$100

Compare a fresh, crisp $100 bill...

With this one... 

Which one is worth more?  

Despite it's being tattered and worn, spit on and muddied, burned and soiled, you could probably buy $100 worth of stuff, even with the dirty hundred dollar bill.

$100 is $100 is $100…  

$100 has intrinsic value equal to 

$100.  

And you are worth more...

You are much like the $100.  Except you are priceless...  

God has made you priceless.  You are worthy to God.  You have intrinsic value.  Whether you are a crisp Bill,  freshly printed, just recently born and devoid of error... Or a crumpled, dirty, filthy Bill, regretting most of your life.   You are still worth infinitely more than $100… 

And that is why your head trash has got to stop.  

If you de-value yourself with the words you say to yourself:   

I'm a failure.  I'll never amount to anything.  I could never be anybody.  I could never be loved by anybody...

... or any of a number of things you could say about yourself...  this is what your God says:

I Love you with no condition.  I Love you without reservation.  I Love you.  I Love you.  I am waiting for you.

You are still worthy.   You are called for great things. You are called to a specific purpose.  A purpose that can serve mankind!

Tangent:

I was asked recently to explain why I insist that our lives are about anything other than serving ourselves.    Why should we want to "serve" others?  Especially, if there's nothing in it for us?

All you need to do is give a gift to someone...  Give a gift to someone that did nothing to deserve it.  Do it expecting nothing in return, and witness the feeling that grace brings.  Grace is nothing more and nothing less than a gift that is undeserved.  Share a Thanksgiving turkey with a family that would never have been able to afford it.  Do it for no other reason than to give... and witness the transformation of giving in your life.  That will be explanation enough.   "Givers" gain in this world... and they gain more than money...  (Check out the BNI  motto... sometimes givers do gain money). 

People who spend their lives taking and not giving are missing one of the greatest blessings this life offers––  to give, and give abundantly.

Growth is a Process

"Relax, growth is a process…"

… is what I keep telling myself in my journey of personal development…  in this adventure of leading myself.

I keep meeting people struggling to overcome this obstacle.  They don’t even have the words to understand what’s going on inside them.  But they’re frustrated with their jobs, careers, business, relationships…  

Have you ever felt like the same problems just keep coming up over and over?

I’m sorry to break it to you, but It’s true––  growth is a process.  And that means nothing more and nothing less than understanding a very simple concept:

Before you can get to steps 7 and 8…  you’ve got to figure out and take step 1.

I’ve been there before.  Trying to figure out why step 8 hasn’t shown up yet.  And I’ve placed the order in my dreams-book!  And I... I’m praying! Believing for step 8 to show up and just land on my doorstep!!!  Why hasn’t it arrived, signed-sealed-delivered?

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the realization that we’re nowhere near where we want to be.  Take a breath. 

No one is exactly where we want to be.  We always want to be just a little bit further along…  Until, that is, we learn the subtle art of appreciating that growth is a daily process.

High performance leaders work their whole lives on becoming an overnight success.

“I’m a lazy person. I never get my work done when I know I’m supposed to do it. I’m just not a productive person..."

Realize that focusing on your past to determine “who you are” is an ineffective way of identifying with yourself.

You’re perpetuating a story about yourself that does nothing but cause you harm.

There's a season of sowing and reaping.  Just like a farmer needs to sow a field, tend the field, and continue to tend the field until the harvest time comes–– your growth works the same way.

The actions you have taken in the past are JUST the actions you took.  Redefine yourself and recreate yourself ONE STEP AT A TIME. 

Sow good seed in your daily routine and given enough time, you'll reap the reward of great habits.  It'll be hard and you won't be perfect.  

You'll be better tomorrow than you were yesterday if you put in the energy to change today...

Here’s a list of to-do’s that might help.

1. Get all your auto-criticism out of your system by writing all the negative things you think about yourself on a piece of paper until you’re literally tired.  
2. Burn the list.
3. Write down in first person a new list of “I am” statements.  Such as  “I am a productive person.”  “I am a courageous person.”  (Even if you don’t feel it).
4. Write down a list of things you’re grateful for.
5. Determine a list of daily habits that could change your life.  
6. Study high-performance, disciplined leaders and reproduce their systems one at a time in your life.  Little by little.  Over the course of a year, maybe.
7. Start with ONE daily habit, then add another, then another.
8. Reflect.  Learn.  Apply what you learned.
9. Celebrate the little victories along the way to the big victories.
10. Keep reading and keep learning.  Keep growing.  

The Importance of Positive Self-Image

Positive Self Image

Today I’m going to elaborate on one of the most important and limiting or enabling qualities of a human being.  I’m going to talk about the man or woman in the mirror.  

Your view of yourself determines your behavior.  Because your behavior today affects who you become and how you perform tomorrow, the Law of the Mirror says, you will never out-perform your self-image.

The value you put on yourself is the value that others will put on you as well.  

John Maxwell says, 

“If you place small value on yourself, rest assured that the world will not raise the price.”

Steps for Building a Positive Image  /  Visual:  Clearing the Muddy Waters  

When you are a baby your water is clean.  Let’s say that your psyche is this cup of water.  Your psyche is clean.  You have a personality, a potential, and a set of natural gifting that are yet to develop.  But as for the voice in a baby’s head.  It’s mommy and daddy’s cooing voice they hear.   

