Personal Development Articles

While I’m not sure about the truth and validity of this story, the morale of the tale won’t “escape” us…… (Yes, pun intended…) Read on, friends – the account of Houdini and the locked door he couldn’t open will challenge you to examine how your own beliefs can have an effect on your behavior. Harry Houdini, the famous escapist, had become so accomplished in his art, that he started to issue challenges to people to find him the strongest box, or cage or water barrel, and the most secure or complex system of chains and locks, so that he could show off his expertise.

Do you ever find yourself thinking “I will be happy if… someday when (fill in the blank) then I will be completely happy …” If so, you could be stuck in a perpetual state of searching for happiness; as if happiness is running away from you all the time and that can leave you feeling that happiness is really just an elusive fantasy. Webster’s definition of happiness: State of well-being characterized by emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy.

“If we value independence, if we are disturbed by the growing conformity of knowledge, of values, of attitudes, which our present system induces, then we may wish to set up conditions of learning which make for uniqueness, for self-direction, and for self-initiated learning.” - Carl Rogers

The industrialized nations are home to societies of doers. Our educational systems ingrain the need to think, complete and meet deadlines. Our childhood life seldom offers or encourages us to simply be. I know that in my childhood it was very dangerous to be seen playing or doing anything that ...

OMBIVALENCE: as a state of mind and body; a philosophy. A statement of personal reality; I am ombivalent. Ombivalent: (ombi-valent) pronounced om-biv-a-lent ombi ( from the Swahili meaning “request”) om (aum) of the Hindu; representing the divine energy united in its three elementary aspects: creation, preservation and liberation. valent ( from valence which is derived from the Latin valentia, meaning "strength")

I have been a proponent of diversity throughout my life. This has manifested in a variety of ways, in both my personal life and career. Often "diversity" is used to connote a particular ratio of the two genders or racial representation. I have a broader definition of "diversity." Diversity ...

and pack a monstrous suitcase full of just about everything, only to kick yourself later because it was so heavy and you only used about half of what you brought? Too much baggage is a pain in the ass. Let’s talk emotional baggage for a minute. Everyone has an emotional suitcase and through the years circumstances and life in general causes people to put negative emotions in their suitcase and carry it along day to day. It’s called emotional baggage for a reason. It is luggage full of painful and negative emotions that people NEED to leave behind, but for one reason or another don’t.r

ThINK it... Here are three very important points I made in my book Milk & Cookies For Success: 1-The most valuable piece of real estate in the world (also the tiniest) is the small space between your two ears—that small plot that houses your brain (your mind) which defines who you are as a human being. 2-YOU (and only you) own that piece of property—it is ALL YOURS to develop as YOU want! 3-The mind is only as strong as its weakest think (like a chain is only as strong as its weakest link).

Vladimir Korotkevich's "Savage Hunt of King Stakh" has quite a few things in common with Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Hound of the Baskervilles". There is a depressing and creepy locale - the marshes. There is an heiress Nadzeja Janovska - the last direct descendant of an old aristocratic family - ...

No doubt, mothers and daughters have a unique connection. It starts out nurturing and playful, travels through ignorance and stubbornness, and winds down to respect and admiration. How can that journey become a more joyful experience when we are both grown? Follow these 6 (simple?) rules for a better, more fulfilling mother-daughter relationship. 1. Tensions between two women, in general, can be stressful. But between a mother and daughter it can be suffocating. Communicatio

There is a well-worm saying that suggests that perception is, in fact, reality. And, no matter how most thinking people might laugh off such a notion, the fact is that for the normal mind, reality is just that - the sum total of our perceptions. How we perceive the world, how it works and our place in it dictates how we behave. Most importantly of all, our own self-perception creates our reality - or, at least, our version of it.

Introductio I have written this article in response to requests to offer some support and advice in this difficult area. I am primarily talking about loss associated with bereavement but any deep and significant loss in life can produce a similar response in us - the intensity and duration may ...

Spring took its time this year; at least in the temperature department. Some mornings it stayed below freezing, brilliantly clear and the dogs being walked still needed their coats! I love that no matter how cold it still was; there were flower buds in splendid new colorful outfits poking through the gentle rebirthing earth. I smiled at strangers and they back at me; we all know what’s coming. Like little kids waiting for presents, our mother earth will reward us with spring’s fertile magnificence.

