life Archives - The Goalden Lady

Forgive Yourself And Grow

We never think to forgive when things go bad. Often times, our first instinct is to point the finger. We always bend towards the side of blame, in fear of being held wrongly accountable for whatever happened.

When things go wrong, no one wants to feel that pain or hold that burden. Handing it off to someone else gives us a temporary feeling of relief and comfort.

Instead of placing the fault on someone else (or yourself), try the opposite – forgive yourself and see it as an opportunity to grow.

Forgive Yourself And Others

This is a simple practice, but no one talks about it. Forgiving yourself is a key moment that allows you to grow. There’s no growth in avoiding responsibility.

Yes, we talk about taking responsibility, even when it’s not your fault. This is to move on, so you won’t be stuck and stagnant. Things happen, but someone has to have the courage to push things forward, even if the next step isn’t too clear.

Let’s take it beyond that – forgiving yourself. There are things that have happened in your life that you wish you could do differently. You blame yourself, but how do you move on from that?

Most people don’t move on – they keep replaying the “what-if” in their minds, trying to make it right. The guilt plays in a continuous loop, over and over in their heads and it begins to stifle their progress. What can you do?

You may not be able to change the past, but you can forgive yourself. At that time, you did the best you could do. The situation may not have even been your fault or in your control. There are a ton of factors that could play into you feeling sorry for yourself. If you can give energy to those type of thoughts, then you have the power to forgive.

Forgiveness is not only for others, it’s for you, too. We forgive those who did us wrong, because it gives us closure. Have you ever thought about giving yourself the same closure, so you can move on with your life? Let the emotions out, but instead of just dealing with it whenever it resurfaces, forgive yourself and let it go.

Growth Happens Here

Life is about growing. You deserve to take the next step, but you won’t be able to if you’re still carrying baggage from the past.

No matter how much it hurts or how bad it turned out, you can forgive yourself. Life can have a way of just happening, whether you are involved or not. The best way to deal with any kind of shame, remorse, guilt or disgrace is to forgive yourself.

Not only will it hopefully allow you to move forward with your life, but you will grow from it. Whether you are forgiving yourself or someone else, it lets you breathe. It frees you up from the negative emotions that have lived in your mental space for far too long.

Whether you do your best and fall short, or you experience life as it was given to you – forgive yourself. Beating yourself up won’t make you feel any better. Forgiveness grows you.

After you forgive yourself, smile. You’ve been holding yourself back because you feel you haven’t earned the right to live your best life. No matter how heavy life gets, we all deserve to live.

Dealing With Disappointment

Disappointment is one of those things you wish wouldn’t happen, but it always seems to find a way to rear it’s ugly head. Whether you find it coming from yourself or someone else, it has a way of disrupting your flow.

Unfortunately, disappointment is something we’re unable to avoid, but we do have the ability to work around it. Instead of trying to ignore it, be mindful and learn how to deal with it productively as possible.

What Disappoints You?

There are a million ways you can be disappointed. Deception, death, high expectations, sadness, anger, betrayal – it all falls under the umbrella of being disappointed. Whether something is unfair or not, it frustrates you.

It could be someone not showing up on time. Maybe you didn’t get the job you hoped for. Your best friend stole from you. Someone cut you off in traffic. There’s not as much money in your bank account as you thought.

Some of these disappointments are caused by other people, but some of it is caused by you. It’s important to know the difference, because you may not be able to fix other people, but you can definitely fix yourself.

Just know that other people are not you! Don’t expect them to do things the way you would do them – this is one of the easiest ways to disappoint yourself. Of course, we should all have high standards and expectations of each other, but in reality, it just doesn’t work that way.

Waking up in the morning to find there are no socks to wear can be disappointing, but you can fix that so it won’t happen again. Running out of gas while driving on the highway can make you mad, but you can fix that so it won’t happen again. These are situations that you bring upon yourself, but you can fix it. Be accountable and stop disappointing yourself.

Perspective

Think about this: do others upset you or do you allow yourself to be upset by them?

One way is blaming and the other is taking responsibility. People do crazy things – you don’t have to like it, but you don’t have to let it ruin your day, either. That’s life. You don’t have to be offended by every little thing. If you can see it from another perspective, it will help you move on with your day.

