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Your personal theme can be changed, just like you change the theme of your browser or your computer. Your theme is built from partly what you have experienced in your life, partly what you have been taught, and partly from you genetics. These are the recurrent attitudes you approach life with. That’s your theme.

If you are worried constantly, “easy to anger”, take life with a “grain of salt”, are “always optimistic” about what is going to turn up – these are all life themes.

You change them, like any habit, through substituting another habit for them. Yes, attitudes are habits. They are adopted by repetition.

You can control any of your attitudes, and should. Just as you stand out if you are laughing at the wrong point in a theater or crying when everyone is jubilant around you at a football game, you attitudes should be appropriate for what is going on around you. This doesn’t mean you agree with everyone’s reactions – but you can decide whether you want to call attention to yourself.

I covered this point of controlling your attitudes in my book “Go Thunk Yourself(TM)!” Re-programming your habits was covered in my “Go Thunk Yourself, S’more!”.

Of course, I’m doing this for myself as I write this. The re-programming I’ve been doing in my own life has some interesting results so far. The program, as you may recall, is to play “The Secret” DVD several times every day for at least 30 days – and follow the tips and techniques in this DVD. You can also use Earl Nightingale’s “The Strangest Secret”.

I often listen to this as background while I am doing other work. What I’ve found is that my basic core attitudes have been changing. The text of the DVD has been becoming almost subliminal – listening to something like this makes it become nearly learned by rote, you often know the upcoming part and what is going to be said next. This is the exact point. If you can find a single recording which has a complete system on it, playing it over and over enables you to learn this and reprogram your life with it. There aren’t a lot of these recordings, but you will find that many authors such as Wayne Dyer and Earl Nightingale said to constantly play other self-help tapes in your life, to surround you with these articles, books and so on. You are going to reprogram yourself in this fashion.

Oddly, you can do this by simply turning off your radio, TV and reading less newspapers during your day. It’s interesting to see how quiet things are and what thoughts now come into your mind. If you do this, you can see what you are constantly thinking about during the day – what your “theme” is in life. You will see what your attitudes are and how you deal with things around you. Because you aren’t constantly being inundated with stories of the dead, dying, or threatening – you now have time to track your own thoughts. And then you can decide whether you want to change them or not.

Reprogramming is like gradually replacing all the colored clothes with whites or vice-versa. You mostly only can pull out a single item at a time and sometimes you pull out the wrong thing – but it’s ok to drop something back in. Sometimes you don’t have a choice, since a white long-sleeved shirt might be entangled with a pair of jeans. But you simply take out the pair, untangle them, and then put back in the one you want.

As you play an MP3 or DVD daily, you start to give yourself a recurrent line of thought to compare your other thoughts with. What I’ve found is that this method will show up a regular and definite chronic line of thought in your life. With “The Secret” DVD, I’m starting to change any old patterns of self-doubt, anxiety, temper with the positive emotions I really always have cherished. Only now, I can simply keep these positive emotions in my life as a constant theme.

So in your efforts to change your own theme, you are simply changing the world around you. That’s just the way it is. The only way this could fail would be in your keeping all this great stuff to yourself. But then, you’d be surrounded by people with secrets, wouldn’t you? And you would have mysteries constantly appearing in your life, wouldn’t you?

Your world and what you think is entirely up to you. What you experience around you is up to you. If you don’t like the stress in your life, if you don’t like the arguing, if you feel like you don’t control where your life is heading – change it.

I’ve laid out in this article how you can do it. You can change your life to whatever you want it to be. You can travel, become a millionaire, live a rock star’s life – anything you want. For me, I like living on a farm and having the time to do my artwork and write. You might like more action in your life – I cherish solitude. What you want in your life, what your theme is – all of this is up to you to change and sort out for yourself.

Whatever your life’s theme song is – it’s up to you. And only up to you. No one can change your life for you. Get one of the classics, or one of my books, or several – or listen to Dyer’s tapes, or Nightingale’s. Or pick up anyone else’s and play them constantly for yourself, for your own personal good.

And you’ll find your theme changing – so let us find you constantly humming your own theme song.

