It is more practical to wax positive – that is, to build up a positive attitude and mindset, rather than to wax negative – or slip into a funk – in the face of life’s challenges.

Do you complain about your problems?

Every life-challenge offers you the opportunity to develop the power and wisdom you need to overcome it.

But when we complain about a problem, we program our subconscious to focus exclusively on its negative aspects and miss the greater opportunities and other blessings that it offers.

To create what you want in life you must first maintain the opportunity-mindset that prepares you to turn the way things are into the way you want things to be.

To establish yourself in this positive mindset, keep your mind free of negative judgment or habitual complaining regarding what is happening.

In this way you preserve your creative freedom to recognize and take advantage of the opportunity presented to you.

It is entirely practical to learn to trust what happens.

When you judge a problem as a negative, you create the
negative situation that you conceive of.

Fearful reactions to challenge or change tempt us to imagine ourselves in a hopeless situation.

If you would just keep an open mind and look for a way to succeed, you will find it.

However tempting it may be to slip into a mood of despair about no prospects in life, you are better off living in peaceful, inner security and enjoying the present moment.

Focus your attention on an outcome that you would LOVE to happen and gently expect that a way to proceed will show itself to you in perfect timing.

Rather than waxing negative when a disappointing outcome befalls you, or when you see no way to reach your goals, try waxing POSITIVE.

 A state of positive expectation will attract solutions and creative ideas.

Imagine how you would be feeling right now if you KNEW that your way to success is going to open up for you.

Try moving your body in a way that expresses that positive attitude.

In this way you intentionally direct your energy into an attitude of joyful expectancy and thus apply the practical wisdom of waxing positive and remain tuned in to higher accomplishment.

Here is a “wisdom secret” that can free you from worry and fill you with encouragement.

Every experience in life moves you forward. 

 Even when it seems that you are falling back, you are moving ahead. 

  There is really only one direction in life, and that is toward your complete success.

 You have to experiment with your best ideas along the way. 

 Some work the way you want.  Some don’t. 

Even when things DO work out you soon see the flaws in it. 

 And when things don’t seem to work out, the blessings that come with that eventually are revealed.

We waste time worrying about making the absolutely right or perfect decision. 

Whatever happens, the experience will shape you into the person you are meant to be – into the person you truly WANT to be.

 If you think about failing, about discouraging possibilities, you attract what you want to avoid.

Focus on where you want to go, take your best shot at it, and see where that lands you. 

Fearful thinking may report to you that you have landed nowhere, but the reality is that you are always landing (or soaring) FORWARD. 

Focus on your goal and look for a way to move toward it right where you are.  Drop fearful speculation and let go of discouraging thought.

If something doesn’t work the way you had hoped, there are always valuable, time-saving lessons to be learned. You are always one step closer to where you want end up.  

Now you know the “secret wisdom” of your constant progress.

An example of this is the president of a company who recently tried to “show up” his sales director by taking over a sales meeting in an effort to prove to everyone present that he, the president of the company, could do a better job.

There are bosses who will publicly insult an employee in a leadership position to achieve the same result.

One obvious motivation behind doing this is to discourage the employee from asking for or expecting a raise in pay.

This tactic can also be used to subtly manipulate an employee into accepting a cut in pay or into submitting to additional work-demands without additional compensation.

A more personal motivation comes down to sheer, dysfunctional egotism rooted in an unconscious inferiority complex.  It may feed the boss’s insecure craving for a sense of power, superiority and worth to make you feel fearfully dependent upon his or her discretion.

 The point is that moment you become caught up in proving yourself you stop really being yourself and begin over-extending and disrespecting yourself.

 Employees who complain that their bosses are just too hard to please are often just falling for the ruse their boss is using to manipulate them into giving more and accepting less, including giving that boss more power over them than is really necessary or in their best interest.

When you feel afraid or even mildly anxious about your boss’s evaluation of your contribution, you give up your power to determine your own destiny.

Remember that no one hires you unless YOU make that happen.

 The reality is that the only one who really has to believe in what you have to offer is YOU.

You will always reap what you sow.  Your results in life depend upon what YOU say, think, feel and do, not upon what another says, thinks or does.

This does not mean that the interests and opinions of others do not matter.  It means that your concept of yourself is a critical cause of how well you do and of how others see and relate with you.

When you worry about pleasing your boss you are distracted from making a REAL contribution, which not only lowers the real value of your work; it also makes your work unfulfilling.

 You weren’t hired to please your boss, even if your boss seems to try very hard to make you think that you were.

You were hired to do your best work in line with the aims of the organization.

As long as that remains your primary focus and intention you are acting in real integrity, which ultimately brings true honor to yourself.

Beyond this, self-confidence is one of the pillars that uphold competence.  You have to feel secure about yourself to do your best work, to make the best decisions, to access your highest level of creativity and problem-solving ability.

 Some bosses will go to great lengths to keep you guessing about their actual view of you as a sort of test to see how strong and capable you really are.

If you maintain your commitment to giving your best work without worrying about what your boss is up to, you may actually impress your boss with the strength of your character and be perceived as dependable instead of as dependent.

 As you practice feeling, thinking and acting authentically self-assured, you radiate a quality of personal power that inspires others to feel secure about you, demonstrate your highest ability and prove your true worth to the organization.

NON-reactivity is a great Leadership Skill.

It is actually the true core of an effective leader’s training.

“Non-reactivity” means, essentially, that your initial response to any event is “relaxed emotional neutrality”.