We can not stop disappointment from happening. However, it does contribute towards the building of our integrity and character. It can be annoying, but if you can see the situation from a different angle, it can possibly put you at an advantage.

Adjust your outlook so you won’t experience a high level of disappointment. It can be heartbreaking when someone lets you down, but don’t let it become distracting. Some of us are stuck on something that happened ten years ago. It’s hard to forgive and let go, but you don’t want to live in a mental prison all of your life.

Forgiveness is for you, not for them. It allows you to move forward so you can continue to make progress in your life. When you hold a grudge, the other person doesn’t feel it – you carry that burden of disappointment. If you shift your perspective, you’ll enjoy the benefit of controlling your emotions (not your emotions controlling you) and creating a more improved outcome.

It’s Okay To Feel Your Disappointment

When other things disappoint you, especially if it has nothing personal to do with you, let it go. Giving up your energy to silly things can be draining. It sounds simple in theory, but why do we make it hard to do?

Sometimes, it’s the small things that can get to us – someone looking at us the wrong way, it rained when it wasn’t supposed to or your favorite team lost the big game. These type of things will happen. You have no control over it, but you can make the choice to forget about it and keep going. Don’t carry it with you the rest of the day – unless there’s something you can do, accept it and let it go.

Other times, disappointment can be more personal and difficult to deal with. A loved one becomes terribly ill or your child is following the wrong crowd. Situations like these are unable to let go as easily. It may hurt everyday, but the best way to handle it is to be as helpful and as positive as you can.

With some disappointments, there is no concrete way of handling them – you just have to let it run it’s course and work itself out. At the same time, you don’t have to live in it. Acknowledge it, but allow yourself to look ahead and continue to pursue your future.

No matter what happens or how you feel, the world doesn’t stop. There are ways to limit your disappointments and deal with them in a productive way – just don’t let it ruin your life.

Opportunity Will Make You Shrink Or Grow

We’re given opportunity through various situations in life. Depending on how you respond, it can build you or break you. When things happen out of our daily rhythm, the opportunity is there, but we have a choice to either shrink back or grow ahead.

There’s no blueprint to life – no one knows what’s going to happen or how it will all end. The best thing we can do is control how we respond and make the right choices.

Blame And Complain Are Friends

One of the easiest things to do, especially when things don’t go our way, is to blame and complain – it’s almost impossible to do one without the other.

Blaming and complaining come as a package deal. If you use one, you’re bound to use the other. It’s the easiest way to avoid responsibility and the quickest way to escape accountability. It’s the lazy man’s “get out of jail free” card.

The lazy man doesn’t exactly get the point. As long as he’s blaming and complaining about his circumstances, others have control over him. If he won’t answer to himself, he’s only allowing others to answer for him.

Blaming and complaining lets you off the hook. It allows you to hand the reins to someone else to take charge. Just know that when you do this, the other person has power over what happens and can maneuver the situation at their will.

You could make suggestions, but you’re not the one holding the reins anymore, so ultimately, it’ll be their decision. This leads to coming up with excuses, just to make yourself feel better, because you gave up your opportunity.

We need to realize that opportunity can come in the form of hard work. It’s not always presented as being wrapped in a bow with a guaranteed happy ending. You must make the choice to commit and mold it into what you know it can become.

Blaming and complaining doesn’t give you that option.

Discomfort And Change Are Friends

Yes, opportunity is sneaky. It’s not easy to recognize, especially when everyone around you is expecting it to look pretty and enticing. You need to be able to spot it, even if it’s dressed ugly.

You wonder why it seems like others seem to have all the luck? It’s because they know how to see what other people look past. Opportunity looks uncomfortable and risky and too hard. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but you have to get in the trenches and make something out of it.

Discomfort and change are friends. They may not look good, but if you stay committed, you can make it into something beautiful – you can be one of the “lucky ones”.

When things look difficult and dirty, your first instinct is to leave it alone. Who wants to waste time working towards something that doesn’t look successful? Why keep trying if it doesn’t work out within the next day or two?

Train your mind to be flexible. When you’re flexible, you have the ability to move and think through any situation. Discomfort doesn’t scare you and change doesn’t make you freeze in your path. Instead, it makes you ambitious and resilient and that’s where the opportunity opens up.

We all have a choice to stand still or to move. Standing still is safe, but moving allows progress. Be uncomfortable for a little while, so you can build towards the comfort that you seek. Change is only hard in your mind – once you put one foot in front of the other, little changes grow into that opportunity you were looking for.

