Stop Criticizing Yourself

Stop Criticizing Yourself

Has someone has ever caused you emotional pain with careless, mean or sarcastic remarks? What follows are some practical ideas to avoid that sort of pain in the future – and to also make sure that “someone” is not your own self.

Of course criticism can be a positive thing at times – and we must be able process this kind of feedback if we want to progress in our lives. Without some form of feedback it would be hard to improve our performance or behaviors.

But criticism can also inflict pain! It can cut very deep – and even stay with us for our lifetime. Depending upon how well you handle it, criticism has the potential to put serious limits on your life – OR to take you forward into higher levels of personal performance.

Sorting it Out
Let’s start with a sorting technique to separate the facts from the opinions. A fact is something that is somehow provable and can be shown to be true. An opinion is an idea, or someone’s personal interpretation of something. Look at your dog, for example. If you were to say,” That’s a beautiful dog,” it would be an opinion.

The underlying fact it that it’s a dog. Your neighbor might think your dog is ordinary looking, or even ugly. One judgment (It’s a dog) is objective, and the other (It’s a beautiful dog) is subjective.

Many times people will state their opinions as fact – while what they are expressing is only their opinion.

I saw someone step on a scale on a TV program and weigh in at 450 pounds. I was alarmed, but he beamed with joy. I had automatically judged him to be seriously overweight. But he revealed that he had lost almost 400 pounds. Wow! My opinion was just that – and his judgment was quite different!

if someone calls you a “couch potato” (the term could be a lot more painful), you should decide for yourself if this is a fact or an opinion. Check out how you look. Do you look or act like a “couch potato?” No? Then this is just someone’s opinion.

The Question

Here’s the really important question! Just whose opinion of you is the most important?

There are periods in life when other peoples’ opinions of us are more important than our own opinion. This especially occurs during our sensitive teenage years. Since we are beginning to take our place as a young man or woman, the opinions of our peer’s often have a huge impact.

Actually that is a natural part of becoming “socialized.” But it’s one we do want to grow beyond as we become adults. Sooner or later we have to make a serious decision to have OUR OWN opinion of ourselves be the most important opinion.

What’s Your Frame of Reference
The best way to correct any tendency to judge yourself poorly is to learn to choose your ‘frame of reference’. A ‘frame of reference’ is the criteria by which we judge something, or determine if it is valid.

There are two possible frames of reference: internal and external. Here’s how to understand the two:

Suppose you have completed a task at work. How do you know you’ve done it well? Does your direct supervisor tell you “Great job!”– or do you just know without anyone saying so? The first “frame of reference” is external, and the second is internal.

Actually neither frame of reference is better than the other – both can have their own importance.

For example, when learning something new, an external frame of reference is very useful. It’s otherwise difficult to learn anything other than what you already know. That’s why the learning experience is based on external feedback … until we have enough experience to decide for ourselves what’s working.

An internal frame of reference has YOU deciding what’s good, bad, or otherwise.

If you have an internal “feeling” that you’re using to judge yourself, this is an internal frame of reference. If you know what you’re doing, that’s probably appropriate. But if you’re doing something totally new, you may still benefit from some external feedback.

Dealing Positively With Opinions

When you are thinking about your self and how you’re regarded, it’s beneficial to create some solid, positive internal frames of reference.

People with healthy self-esteem operate from a positive internal frame of reference in regard to their personal worth. People with weaker self-esteem operate from an external frame of reference – and are more likely to listen to other people’s opinions of their worth. And in some cases – they actually allow others to totally decide their worth. This is does not lead to a positive life experience!

So can you change this? Here are few simple suggestions:

• Start by paying attention to what you say to yourself about your own self. If you hear negative self talk YOU are creating a negative internal frame of reference.
• Begin to correct this by paying more attention to the things you appreciate about yourself.
• Put more focus on what you do well, and realize that none of us are perfect in all aspects of our lives.
• Be a little kinder and forgiving of yourself and others.
• Forget past pain and judgments, and stop re-creating them by bringing them into the present moment.
• Take a course, read a book, or attend a seminar on personal empowerment or self-esteem.

posted by Jill Ammon-Wexler
Amazing Success

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Double Your Brain Power

Do you think you have an average or perhaps an above average mental capacity?Actually you have far more brainpower than you can begin to imagine. You have close to, or perhaps even beyond, genius potential.

You don’t believe me? The past ten years could well be called the decade of the brain. Neuroscience now has the means of observing a healthy living brain in action.

Physicists have discovered parallels between the human brain, and Einstein’s quantum universe. Biological scientists are demystifying the brain’s chemical and electrical mysteries.

Trying to define our brain’s ultimate capacity is like trying to place your finger on a globule of mercury. The human brain is infinitely complex and subtle. And your amazing brain is no exception.

The Amazing Capacity of your Brain
Your brain contains a minimum 1,000,000,000,000 individual nerve cells neurons.

But this figure is even more astounding when you consider that each nerve cell can connect with as many as 100,000 other nerve cells.

If we add upthe potential capacity of your brain cells to make interconnections  the resulting number will stretch at least 10.5 million kilometers long. Isn’t that remarkable?

No known person has even approached using their full mental capacity. The human brain is virtually limitless.

It was once estimated that we use about 10% of our mental potential. Today neuroscience has dropped that estimate to less than one percent. And even that figure seems overly optimistic.

Your Thinking Cap
You’ve heard the expression thinking cap. That term refers to your brain’s cerebral cortex the cortical grey matter neuroscientists consider to be the source of your logical thinking capacity.