Dr. Robert C. Worstell, Phd

http://www.articlesbase.com/self-help-articles/changing-the-theme-song-to-your-life-how-to-reprogram-and-revamp-the-world-you-live-111233.html

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Integrity is a value, like persistence, courage, and industriousness. Even more than that, it is the value that guarantees all the other values. You are a good person to the degree to which you live your life consistently with the highest values that you espouse. Integrity is the quality that locks in your values and causes you to live consistently with them.

Integrity is the foundation of character, and character development is one of the most important activities you can engage in. Working on your character means disciplining yourself to do more and more of those things that a thoroughly honest person would do, under all circumstances.

To be impeccably honest with others, you must first be impeccably honest with yourself. You must be true to yourself. You must be true to the very best that is in you, to the very best that you know. Only a person who is living consistently with his highest values and virtues is really living a life of integrity, and when you commit to living this kind of life, you will find yourself continually raising your own standards, continually refining your definition of integrity and honesty.

You can tell how high your level of integrity is by simply looking at the things you do in your day-to-day life. You can look at your reactions and responses to the inevitable ups and downs of life. You can observe the behaviors you typically engage in, and you will then know the person you are.

The external manifestation of high integrity is high-quality work. A person who is totally honest with himself will be someone who does, or strives to do, excellent work on every occasion. The totally honest person recognizes, sometimes unconsciously, that everything he does is a statement about who he really is as a person.

When you start a little earlier, work a little harder, stay a little later, and concentrate on every detail, you are practicing integrity in your work. And whether you know it or not, your true level of integrity is apparent and obvious to everyone around you.

Perhaps the most important rule you will ever learn is that your life only becomes better when you become better.

All of life is lived from the inside out. At the very core of your personality lie your values about yourself and life in general. Your values determine the kind of person you really are, what you believe has defined your character and your personality. It is what you stand for, and what you won’t stand for, that tells you and the world the kind of person you have become.

Ask yourself this question: what are your five most important values in life? Your answer will reveal an enormous amount about you. What would you pay for, sacrifice for, suffer for, and even die for? What would you stand up for or refuse to lie down for? What are the values that you hold most dear? Think these questions through carefully and, when you get a chance, write down your answers. Here’s another way of asking that question: what men and women, living or dead, do you most admire? Once you pick three or four men or women, the next question is, why do you admire them? What values, qualities, or virtues do they have that you respect and look up to? Can you articulate those qualities? What is a quality possessed by human beings in general that you most respect? This is the starting point for determining your values. The answers to these questions form the foundation of your character and your personality.

Once you have determined your five major values, you should now organize them in order of importance. What is your first, most important value? What is your second value? What is your third value? And so on. Ranking your values is one of the very best and fastest ways to define your character.

Remember, a higher-order value will always take precedence over a lower-order value. Whenever you are forced to choose between acting on one value or another, you always choose the value that is the highest on your own personal hierarchy.

Who you are, in your heart, is evidenced by what you do on a day-to-day basis, especially when you are pushed into a position where you have to make a choice between two values or alternatives. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Guard your integrity as a sacred thing.” In study after study the quality of integrity, or a person’s adherence to values, ranks as the number one quality sought in every field. When it comes to determining with whom they will do business, customers rank the honesty of a salesperson as the most important single quality. Even if they feel that a salesperson’s product, quality, and price is superior, customers will not buy from that salesperson if they feel that he or she is lacking in honesty and character.

Likewise, integrity is the number one quality of leadership. Integrity in leadership is expressed in terms of constancy and consistency. It is manifested in an absolute devotion to keeping one’s word. The glue that holds all relationships together—including the relationship between the leader and the led—is trust, and trust is based on integrity.

Integrity is so important that functioning in our society would be impossible without it. We could not make even a simple purchase without a high level of confidence that the price was honest and that the change was correct. The most successful individuals and companies in America are those with reputations of high integrity among everyone they deal with. This level of integrity builds the confidence that others have in them and enables them to do more business than their competitors, whose ethics may be a little shaky. Earl Nightingale once wrote, “If honesty did not exist, it would have to be invented, as it is the surest way of getting rich.” A study at Harvard University concluded that the most valuable asset that a company has is how it is known to its customers: its reputation.