Growth Takes Courage

It takes a strong person to embrace discomfort and change. Anytime you have the choice to leave things as they are and play it safe, you’re letting your power slip away from you.

Courage is feeling the fear and following through – even in the face of defeat, you’ll find the strength to push through. The distractions will always be there. If it’s wrong, keep going until you make it right.

As they say, fortune favors the bold. Never be afraid of what might happen. Give yourself a chance to see how well you can adapt and adjust – always bet on yourself.

Discomfort and change are your teachers. It may hurt a little, but it won’t hurt for long. Don’t be afraid to grow yourself into the person you know you are.

Education Doesn’t Just Happen In School…

The world is lot bigger than you think. The internet has shown that, but what about seeing it personally, for yourself?

Education doesn’t just happen in school, it happens all around us. Some people get their best education interacting with the real world. There’s many things you can learn with real world experience.

On the other hand, some people are still stuck on formal education. Not so long ago, that may have been the only way to “guarantee” your success, but times have changed and it’s important that we realize this and change along with it.

Formal Education

In some places around the world, formal education is the law. There still may be some countries that lack a public school or a place for kids to learn initially, but it’s the desire for every parent to provide some sort of formal education for their child.

It starts with elementary or grade school. You’re taught the basics of how to read, write and how to do math. This is the foundation of all learning. From here, it gets a bit more intricate.

Somewhere down the line, we begin taking standardized tests, among other types of measurements of intelligence, to see how “smart” (or standard) we are. Are we moving at the average pace? Did we retain enough knowledge to move forward to the next grade? In essence, are we really learning anything, or taking in just enough to get to the next level?

Experiencing Education

In most instances, we’re taught the theory of operating in the real world, without having to go through real world experience. Can you learn how to run a business just by reading a book about it? Maybe you can, but it’s much better to get hands-on experience, as opposed to speculating and reading information about it.

You may be book smart, but that’s not where your education should end. Working in different places offers a different look at how the outside world operates. Every transaction with every person won’t give you the same outcome. This type of learning allows you to adapt and adjust to different situations and circumstances.

It’s good to read about how to drive a car, but until you get behind the wheel, it’s totally unlike what you would expect. Would you rather someone read the book and teach you, or have someone who has actually driven before teach you?

The outside world should be an extension of your inside education. Being taught by experience offers a new perspective of how things really happen. It gives you a better appreciation of how things are done. This is where real growth happens.

We’re All Cut Different

All people are different and we have different strengths and weaknesses. There’s nothing “standard” about anyone of us. We may have similarities in how we do things, but we’re still individuals with the ability to think out own thoughts and to act beyond what we’ve been taught.

And that’s where the real world comes in. The real world allows you to think outside the box and create your own path. In school, we’re taught to memorize several theories and equations for various things, but that always doesn’t compute to success in the real world. Some may argue that those theories and equations teach you how to think, but it’s not the only way – there are more strategies that demonstrate how to stretch your thinking.

With that in mind, the real world teaches you how to think in all types of situations. Depending on what you want to be in life, a formal education can be important, but just know that one type of education fits every type of person.

Get Out

Don’t close yourself off after you’re done with school. There’s so much more to learn – so many more experiences to be had.

Whether you prefer a formal education or a real world education, you’re still in control of your mindset and how to set your path.

Whatever you choose, always keep an open mind. Be aware by allowing learning to take place wherever you are. It doesn’t always have to be in a classroom for it to be real – it occurs any and everywhere.

Success Has No Timeline

It seems that success is supposed to come by the time you’re 30. We should have settled into the big house, with the perfect spouse and the fantastic career.

While this may be someone’s reality, it doesn’t happen that way for most of us. Somewhere down the line, someone convinced you that “having it all” was supposed to come before you turn a certain age.

For others, it’s the direct opposite. While “having it all” is very possible, there is no particular time you should be concerned with when it comes to reaching your goals.

Compare Yourself, To Yourself

Why is your friend successful, but you’re still struggling? Who keeps watering the grass on the other side, so it’s greener? What is it that you’re doing so wrong?

There’s one answer to those questions and others like it – it’s none of your business. When you constantly compare your life to others, it’s always wrong.