Challenge: I’m a new manager leading a team of sales professionals. One of my associates is very negative and does minimal work. While he meets quota, he could do so much more and his negativity impacts the other members of our team. He’s been with our company for a number of years and it seems ...

I have no idea exactly how many personal development, self improvement or so-called self help books were sold over the last year – but I do know that it is one of the fastest areas of growth in the publishing world with millions of books being sold every year. I also know that these self help books aren’t making a blind bit of difference. How do I know that? Well, turn on your TV, open your newspaper or take a quick glance at the web’s chat-rooms and forums. The world is a more insecure, fearful and confused place than it ever was.

Today's subject is the 13 named principles of The NEW Think and Grow Rich. From time to time someone asks me—and sometimes I wonder why it doesn't happen more often, but maybe I already have the answer—"Should I memorize the 13 principles of The NEW Think and Grow Rich?" I usually refer to them ...

By Merna Throne, M.S.

Many years ago, a mentor of mine told me something very profound. I asked him what it was that kept certain managers moving up the corporate ladder while others stopped. What he said has never left me. He told me that those leaders who did not progress to the top stopped being coachable. A mindset that cripples some senior executives is the belief that they have made it to the top and are somehow beyond the need for feedback. They no longer feel that they have anything to learn, so they remain in a static place without growth. As a result, their careers also cease to grow.

What is hiding just past your rules of reality? What is on the other side of your self beliefs? Just around the corner from what you tell yourself is possible? What is it that is waiting for you to tap into and unleash? It is the magic of your creative mind. This magic is real. As real as you allow yourself to believe, and let me tell you, once you believe, you can create a magical reality. But it is in allowing yourself to believe in the things that you cannot yet see. Belie

Your first mission on earth is to deal with every problem of your life and to make it successful. Dealing with life and to make it successful is not an easy task. It may seem easy but it is quite difficult. To survive in present day world, personality development skills are really very important. It will help you to make your life easier as well as successful without any hitch. Basically, personal development refers the way of improving your skill. It actually includes some o

"Change; to make the future course of something different from what it is" So you want things to be different? Being at a turning point in your life can mean many things, but most importantly it can mean change. Change is often met with resistance, and may be looked at as a source of stress, but it doesn't need to be that way. What if you could think about change in a whole new way? What if the idea of change brought about excitement and inspiration? What if change was the c

Before the Statute of Limitations runs out on making resolutions, I have a suggestion. Not a casual, easily cast aside resolution like signing up for spin class or cutting back on caffeine, but a biggie and one that calls for commitment. Executive presence is the core of my suggestion and in those long forgotten days of making resolutions in cursive, it could have been listed as "improve leadership skills."

Truly hearing someone when they’re speaking to you can be far more challenging than you might imagine and there’s lots of training out there to help you become a better listener. Most of this training, however, misses out on an important first step to genuine communication. When it comes to listening, it’s important to remember that each person must listen through herself. The body acts as the receiver for auditory information – it is the membrane of experience just as the eardrum is the membrane of hearing.

Recently, I was talking to fellow entrepreneur, Wendy Robbins, about autosuggestion, one of the more powerful principles I teach in The NEW Think and Grow Rich. Principle #11 teaches that the thinking The NEW Think and Grow Rich philosophy is based on is complete and throughout your whole corpus—it doesn't just include your conscious mind, it includes your subconscious mind, too. In fact, it's your subconscious mind that really determines your actions, more than your conscious mind does.

How many of you play sports? If you do, you would probably agree with me that it takes time to master a sport. This is especially true for some of you who decide to become a professional sportsperson. If you are a soccer fan, I believe you should know David Beckham. For those who do not know him, he was formerly the captain of the English national soccer team and a master of free kick. The truth is that even though he is now a free kick expert, he continues spending countless hours practising his free kick as he believes practice means improvement.

In my book, eavesdropping is snooping. It may be accepted behaviour in spy novels and British mystery programs but unless your name is Inspector Poirot, eavesdropping is a no-no.

