Ritual for Staying on Track

Ever wish you had a daily ritual to help you stay on track?

Here’s a simple ritual you can use. Incorporate this “trick” into your day and you will find that you are more often on track for achieving your goals, both personal and business.

Here’s the trick. Throughout the day, take frequent short breaks (perhaps once every hour). During each break ask yourself these 3 simple questions.

  1.  Am I doing the highest income or highest impact activity that I need to be doing right now to move me towards my top goals?
  2.  What level is my energy at and what can I do to increase it right now?
  3.  Are my thoughts and emotions lined up for maximum performance right now?

Whatever the answer, make the necessary adjustments. Over time, you’ll find that you will train yourself to maintain a high performance attitude and behavioral pattern throughout the day. This will result in maximum returns on your energy!

Have You Yawned Enough Today?

Probably not. But you should.  Mindful yawning is a ritual that everyone should incorporate into their day as it is the fastest way to reduce mental stress caused by prolonged concentration and focus.

Olympic athletes yawn before they race, musicians and speakers yawn before they go on stage, snipers are trained to yawn before they pull the trigger.

What are other reasons for yawning? Yawning causes the release of dopamine, a hormone that keeps work-related motivation high. It clears away the fogginess of sleep and increases cerebral blood flow which enhances mental efficiency and quickly brings you into a heightened state of cognitive awareness. It has a similar effect on a person as having a cup of coffee, and it regulates the time clocks in your brain, helping you to sleep better at night!

Throughout your day, yawn as many times as possible. You should do it at least once an hour.

Yawn when you wake up, when you’re confronting a difficult problem at work, and whenever you feel anger, anxiety, or stress. Yawn before giving an important talk, yawn before you take a test, and yawn whenever you feel bored. But do it mindfully, paying close attention to how it affects your mood and awareness.

Conscious yawning is easy to do once you get past the idea that it is rude. All you need to do to trigger a deep yawn is to fake it four or five times. Try it now.

For more on how to stay focused and productive during the workday, see the following post.

How To Develop Powerful Daily Habits For Success

Are your daily habits crushing your chances of success?

Try this “innercise” from John Assaraf that appears on his myneurogym.com blog. It will help you release destructive habits and strengthen new, constructive habits.

John calls this innercise, “The Daily Opportunity.” It works like this:

1.  Choose a habit you want to release and identify what is triggering this habit.

2. Place a sticky note next to the trigger (i.e. where you hang your coat, your coffee mug, the pantry, your refrigerator) and starting today, interrupt your habit with a habit you want to encourage. You could go for a walk, drink a glass of water, take a few moments to stretch your body, read a chapter of Napoleon Hill’s book, sit in meditation, or daydream . . . .

3. Anytime you are triggered, repeat the alternate behavior until it becomes a new and improved habit. Your brain will still receive a reward, which will strengthen your constructive neuropathways.

Read his entire blog post and watch the accompanying video. it’s well worth the effort.

Click here to read John’s post 

 

Are You Visualizing Correctly?

Many of us involved in personal development visualize our goals daily.  Our gurus have told us to do that for years and we have made it an important daily ritual.  But for many of us, visualization does not work or at least not like we have been lead to believe it should.

It turns out that visualizing your goal is only the first step.  Much more is needed. The newest research, spearheaded by the psychologist Gabrielle Oettingen, shows that you must do 4 types of visualization: Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan.

She calls this WOOP and you need to do each visualization in the following order:

  1.  WISH:  First visualize your goal in great detail. This is essential.
  2.  OUTCOME:  Next, visualize in great detail all of the benefits you’d get if you achieve the goal. If you can’t do this, you may have picked the wrong goal.
  3.  OBSTACLE:  Visualize and write down all of the obstacles that are preventing you from attaining that goal. This is the most essential step that many people ignore or avoid. If you can’t clearly see all of the obstacles and problems involved in achieving a new and bigger desire, you’ll never find a solution.
  4. PLAN:  Plan a strategy that will move you toward your goal. If you can’t come up with one, ask for help, learn new skills, or change your wish. Once you have this plan, visualize yourself using it to overcome the obstacles you laid out in step three.

