10 Optimism Quotes to Inspire You

When you are going through difficult times, when the news is negative, or when you are simply tired and discouraged, it can be hard to summon optimism. Here’s a little inspiration:

1. “No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit.” — Helen Keller, author

2. “I figured that if I said it enough, I would convince the world that I really was the greatest.” — Muhammad Ali, boxing champion

3. “Just believe in yourself. Even if you don’t, pretend that you do and at some point, you will.” — Serena Williams, tennis champion

4. “Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, you are unlikely to step up and take responsibility for making it so.” — Noam Chomsky, linguist and activist

5. “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” — Winston Churchill, politician

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Born Into Slavery

A reflection on discovering that one of my ancestors was Born into Slavery.

As my connections will be aware I am very keen on tracing my Family History. I have always been fascinated by the twists and turns that the journey of exploration can take us on and these last few days have certainly seen things take an unexpected turn!

Some years ago I took a DNA Test which gave me some insights into my genealogy many of which were what I had expected.  However, I have always been intrigued by the reference to West Africa in my DNA although I hadn’t especially pursued it.

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How to Move On When You Make a Mistake

If you are like most people, then you have probably lost quite a bit of sleep to ruminating on past mistakes. Everyone does that. They lay in their bed at night and just as they are about to sleep, they start dwelling on some mistake they made.

Sometimes the mistake was yesterday and sometimes the mistake was a decade ago. Thankfully, there are a lot of different strategies that you can try to make getting over a mistake a lot easier. In this article, you will find out a few different ways that you can get over mistakes, no matter how severe.

Look for Some Positives

No matter how severe a mistake is, there is a good chance that it may have some positive aspects to it. You have to try and look for a silver lining in any mistake and focus on that, instead of the negatives. A good example of this would be mistakes that cause you to learn something.

We all make mistakes, but we also all learn from our mistakes as well. Focus less on the mistake, and more on what you learned as a result of the mistake.

Look at the Mistake in Context

One thing about humans is that we tend to really overinflate the impact of mistakes in our mind. Sometimes it can be helpful to try and distance yourself from a mistake and ask yourself “did it really matter in the end?”

This happens a lot with social gaffes. People say the wrong thing to someone and assume that the other person was very offended by it and is thinking about it; however, the reality is often that the person has forgotten about the conversation entirely. So, it is worth distancing yourself from a mistake and asking if the mistake is really as bad as you are making it out to be.

Do Something to Make Amends

A big reason why so many people dwell on mistakes is that they don’t ever do anything to make up for the mistake. Making up for the mistake, if that’s possible, can really help you to stop dwelling on it.

Obviously, this doesn’t apply to every mistake, but if you can think of a way to try and repair the damage done by a mistake that you made, that will go a long way towards helping you to overcome the mistake and move on.

Starting Your Personal Development Journey

There is a Chinese quote ascribed to Laozi although sometimes also to Confucius that goes “a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.” So it is when we set off on a journey of Personal Development.

When you first start your personal development journey, it can be tempting to take short cuts. You think that you already know who you are, what you want, and what you stand for, and how to exemplify that. However, that’s not how the human mind works.

Often, we hide truths from ourselves and are not honest with ourselves about these issues. For this reason, the following ideas will hopefully help you think about how you approach starting your personal development journey so that you will succeed.

Don’t Skip the SWOT – It’s imperative that you perform analysis on yourself in every aspect of your life to find out what strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats you face for any of the target issues you want to address. For example, if you perform a SWOT and realize that you’re not very good at something, you then have a choice. You can find someone who is to do it for you, or you can find training to learn to do it.

Nurture Your Strengths – When you perform the SWOT for any sector of your life, you’ll also identify your strengths. The best thing to do in life is to choose to lead with your strengths. You want to keep doing the things you’re strong at and learn to do them even better since you’re obviously interested in those things.

Improve Your Weaknesses – When you find out that you are weak in some area, you’ll need to determine whether you should improve it yourself or improve it by outsourcing it. To determine which is better, ask yourself whether it really matters who does it or just that it is done.