There's no doubt about it - after years of shopping around for brain entrainment products, The Unexplainable Store has revealed itself to be one of the prime sources of a high quality isochronic, monaural, and binaural beats download. This brain entrainment review will lay out all the reasons why I believe this is so. With a minimal amount of knowledge on brain entrainment theory, it is relatively simple for companies to market their own products within the field. But what se

Live long enough and at some point you will battle feelings of depression. You might not struggle to the point of being diagnosed as clinically depressed, but struggling with a feeling of sadness for a period of days or weeks is quite common. It can be caused by situations or circumstances, such as relationship breakups, job issues, health problems, financial struggles, a death in the family, and so on.

I've been gripped with Olympic fever for the past 10 days. What an honour to watch the world's elite athletes pitting their decades-honed talents against each other. And the physiques on show?... oh my! For me too, as far as getting athletes' victory-against-all-odds stories to parallel into my leadership development coaching... there's been gift after gift!

Do you ever step into the pit of despair, inadequacy, depression, hopelessness, or fear? The more conscious you are of your process of moving and being in and out of the pit, the more enlightened you can become. Each moment presents a choice to live; each situation presents a choice to ...

Most westerners just don't meditate. Our culture is a culture of “doers”. We do so much, or think about doing so much, that we tend not to develop any inward awareness until we can’t do something we want to do. In those cases we typically experience a negative emotion. A culture like ours that ...

When I was a small child school dinners were an exquisite form of torture for me. Growing up in a Britain where for most adults food rationing was still a very real memory, waste of any kind was a cardinal sin. And so, at school meal times the food was ladled onto our plates (no question of ...

Whilst the debate about financial education in schools continues, parents need not wait to teach their kids about money. Here are 7 things that every teen should know about money. Manage your money - Show your money who’s boss by putting a money management system in place. Divide your income into separate jars, money boxes or bank accounts. Take a proportion and save it. Take another and allocate that for investing. Then work out how much you need to spend on essentials. From the remainder you can put some aside for fun and leisure.r

I’ve just spent a couple of days with a client here in the French Alps – someone who regards his personal development as of paramount importance in his life, someone who has altered his daily routine, going to bed one hour earlier to ensure that he has an extra hour each morning for meditation. He has been regularly meditating for up to an hour each morning for the last two years. The benefits? His health and fitness have greatly improved.

I was presenting my Kids in Trance Seminar about 9 years at Brunswick City Schools in Ohio. I helped a teenage student resolve a problem with a school bully. The issue resolved itself so quickly that the teens' mother inspired me to assist other kids in the district. Since I was already in the seminar business, I eventually began to speak to large and small groups of youths in classrooms, auditoriums, assemblies, and school cafeterias.

Our world, our entire universe and, indeed, your own daily life operates like a big energy-exchange machine. Ground-breaking discoveries in the field of quantum physics has begun to confirm just how this energy actually works. But, for starters, we already know that everything is made up of energy. Superstring theory, which the CERN teams working on experiments with the Large Haydron Collider will, in time, be confirmed experimentally, states that the most basic components of everything in the universe are superstrings of energy.

What is important to you in life? Do you know what your values are? Values are those things that are priorities. These can be anything from nature and beauty, adventure, learning, having fun, or honor and integrity. You know these things because when you see them in others, they bring you joy. When you experience them for yourself, they bring you joy. And when you don’t have enough of them in your life, you feel empty, like life has lost meaning. Too often, however, we live life without our values leading the way.

Decades of psychological research prove that about 96% of people use only 1% of their mental energy to focus in the present moment. Instead, the “normal” subconscious (the greater part of your mental energy) lives in your formative years, when you were so “sponge-like” and open-minded that you learned the subconscious programs that now create your reactive, habitual behaviour. All these programs together make up your personality. An acquaintance, Tom, recently told me “I love my personality!” But your personality is not who you are – it’s who other people told you you should be.r

More articles from this author at http://how-to-be-a-better-you.blogspot.com 1.) Don’t take so much notice of how you feel and whats going on behind your back all the time. Stop worrying about what people think of you. Get over it, at the end of the day only your thoughts and god ones matter. 2.) Please let go of worrying so much. It often and will makes things worse 9 out of 10. The more you think about something bad, the more likely it will happen. When you’re mind trig

As I get older, and hopefully, wiser, I tend to become more of a rebel. The one way to get me to do something is to tell me I can’t. I wish I could say I’ve always been this way but that’s not so. It’ a trait I’ve developed along the way, likely because I’ve had to take risks and I’ve found that much of the time, I’ve been successful. Until recently, I didn’t think of myself as ambitious. I thought of myself as surviving and doing what I had to do. I also followed what has been a trait for as long as I can remember. I don’t like to do the same thing for too long.