As we get older and negative events and voices start making their impact on our lives, the cup begins to get tarnished with these voices.  Until the voices become our own and we can’t distinguish between the negative voices. And the voices are nothing more than ideas we can believe or not believe.  Their truth value is determined exclusively by you.

I believe that every person is born with unique gifts and potential just waiting to be tapped into.  There are some people that can do things that I will never be good at.  I stick to the things that I’m good at and that I love. I work on a lot of the things I’m not good at so that I can get better, and because doing those things builds me up as well…  

(That doesn’t mean that I was always good at the things I’m good at today.  When we’re babies, we don’t know anything.  We naturally develop all the abilities we own today).

The problem is that many people never even give themselves room to develop the innate abilities within them.  They judge themselves by the way that water looks to them.  They say, water isn’t for me, when they have to put in the work to develop.  Because no-one who was ever great developed their abilities accidentally.  They slaved over those skill sets.  

Henry Ford said,  “Whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right.”

The voices about yourself you believe determine the vision of the future you can achieve.

How many of you criticize yourself heavily on a pretty regular basis?  And it looks like:  “Man, I’m not good enough. Or, I can’t really do that.  That’s not something for me.  I’ll never be good at that… look at other people, they can do this so well… I wish I could be that good, but I’ll never be that good…”  ?

I used to call that the auto-criticism monster.  Other people call it the gremlin.  Some people call it the enemy.

In the little bit of time I have left, I want to show you a vision of what your life could be.  

This hazy glass is dark and murky.  This is your subconscious… your psyche literally has an unclear view of itself.  And so the vision of your future in turn is unclear.

The Secret is…

We need to flush it out. 

Our thoughts and beliefs about ourselves create emotions.  Emotions are ENERGY in motion.  Emotions affect our actions.  We think about our actions on a conscious and a subconscious level –– those thoughts create further emotion.  That energy in motion creates our behaviors.

We sometimes can’t control the thoughts or voices of our auto-criticism monster/ our gremlin.  But we can control what we say back to those thoughts.  We can control what we believe.  It takes work. But let me show you.

To build your self esteem:

1. Guard your self talk.  Stop talking negative things to yourself.  Never say it out loud, even if it’s in your head.  Instead, talk to yourself out loud and say positive re-enforcing things.  Find positive adjectives and say them out loud while looking in the mirror.
2. Stop comparing yourself to anyone. When you discover that the best version of you has unique things to offer that someone else doesn’t, you’ll be liberated.
3. Create habits and disciplines to combat and kill the auto-criticism monster/ that deadly gremlin cancer.  Practice a small discipline daily.  Get up early and listen to empowering music.
4. Celebrate small victories and log them in your journal.  (You should be journaling and reflecting daily)
5. Write and speak positive adjectives about yourself and give yourself room to grow.
6. Perform intentional acts of kindness and add value to others. 

Embrace growth is a process.  Breathe. Let yourself make mistakes and learn from them.

Our behaviors determine our habits.  Our habits determine our character.  Which in turn determine our DESTINY.

Make the glass clean.  

Pour Water on the Seeds

Thank you to my anonymous reader who asked me to list ways we can develop the seeds of greatness within!

The following are a few suggestions:

• Keep a gratitude journal

Gratitude is one of the most powerful forces that works in our psyche.  As counterintuitive as it may sound, writing down what you're thankful for sends a message to your subconscious that says, "I am worthy,"  "My life is valuable."   Writing down the your victories over obstacles reminds your subconscious that if you could win in the small things, you can win in the big things.   

I routinely write in my journal a list of the things I am thankful for and the victories I have collected.  The activity makes me feel empowered, and can be a powerful force in the order of developing a strong, positive self image.

• Create a Mission Statement for your Life

Stephen Covey, in his book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, writes about the value of creating a life mission statement. He encourages you to involve every member of your family.  What your life mission statement does is it focuses your mind on determining your values.  Remember, values are your roots.  

You need values, principles, and strong character to live a fulfilled life.  A well-thought mission statement crystalizes your code of life.  It allows you to measure your weekly, monthly, yearly actions against your code.  Are your daily actions coinciding with where your values are?  Or are you fooling yourself and creating inner stress by living out of harmony with your deepest values?

• Read to grow yourself

It's one thing to read for fun, another thing to read to grow.  Loads of people spend their lives reading pulp fiction and never pick up a book that challenges them to be better people.  Therefore, their growth is stunted.  

Reading is a pre-requisite for excellence in performance and leadership.  Make sure you are reading hungrily and intentionally.  Decide WHY you are reading what you are reading in order to be more effective with your time.

Ask yourself  "How does this book enable me to work better in my field? How does this book enable me to grow closer to the best possible version of myself?

• Seek out and value mentorship, and relationships that stretch you

It's hard to keep yourself motivated and progressing through life without a strong support group and a growth environment.  The reason organizations like Alcoholics Anonymous, book reading clubs, and Parent Teacher Organizations (ha ha ha... can you tell I'm a new parent?) are so popular is because of the power of a community.   No matter the level of your current achievement, you can be associating with others that challenge and stretch you.  Continually challenge yourself!

There's a saying in Spanish:   "Dime con quien andas, y te dire quien eres."   It means:  "Tell me who your friends are and I'll tell you who you are."   And yet another way of putting it is as follows:

"You will be the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with."

-Jim Rohn