When you begin comparing your life’s journey with someone else’s, that’s where you lose. Everyone else will always look better and have more than you. “Perfection” is never within your reach.

Some of us are born with advantages, some of us aren’t. Some of us have both parents living at home, some of us only have one. Some of us are millionaires by the age of 25, some of us by 55.

The point is, life is different for everyone. Each and every person’s journey is unique – there are no 2 lives on the planet Earth that happens exactly alike. Build right where you are, using what you already have.

Their life is so perfect – “why am I so far behind?” If you’re putting in the work, doing the best you can do, your achievement isn’t far away. Don’t measure how successful you are, using someone else’s ruler. Your own efforts will put you right where you need to be.

Focus on what’s in front of you, not what’s happening with someone else. Success doesn’t come to you, when you’re looking at other people. Again, do what you can, with what you have.

Where Is Your Focus?

Always look at what’s ahead in your life. Taking your eyes off of the prize (your goal) will surely slow you down. What someone else is doing doesn’t make your journey any less worth traveling.

Plan and prepare for what you want to do. Control what you can. You can only do this by betting on yourself and minding your own business.

When you look at what others are doing, you’re giving them the attention you should be giving yourself. You give them credit for what they’ve done, when you should actually be giving yourself credit for what you’ve accomplished.

We don’t see what other people do to become successful. They don’t tell you how hard it was, the friends they lost along the way or the sacrifice they made in order to reach their goal. All you see is what happened in the end.

Maybe they did something unthinkable to achieve what looks like a dream life – the whole point is, you don’t know. Instead of going through all of the guessing and assuming, focus on what you’re doing and how you’re going to be outstanding in your own life.

Success Will Come In Time

Concentrate on what you can do to make yourself a success. The world will open up to you when you begin to live your life. Don’t let your ego get in the way by thinking you have to keep up with someone else’s life, just to prove you’re worthy. You don’t have to prove anything to anyone.

It’s good to have people who inspire and motivate you, but don’t expect their success to be your success. You can follow the exact same blueprint of Serena Williams, but that won’t make you a champion within the same amount of time.

The only thing you can do is take responsibility for how hard you work. You have the power over how disciplined or resilient you can be. No one can put in the work for you – you must do that yourself.

Be inspired and motivated, but know that your success will come in your time, not theirs.

Are You A Sideline Spectator Or A Progressive Player?

Most people stand on the sidelines all of their lives, while they watch others accomplish their goals. Being afraid to own your life is not a place where you want to be stuck. Watching as a spectator has it’s advantages, but you shouldn’t be a spectator all of your life.

On the other hand, being a player also has it’s advantages. If you take consistent action and responsibility for your goal, you’ll win the game, and much more in the end.

Competition is good. It can be fun to watch other people compete towards a common goal, especially in sports. There’s nothing like cheering for a winning team.

The Spectator

As a spectator, you don’t have to experience what the players go through. You simply watch with excitement and relax as they attempt to outplay the other team and carry themselves to victory.

Spectators get to laugh, be angry, eat hot dogs and nachos, shout what’s on their minds to the players – it’s a very comfortable position to be in. There’s no expectation from anyone and you get to do what you want while watching the competition.

Being on the sidelines is a comfortable place to be. It’s easy to sit back and watch while someone else is doing all of the work. Wanting to win when you’re not putting in the work is as simple as it comes. It’s nice to be a spectator, but life shouldn’t stop there.

Sometimes, you wish you were out there playing, because you think you can do better than the players. This may be true, but in the end, you’re only a spectator. You come to witness the best players in the game.

The Players

The players are the ones who put in non-stop effort and daily habits to become the best at their sport. No one wants to perform poorly in front of a crowd of millions, so they practice and train constantly. We all want to be the best.

As a player, you will sacrifice time with family and friends. If you want to gain a competitive advantage, you will have to spend time by preparing on the field, watching game tapes and other things in order to produce a win for your fans and the team.

Not only do you have to have personal discipline in order to be the best, you also have to deal with your team mate’s attitude. Some are easy to work with and some are not – everyone is different. Everyone has to figure out a way to work together as a team, seamlessly.

On game day, you’re expected to do one thing: win. No one cares about the argument you had with your friend right before the game or the fact that you may not be feeling your best. You’re expected to be confident, show up and fight until you win.

