Marcel Legros - Play the Game of Life

Failure generally occurs when you have decided to quit, not when someone else tells you it is over. You have a lot of control over when failure occurs. If you keep going, it isn’t a failure. To reduce the amount of failure you have in your life, you need to increase the amount of effort you put into your various projects. What can you do to hang in there a little longer? What can you stop telling yourself that makes you stop?

Most people find that success is located, just beyond the point where they stopped. Don’t you be one of them.

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Interested in being happier and more successful? We can all learn a lesson from an episode of TV’s “Star Trek” that gets in under our radar and teaches us the importance of focusing on the positive.

In one episode, the crew lands on a vacation destination planet where they could create any reality they wanted, just by thinking about it. At first they have a great time creating wonderful things, but gradually become bored and tired and begin to focus on negative things, which creates negative situations for their reality there. Many of us run our lives the same way, by starting out focusing on the things we want, but then shift our focus to what we don’t want and our lives turns out as badly as the “Star Trek” crew’s in that episode.

So how do you focus on the positive? You need to make a decision to focus on the positive, it doesn’t just happen. As a motivational expert, I stress the importance of having goals to guide your life and “focusing on the positive” should be one of them.

People attending my seminars are surprised when I tell them to announce to the people they are in contact with that you intend to focus on the positive. My personal experience with this is that the reactions you receive will run the gamut from total acceptance to almost outright hostility. I advise you not to let the reaction of others to affect your own thoughts and behavior. By announcing to the world that you intend to focus on the positive, you reinforce your decision by putting yourself on notice and encouraging other people to give feedback on how you are doing regarding being positive.

Scientific research can help you take full advantage of a positive focus to make decisions. Research shows that we tend to become happier as we move through the day. Our mood is generally lowest when we wake then peaks at noon, then declines till four in the afternoon, and then begins to build to its highest point of the day around 10 PM. So use those peak times to make plans, set goals, tackle hard jobs, etc. Make decisions when you are the most upbeat during the day in order to reduce the negatives in your life from pulling you back.

It also helps to realize that you can only control yourself, you can’t control things like the weather, things that other people do or don’t do, mechanical failures and so on. Focusing only on what you can control takes a lot of pressure off you and leads to greater happiness.

Business and Life Coach Theresa A Smith spends time having her clients become very clear about what they want of life and then helping them focus heavily on pursuing the steps needed to attain that life. She finds knowing what you want out of life and then working towards it is the number one step her clients can take to give them long lasting happiness.

I publish a free daily One Minute Motivator via email and YouTube and in a recent one I said,

“Every day we have a choice. We can choose to focus on negative thoughts that leave us feeling insecure, frightened and cynical or we can choose to focus on positive thoughts that empower us and fill us with a sense of optimism about our world and our role in it. What type of thoughts we choose to focus on, grow stronger, and the other type will grow weaker. Make the choice to focus on the positive, and you will find it gets easier the longer you do it.”

In my book, “Sixty Seconds To Success,” I make a similar point.

“Your focus is your future. You get what you focus on. You can focus on the things that will move you and your projects ahead, or you can focus on things that will not. Focus brings all your power together and enables you to do things in one area that you couldn’t do without it. Picture yourself achieving your goals, and your chances of achieving them go up dramatically. Believe it and you’ll see it.

What you think about on a daily basis is what your future will be like. Tibetan monks believe that if you want to know your future, look at what you’re doing right now. Everything we do now affects what will happen next. Our life’s a chain of now’s and all the things we did in those now’s. Now is what counts and now is what will make your future.”

The two worlds are there for each of us to choose which to live in. Choose the world of your dreams and focus on the positive in your life - it’s as close as your next thought- and before long your dream will be your reality.

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There’s an old saying, “You Can Never Go Home.”

I understand the sentiment behind the proverb, but I feel the need to add to it, with:

“You can never go home. You’re already there, and you’ve never left.”

When you go back to places and people from your past, they’re never quite the same as you remembered them. Often, you’re let down and disappointed by what you find but often they’re exactly as you left them. It’s a strange feeling, returning to a childhood haunt or place of past importance to you. It feels like you’re walking onto the set of your own movie, somehow. It’s even stranger to contact someone you haven’t spoken to in years and say hello.

Try This:

Go to a place you haven’t visited in a long time - somewhere important to you.

Call someone you haven’t talked to since you were a kid - maybe an old friend, neighbor, realtive, or teacher.

It’s exciting and satisfying, but I’m not entirely sure why.

