Get Your Life Together!
BE PROUD!
Hard work deserves recognition. As you sift your way through all the little accomplishments in life, you should be rewarding yourself. Even if there is nobody else in your life that pays enough attention to all your conquests, you should at least be giving yourself pats on the back. When you are deciding on goals, you should also decide on rewards for goals reached. Maybe every five pounds lost merits a new outfit, or every excellent grade on a term paper results in a trip to the movies. As all your small goals get accomplished, you should start creating bigger rewards for bigger accomplishments. You can set money aside each month to take a small vacation when you can finally cross another huge goal off your list, or maybe you might want to take a day off from work and do absolutely nothing for an entire day (a real treat for many people!). Everyone works better with a little praise and recognition, and even if you are the one doing the recognizing, it is still better than all your hard work going unnoticed.
Have faith in yourself. Even if the entire process seems incredibly slow-going, or if you falter a bit and have to struggle to get back on track, you really need to have faith in yourself that you will achieve your ultimate goal. If you lack faith in yourself, you really are doomed to fail…you can get all the praise in the world from the people close to you, but if you don't truly believe that you can accomplish your goals, you probably won't. So whatever it takes for you to think positively and to believe in yourself, do it. If that means looking in the mirror everyday and loudly proclaiming, "I believe in me!" then do it. If you need to wear a special necklace around your neck to remind yourself to stay positive, do it. Do whatever it takes to keep on track and to instill faith in yourself. If you begin to doubt yourself, start thinking about how far you have undoubtedly come from the very beginning. After all, simply acknowledging that you need to get your life in order is a big step that brings you all the closer to your ultimate goal.
Do you feel more confident? You should! Although you don't want to cross the border into arrogance, you should not be surprised if you feel a little better about yourself as you find yourself accomplishing more and more goals. You have worked hard, and since getting your life in order is not a particularly easy task, you have a right to feel the slightest bit smug about what you have done. Just keep your smugness to yourself, of course, and if necessary make humbleness another goal on your list. After all, just because you worked so hard to get your life together does not necessarily mean that you can march around proclaiming how well you are in control of everything. Doing something like this will inevitably lead to other people pointing out all the various additional things you can do to get even further in control of your life.
Changing your life, getting it in order and on track and trying your best to be as happy as you can be are all the sorts of positive changes that will make a real impact on your quality of life. Whether you have started implementing changes as you have read through this book, or if you are just starting to make changes as a new undertaking, you should know that bad things do not generally come from good intentions. Nobody else in this world can make you happy and fix your life…that's your job. Approach the journey of creating a satisfying life as you would any other important task: with intention and perseverance. Because if you don't start trying to get your life in order, who will? You are your best advocate, and you should act accordingly.
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