By the same token, your greatest personal asset is the way that you are known to your customers. It is your personal reputation for keeping your word and fulfilling your commitments. Your integrity precedes you and affects all of your interactions with other people. There are several things you can do to move you more rapidly toward becoming the kind of person that you know you are capable of becoming. The first, as I mentioned, is to decide upon your five most important values in life. Organize them in order of priority. Then, write a brief paragraph defining what each of those values means to you. A value combined with a definition becomes an organizing principle, a statement that you can use to help you make better decisions. It is a measure and standard which enables you to know how closely you are adhering to your innermost beliefs and convictions.

The second step to developing integrity and character in yourself is to study men and women of great character. Study the lives and stories of people like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Florence Nightingale, Susan B. Anthony, and Margaret Thatcher. Study the people whose strength of character enabled them to change their world. As you read, think about how they would behave if they were facing the difficulties that you face.

Napoleon Hill, in his book The Master Key to Riches, tells about how he created an imaginary board of personal advisors made up of great figures of history. He chose people like Napoleon, Lincoln, Jesus, and Alexander the Great. Whenever he had to make a decision, he would relax deeply and then imagine that the members of his advisory council were sitting at a large table in front of him. He would then ask them what he should do to deal effectively with a particular situation. In time, they would begin to give him answers, observations, and insights that helped him to see more clearly and act more effectively.

You can do the same thing. Select someone that you very much admire for his qualities of courage, tenacity, honesty, or wisdom. Ask yourself “What would Jesus do in my situation?” or “What would Lincoln do if he were here at this time?” You will find yourself with guidance that enables you to be the very best person that you can possibly be.

The third and most important step in building your integrity has to do with formulating your approach based on the psychology of human behavior. We know that if you feel a particular way, you will act in a manner consistent with that feeling. For example, if you feel happy, you will act happily. If you feel angry, you will act angrily. If you feel courageous, you will act courageously.

But we also know that you don’t always start off feeling the way you want to. However, because of the Law of Reversibility, if you act as if you had a particular feeling, the action will generate the feeling consistent with it. You can, in effect, act your way into feeling. You can “fake it until you make it.”

You can become a superior human being by consciously acting exactly as the kind of person that you would most like to become. If you behave like an individual of integrity, courage, resolution, persistence, and character, you will soon create within yourself the mental structure and habits of such a person. Your actions will become your reality. You will create a personality that is consistent with your highest aspirations.

The more you walk, talk, and behave consistently with your highest values, the more you will like yourself and the better you will feel about yourself. Your self-image will improve, and your level of self-acceptance will go up. You will feel stronger, bolder, and more capable of facing any challenge.

There are three primary areas of your life where acting with integrity is crucial. These are the three areas of greatest temptation for forsaking your integrity as well as the areas of greatest opportunity for building your integrity. When you listen to your inner voice and do what you know to be the right thing in each of these areas, you will have a sense of peace and satisfaction that will lead you on to success and high achievement.

The first area of integrity has to do with your relationships with your family and your friends, the people close to you. Being true to yourself means living in truth with each person in your life. It means refusing to say or do something that you don’t believe is right. Living in truth with other people means that you refuse to stay in any situation where you are unhappy with the behavior of another person. You refuse to tolerate it. You refuse to compromise. Psychologists have determined that most stress and negativity come from attempting to live in a way that is not congruent with your highest values. It is when your life is out of alignment, when you are doing and saying one thing on the outside but really feeling and believing something different on the inside, that you feel most unhappy. When you decide to become an individual of character and integrity, your first action will be to neutralize or remove all difficult relationships from your life.

This doesn’t mean that you have to go and hit somebody over the head with a stick. It simply means that you honestly confront another person and tell him that you are not happy. Tell him that you would like to reorganize this relationship so that you feel more content and satisfied. If the other person is not willing to make adjustments so that you can be happy, it should be clear to you that you don’t want to be in this relationship much longer anyway. The second area of integrity has to do with your attitude and behavior toward money. Casualness toward money brings casualties in your financial life. You must be fastidious about your treatment of money, especially other people’s money. You must guard your credit rating the same way you would guard your honor. You must pay your bills punctually, or even early. You must keep your promises with regard to your financial commitments.

The third area of integrity has to do with your commitments to others, especially in your business, your work, and your sales activities. Always keep your word. Be a man or a woman of honor. If you say that you will do something, do it. If you make a promise, keep it. If you make a commitment, fulfill it. Be known as the kind of person that can be trusted absolutely, no matter what the circumstances.

