’t want you to be the next victim and neither do you. One of the reasons people try to kill themselves is because they want to succeed but they desperately don’t know why. They want to be able to control their thoughts and they want to feel strong and able to get through the bad times, the bad and sad feelings, but they just don’t know how. Many feel weak and have many regrets that they let burn into their positiveness, turning positive to negative. Lets reverse that process – Lets turn negative feelings to more positive feelings.

Self Encouragement can be the answer that you are looking for. To encourage yourself to do better next time is to show yourself that you care and that you want better for yourself. One of the reasons therapy can be so successful is because the group members encourage each other to do better and to ‘stick with it’. You don’t have to be in a therapy group to do this or though therapy groups are popular and should you want to consider them it would be wise to do so. You can also encourage yourself to do better and stick with it until you finally succeed. Every person is different in internal ‘makeup’ and that is the reason why we react to situations differently. We also have differently learning rates and what is easy for one person is not necessarily easy for another person. Accept this fact. It may take you longer to get to grips with your life than someone else, but that’s natural. The secret is to not give up and to encourage yourself with each success.

Be pleased that you stayed of the bottle for so long. Encourage yourself to do better next time. Maybe you could reward yourself whenever you pass a certain landmark, maybe every three weeks to start off with. Next try to go more than three weeks and give yourself some form of reward for doing so well.

The reward has to be something that’s good and worth rewarding yourself with. Preferably something positive or happy. Maybe a trip out of town or a night out with a friend or partner. Give yourself little pep talks to remind yourself how well you are doing, be positive and willing to believe that you are doing a good job and can succeed. The reward should be for you personally or though some people may be pleased to have a day away from home with their family and consider that as a good reward. If you don’t have a large music selection but you would like more music albums, you could put aside some money each week and buy one CD of music once every three weeks only if you succeeded, after you have lasted three weeks, raise the length of time to four weeks starting the day you brought the last CD of music. Make the reward something that you will truly appreciate, something you will really be grateful for. Something worth the effort.

Maybe if you wanted to buy something but have never tried to buy it because you consider it to expensive you could use this for positive motivation. Every three weeks you could put aside some money to collect enough cash to finally make the big purchase. The reward for your efforts would be well worth the trouble that you went through and also you will go months without touching the alcohol.

You could get a family member or a friend to buy something that you have always wanted (you pay for it) and then ask the other person to ‘hold’ the item until the required time is up and then the other person will give you your reward.

Be good to yourself. Never mentally harm yourself. Encourage improvement with yourself, but encourage yourself positively. Verbal encouragement coupled with an encouraging reward ought to help get you through the problem that you are having in a positive way. No more feelings of personal dislike, and a new view of your new inner strength.

Something is always worth doing as long as the rewards are worth the effort. If you want to stop yourself from a weakness then make sure the encouragement is positive and the rewards good and motivating.

Its like the movie It’s A Wonderful Life. A man, George Bailey wants to kill himself and Clarence the Angel jumps in the water first so that George Bailey can save him from drowning, which was what George was going to do. But why would George save Clarence when he wanted to do away with his own life? Its a unlogical scene. And yet it appears to be human nature to care for others. Lets put you in George’s place. What would you say to somebody who wanted to kill themself and you were just going to kill yourself. The first thing you would do is try to encourage that person and tell them that life was worth living right?

Why can’t you do that for yourself? Why can’t you offer yourself encouragement all through your life and then you would never get to the stage of trying do away with your life. Your belief in yourself would be stronger. Even though George was helping people at the Building and Loan he was also unhappy because he wasn’t living out his lifelong dream of traveling the world and it was becoming plain and clear that he never was going to get his dream.

Its like going for a walk with no money and no clothes except for a loin cloth, you are walking along a long path made of hard dry ground covered in rocks and dust. The wind is whisking around you and the harsh sun baking your sunburned body. You are not to pleased with the situation. On both sides of the path are many shops of all kinds just waiting for somebody like you to come along and buy something. And you wish that you could, but you have no money, not a timeworn cent.

You walk looking down in despair because life is so harsh and you wish that you had clothes like other people. All of a sudden you stop for there in front of you is a small shiny rock. You pick it up. You smile with glee – its a small cut diamond sparkling in all its glory. Somebody obviously dropped it but you smile because its worth a few dollars. Enough to get you a nice set of brand new clothes at least. You walk into the nearest clothes store and by some clothes and a nice wrist watch. You walk out of that door very pleased that you have been blessed with such good fortune.

You walk for another two miles and although you are grateful for your new clothes you are worried about your calloused sore bleeding feet. Some shoes and socks would be nice you think… Another mile later and you are feeling a bit down, while looking to the ground you see another small diamond. You quickly bend down and grab it. You smile towards Heaven and head towards the first shoe shop that you see, inside you go and buy some shoes and a dozen pairs of socks and luckily the owner has some plasters that you can buy for your aching feet. He even lets you soak your feet in some warm water for a half an hour for a few dollars. When you walk out of the shop you smile because you look oh so good and are feeling so well looked after. Its grand, its great – oh what a life! Things are really looking good for you.

You walk another three miles and you think “Gosh I am so hungry, but I have spent all my diamond money.” Sadly you keep going. But there in front of you on the ground yes another small diamond. Its not as big as the last two but its still a chance to get some dinner for your aching grumbling tummy. You pick it up and gleefully run towards the first food shop you see. Good luck for a hungry tummy, its a hamburger store, in you go and out you come with two dozen burger’s with the works on them and four bottles of Coca Cola.