So, you've been thinking your life is a mess! It's not. It certainly feels like it is, but it's really just in a state of restructure and re-adjustment. You're feeling like everything is falling apart because that's the feedback you're getting from the actions you've taken in your life...to this point. Simply put, you're being told you're on the wrong path.nnHere's the thing....what you've been doing, isn't working.nn What's Really Going On? nnUnderstanding what adversity mea

“No action, no change. Limited action, limited change. Lots of action- Change occurs.” Catherine Pulsifier Procrastinators: Leaders of Tomorrow, the t-shirt phrase puts it right into perspective. If you want to lead a fulfilling life you have to get moving today on the tasks that will make the difference. Whether you suffer from the procrastination bug in one area or throughout your life the following ten tips can help take you from paralysis to achievement. “The secret of getting ahead is getting started.” Sally Berger

Earlier this month, Global News asked me to appear on the 6 o’clock news to comment on the social taboo of foul language or cursing and swearing. I was being asked to comment on the etiquette of cursing–an oxymoron if ever I heard one! (Swearing – meaning solemn promise – is another subject for another day.) A recent study by British psychologist Dr. Richard Stephens had just been released, linking the use of four letter words, profanities, vulgarities – by whichever name you call them – with pain management.

There are some who actually enjoy drama, but the majority of people try to keep it out of their lives as much as possible. There are some periods of course where you will find that drama popping up here and there. There is a strong chance that you want to get rid of that drama, or at the very least keep it to a minimum.

1. “I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can’t find anybody who can tell me what they want.” – Mark Twain 2. “There is no satisfaction that can compare with looking back across the years and finding you’ve grown in self-control, judgment, generosity, and unselfishness.” – Ella Wheeler Wilcox 3. “People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds, it is something one creates.” – Thomas Szasz 4. “If you don’t get lost, there’s a chance you may never be found.” – Anonymous

What’s the difference between positive thinking and positive mental attitude? Because, as far as I can figure out, positive mental attitude is just a fancier name for a way of thinking that is becoming increasingly discredited. Your attitude is created by your subconscious mind – the part that stores your belief systems – your beliefs about how the world works and your place in it.

No matter what your present circumstances are, the first step to becoming better is the commitment to do just that. It is amazing how many businesses, marketing gurus, mentors, coaches lawyers and doctors, even rocket scientists like to present themselves as "the best." To claim that you are the best in any industry or area of expertise is simply untrue - or at least there is no way to actually measure it even if it is true. At the end of the day, there is no way for any business or person to say they offer the best of anything - service, quality or features.

In case you haven’t already heard, the global economy is in something of a reversal at present!! I mention this in the context of a long-standing friend mentioning to me over breakfast last Friday that his daughter “couldn’t pick up the ‘phone” to ask for some career or job-seeking advice from one of her father’s business acquaintances – she was afraid of what of what he might think of her! My friend suggested to me that, in what is approaching recession induced mass hysteria, people feel “disempowered”.

E.E. Cummings once said ‘it takes courage to grow up and be who you really are’. It’s so easy to understand and grasp when you see it written down (like most great quotes) isn’t it? We know its value and ‘truth’ and yet: why do so many of us live each day of our lives waiting for the ‘stamp of approval seal‘, the permission, the go-ahead, the say-so from others just to be ourselves? Why does it seem almost impossible to take a personal heroic action and stand

Life is About Choices and the Decisions We Make rnLife is like a road. There are long and short roads; smooth and rocky roads; crooked and straight paths. In our life many roads come our way as we journey through life. There are roads that lead to a life of single blessedness, marriage, and religious vocation. There are also roads that lead to fame and fortune on one hand, or isolation and poverty on the other. There are roads to happiness as there are roads to sadness, roads