Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Are you successful? Do you have plans to be successful?  Do you have a definition of what success means to you? Do you ever think of how to plan and create your success?  These can be some of the questions when you think of success.  I was just reading an article written by Dr. Kem Thompson about 10 universal principles of success, and I want to share them with you because these principles are really strong. Here we go:

Success is not something that only a chosen few can achieve. Everyone can be successful in every area of his or her life. You just need to know how to do things in such a way as to make sure you succeed every time. Success comes as a result of forming certain habits, and continuing in them. Consistency is key. To succeed, you need to be a certain type of person. Don’t be discouraged if you are not yet that type of person. With practice, anyone can become a successful person. The successful person thinks in a certain way, talks in a certain way, and acts in a certain way. The list below briefly outlines 10 of those ways (and a bonus tip!). Anyone who consistently applies these principles to any area of their life *will* experience success in that area.

1. Vision: Have a clear picture of what exactly it is you want to achieve or become. Keep this picture at the top of your mind at all times. Doing something you want to do, because you want to do it, will motivate you to succeed at it. Start with the end in mind.
2. Belief: Believe without a shadow of a doubt that you can do it. Believe that you will succeed. Believe in a Higher Power who is helping you get what you want. Stay away from negative influences (people, books/articles, anything negative), which make you doubt your ability to succeed. Surround yourself with things that remind you that you can, and will, succeed.
3. Responsibility: Realize that you alone are responsible for your future. You alone are responsible for the outcome of your efforts. Don’t look for anyone to blame. Feel free to ask for help as you need it, but remember the final decision is up to you. It’s your life, after all.
4. Affirm: Make a habit of saying out loud what you hope to achieve. Speak of it in the present tense, e.g., ‘I am fit and trim’, as opposed to ‘I will be fit and trim’. If you feel awkward speaking out loud to yourself, write down the affirmation. Then look at it (or better still, rewrite it) several times each day. This helps your mind stay focused on the goal. It also builds your self-belief and confidence.
5. Commitment: Make a firm commitment to action. Decide to take whatever steps you need to take to help you achieve your goals. Then honour the commitment you’ve made. Too often we find it easy to keep our commitments to others while neglecting to keep our commitments to ourselves. This pattern has to change if you’re to succeed in life.
6. Set a SMART goal: Now that you know what you want to achieve or become, you need to define it by making it a goal. Your goal has to be Specific, Measurable (you need a standard to help you know when you’ve achieved it) and Motivational (it’s got to inspire you and keep you motivated), Attainable and Attractive, Realistic (no point setting an unrealistic goal such as “I want to be a millionaire this evening”) and Timed (State when you hope to achieve it).
7. Plan and Take Action: Work out a plan of action. Break down the plan into baby steps. Take a step or two each day, reminding yourself that each step is bringing you closer to your goal. Perform each act to the best of your ability, filled with faith, determination and purpose to reach your goal. Most importantly, be consistent.
8. Persistence: Do not give up until you have achieved what you desire. In the course of things, be willing to change any part of your plan which turns out not to work, and try something else. Thomas Edison did not give up in his quest to invent the light bulb, even though he’d ‘failed’ 10,000 times. Now that’s persistence! See every failure as a stepping-stone to success and as a temporary set back. Learn from it and push on towards your goal.
9. Gratitude: Maintain an attitude of gratitude, knowing that your dream is about to become a reality. Refuse to grumble when circumstances look contrary. Refuse to complain. Be grateful for where you are now, and for where you are headed. Look around for things to be grateful for. You’ll be surprised to find quite a few.
10. Become a giver. In your relationships, always think in terms of what you can do for the other person. What goes round comes round. After all, whatever dreams you have most likely involve interacting with other people. Be kind and generous to all; you never know where your breakthrough will come from.

Bonus Principle. Be in the know: Find out everything you can about your situation/goal. Read books, listen to tapes, and talk to experts, whatever it takes. This will help you make wise decisions and keep you confident as you go along.

So there you have it. I have given you a summary of principles which, if you apply consistently, WILL guarantee you success in any endeavour. Don’t just take my word for it, though. Prove it yourself by actually applying it to your life situation.

Knowlegde is not powerful until you act on what you know. Think about that. Better yet, act on it! You’ll be glad you did.

These principles may not be new to everybody, but it may have been some time ago if you have read them before. Therefore you might like to be reminded of them and read them again. If you have applied these in the past then now may be a good time to see how much of these principles ( or maybe all) still play a role in your life.

Photo Credit:  zaraki.kenpachi

“Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in Eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity.” ~Swami Sivananda

Life goes fast, maybe a bit too fast at times. It’s probably a sign of the times and it must be the way life goes. We want things to happen and be done increasingly faster every day. If we don’t slow ourselves down every now and then, we may at some point get a bit overwhelmed by life. It’s possible life becomes fast enough to pass you by, leaving you behind flabbergasted and wondering what happened to you.