To appreciate the power of this simple technique, do it 2-3 times a day with small desires. Remember to visualize the obstacles and your plan for overcoming these obstacles. This is critical.

Also, don’t forget to take action and persevere. Your dreams won’t magically materialize! Visualization is necessary but not sufficient to achieving your goals.

How To Incorporate New Rituals Into Your Day

If you want to incorporate some new success rituals into your day, don’t try to add them all at once. This is setting yourself up for failure.

It works better to think about ONE thing, one very small thing that you can do daily that will move you closer to your goals.

What if you committed today to doing that ONE thing every day no matter what. Can you commit to that? Will you? Start it right now. Put on ONE shoe to go running. Do ONE sit up/push up. Eat ONE healthy food. Read ONE page.

Research shows that when you start doing that ONE thing and do it repeatedly, it starts a chain reaction and the formation of a new habit.

Make it as easy as possible. Creating a positive habit is more important than its intensity.

Add the one thing to a routine you are already doing and it becomes even easier.  For example:

  •  As soon as I wake up and put my feet on the ground I will___________
  •  As soon as I brush my teeth I will_________________
  •  As soon as I have my coffee I will_________________

Do this for the next 7-14 days and start a new daily ritual!  Start one new ritual each week and over a year you will have transformed your life.

Create Triggers To Keep You On Track

In his excellent book, High Performance Habits: How Extraordinary People Become That Way, Brendon Burchard writes that high performers tend to prime the emotions they want to experience. They think about how they want to feel, and ask themselves questions or create triggers that generate those feelings.

Today I am going to focus on triggers. A trigger, in psychology, is any stimulus that will precipitate feelings (memories) in an individual. It could be a sound, smell, taste, sight or touch.

The first trigger Brendon mentions, he calls a “notification trigger.” Brendon puts the phrase BRING THE JOY into his phone as an alarm label. He sets the alarm for three different times throughout the day.  He might be in a meeting, on a call, or writing an e-mail, and all of a sudden his phone will vibrate as the alarm goes off and displays those words. Of course you can select different words and you might set the alarm to go off more than three times a day. It’s up to you. One of my favorites is “I now accept and love myself every day in every way.”

Another trigger Brendon describes is a “door frame trigger.” Every time he walks through a doorway, he says to himself, “I will find the good in this room. I’m entering this space a happy man ready to serve.” This practice helps him get present, look for the good in others, and prepare himself to help others. What positive phrase or sentence could you say to yourself every time you walk through a doorway?

A third trigger Brendon discusses is a “stress trigger.” Whenever things feel like they were getting out of hand, Brendon will stand up, take ten deep breaths, and ask, “What’s the positive thing I can focus on and the next right action of integrity I should take now?”

In High Performance Habits, Brendon offers a number of other triggers that you might consider. Click here to order a copy of this great book.

What triggers can you think of that will help you stay on track and perform at your best?  Share YOUR IDEAS with OUR readers.

 

 

 

Rituals To Keep You Focused and Productive

Below are four rituals you can easily add to your daily routine that will help you stay focused and productive throughout your work day.

Start by downloading a mindfulness bell or setting alerts in your phone to go off every hour.

  1. When it goes off get up and move. Not only will your productivity improve, but it’s a proven fact that you will live longer than if you remain seated for hours.
  2. Next stretch very, very slowly to help release any remaining tension.
  3. Then take six mindful breathes. This will reboot your brain.
  4. Finally, before getting back to work, ask yourself  “What is the most important thing I could be doing during the next hour?” Then do it.

For extra credit:  Repeat affirmations to yourself. Doing so, while waiting at a stop light or during other delays will help keep your mindset positive and focused on your goals.

