Motivating your spiritual side

In order for us to be healthy and happy human beings, we cannot neglect our spirituality. This does not mean that we need to be intensely fanatical about religion or about a particular organization. In fact, spirituality does not have as much to do with religion as one might think at first glance. What it means is that we get in touch with our spiritual side. It is possible to go to place of worship frequently, but still neglect spirituality. In fact, many atheists would argue that they are more spiritual than religious people because they focus more and the here and now because this time is all we have.

Spirituality is a lot like physical fitness. It takes practice and motivation. Here are a few ideas of things than you can do to motivate yourself to increase your spirituality.

Read sacred writings or uplifting books.
The wisdom of the ages is found in books. Just as the written word has allowed us to become a technological civilization, books and sacred writings contain the human race's cumulative wisdom and spirituality.


Watch uplifting movies.
There are so many movies and television shows which are degrading, vulgar, rude, violent, and pornographic. This kind of material takes you further away from spirituality. If you can find movies where people forgive each other, show love to each other, and lift others up, then this will be time well spent.

Practice praying, meditating, or sitting quietly.
Just as in physical exercise, spiritual exercise takes time, practice and motivation. Commit to spending a certain amount of time each day in prayer according to your beliefs. Spend part your prayer time in silent contemplation. Don't try to use
God as your personal genie, but spend time praying for others, and listening silently for thoughts and impressions. Meditation is a good idea regardless of your faith. The goal of meditation should be to empty your mind of all the daily activities and troubles, and try to be quiet and enjoy being part of something larger. Spending this time daily will help you to see things differently in your daily life. You will be more in control of yourself instead of just acting out the script that life hands you. If you don't believe in God, and don't have the discipline to meditate, when you have a quiet moment, just sit quietly for a certain length of time and see what comes to your mind

Begin or increase your donations to charity.
Giving makes you feel good. Helping others in need is one of the best and time tested ways to increase your spirituality. You can also volunteer for worthy causes.

Practice focusing more on others.
When you find yourself in a conversation, and you catch yourself talking too much about yourself, stop and shift the focus of the conversation to the other person. Ask questions about them, compliment them, and show them that they are important to you. If there is somebody that you do not like, do something nice for them. If someone has done something to offend you or hurt you, forgive them. Try and put yourself in other people's place more often. Practice putting the desires of your spouse before your own. Treat members of your family with great respect.
Cultivating spirituality in your life is more important than anything else you can do. It requires motivation, perseverance, and a lot of hard work, but so does almost anything worth doing. The things that are the hardest to do often pay the greatest dividends.

How to Stay Motivated Forever

Just as willpower is an essential factor in achieving success, at some point in time, discouragement and lack of motivation may hinder you from reaching your objective. And it is up to you, and you alone to devise techniques that will help you keep that drive within afire.

It is helpful to have visual goals. Whatever the goal is that you are working towards, make it visual. It maybe something material like a car, or a vacation you have been looking forward to for the longest time.

Take or cut out a picture of it and post it at a conspicuous place at work or at home where you can see it often. So that when you feel discouraged, this will remind you of your goal and will help you keep your spotlight.

Make a contract with oneself. According to motivational researches, people who write down to-do-lists are far more triumphant in achieving their intended goals than those people who just keep mental lists instead.

Putting something in writing somehow makes it more powerful psychologically speaking. This may also be the basis why most cultures have such a high regard in honoring contracts. In the contract, you may also include a certain reward that you will give yourself once you have accomplished the task.

After all, everyone likes to be rewarded for completing a good job. Even a simple pat on the back, “good job”, or “thank you” may do the trick to give the person the additional push to carry on, but unfortunately, these may not always be readily available. Considering that these are also essential in keeping oneself motivated, you must learn to find a way to get that encouragement on your own through pleasing yourself.

Abusive people lower your self-esteem and bring you down. Get these negative people out of your life. Surround yourself with positive people. Imitate their example. Smile amply and think happy thoughts.

These will give you a brighter outlook and lets you see a clearer picture of what you really want and a fresh mind to know what steps to take to get there. Rather than wait for things to happen, try to be proactive and MAKE THINGS HAPPEN. Inactivity idles the brain and stagnates your potential to reach your goals. 

Read inspirational books and literature. These will help you improve your attitude and heal your mind. A book of success stories also proves to be encouraging. You will not only learn from others' experiences and derive confidence boosting insights from them but the story will be instrumental in motivating you to go for your goal and move ahead with your plans. If this still seems to falter, get training or education.

Oftentimes, not knowing how or where to start is frustrating. Knowledge is power. Having a clear understanding of how and where to start is empowering and it will provide the extra drive needed to hit the mark you are aiming at and follow it through.