There are literally dozens of examples of how this reveals itself. The bottom line here is that it is o.k. to stop and make time every day to important things in our life. For example spending quality time with your family, or enjoying the good dinner together etc. we all have our own examples that match our  lives. Because life goes so fast we sometimes tend to forget or overlook what’s really important to us.

A good way to calm yourself down a bit and get some peace is by applying the force of meditation. There are many ways to meditate and via the internet you can find a lot of meditation music or practices to help you get started.  It’s really interesting and rewarding to experience that after some practice you can reach other conscious levels like the Alpha, Beta and Theta levels. Each of these levels has it’s own use and an explanation of each type of level may be interesting enough for a post of it’s own.

After you finish meditating you may really feel rejuvenated. If you meditate well you give your brain a chance to take a rest. Sometimes after meditating you may also feel refreshed like when you wake up in the morning after a good night of sleep.

“Meditation brings wisdom; lack of mediation leaves ignorance. Know well what leads you forward and what hold you back, and choose the path that leads to wisdom.”~ Buddha

For me personally it really works, it’s like I am capable of doing more and it makes me feel sharper and more balanced in my every day life.  I am looking forward to talk to you again.

Photo Credit : h.koppdelaney & alicepopkorn

In my previous post I wrote that I would explain the way I listed my goals  in a plan, and how to follow this plan. I will get to this in a moment, but first things first.

Whenever I check my mail or the messages I got on my twitter account it’s hard to ignore all the ‘offers’ that are yelling at me how I can make an X- sum of money in a X-period of time. It’s also obvious that  the senders of these messages are very aware that there is a lot of competition in the  pool they are fishing in.  They stretch themselves to great lengths in an attempt to outbid the competition with offers that seem to be too good to refuse.

Or maybe… too good to be true.  Sometimes I read these messages and I notice how smart and convincing  these ‘pitches’ are written.  Giving me the feeling I am missing out on something  and that I might regret my decision if I would elect not to join a particular offer. Usually when something sparks my interest I save the link to it in my favorites and  then I read the info again the next day. Most of the time my interest has faded by then.

Now I don’t want to suggest that online opportunities are ‘no good’. They can be good IF you are looking for something new. But if you are already working on things it can become annoying and distracting. Because when you are working on a plan an important part in your quest to success… any success is to remain focused!

Well, let’s go back to the plan. To come up with your plan of action or goal-sheet may be very easy and straightforward. For me personally experience has taught me that it takes time to get a realistic plan. After the initial plan you think it over for awhile and as time goes by new insights and ideas of how to do things come to mind. After making some adjustments and updates to your plan you may also start to feel comfortable with it. Thus making it easier for yourself to accept the plan as your very own plan!

After getting this far it is crucial to execute your plan the right way. So let’s say you want to achieve your X-goal within a year. The year will be  your total timetable for your long term plan.  When working your plan it will be good to know if you are still on track with things you do, so you can also set a mid-term or mid-year goal that you may want to achieve within six months. To fulfill your whole plan and to make sure you will achieve it you break up your plan in weekly or two-weekly goals that you are going to work on week after week. Consistently working this way will make you succeed with your plan or with any  endeavor you want to achieve or set your mind to.That’s when you have the X-Factor in planning your future.

Photo Credit: Omsel

Fifteen years ago I was renting a house and… I got myself in trouble. I didn’t pay the rent on time and  I don’t know exactly but I think I was behind on  three monthly installments of rent. My landlord at the time gave me three weeks to come up with the money before he would throw me out of the house.

At that time I was also looking for a job and did not have income. My circumstances were not so good and at some point it really looked like I was going to lose my home. I remember that I was looking at the letter of the landlord and grinding my brain trying to come up with a plan that would lead to some sort of solution. I did not have much options then, the most logical option I had was to go to a temp agency and start working. Actually to come up with that idea didn’t require much thinking. But what I did think about was that if I would work a certain amount of days for a certain salary, I had a chance I could make it. So I did, I went to the temp agency, got myself a job somewhere and worked. I remember those three weeks went by in a rush.

But…. after twenty days, one day before I had to pay my due, I had the money . I actually had more money then the amount  I needed.

I never forgot this little experience. It proved to me that if you are with your back against the wall and that if you have the willpower and you really want to do something about your situation you can and will achieve that! Napoleon Hill once said that ‘if the desire is strong enough, the word impossible no longer has any meaning’.

For the last few months I contemplate about my career and what I like to do with my future. I am making plans and set my goals. I am trying to recreate the  ‘feeling of standing with my back against the wall’ again. This time not for reasons as mentioned above, but to align all the factors I need to succeed with my next endeavor.

Through insights and getting advice from the right kind of people, (some refer to them as mentors or teachers) I know exactly  how to recreate that feeling, yes that’s what it is,  how to recreate that same kind of emotion that helped me succeed years ago!