Understand The 3 Domains of Personal Development – They are, physical, cognitive, and social-emotional. Together, these domains cover all aspects of your life, including health, work, personal growth, spiritual life, and so forth. Working on all aspects of your life usually is much better than focusing only on one as they are sometimes indistinguishable.

Plan for Action – As you work through crafting your plan, nothing is done until you’ve set up action-packed steps and put them in your calendar scheduled for you to implement them. Whether you are doing it yourself, or outsourcing it, doing is the most critical part of the plan.

Focus on The Right Target Issue First – One reason it’s helpful to go through every single domain and issue you have before setting up a plan is that it helps you to know which issue to focus on first. For example, you cannot write a novel until you can read, and you can’t learn to write until you can read, first things first.

Be Persistent – Once you have your action plan, which is developed based on reality and not on how you wish it to be, you only now need to be persistent and take the steps to success. It truly is that easy. Once you have the steps scheduled in your calendar and you start implementing them, your life will begin to change.

Get a Coach – If you understand everything but your implementation skills leave something more to be desired, you may want to employ a life coach to help you. If you know some life coaches who specialize in personal development, you might want to talk to them. If you don’t know anyone, ask your colleagues for recommendations. It’s likely they will know someone or can direct you to someone who would know more on the topic.

One thing to remember about personal development is that it’s an ongoing process. You’re never done with it. There is no real finish line. For this reason, it’s best to develop tenacity and persistence as you follow the path you’ve created for yourself, adjusting as you go based on facts, and learning about what is really and truly important to you deep in your subconscious. It’s all about knowing who you are and living a life that illustrates who you are.

Do You Need a Personal Development Plan?

In my last post I looked at the importance of understanding our own core values and beliefs in order to focus on areas for development.  I now want to start to take a look at how we formalise our own development. Do you really need a Personal Development Plan? If we consider that Personal Development is a process that you will work on for your entire life then, to me at least, it makes sense to have a plan for how you are going to approach it!

What is the Purpose of a Personal Development Plan?

It will help you assess your skills, qualities, and will help you build the lifestyle and life that you envision that you desire for happiness and a high quality of life. The personal development plan can help you with all aspects of your life and help you become more self-aware at home and at work.

Perform a SWOT on Your Life

A well-designed personal development plan will address your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and roadblocks or threats in all areas of your life that you develop. Your plan will identify your strengths so that you can improve them, your weaknesses are so that you can make up for them, and new opportunities, so you know when a door (or window) is open, as well as noting any roadblocks or threats along the way.

Recognise Development Areas

When you perform your SWOT in each area of your life, you will discover internal and external things that are blocking your success. For example, you may hold the belief you’ll never have enough money to save for the future. Because of that, when you do get “extra” money, you tend to blow it right away on all the things you feel you missed out on before. This is a limiting belief about money that a lot of people have because most people think money is a finite resource when it’s not. It’s manmade. Therefore, we can make more.

Identify Your Resources

You may do some work that helps you look at the resource you have available to do a specific task. For example, if you decide you want to start a coaching business, what resources do you have to start it. What things do you need, what things can you live without, what can you do yourself, what does someone else need to do. This works in every single aspect of your life. You may realize you already have all the skills inside to do exactly what you wanted to do. However, you may realize that you need to pay for additional brainpower (resources).

Build Better Relationships

One of the most shocking aspects of creating a self-development plan is how much it can help relationships. When you realize that you only control your own behavior and actions, it starts to get easier to manage relationships. Treating them how you want to be treated is an excellent start but becoming self-aware enough to go farther and realize that not everyone likes what you like so you may need to treat someone the way they like to be treated instead.

Whatever you want to work on can be done via the personal development plan. Whether you want to lose weight, start a business, change jobs, or go back to school – the goal doesn’t matter as much as developing the plan that you need to get where you want to go. Your plan will not be the same as anyone else’s because you are different. That’s why it’s so consequential and unique because it’s just for you.