You’ve been practicing for this one performance for months. If you don’t, it will definitely show in your performance. Even if you prepared beyond your ability and lose, some fans will hurl insults at you as if you are without emotion.

Are You A Spectator Or A Player?

It’s easy to sit on the sidelines of life. Anyone can point out the mistakes and see what should’ve been done from a safe distance. You can make heartless comments or sell your tickets if you don’t feel like going.

When you have no goal or some level of commitment to get you to the next level, you can complain, but at the same time, it’s in your control. You don’t have to sit on the sidelines and be a spectator. There are many other ways you can participate in the sport of life and win.

The players know they can get hurt, but they take a chance. They know they can lose, but they continue to do their best. They know their fans will make outrageous comments, but they ignore it and keep moving forward. They are aware of the personal sacrifices, but they see the bigger picture and follow through, anyway.

Spectators don’t have to experience any of what the players do. The people who take a chance on winning or losing, being disciplined and focused, putting in the necessary work in order to come out on top – those are the ones who succeed in life. They aren’t afraid of what others will say about them, nor will they quit if they fail.

Do you want to be a spectator or a player in life? The choice is yours.

#BeGoalden

Claim The Life That’s Meant For You

Claim The Life You Were Meant To Live, Without The Pleasing

Have you ever thought about what type of life you really want to live? Is it something that you mindfully work towards everyday?

Somewhere in life, you started paying more attention to what others thought about you, than what you thought about yourself. Something (or someone) told you that it’s important to please and impress others and you took it too far.

These people are pleasers and there are three types: the People Pleaser, the Parent Pleaser and the Pity Pleaser.

The People Pleaser

Some people are people pleasers – they’re unable to function in life, unless they know they are in someone’s good graces. They’ve basically built their life at the convenience of others.

If you ask a people pleaser what they want, they’ll ask someone else before they give an answer. Everything is based upon going with the popular opinion, so they won’t be the odd one out. If someone puts them on the spot, they’d rather die than to give their own honest opinion.

Now, it’s blown into an unconscious habit where they’re constantly looking for opportunities to be someone’s friend, or to be that ‘like-able’ person. It’s important to be presentable and decent towards other people, but don’t cross the line by making it your life’s mission.

The Parent Pleaser

We all start off as parent pleasers. As children, we want the approval of our parents, so we strive for that acceptance because we like the positive feedback. At this moment in time, we don’t know any better because we’re growing little humans and we haven’t experienced much of the outside world.

The unfortunate thing is, some of us never grow out of being a parent pleaser. We constantly look for the chance to impress them by following the path they set out for us. The last thing we want to do is disappoint mom and dad.

This isn’t totally on the child – some parents take advantage of their children by constantly telling them what they should do, what they should wear or where they should go. They leave no room for the child to think independently.

As a teen growing into an adult, you should be able to think for yourself. Mom wants you to be a lawyer, but you want to be an artist. If mom doesn’t get her way, she’ll be mad, so you don’t do it. This can go on for the rest of your life and before you know it, your life has passed you by.

The Pity Pleaser

A pity pleaser is the person who has always experienced anything worse than you. If you tell them about the time you were hit by a truck, they’ll tell you about the time they were hit by two trucks. They look for someone to outdo to make them appear more interesting.

Pity pleasers have the unique ability to make everything all about them. No one else can have a better (or worse) story than they have. Every time someone is going through a challenging time, they’ve always gone through something even more challenging.

There’s no beating the pity pleaser, as they take pride in being better at being the worst. No one has ever had it more rough than them. They feel like they deserve your sorrow and pity support.

Claim Your Life

All of these people have built their lives around what others think of them. For some reason or another, they never leveled up to being personally accountable for their own thoughts and actions.

Everyone has to take responsibility, but the majority of the responsibility lies with you. Pleasers allow their lives to be led by other people. In the end, they’ve realized that they didn’t live their own lives and wished they had.

Think about what you want. It may hurt someone else’s feelings, but you must go out and claim your life! Do what’s best for you, without worrying about who thinks what. No one can live it better than you!

It’s not disrespectful to disagree with other’s opinions, but you are disrespecting yourself by not living and thinking to your own full potential. Claim the life that’s meant for you – live through the rights and wrongs, the successes and the mistakes because it is your unique journey.

You’ll never achieve living the life that someone else wants you to live. Give up being a pleaser and experience the world through your own thoughts and actions.