Off you lumber down the path eating a burger from the brown paper bag that the shop gave you. After three burger’s and one bottle of Coke you are not much interested in eating and drinking anymore but you sure could do with a decent bag to carry all those burger’s and bottles. Not that you are ungrateful or anything, but it would help your aching arms and back if you had a decent bag. Two miles later and you have to stop before you drop your food and drinks. You sit at the side of the path and rest. Then you get up and start walking again, you still smile though, the wind no longer bothers you and you love your new socks and shoes. Life feels good and most of your needs are met.

An hour later you stop because the load is to heavy and awkward to carry. You eat another two burger’s and down another bottle of drink. Oh that feels good as you pat your satisfied tummy. You lay down for a small sleep, resting your weary head on a clump of grass. After a while you wake up because a stray dog is licking your face. You pat the dog and then get up to go. But there on the ground immediately in front of you is another lovely small diamond sparkling in the sunlight. You pick it up knowingly and turn around to find a good bag store. A half hour later and you have a good strong bag and a wide brimmed hat to cover your sunburned head. After adjusting your new stylish sunglasses you head on your way. Smiling with joy, walking with an upbeat step towards your destination.

In the short story above did you notice that the person was kept happy with small delights. Those small diamonds encouraged the man who was originally miserable. Each find was just enough to keep the man going, each one helping him to believe that he could make it to wherever he was going. You can give yourself the same small doses of encouragement. Don’t wait for others to pat you on the back to encourage you, do it yourself. Your life will pick up and be happier if you keep giving yourself good positive pickups to help get you through life and through everyday no matter how rocky and barren the path ahead looks.

Visualize

During my life I have seen many examples of people visualising. This is a proven method of seeing yourself do something before it happens, or seeing something that you want before you get it. Many sports people visualise before they attempt certain feats that they know would be harder if they did not mentally prepare themselves for the task. Many people have been known to make a mental picture of themself as a winner in their sport before they start the new season and while the season is going they are actively visualising themself as a winner, convincing themself that they have what it takes to be a real winner in their chosen sport. After they visualise they seem to have more firepower, more will to make it. It really works.

When I was practising Karate I thought that the hardest thing for me to do was to do a back-spinning-kick. This was a kick that I struggled with. I managed to learn how to do many Karate kicks in a manner of a few months, but the back spinning kick was the one that was the hardest for me to do. Then one day our instructor told us all to visualise a particular Karate move with our eyes closed. We were given a few minutes to make up the picture in our minds before we got on with our class. I imagined that I was doing the back spinning kick easily and efficiently, but I still had my doubts. After a few more weeks I finally managed to achieve this goal with ease and I firmly believe that visualising myself doing a back spinning kick really helped make my goal a reality.

I recommend that you try this for yourself. Just choose something that you have always wanted to do and regularly visualise yourself doing it. With visualisation comes the work of putting it all together to make it a reality, this is all part of the process, a very important part. Use visualisation with prayer and you have a powerful combination, imagine seeing something and then God helping you bring it to reality. Working together with God is a sure way to improve your life.

If you consider yourself as a grumpy person visualise yourself being happy. If you have trouble imagining this then go to a mirror and smile then when you visualise all you need to do is remember your smiling mug in the mirror. If you want your relationship with your husband or wife to be closer then visualise the two of you dancing to a slow waltz or walking together holding hands. Maybe a picnic on a sunny day is your wish. Visualise the situation and then pray to God asking for his help in this very important matter.

Visualisation is a very powerful tool and used correctly it will help you achieve your goals. Use it with prayer and you have just added a special imaging tool to your Life Toolkit.

Try Things – You Never Know What You Can Do!

There was a time when those that I knew once laughed at the thought of me writing a book. It didn’t seem conceivable to them that I could do this. I was not good at English writing at school. In fact my education was not that good mainly due to my upbringing and my lack of faith in myself. I can say with total belief that I didn’t believe that I was ever going to go further than being a simple laborer of some kind. Many, many years went by where I was doing manual labour and there was not much call for me to do work that I had to use my head to work something out. By my thirties I figured that I had failed as a person in many ways.

But I went on to doing correspondence courses on electronics and then computer repair. This was a great struggle for me and I can thank the great tutors that I had who took me through the struggle. I got many great marks and was amazed to find that I did well in some math subjects. Math was not a good subject for me at school, I really struggled as a teenager in my math classes. I studied for a couple of years and enjoyed the challenge, feeling proud that I could do something other than manual work. For the first time in many years I was using my thinking powers to do something.

I then taught myself web page programming and computer software programming. Finally I sold software on the internet and computer courses on Borland’s Delphi programming language. These were tiring but exciting times for me. But success eluded me. I made many friends and helped many people, but the struggle to succeed went on and on.

My ex-wife’s favourite subject was always English writing. My eldest daughter loved English writing. And it was always a stand up joke in our home that I was not the writer of the family. Sometimes I mentioned that I would like to write a book but that comment was often followed by laughter. But after reading Dickens and other books that were English classics I found that I learnt a lot from those masters of the old world. And I also found a new delight in writing. I wrote some stories for children and finally this book. I found that my writing style had improved greatly and I enjoyed what I was doing.

All this from the boy who failed his education and failed in many other ways. I am proud to say that the biggest changes came after I became a Christian. My attitude and writing changed and got much better and this book is a result of that. You too can take up a new challenge no matter what others think. Try something new, have a go, especially if you try something that you always wanted to do but never believed that you could. Go for it and use my life as an example for what you can do.