experiences – Personal Growth Cafe

July 19, 2012

4 New Year’s Resolution Goals Worth Setting

New Year’s Day is a great time to implement change and personal growth by setting goals that you want to achieve throughout the upcoming year. Some resolutions are well worth setting, because they can contribute greatly toward helping you live the life you desire and they’re attainable without any unrealistic expectations.

Try these types of New Year’s resolutions to ring in a happy new year:

1. Health improvements. When your body thrives, you have more energy, enthusiasm, and vitality to do everything you want to do. Focus on setting goals for the specific actions that will provide the results you’d like to see.

* For example, rather than stating that you want to lose 25 pounds next year, try to find achievable goals that will help you lose weight. Set resolutions such as enrolling in a yoga class, trying three new types of aerobics, or going for a walk each day after dinner.

* Resolve to bring new experiences into your life. Set goals about new foods that you want to try, eating 3 more vegetable servings each day, or growing your own organic vegetables.

* These goals are more fun to reach, but they’ll contribute to the same end result.

2. Financial improvements. Following the same advice as above, try to avoid setting unrealistic resolutions like “pay off all my debt next year” or “Put $10,000 away in savings.” Instead, choose goals for specific actions that will get you where you want to be financially.

* For example, you may resolve to save all of your spare change and deposit it into your savings account every month.

* Maybe you’d like to pick up 3 extra hours at work each week and dedicate those earned funds to your savings account or debt repayment.

* Or make a list of specific money-saving actions like the above that you’d like to incorporate into your daily life and add a new action to your routine each week. By the end of the year, you’ll be an automatic money-saving machine!

3. Creative endeavors. Creative goals can absolutely lead to personal enrichment and development. What interests you? Set resolutions to try new things, experience new places, challenge your comfort zone, and learn about yourself all at the same time.

* To get you started, consider resolutions to try new crafts or creative projects, start writing in a journal, take up pottery, or a variety of other creative endeavors. Create a resolution to try a new recipe at least once a month. Or fashion a resolution to hand-make every Christmas gift you give, starting at the beginning of the year!

4. Intellectual endeavors. Intellectual New Year’s resolutions can also benefit you in many different ways. Elect to take a course or seminar on a topic interests you, such as photography, scrapbooking, auto repair, or entrepreneurship.

* Challenge yourself to read ten non-fiction books about subjects that interest you, or resolve to participate in an intellectual challenge like NaNoWriMo, November’s “National Novel Writing Month.”

* New Year’s resolutions are a great way to find new ways to challenge yourself.

Above all else, choose New Year’s resolution goals that actually interest you and that are achievable for you. Resolve to do things that will be enjoyable, while also improving your life as a whole.

July 18, 2012July 18, 2012

Letting Go of Conflict from Your Past

You can learn to let go of the conflict in your life. Everyone has things from their past they aren’t proud of. Perhaps you keep thinking about a situation and wonder how things might have been different. The reality is, wishing things were different isn’t doing you any good! Avoid letting past conflict hold you back.

Instead, release your concerns and focus on the present. Today is what matters and you can use today to make better days ahead. There are many techniques you can use to help you leave the past behind, and it’s good to experiment with different strategies until you find the one that’s right for you.

Release Your Negative Thoughts

Thinking negatively about yourself or past events isn’t productive. Even if you’ve made mistakes, you should see them as learning experiences that brought you to where you are today. They’re teaching moments, where you make a choice and learn from what happens next.

Avoid dwelling on your mistakes. It’s important to take the information you learned and put it to good use. When you find yourself thinking negatively about your past, try a tactic that makes you focus on the present.

Some ways to help you focus on the present include:

* Exercising to raise your endorphin level
* Helping someone else by volunteering or getting involved in the community
* Meditating, praying, or visualizing
* Using affirmations to realize what positive things you currently have in your life

Conquer Your Conflict

Thoughts have power, so make them work for you, not against you. When you look at your experiences in a positive light, you open the door for more positive energy and experiences to come your way. Maybe something happened that you didn’t like, but what did you learn from it? What good things came from it?

There is always good if you look for it.

Most people forget to look for the good that comes in all experiences, so make it a priority to seek joy in the things you’re doing today. You aren’t required to forget about the past, but you can move away from it. Living in memories is no longer necessary. Live in the present, and look toward the future. It’s much easier to see where you’re going that way!