Your integrity is manifested in your willingness to adhere to the values you hold most dear. It’s easy to make promises and hard to keep them, but if you do, every single act of integrity will make your character a little stronger. And as you improve the quality and strength of your character, every other part of your life will improve as well.

Brian Tracy

http://www.articlesbase.com/motivational-articles/becoming-a-person-of-integrity-136366.html

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IDEAS are the fruits of your thinking.

One idea can change your life.

The aprk of thought thought that sets you on a new path.

The spark of thought that gets you to develop a new product.

The spark of thought that suggests a marketing breakthrough.

But they’ve got to be harnessed and put to work to have value.

Each year an oak tree produces enough acorns to populate a good sized forest. Yet from these seeds perhaps one or two acorns will become a tree. The squirrels destroy most of them and the hard ground beneath the tree doesn’t give the others much chance.

And so it is with ideas. Very few bear fruit. Ideas are highly perishable. If you’re not on-guard from the squirrels (negative thinking people and your own negative thoughts) will destroy them. Ideas require special handling from the time they are born until they are transformed into practical ways for doing things.

Use these 3 ideas to harness and develop ideas:

1. CAPTURE THEM. Earl Nightingale said “Ideas are like slippery fish. If you don’t ’spear’ them with a pencil they will escape.” Ideas will come to you at all sorts of times. They’ll just ‘pop’ into your head when driving, having a shower, a beer or wherever. BUT, they don’t last long. If you don’t record them your mind WILL forget them. Keep a notebook with you at all times and WRITE them down. If you don’t, the fruits of your thinking will disappear . . .

2. Next, review your ideas. Store them where you can find them. If you only create ONE idea a day, within a year you will have more ideas than mot people record in a lifetime . . . Review your ideas . . . You NEVER know when just ONE will change your life.

3. Fertilise your ideas. Now make your ideas grow. Think about them, attach them to other ideas. Read everything you can about your ideas. Discuss your ideas with other. And when the time is right, put them to work in your business and your life.

And be sure of this.

Ideas arise when you are exposed to new thinking, new people, things outside your comfort zone. People NOT in your industry, people who have SOLVED your problems before.

Attaching yourself to other people will similar goals and dreams as you acts as the fire to create the SPARKS of new ideas you can use to benefit your clients, yourself, your family and friends.

You need to rub shoulders with other success hungry people. Associate with people outside your core interests – doing so will illuminate the BIG picture.

Dedicated to others success,

Henry Baker.

Copyright Henry Baker 2009

Henry Baker

http://www.articlesbase.com/entrepreneurship-articles/this-one-idea-can-change-your-life-forever-896809.html

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Self-improvement or empowerment is not a new idea to the 21st century. Actually, such ideas have floated down through the decades since the 1930s. Before that, motivational speakers and forums might have been called something else. Today, the Law of Attraction is the key idea that has encouraged millions of people worldwide to reach for and attain goals in personal growth, financial independence and productivity.

Bob Proctor, the Canadian-born founder of the Law of Attraction self-improvement method, has been teaching and instructing people throughout the globe how to obtain prosperity and improved personal relationships since the 1960s.

Although a high-school dropout, Proctor has always had goals. He was not born into money and did not live a pampered life. He experienced many of the same trials and frustrations millions of people do today, including a lack of education and a sporadic work history. As a young man, he read a book that literally changed the course of his life. That book was called, “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill. It was the first book of its type that he had ever read. He followed it with works by Earl Nightingale.

Nightingale was earning quite a reputation in the 1960s, along with his partner, Lloyd Conant, founders of Nightingale-Conant, producers and publishers of a new wave of personal improvement media that seemed ripe for the plucking during that unsettled era of personal and spiritual growth and freedom.

Soon Proctor began to work for the Nightingale-Conant Company, and before long he became vice president, promoting the immensely popular culture the company engendered. Soon, Bob Proctor created his own seminars and began speaking engagements around the world. Since then, his speeches, workshops and uplifting and encouraging motivational materials have helped thousands of people reach for and obtain their own personal goals.

The popularity of self-help tools and motivational speaking has reached an-all time high as the 21st century ushers in more independent thinkers and business people taking advantage of global communications made possible by the Internet. Using tools that teach positive thinking, motivation and how to maximize human potential, Bob Proctor has created a program that teaches and uplifts people from all walks of life. Through his seminars and teaching materials, possibilities that were unimaginable before now seem possible for anyone who reaches out for help.