Try a few of these suggestions and let me know how it worked out for you.  Please comment below.  Till next time.

It’s Tax Day. Are You Experiencing Fear?

Fears over our taxes and getting them complete on time are common.

Be Happy! Tax Day comes just once a year.  What other fears do you have that last year round? Do you see them listed below?

  • Fear of failure (keeps you from trying)
  • Fear of success (sabotages your every effort)
    Fear of looking foolish (keeps you from speaking up)
  • Fear of speaking (keeps others from seeing your brilliance)
    Fear of loneliness (pushes you into unhealthy relationships)
  • Fear of poverty (which clouds your financial decisions or creates workaholism)

If any of these fears or others are holding you back, you may be interested in this free training offered by John Assaraf. Check it out

http://www.myneurogym.com/go/?p=DSjolin&w=WTGFEvent

Your Morning Ritual: Setting Your Mindset For The Day (Updated)

It’s important that you get your day off on the right track and that is where  your morning ritual comes in. It prepares your body and mind to have a happy productive day.

This morning routine doesn’t have to be complicated or take a lot of time.

In fact, you can accomplish a lot in less than an hour and some days, even a few minutes can be beneficial.

Gratitude as part of your morning ritual

Your morning ritual should begin the moment you wake and gratitude is a great start. List as many things as you can for which you are grateful

  • Immediately be grateful for the fact that you woke up this morning and have another day of life. Not everyone was so lucky.
  • Do you have family and friends? There are many lonely people in this world.
  • Are you enjoying a warm, nutritious breakfast? Again not everyone is so lucky.
  • Do you have a job and an income to support your family?And that is just a  start. Most of us could go on for hours listing all the blessings we have in our lives.
Empowering Questions

Next, ask yourself a series of empowering questions.

Here is a list of questions that Tony Robbins asks himself each morning:

  1. What am I most happy about in my life now?
  2.  What am I most excited about in my life now?
  3.  What am I most proud about in my life now?
  4.  What am I most grateful about in my life now?
  5.  Who do I love? Who loves me?
Other Morning Rituals

Once up, there are any number of additional empowering rituals that you might incorporate into your morning routine.

For example, as you crawl out of bed, repeat to yourself, “Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!”

Other morning rituals to try include.

  • Exercising
  • Eating a healthy breakfast
  • Reading
  • Meditating
  • Reviewing your top goals
  • Visualizing your day
  • Priming your brain with affirmations
Conclusion

Each of the rituals listed above will help get your day off to a good start.  Doing them will ensure that you are living by your highest values and are taking care of the most important things first.

Once off to this good start, your momentum will keep you on a positive track.

What is one ritual that are willing to commit to starting tomorrow morning?  Enter a comment below and let us know.

Gratitude Rituals

Perhaps the most important morning ritual you can incorporate into your life is Gratitude.

People who practice gratitude, on a daily basis, are healthier, happier, more effective, and more resilient. They report better physical and psychological health, they engage in more healthy activities, and they are more willing to seek help for health concerns than individuals who do not consciously practice gratitude.

Additionally, if you believe in the Law of Attraction, the more you are grateful for what you have, the more you will have in your life to feel grateful for.

The moment you wake, immediately feel grateful for the fact that you woke this morning and have another day of life. Not everyone was so fortunate. Then, silently say “Thank you” at least ten times to place yourself in an even more grateful state of mind.

Next, write down everything that you can think of to be thankful for.  This might include things like family members, friends, your job, good health, opportunities, a car in good condition, a roof over your head, food to eat, clothes … the list is endless.

Begin each sentence with “I am so happy & grateful that I ….” or something similar. As you do this, truly feel grateful.

You should shoot for no fewer than ten things that you feel grateful for and with time you will be able to fill pages. The more you write, the more you’ll feel any negativity melt away.

Try it today and let me know your results.