Having enumerated all these tips and tricks to attain self-motivation, but still you seem to feel lacking that much needed drive, there is one last thing that you must try.

Whatever it is that you have been meaning to do, or wanting to achieve, JUST DO IT! Keep on aiming high and go for it! Actually getting your hands dirty best solves the problem of motivation. By “forcing” yourself to just do it, your momentum will pick up gradually as you go along and before you know it you have finished the task or have finally achieved your goal. Divide and conquer is the key.

Break down the apparently unattainable activity to small doable steps. Not only does it become less overwhelming, but seeing the "in the meantime" results will further your confidence that it can indeed be done.

Lack of motivation happens to us all, but if you do not encourage yourself to accept opportunities and be challenged, no one else will. It is most important to keep your eye on the goal, find ways to keep going, and in no time, you shall reap its benefits.

And if at the beginning you were just doing it for the material reward, you will also learn to realize that the fulfillment, satisfaction and self-achievement you derive from reaching your goal is a much enjoyable high that will keep the drive within constantly burning.

Improve your self confidence in 15 minutes

I used to be frighteningly under confident in social situations. And although people who know me now would never believe I used to doubt myself so much I literally had to learn confidence until it became a natural part of me. I can tell you relaxed optimistic confidence is just, well so much more fun.

Here I’ll tell you about the things that made the most difference to my confidence levels…
Some people have naturally high levels of confidence but everybody can learn to be more confident
Firstly, it’s important to get a clear idea of what self confidence really means, otherwise you won’t know when you’ve got it! So, self confidence means:

1) Being calm. For every situation in life you need to run on the appropriate level of emotion. Too much emotional ‘leakage’ into a experience can spoil the experience. You make great strides towards confidence when you begin to relax in a greater range of situations.

2) Being cool. The second part of self confidence is about being able to relax with uncertainty. To be ‘cool’ in a situation really means relaxing with not knowing how things will pan out. If you truly tolerate uncertainty, you can do pretty much anything.

3) Not being too concerned with what others think of you. You know when you imagine what some place is going to be like before you go there but when you get there it is totally different to your imagination? That’s how reliable your imagination is! Stop trusting your imagination so much. I’ve long since stopped bothering to imagine what others think of me because so often I’ve turned out to be wrong.

4) Being specific – where do you want confidence? ‘Confidence’ is meaningless until you tie it to something specific. You are already confident that you can read these words or can switch a light on and off. So you don’t need more confidence everywhere. To get what you want in life you have to establish exactly what you do want. Where do you want confidence in your life? Think about the specific situations now and write them down. You beginning to steer your brain towards confidence.

5) Understanding that what you expect is what you get. Your brain is an organ that needs clear goals to work towards. When a task has been set in your brain it will do everything it can do to bring about the completion of that task. If you’ve tried to recall someone’s name but can’t, hours later you’ll often find their name pops into your head.
The ‘trying to recall’ experience set the task or blueprint for your brain’s future subconscious behaviour which eventually produced the name for you – when you weren’t thinking about it consciously. You can use this natural mechanism to start feeling more confident. But, to ensure you set the right task for your subconscious mind, the next point is vital.

6) Don’t task your mind with negatives. Instead of: ‘I don’t want to screw up’ (which sets the task of ‘screwing up’ for your brain), set the blueprint for what you do want! Your brain doesn’t work towards what to do by being told what not to do. And nature has given you a wonderful natural tool to set the right task blueprints with.

7) Use nature’s goal-setter: Now you understand how vital it is to set the right task for you brain, you need to know how to do this reliably. Good hypnosis will strongly ‘program’ the right blueprint in your mind through the use of your imagination. If you powerfully imagine feeling confident and relaxed while in a relaxed hypnotic state it will be hard for your unconscious mind to do anything else. The blueprint for relaxation has been set firmly into your subconscious mind.


Three simple strategies to get you feeling confident quickly:
   1) Think specifically of the time/place/situation you want to feel confident in. Remember ‘confidence’ doesn’t mean anything until you attach it to something specific.

   2) Focus on words in your mind right now that describe how you do want to be in that time and place. Maybe words such as ‘calm’, ‘relaxed’ or ‘focused’. Remember your brain works on clear positive instructions.
 
   3) Close your eyes for as long as you like and think about how those words feel. Then, imagine the situation itself and rehearse it in your mind feeling confident and relaxed. This way you set the right blueprint or ‘task’ for your unconscious mind.
You can repeat this often to make it more effective and use it with as many areas of your life as you need to. If you listen to a hypnotic cd or download that can make the benefits even more powerful (see my profile below). So if you feel like you’d be blessed with less confidence than some other people you can start redressing the balance by using your mind in the right way right now.