As you move yourself forward toward increased success, if you’re doing your work right, you’re going to meet expanding opportunities to serve a wider community, market or audience.
And at each stage of that growth, one side of you is going to dig in its heels and protest desperately, with self-talk such as:
“Who am I [...]

Although the details vary, there’s really only one way to influence the future — the active and vivid imagining of events.
If we’re imagining desirable events, we call this attraction work, doing affirmations, praying, doing requests or programming our minds.
Whichever term you use, this is the method you’ve been trying to master for some time now.
But [...]

Only five more days in sunny Japan, then my wife and I will be living in Thailand. As I wrote earlier, we’ll be flying out of Osaka airport on Thursday the 14th of February.
Valentine’s Day.
And talk about synchronicity! Things have fallen in our favor again and again. The latest “coincidence” was when a [...]

Building up your own self confidence isn’t any great mystery. It isn’t even particularly difficult.
Yes, I know that when your life turns dark, and despair grabs you by the gut, it can seem like you’ll never see sunshine again. But that’s an illusion. And like most illusions in life, despair is mostly self-induced.
If you’ve been [...]

It was a simple question on a business forum run by a large U.S. bank:
I am planning an ecommerce website to retail paintball products. I’m looking for a name, but the one I came up with is already registered. So I’m stuck, which puts me back at the start. I want a memorable [...]

Went back to high school today — the old school I attended nearly 50 years ago.
It’s still standing, still serving the community well, and its students are, unlike the kids in my day, incredibly young for their age… or so it seemed to this old geezer. And that goes double for the teachers.
It was nice [...]

Recently I stumbled upon Donald Latumahina’s excellent Life Optimizer blog, and this article in particular grabbed my attention:
15 Tips to Stay Positive in Negative Situations
Though it’s not easy, it’s important to stay positive in negative situations. Latumahina recommends 15 positive things you can do so you don’t succomb to the negative that may be going [...]

I lived for a couple of years with my grandparents on a farm in North Georgia, and in addition to his other businesses and holdings, my grandaddy also grew several acres of corn.
If you’ve ever seen corn in the field, you’ll know that all the stalks grow tall except for the ones along the edge [...]

So why are most people terrified to speak in public? Well, let’s face it — they know they don’t know what they’re doing, and they fully expect high-visibility failure.
But some people DO know.
Patricia Fripp is one of those people. Here, she explains how she coaches awkward, fearful speakers to pro-level in mere hours. Pay close [...]

The movies have it wrong, you know.
You remember, don’t you? Darth Vader keeps urging, “Come to the dark side of the force, Luke.”
But evil just about never approaches you in such a direct, easily recognized way. No, it’ll sneak into your life sideways, under the pretext of “this is for the greater good” or “you [...]

When it comes to our little day-to-day challenges, most of us tend to over-emphasize their size and importance.
In fact, it’s very common to try and outdo our friends in describing our most recent “disasters” and “tragedies.” We want everyone to think we’re struggling heroically to meet and master every little blip on the radar screen.
But [...]

Everybody has days when the confidence sags a bit.
And let’s face it, sometimes our confidence can even take a major dive, facedown in the dirt. When that happens, it may take real guts to keep moving forward. What we’d rather do — when our confidence has just been squashed — is slink away and disappear [...]

The Japanese describe a big, life-changing decision as:
“Kiyomizu no butai kara tobi-oriru.”
That tongue twister translates as:
“Leaping from the high porch of Kiyomizu Temple.”

If you’ve ever been to Kyoto and visited this temple, you’ll know it’s built high on a steep hillside. You can stand on the wide porch that runs all round the temple building, [...]

It doesn’t take much to put a winner out in front of the pack. In business and in sports, again and again, most victory margins are fractional.
And the difference in attitude required to spring out in front the crowd and be that leader - well that may take only a sliver more of determination, of [...]

Mike said his dad looked ready to spit poison.
One of the ladies at church had just commented, “Teddy, your little boy is so polite.”
As always, Mike’s father loved to hear that. He beamed, “Yep, I’m raising my boy to be a good, obedient kid.”
But that particular day, old Mr. Corley happened to be walking [...]

Are there parts of your life you sometimes hate?
Wish you could cancel those failures? Dump the defeats and sidestep the lousy breaks? Maybe very little in your life is going right – hasn’t been right for a very long time. There’s a lot of that going around.
But are you ready to change it? … change [...]

They called my wife Monday evening, about 6:30, with the news that her father had just passed away.
There were tears of course, then we got moving. It’s a two-hour drive by expressway to the family home in Wakayama, and we were packed and on the road inside forty minutes.
Shioe, my wife, deeply regretted not being [...]

You remember the 3 North Korean orphans I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. They were being held by Laos, who were demanding a fee of $1,000 each to let them go.
Well, here’s some good news… they’re safe now. Below is a recent statement about their release from the jail in Laos.

Every time I read palms and do readings for people, I’m struck all over again by how common it is to worry. Nearly everybody’s doing it.
A few of the people I see are optimistic and upbeat in their thinking… a VERY few. The truth is, most people spend much of their time and energy dreading [...]

Some changes are sudden - you know the instant they occur that something has happened. Mine was slower, and it wasn’t until later that I realized anything had happened. This was the change, however, that reshaped me from failure to success.
I stepped off the airplane at the Tokyo Narita Airport and instantly plunged into something [...]