#BeGoalden

You Have a Choice: Discipline Or Disaster?

Consider how productive your life would be if you had to choose between discipline or disaster. Everyday, we make the decision to create good habits, or to take the easy road.

Your daily habits lead to the outcome of your life. If you choose to be intentional with what you practice, success is very attainable.

If you decide to let life lead you and go with the flow, it can be disastrous. It’s your choice: live with discipline or suffer the consequences of potential disaster.

Life’s Path

Understand that you are in control of your life. Whether you were born with certain advantages or not, your life is still your’s to create.

You can only do what you can manage. Things happen out of the blue that aren’t within our control – those are the situations we have to adjust to.

The things you can control will drive you towards your achievements, but only if you make the right choice. You are able to control many situations like when you sleep, what you eat, when you study, and making good and bad choices.

The outcome is the result of those habits that you can control. Let’s see how building the habit of discipline can guide you toward accomplishing your goals.

The Discipline Habit

Discipline is the foundation of becoming successful. It takes focus, consistency and other characteristics to get there, too, but they all fall under discipline.

Your mindset plays a big part in being disciplined. Being disciplined requires you to do things that are not easy – it’s when you make the difficult choice, instead of the easy choice. When you want to eat that piece of cake, but you choose the apple, or when your friends go out to party, but you choose to stay home and work on your craft.

Doing the thing that will lead to long term, positive benefits is definitely a challenge, but it can be done. When you have to make the conscious decision to do what you’re not used to doing, even when you don’t feel like it, you’re building the habit of discipline.

What happens when you don’t have the habit of discipline?

Unconscious Disaster

When you aren’t disciplined, you’re allowing life to happen to you. If you don’t control your daily habits, it can potentially lead to a disaster.

What happens when you don’t pay your bills on time? You have to pay late fees and ultimately, it will affect your credit score and then you’ll have to pay more interest for a loan. See how that breaks down in the long run?

What happens if you don’t exercise and eat right? You may gain weight and have less energy. When your kids want to play with you, you easily give out of breath and have to sit down. A heart attack may surprise you one day and after staying in the hospital, you’re hit with a huge medical bill.

Think ahead – your decisions and actions have consequences. Some of these can end up being disasters that can last a lifetime. Make sure the results you want will benefit you in the future.

Choose Your Discipline

Being disciplined is hard, but so is dealing with a potential disaster. If you can direct your life away from misfortunes, it should be an easy decision to make.

Choose your hard. There are habits we can control, to the point where we can influence the results that we want. It may not turn out in our favor sometimes, but adjustments have to be made in order for things to grow and work out.

Don’t settle for instant gratification – think long term. The more disciplined you are now, the less disaster you will face in the future.

We aren’t able to control every aspect of our lives, but let’s make the best of the parts that we can control. Life does happen, but we do have the ability to lead our lives in a more positive and disciplined direction.

#BeGoalden

How To Manage Your Mind (Excerpt From: “Help! I’m Stuck” Book 2)

Knowing how to think is not a subject that is taught in schools. Instead, it is up to the parents to teach their child how to think, if they teach them at all. Some of us come into the world following someone else’s lead, not knowing that we can lead ourselves. This causes a world full of non-thinkers. Learning how to think should be a skill that is required learning.

Direct thoughts is using your own thoughts to guide you to a successful life. It is careful, intentional thought that leads to your desired outcome. Among other characteristics, it takes focus and self-discipline to navigate your thoughts to this level.

Too many people are going in the same direction, following the same Joe Shmoe. Students don’t question teachers, academically. School counselors determine the fate of the students and most students go with it, without knowing they have a choice. They no longer control their own thoughts, as they have given up that great privilege to someone else.

Plain and simple: if you are not thinking on your own, someone else is thinking for you. Following someone else relieves you of the task of directing your own thoughts. This fulfills their life and destroys yours.

Direct thinking is a skill that can be taught. First, you must realize that it is a skill, like focusing. You may not know how to do it, but you can learn and enhance upon it through practice.

The best time to learn direct thinking is when you’re a child. You can still learn as an adult, but the earlier you study it, the more you can use it to guide your desired goals.

In essence, direct thought is leading your thoughts towards a certain direction. You are responsible for guiding your own mind. Will you guide it towards a well-deserved positive path or will you guide it towards a lazy, average negative path?