Your cortex is actually split into two separate sides that are connected by a fantastically dense and complex highway of nerve fibers called the corpus collosum.

In most people, the left side of the cerebral cortex deals with logical matters words, numbers, reasoning, and analysis. It spends a lot of time in the beta brainwave range.

The right side of your cerebral cortex, on the other hand, deals with imagination, images, color, day-dreaming, visualization, and pattern recognition. It tends to focus quite a bit in the alpha brainwave range that’s so highly developed in meditators.

Was Einstein Right-Brained or Left-Brained?
There’s a common assumption that most people are either right-brained OR left-brained.

If that’s true, then we must assume that the great scientific genius Albert Einstein was left-brained while the great creative master of photography Ansel Adams would then have been right-brained.

But was this the case?

An examination of the notebooks of Albert Einstein and Ansel Adams pokes huge holes in this common theory. In fact, Einstein did NOT credit his greatest scientific insights to his left-brain logic but rather to right-brain highly creative daydreaming.

And Ansel Adams credited his greatest art photographs not to his right-brain artistic eye but rather to his left-brain detailed analytical note taking.

The Whole-Brain Secret
Actually – your most powerful and expansive mental activities are those using both sides of your cortex.

If you describe yourself as primarily creative or intuitive right-brained, or analytical and logical left-brained, you are just describing the side of the cortex you have most successfully developed.

With the correct nurturing, the other side of your cortex can also flourish and develop! This has the potential to double your mind power.

Get Immediate Results
There’s an outrageously powerful way for you to immediately refine the non-dominant side of your cortex. Great athletes do it. So do top executives, famous artists, and people from all walks of life who seek to excel in their lives.

On first reading, the following solution may seem too simple to be effective. But just give it a try, and you’ll be amazed at the expanded depth of your mental capacity.

The solution? Do what Einstein and Ansel Adams did.

If you’re analytical encourage yourself to daydream. And if you’re instead predominantly creative encourage yourself to begin to logically analyze your creative efforts.

Notice as many details of life or a problem as possible. Activate your mind and ask yourself what if. And begin to pay more attention to your mental wanderings.

Build Your Mental Focus
A really big key to making this work is commitment and mental focus.

Here’s why: The instant you commit, and focus your amazing brain on a single thought, you fire up laser-like mental power. In that millisecond you actually physically strengthen your brain’s neural networks attached to that thought or goal.

This is the true key to peak performance and masters-level performance in all areas of life.

Want to TRIPLE your brain power? Dr Jill would like to help! What type of peak performance would YOU like to experience? Would you like to feel the power of reaching a major goal in only 6 weeks from start to finish? Click here.

How about physically installing the brainwaves and thoughts of self-made millionaires into YOUR brain? Click here.

Are You Chasing the Right Dream?

The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.
~~ William James, famed psychologist

Achieving certain dreams often requires FAR LESS WORK than achieving other, seemingly easier goals.

Why is that so?

Because it is much, much harder to work for a goal we do not passionately desire. But when you manage to get yourself focused on what is naturally of passionate interest to you your work becomes play.

Are Your Goals a Good Fit?
Hopefully you’ve invested some thought clarifying your life goals and you know exactly what you want. So why not take a few minutes to ask yourself an important question am I pursuing the right goal for ME?

Here’s why that is so important: You’ll never really achieve your true potential as long as you pour your energy into something that doesn’t really fit your true passions and interests! Does that seem too simple?

Think about that for a moment. It’s unfortunately very easy to automatically adopt someone else’s goal. We were trained to do that very thing as children.

Ninty-nine percent of us were fully expected to achieve the goals our parents and educational system set out for us. Some of us gave in and tried to do so. Some of us rebelled and learned to fail instead. And some of us felt somehow inadequate because we did not have the natural interest and or aptitude to do what we were expected to do.

If you find you never seem to achieve your goals, you may be setting goals you don’t really desire or believe in for yourself.

This is never going to lead to success. What it will lead to is one false start after another and a tendency to want to quit after the first bump in the road.

This is a major dead-end, and will do nothing but gradually erode your self confidence.

Ask Yourself This…
You need to be sure your goal really is YOUR goal for YOUR life. If you feel resistance, take a serious look at that. Ask yourself who you might really be setting that goal for?

Then ask yourself if you really have a burning passion for that goal, and are willing to butt heads with as many so-called failures as necessary to achieve it.

If your answer is no this may be a good time to revisit your goal setting exercise.

Selecting an Appropriate Goal
Three things will happen if you make the effort to refocus yourself around a goal that is more in keeping with your natural talents and passions:

First, you will be happier, less stressed, and far more productive.

Second, you will be far more likely to hang in as you hit those jarring bumps in the road.

And third, there is a higher probability you will achieve a level of excellence at what you’re doing. This increases your value thereby increasing your potential for increased return on your efforts.

So put your goal to the test. Does it truly measure up to your innermost desires?

Achieve it.
The secrets of goal achievement are actually quite clear cut:

Have burning passion for what is desired,

Set a clear and exact goal to get it,

Make an absolute commitment to achieve the goal,

Be willing to pay the price for achieving it, and

Commit to focused action, focused action and more focused action.

Action Point…
Now … ask yourself this question: Is 2006 going to be any different than 2005? How? And what do I have to do NOW to make next year more of what I want? Are YOU motivated to improve your probability of achieving your goals in 2006 and become a whole lot happier and successful? => Start here.

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