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CLEAR YOUR MIND

Keeping a clear mind is vital to our health and working efficiently at the chosen task ahead. We have all tried focusing on something like a test, talking in public or running a race, to be overcome with thoughts that had nothing to do with the actions at hand.  It lowers our performance dramatically, taking our head out of the game and into our own world. Having a clear mind is important for sleep as well, because we don’t want to be having restless nights thinking about what we have to do tomorrow or weeks to come.

There are several methods to help us clear our minds, relieve stress, focus our attention and feel happier. Some of these methods are from CEO’s providing there morning and evening routines, others are from personal experience and what I have found to personally help me.

    1. wake up early- This means going to bed earlier and getting your 8 hours of sleep, most of the CEO’s say they go to bed at 9pm and wake up at 4am. As you are most productive in the mornings and it sets you up for a fulfilled productive day.
    2. Have goals and a To do list- Before you go to bed or first thing when you wake up in the morning, write down what you need to do for the day ahead. This is so you can plan your day according and focus on one task at a time, rather than trying to multi task. Tick off each goal/task as you do them, to provide yourself with a sense of achievement and visual recognition of completing the task.
    3. Exercise/Meditate- Both exercise and meditation are proven to help you focus and provide you with more energy. Exercise at least 3 times a week for a 30-60min period and if you don’t like meditating, try providing yourself with some alone time, where you can sit and clear your head for 20mins.
    4. Circular Breathing- There are many breathing techniques, but find one that works for you and stick with it. Breathing techniques are proven to increase your alertness, focus your attention, feel more energised and calm your nerves. These methods are fantastic for on the spot help, such as before public speaking and before a competition.
    5. Clean- Having a clean work area and clean home life is extremely important to providing a positive safe space to live and work. If everything around you is cluttered it can make you feel cluttered and unsatisfied with your living conditions. If you are waking up to a clean house, it makes you feel positive and ready to attack the day, freeing your mind from those bad thoughts.
    6. Stop avoiding your issues- This is a major one for me, as I can let jobs/emails/life get on top of me and there is no bigger mental strain for me then feeling like I’m constantly supposed to being doing something and feeling bad about. So I have to make sure that I stay on top of these things and if I do run out of time to do something, I have to make sure I put it on my to do list so that it doesn’t get forgotten about and it helps my head keep clear of these things. This also applies to a lot of aspects in life, such as people avoiding doctors or dentist, avoiding paying that fine, etc. If you make a habit of doing things before it gets to the last minute or too late, it will help you feel on top of your life and leave all those worries out of your head.
    These are just some of the steps we can take to clear our minds. It takes a well rounded lifestyle even right down to diet, stress control, living conditions, family. But they are things that can be worked on. For some people a clear mind comes more naturally and for others it is a journey. I will be going into these other topics over the next couple of months and speaking more extensively about the points I have touched on in a book that will be coming out later in the year.
    Best of luck.
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Follow YOUR PASSION (don’t let anyone stop you)

Has there ever been something in your life that has made you excited or given you this burning passion?

But you never followed it through or gave it a chance to see where it could lead you.

Unfortunately a lot of the time this happens because of our closest friends and families; the ones that have the most influence on us. They can defiantly steer our lives, both directly and indirectly, helping make decisions, making us feel good or bad about making our own decisions, by constantly surrounding us with negativity or positivity.

PARENTS want us to succeed, but often what success in their minds are, are different to our own opinions. So you shouldn’t let your parents stop you if you want to be a musician or a politician or a full time traveller. Because it is YOUR passion, YOUR dreams, YOUR Goals. Im not saying to not listen to their opinions, because they do have a few extra years of life experience on you. But  to not just let them to persuade you to put your passion on the back burner, until you finish uni, until you buy a house, until you have a family or until your retired. Because if you constantly procrastinate on your passion, then when will you follow your dreams. There is never a better time then right NOW, to find your passion and give yourself to it 110%, because there are always excuses and reasons not to do something.

FRIENDS are our next major influence if not more so then our parents, they can bring you up and they can certainly bring you down, the old saying of ‘your 5 closest friends make you who you are’ is certainly true. If your around friends, that constantly drink, party and live a mediocre life, then the chances of you following suit is nearly guaranteed. But if your passion is to compete in the Olympics as a professional athlete, your not going to continue hanging around those friends. Your going to surround your self with like minded people, and successful people in your chosen sport, to help push, motivate and inspire you, to help make your goals a reality and live your passion everyday.