The greatest thing about Bob Proctor, says the majority of his followers, is that he doesn’t talk at you, but with you as he speaks about attaining unheard-of wealth, personal satisfaction and growth. Anyone who has ever heard Proctor speak to audiences of hundreds has experienced the enthusiasm and joy he feels for his subject matter. Proctor offers not only the tools, but also the methods needed to use those tools to their fullest potential in order to obtain the goals that people yearn for. Take the time to find out what the Law of Attraction is all about. You won’t regret it.

Richard Gober

http://www.articlesbase.com/self-help-articles/bob-proctor-the-brain-behind-the-law-of-attraction-155106.html

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There’s a certain magic that comes with all celebrities – obviously. They are dynamic. They are engaging. In fact, even though we never meet them, they often become role models. Through their work, they invite us to look into ourselves and find the magic inside each of us. For plus size women, these role models also have something that we often have very little of – confidence. Even those female celebrities who struggle with their weight and body image seem to know that they have something magical and unique, and that it has nothing to do with the size of their derriere or the number on the tag of their blouse.

Like all human beings, starlets come in an endless array of shapes and sizes – they come in the slender variety by the dozens – and they come in the not-so-slender category, like fuller-figured retired supermodel Tyra Banks. Season after season, Tyra uses her popular show, America’s Next Top Model, to champion plus size women at every turn. And no conversation about plus-size role models would be complete without Oprah Winfrey – the queen of the modern-day weight battle.

So what is it about these particular women? Is it that they love themselves just a little more than the rest of us? Or is it simply that they ask US to love ourselves more – and to own EVERYTHING magical about ourselves that has NOTHING to do with our bodies?

Because I think that most of us look at their struggles with weight and often think, “Who cares?”  When I see Wynonna Judd or Oprah struggling with their weight over and over, I never stop being amazed that they would even CARE about that. They are accomplished and fantastic, after all, and their beauty is NOT up for debate. So the question I am then led to ask is this:  What does that say about me???

Much to my amazement, time after time, the answer is that I stop seeing myself from the outside – as a “plus size” woman – and instead, I see myself as a PHENOMENAL woman.  My beauty is also not up for debate – not even by me!  And it does NOT depend on the size of my a**.

Believing that our worth is proportionately tied to our size (in adverse ratios, I might add) is as awful as believing that it is tied to our race, or our bank account, or the neighborhood we live in.  It’s just another form of lies and false division.  The WORST insult is when I do it to myself.

That is why I so often write about the importance of plus size fashion and having a killer wardrobe – because I am NOT going to let my magic be overlooked just because I’m hiding in the crowd, embarrassed about my weight. There’s so much more to me that really matters in this world. My style matters. My vision matters. My PASSION matters. My ability to inspire others, my capacity to spot great ideas, my savvy when it comes to marketing and positioning – all of that matters. My fat a**? Not so much. And that, quite simply, is how I feel about that.

Stacy Montgomery

http://www.articlesbase.com/fashion-articles/role-models-for-a-real-world-tyra-banks-oprah-wynonna-and-me-756538.html

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I’m a full time carer for my mother and the stress is really starting to get to me. She can not be left alone so I am with her 24/7. Is there any way to deal with the stress or am I just clutching at straws?

Please look in the yellow pages for services to help with respite care. There are also caregivers who come into the home and assist with the elderly.
I am sorry your feeling so overwhelmed right now, and understand why. It is very taxing and strenuous work. do you have any siblings that could assist with your mother? You need to take care of your needs too, and deserve a break. Call rest homes to, and ask about information on elderly care that live at home, maybe they can lead you to the right direction. I am sure there has to be county services out there for you that will offer assistance.
My heart goes out to you.
You must love your mother very much.

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I have one week of summer school left and then I’m done. I’ll finally have my bachelor degree but now I have student loans due and I’m also stressed about finding a job. Along with everyday things that occur. What’s the best way to deal with stress naturally?

wow, you have a full plate there. no wonder you are stressed out. try walking everyday. just a natural enjoying life and stress free walking. look at nature all around you. look at the trees and the flowers. enjoy watching the squirrels at play. sit and watch people go by. relax your neck muscles. then hold your head high and then pull your chest up out of your abdomen. take a deep breathe, breathe the air.

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