I got the actual kick start with the jig saw pieces I needed last week during a skype conversation with a friend from the ‘States’.  In my next post I plan to reveal how it all came  together.

Interested….. check back soon or simply subscribe to my feed.

Photo Credit:

 Juan Pablo Cambariere

Are we not all the same? Always looking for that special moment, that eureka moment, that turns your world upside down and makes you feel like you hit the jackpot. The moment that may bring you recognition, success, fame and maybe even fortune. Oftentimes it feels like it is just out of reach, it seems to be there for the taking but you just can’t lay your hands on it.

When you think of it, there are literally thousands of eureka stories that actually helped shaping the world as it is today.

It is believed that Archimedes was the inventor of the word ‘eureka’ after he discovered his principle known as :

‘Any object, wholly or partially immersed in a fluid, is buoyed up by a force equal to the weight of the fluid displaced by the object.’

More interesting inventions are amongst others the inventions of the lightbulb, the telephone, Coca Cola and the personal pc to name just a few big eureka moments.

What’s amazing is that most eureka moments seem to pop up by accident, or by the invention of something that was meant to be used in another way.

Now the question of the day: Is it possible for us to influence our brain into having our ’Aha!’ moment? The answer is a strong and confident YES!

Scientists have come up with studies that prove that sudden flashes of insight don’t just happen, but are the product of preparation of the brain. These ‘flashes’ will come when the brain is relaxed and receptive to ‘free floating ideas’.

A Eureka! sensation involves minimal monitoring of one’s own thoughts and builds on the sentiment expressed more than a century ago, when the great scientist Louis Pasteur declared that ‘Chance favors only the prepared mind.’

I think this is great, and good to know that you don’t need to grind your brain to come up with new creative ideas. It proves  the power of for example meditation to achieve higher mental and spiritual levels.

I am looking forward to talk to you again. 

photocredit: jeffweese

At this very moment we are enjoying the latter part of summer here in Holland. It’s great to have clear blue skies and  light breezes. It’s also great to sit out in the garden and have a chat with family or friends and enjoy a nice glass of wine. It is at moments like this that we fully appreciate life.

When I think of it I believe that if you see and experience the surroundings that you live in from a point of view just like mine, there must be tens of thousands, if not more of amazing and nice places around the world just like ours. It is just that we oftentimes allow negative forces of any kind e.g. negative energy or negative elements to block or blind us from all the positive emotions and  the amazing life we are living.

We have  nice  countryside sceneries with forests, a big lake and the north sea and it’s beaches all within a couple of minutes driving from our home. The absence of most of the tourists at the end of summer, is a nice added bonus to this. It makes me wonder if this same thing also goes for other holiday destinations like Umbria and Tuscany in Italy? Are the locals there thinking the same as I/we do?

 ‘Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity…. It turns problems into gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.’ by Melodie Beatty

I think a lot of the things we do originate in the mind, and once you realize this, you understand the power of the mind. I am grateful for the way I live my life more and more. The more I am aware of this and apply these principals to my life, the better my life seems to become.

Every season has an end. Allowing  a new season to exhibit it’s beauty. Bringing with it ‘hope’ of more amazing things to unfold for us. If we can conceive it we can achieve it. On moments like this going to the forest, beach or lake becomes a walk in ‘Gratitude’ park.

photocredit: flirianders & thebluemoose

I Am Always Truthful, Positive And Helping Others. This is the most important message of an E-book that I found a couple of days ago. The book is written by Michael Anthony Klosek and it is called: “How To Be Happy” and have fun changing the world. Or you can simply call it “The Happy Book”.

During and after reading this book I started questioning my own approach to being Truthful, Positive and Helping others. After some thinking I realized I could improve a lot on these subjects.

A long time ago it already became clear to me that life would be easier if you live without lying. Back then I was thinking to myself that I would try to be as truthful or as close to the truth as possible. Now after reading the book I want to do my best to  always be truthful. I mean why not do the effort, there is nothing to loose. In fact I will only win.

Positivity is something else. Here at home we continuously remind each other to be positive and to try to see the positive side of things. However in daily situations we sometimes tend to ‘forget’ to be positive all of the time. Especially when we become impatient, or our ‘interests’ are not being served the way we like. For myself I think I have to focus more on transferring my negative emotions into positive ones. I am already trying, but I am sure I can do much better.

“He who conquers himself is the mightiest warrior”

This quote from Confucius states exactly  what being positive is all about. Let Michael Anthony lead you and explain step by step how you can achieve to be Truthful, Positive & Helping others.

Actually I was already working to improve my positivity and the helping of others before I even found this book. I started this blog as a celebration of life, and I wanted to make it positive and fun to read. That is the plan;-). Thanks to Michaels book I have a guide now, so it should be easier and I probably see results faster.

You can download your free copy of the Happy Book now!