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It is very comfortable to be with people that agree with us, but if you are going to experience peak growth, you need to expose yourself to people with totally different opinions and approaches. You will not learn new things from people doing and thinking exactly what you do. Yes, you will experience rejection, frustration and the sense that you know more than the people you do not agree with, but if you focus on the new ways of looking at things, you will discover new and better ways to do things.

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I said to my husband the other night: “We’re perfectly normal (in a secret service kind of way). We just wear our tics on the inside.”

What common denominator quantifies someone as normal? I’d like to meet the asshole who created the median and rough him up a bit. Unfortunately, there is no singular asshole to blame - just a mass of humanity trying to fit in and fly under the radar.

We are taught to care about other people’s opinions from an early age. “What will the neighbors think?” is the gold standard in disempowerment. It disables unique expression and separates us from emotional authenticity. We become liars by omission. Showing the world only what we think is acceptable, and slamming the lid on creativity. How can we lead full and enriching lives if were always looking over our shoulders to gauge the reaction of the guy in the next row. Who’s life is it anyway?
Why Do We Succumb? The Cost of Doing Business

It begins on the playground and escalates through high school. The desire to be accepted. If you are different you run the risk of beatings—or worse; becoming a social misfit. The fear of being alone can motivate us to do a lot of stupid things. But at what cost? Veiling our nature in order to blend in, detaches us from our experiences. Choosing ‘safe’ scenarios, to protect ourselves from pain—leads to boredom and discontent. The old Pink Floyd song “Comfortably Numb” is a great example of a life half lived.

Think of all the great minds who were at one time or another deemed ‘odd’. Their contributions to our world have been immense. I’m not suggesting anarchy (that would be creepy). Just the ‘eyes wide open wonder’ that comes from being truthful with yourself and genuine with others.

Self acceptance.

So stir the pot, jump on the bed, cross your eyes, and laugh till it hurts. Don’t worry; it’s normal.

Changing the world, one follower at a time.

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You can’t pick and choose the times when you will be responsible for what you do, or when you will act responsibly. The things that build and prove your character, do not always occur on sunny days, when you don’t have a lot on your “to do” list. No, character building events, are character building events, BECAUSE they occur at times you would rather do something else. The positive side of this is that because you have to make a sacrifice to do the right thing, you get a tremendous sense of pride about yourself and your self esteem takes a big boost. Others will notice this trait in you, and you will be given more and more responsibility, which will pay off big for you. So step up to the plate, do the right thing and give yourself credit for being a good person.

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Overcoming adversity can become a habit, just as running from adversity can become a habit. Look around you and see if you don’t notice people who seem to fall into one of these two categories. Some people seem to thrive on adversity, they love a challenge, they almost look forward to problems, and when adversity hits, they throw themselves into finding the “fix”. Other people seem to run from problems almost out of reflex. Habits can work for you or against you, so make overcoming adversity a habit, and it will work for you.

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Changing a few words can change your life for the better. Stop saying “if only,” and start saying, “If it’s to be, it’s up to me.” We all have tons of “if only’s,” such as “If only the boss liked me, I could move up,” or, “If only I could win the lottery, my life would be great.” The common theme is that we are relying on someone or something else to make our life good. Do you really think your boss, the government, or something else is going to come and save you? Relying on someone else to save you robs you of your self-esteem and a sense of control over you life. Once you take control of your life, you feel better and you begin to take steps to move ahead. So stop saying “if only,” and start saying, “If it’s to be, it’s up to me.”

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Our negative self-talk does more damage to ourselves, than anything, anyone else can say about us. Our subconscious mind pays a great deal of attention to what we say and tends to accept what we say as true. If we say we can’t do something, our mind buys into that and goes on as if that were true. The reverse is also true, if we say we can do something, our mind goes on, operating as if we can do it. So be careful of what you say, your mind can and will use it against you or for you. Use assumptions to help you instead of hurting you. Most of assume the worst, when we think of a new idea for ourselves. We assume that people won’t like it, that it won’t work, it will be too expensive, and so on. Why not assume that everyone will like it, that it will work and it will come in under budget and ahead of schedule. A change to positive assumptions will give you the power to move ahead and make your ideas happen, so challenge any negative assumptions that come up and find positive assumptions to replace them.

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It’s a good thing you didn’t get what you wanted. In this world, everything really does happen for the best, and what happened, even if it not what you wanted, is the best thing that could have ever happened to you. When one door closes for you, another door opens and it is up to you to find that other door, open it and find out why it was the best thing that ever happened to you. Work at finding the good among the bad, picking up the pieces and going on with your life, by taking the set back and turning it into something positive.

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