Make corrections on your journey if you need to, but avoid going backwards. Moving forward, into a bright future and away from conflict, should be your focus. When disconcerting thoughts of the past appear, gently urge them away with thoughts of the future. Avoid letting that negative voice get to you, because it isn’t what’s true and real.

You know what’s really important, even if your thoughts sometimes try to tell you otherwise. By focusing on what matters to you in the here-and-now, and seeing how you can extend that into your fabulous future, it becomes easier to shed the conflict that comes from spending too much time in the past.

It’s not possible to change your past, but it is possible to live for today.

That’s something to remind yourself of each day. Why live with regret and conflict when there’s joy and beauty to be found? Live in the light of peace and joy each day, and focus your energies on what you can do to make things better for yourself and the world around you.

You’ll find that you have more happiness and that you also bring more happiness to others. When you’re looking into the past, it’s hard to see the great things on display in the future. By letting go of your past, you’re able to change your focus and outlook onto much brighter things!

July 17, 2012

Creative Notions

People seem to have the misconception that only a select few are able to unleash a steady flow of creative genius. That is not true at all. The fact is, creativity is very much like a muscle that needs to be exercised in order to consistently give out great results. If you don’t practice harnessing creative thinking, this skill will very much atrophy into inexistence. But keep working and this skill will soon come to you in a snap.

So how do you unleash your creative thinking? Well, the first thing is to become a human leech. No, we’re not talking about just sucking the blood out of every living being available, we’re saying that you should take in as much knowledge and learning you can find. Read everything available — good and bad, and keep your mind open to the infinite possibilities of the universe. The more you know, the more you’ll want to know, and the more your faculty of wonder will be exercised. Prepare to be amazed at little facts that add a bit of color into your life.

Focus on a creative activity everyday. Yes, it’s an effort. Even doodling is a creative activity. Don’t let anything hinder you. Mindlessness may be a creative activity, but for people who are just starting out to unleash a little bit of creative thinking in their lives, it is helpful and encouraging to have concrete evidence, that, “hey, what I’m doing is getting somewhere.” So why don’t you try it. Practice drawing for a couple of minutes each day. Bring out your old camera and start snapping photos like crazy. Keep a journal and make a point to write in it religiously. Another cool idea is to write by describing something with your five senses. Try to avoid vague adjectives like “marvelous,” “amazing,” and “delicious.” Before you know it, you’ll have built yourself a tiny portfolio, and you’ll be amazed at the growth you’ve undertaken after amassing all those works of art. Who knows, you might actually take to liking those things you do everyday. Pretty soon those things will become a part of you and you’ll be addicted to these creative exercises.

Think out of the box — or don’t. Sometimes, constraints are actually a good thing. Limitations discipline you to work within your means. It enables you to be more resourceful. Creative freedom is great, but limitations enforce discipline.

Try something new everyday and let your experiences broaden your perspective. Explore a new district in your neighborhood. Spend an afternoon in a museum to which you’ve never been before. Chat up someone on the bus. Open up to the people around you. As you thrust yourself out of your comfort zone more and more each day, your sense of adventure grows and so does your zest for life. Think about it. When was the last time you did something for the first time? If it’s been a while, I tell you, you’ve been missing out on a whole lot of experiences that could’ve added to your growth, emotionally, mentally, physically, or spiritually. Why don’t you try bungee jumping today? Not only will you learn, but you will also have plenty of stories to share, enabling you to practice your storytelling skills and making you the life of the party.

Embrace insanity. No, not to the point of practically admitting yourself into the mental ward. As John Russell once said, “Sanity calms, but madness is more interesting.” Exactly! Every creative thought was once deemed insanity by other “normal” people at one time or another. Luckily, that didn’t stop the creative geniuses from standing by them. The thing is, sanity or being normal confines people to think… well, normally. Withink limits. Creativity is essentially breaking through barriers. Yes, this includes the bizzarre and the downright strange. I’m not saying that you yourself should develop a creative personality. That might go haywire. An example of a creative personality would be George Washington, who often rode into battle naked, or James Joyce, who wrote “Dubliners” with beetle juice for an intense fear of ink, or Albert Einstein, who thought his cat was a spy sent by his rival (or in thinking creatively in this case, the term could probably be “archnemesis.”) It’s important that your creativity doesn’t get you detached from the real world completely.

I hope this article has inspired you to start thinking beyond your “limits.” If you follow these steps pretty soon you’ll be living a life full of interesting adventures. Unleashing your creative thinking will bring about a new zest for living life.