How It All Begins

We are born with basic instincts. There is nothing on our newborn minds, as of yet.

Although we may not know it at the time, we pick up signals within our space. We hear the sounds and experience the environment.

As we get older, our minds become sponges. Habits are picked up and we begin to develop our own thought patterns, depending on our environment. Some environments are filled with love and support, while others lack those basic elements.

We should allow children to think for themselves. Let them experiment. Let them learn to embrace their own challenges without constant assistance. They should know what it takes to solve a problem or make adjustments to changing plans. This will serve them well in years to come.

Children should know it’s a privilege to think for themselves. Historically, people have been abused and scolded for thinking on their own. So called ‘superior’ people were supposed to do all of the thinking for the ‘inferior’ people. This happened in many countries, across the world.

Therefore, we should appreciate the fact that we have the power to direct our own thoughts and we should direct them well. If you aren’t sure how to go about managing your mind in this way, this book will show you how.

#BeGoalden

How To Be Happy Without Feeling Guilty

We’ve been conditioned to feel anxiety or stressed whenever situations happen in our lives. Even if it’s something good that makes you happy, instead of being grateful or feeling joy, we feel like it isn’t enough.

Let me be the one to tell you right now: you have a right to be happy. There’s nothing wrong with feeling content or being excited about your future, even if others aren’t.

Be Happy On The Inside

Finding your inner happiness is important – it doesn’t work unless you find it, first.

How do you find your happiness? Think about what you are grateful for. It’s the little things that bring you joy – a blossoming flower, a laughing child or drinking cold water on a hot day.

How you feel about yourself plays a huge role – think of three things that you love about yourself. Don’t think of how much weight you want to lose or if you’re having a bad hair day. Simply think of what makes you feel good.

Yes, it’ll take some effort because we’re used to seeing the bad before we see the good. See the good in yourself for a change and take that with you throughout the day. Be happy about the person you are growing into.

Be Happy On The Outside

Often, we depend on others to make us happy. If someone is having a bad day, we carry that weight as if it were our own. If you make a mistake, it bothers you all week. You don’t have to do that.

Don’t let things that happen in your environment determine how you should feel. Of course, something could always go wrong, but you don’t have to give in to that negativity. Shift your perspective and find some joy.

Your life isn’t controlled by what’s going on around you. Remember, you have a choice to be happy. Do a random act of kindness to inspire the rest of your day – it’s hard to feel bad when you’ve done something good for a stranger.

Life Is Too Short

Get out of that rut and find your happiness! You don’t have to go around smiling all the time – you’re not trying to show that you are happy. Your goal is to feel happy.

Your life is in your hands. Are you going to waste time being down and stressed out because you watched the news? Or are you going to take advantage of the fact that you have a choice to be happy?

Life happens. You can choose to live it in the dark or you can live it in the light. Everything is not sunshine and rainbows, but be mindful of those moments where you can find peace and be delighted.

It’s easy to fall into discouragement and misery when nothing is happening, but again, don’t let the outside forces control the rest of your day. With all of the distractions going on, it’s hard to find some joy, but it’s still your choice and your responsibility.

Never Feel Guilty About Your Happiness

There will be times when you’re having a great day and someone says something negative to you. People will make you feel guilty about being happy and try to spoil your good mood.

Don’t let anyone steal your joy. You are responsible for your own happiness and they are responsible for theirs. You are not obligated to make other people feel good about themselves – that’s something we all have to learn how to do on our own.

Know that you deserve to be happy. If someone else isn’t happy, it’s not your fault. Taking on other people’s emotions as your own seems sympathetic, but sometimes, we allow it to consume us and it’s not our issue to deal with.

Let’s not forget that you have your own dragons to slay. In the midst of it all, you can still find your peace of mind. Being angry along with someone else only takes away from your positive vibes. Be sympathetic, but don’t feel guilty about your happiness.

We all strive for happiness and it comes to us at different times. When you get it, you must allow yourself to feel it for as long as you can. Tomorrow is not promised and you shouldn’t waste it, just because someone else may be having a bad day.

Make the decision to be happy from the moment you wake up. Find three things that you are proud of about yourself and take that with you. Throughout your day, identify the small things that bring you joy and live in that moment. Most of all, don’t let the outside influence how you feel on the inside.

#BeGoalden