The last main influencer that prevents us from following our passion; is YOURSELF. Firstly we prevent ourselves by listening to our mediocre friends and family members, they get in our heads and help manifest self doubt, lack of motivation, and tell us that a 9-5 job 5 days a week, is what we are supposed to do, because thats what they do and thats what their parents did, so YOU must do it to. But we need to start surrounding ourselves with positivity, a mentor in your chosen path, friends that will be there to push you and help you as well. Because once you start doing this, you start believing in yourself, you push that self hate out, that you CAN’T do it and you start saying I CAN do this, I can be me. I WILL do this, I WILL be me and I WILL FOLLOW MY PASSION.

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STAY IN THE DEEP END

Have you ever noticed how much you can achieve, stretch and grow when out of your comfort zone?

From a young age we are constantly being put outside our comfort zones, from starting school, making friends, starting a new job, going to our first conferences; anything that involves a new situation, new people, new skills. And this is amazing for our growth, we are creatures that learn to adapt, think, improve and thrive under pressure.  But unfortunately we can become comfortable and complacent with our lives and forget to push those boundaries and throw ourselves in the deep end of a situation.

At first being thrown in the deep end of a situation can seem extremely overwhelming, but we have all done it before and we can do it again. We need to have faith in our own abilities and what we can achieve. Because the sense of self satisfaction that we get out of doing these tasks that we once thought was unachievable for ourselves is amazing, and it pushes us to do it again and again and again, until we turn into that person that we once admired for being able to put themselves into those situations.

A personal story of mine is when I recently started bootcamp at BENton gym. My first day walking into that hall was extremely confronting, I hardly knew anyone, I hadn’t been extremely physically active over the last 12 months, and I didn’t even have suitable foot wear such as joggers. But here I was standing in a hall with 40 other people in my converse. The first week pushed me to my limits, I was waking up every morning battered and sore wondering what I had got myself involved in. Yet I kept going back every night trying to improve my form, improve my strength and calisthenics, not giving up.. I have now been attending the bootcamp for 4 months, usually 4 days a week, and the amount of progress I can see in myself is amazing. I have made a fantastic new group of friends that are like minded and motivated, I am using heavier weights, and running a lot quicker. Its not only helped me physically but mentally also, giving me a sense of achievement and reward.

My point being is that if I never threw myself into this situation (and applied myself) then I never would of grown, I wouldn’t have made new friends and continually impress myself with the capabilities of my own body.

A quote I heard the other day from Steve Harvey, which I loved. “You can play it safe and deal without the cuts and the tears and you can stand on that cliff for life forever safe, but if you don’t jump … your parachute will never open. You’ll never know.”

So get out, don’t become complacent with your own life, push the boundaries, impress yourself. Take that chance with a new career choice, start playing an instrument in a band, travel on your own, start a dance class; who knows what can happen when your outside your comfort zone, the possibilities are endless, and thats exciting. You can grow and adapt and become who you want to become.

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Failing is GOOD (life lessons are good)

We are taught from a young age that winning is good and losing is bad; its bad to fail at life. But in reality it is the complete opposite, its all about the lessons you learn from these mistakes, how quickly you can realise them and grow from these experiences to make yourself a better person. Because failing is a natural part of life, it will happen to us all, and some of the most successful people in life are those that have a story of having the most failures with horrible upbringings, drug addictions, poverty, relationship nightmares bankruptcy, mental breakdowns; but why are they successful now? Its because they learnt from these experiences and grew from them and applied these things to there life relentlessly and didn’t stop, because they had been there and knew that they never wanted to go back there or re live those same failures, although they may have kept making mistakes, they wouldn’t re make the same ones.

So we need to embrace and accept that failing is apart of our life, thats going to help shape us into more experienced, knowledgable, driven people. Because if you can recognise this and your mistakes, then sit back and see where you went wrong, how this could have been avoided, what you WILL do differently next time, how this WILL be beneficial to you and others and making yourself a goal to never doing it again or working on it over time, never letting yourself get to that low again. Some mistakes are habits, that sometimes take work and can’t be stopped at the drop of a hat. This is fine, the same principle applies; recognising, assessing, planning and goal setting.

Now if you think to your past, and  think about the times in your life when you have done something that seem’d a failure; It may be the time you selfishly took the ball yourself, convinced you were going to get the winning trie, but rather got taken out. knowing it or not you more then likely learnt an extremely valuable lesson that day; that when competing in team sports or frequently through out life for that matter, its necessary to work as part of a team with a common goal to achieve what we all want (to win or be successful in life). But it would have happened many times throughout your life, and sometimes we learn these lessons straight away and other times it may have taken years and years before we looked back and learnt these valuable life lessons.

So I believe its good to be more conscious of our actions and there results and rather then looking at losing and failing, see them as valuable life lessons that you have first hand experiences in and know you won’t make the same mistakes again.