This state places you in a true leadership position, because to be in charge begins with being in charge of yourself.

 When people or circumstances make you react, they are in charge.

To be REactive means that you slip into an automatic reaction rather than a purposeful, strategic response.

 A reactive leader ignores goals,
needs and strategy.

 Strategic responsiveness, which means acting with purpose or aligning your response with needs and objectives, represents the essence of leadership.

A relaxed state of emotional neutral gives you access to your most resourceful leadership capacity.

You can think more clearly, observe more accurately, and respond more strategically than when a reaction of stress and strain seizes hold of you.

In other words you lead more effectively when you respond with peace and poise than when you react with automatic emotional intensity.

Reactivity consumes leadership power.  Stress and strain produce an energy-drain.

Reactivity not only undermines your individual effectiveness.  As a leader you role model your mode.  So when you react, you model a draining, non-strategic mode of work for your followers, and lead them away from the positive work model you want them to demonstrate.

For example, a reactive mode always drains motivation. You lose your positive attitude for as long as that reaction lasts.  As a consequence of the example you set, your followers are bound to demonstrate lower morale.

Non-reactivity empowers you to lead others, to lead yourself and your life more easily and enjoyably.

Non-reactivity is not merely a leader-skill to “believe in”.  It is a one of those “best leadership practices” that requires continual long-term exercise to develop.

Automatic reaction patterns are habitual, and habits that have been in charge for a long time can take a long time to weaken.

Whether opportunity or opposition befalls you, practice dealing with it in a state of relaxed emotional neutral.  From that point of peace and poise you can:

•  Choose your response strategically
•  Avoid the negativity and drain of stress and strain
• Model higher performance and a more positive attitude
• Direct events and lead people to more easily and effectively.

 Achieve a higher level of leadership success with more ease and enjoyment through by exercising the indispensable leadership skill of non-reactivity.

It’s important to develop the patience needed to trust the time things take, including the time it takes for an idea to pop into your head, for things to change, for an opportunity to arrive.

When we face dire straits, like going broke, dealing with a serious illness, or losing someone we love, trusting that it is okay to see no way out can be extremely difficult to do.

And yet, developing self-confidence, courage and faith at that heroic level is also extremely important to do.

We need to avoid or stop worrying, because filling our head with thoughts of pessimism and dread leaves no space in our mind for our solution to arrive.

When you have no idea of what to do about the future, live in the now, confidently trusting that things will work out in line with what you want to happen.

Don’t give up on your great goals, even when it seems that the bottom is about to fall out; but also don’t stressfully struggle to figure out a way to be successful or even a way to avoid failure.

 Give up on your FEARS!

 Holding onto imaginary scenarios of what you do not want to happen:

• Plagues you with unproductive, unhealthy anxiety
• Steals all your joy and capacity for deep, rich gratitude for all of your blessings
• Repels from your heart and mind your “inner light” of guidance
• Manifests conditions that match your frightening inner visions
• Wastes the creative mind-power of your imagination to manifest the success you desire

When we face uncertainty, particularly when grave risk is involved, it can seem unreasonable, irresponsible, and maybe even insane to live in the present, with inner peace and confidence, and without a worry about the future.

But in that state of confidence and inner peace your body can do its best work of healing and staying healthy.  You can relate lovingly and patiently with the people in your life.  And the power of your confidence exerts its “magical” influence over your destiny, HELPING life meet or surpass your greatest expectations.

 While it may seem that maintaining your faith in the face of danger is crazy, it is worrying about a frightening future POSSIBILITY that more accurately characterizes insanity.

The future that you fear is not real. It is an imaginary condition that you relate to as real as long as you worry about it.  It is an UNREAL condition and living within it causes you to suffer.  Now THAT’S crazy!

When facing danger of any kind, including financial problems, health issues and relationship challenges, even when the eleventh hour seems to be closing in, make your faith PRACTICAL by living in the now, with confidence.

Be at peace, alert to recognize when your mind comes up with a solution or your circumstances reveal your “open door” of opportunity.

Your positive attitude will lead you into positive results. 

Here is one way that this empowering wisdom works.

When you feel frustrated by your effoprts to accomplish a goal, this does not have to cause you to feel stuck.

If you seem blocked from accomplishing something you want, look at the reasons why you want it.

Although you may not be able to achieve your goal right now, you CAN do things to experience more of the success and satisfaction you want FROM that goal.

For instance, if you want to make more money, but you have not been able to do that, think about the reasons WHY you want more money.

Let’s say one reason is so you can feel free of economic worries.  To apply a wise strategy for success, focus DIRECTLY on gaining your freedom from economic worry.

How can you do this? By doing internal self-work for emotional liberation from dependency upon external circumstances to feel internally secure and confident.   

So one open door to more success in this situation is to do the self-help work of strengthening your emotional security, trust and confidence without waiting for your economical condition to change.

The great success secret being presented here is simply this: Whatever it is that you want, when the way to it seems blocked, step back and clarify the most important reasons WHY you want it.

Then look for creative, alternative ways to satisfy those WHY’S and you will experience more success and satisfaction.

Don’t get caught up in a fretful, futile power-struggle with your life.  Look for alternative ways to experience more of what you want right without having to manifest that goal first.  This simple practice will reveal to you your open path to more accomplishment and fulfillment.

The more you practice this approach to succeeding in life, the more you develop the habitual success mindset of looking for and taking full advantage of your open doors instead of wasting your life on worrying about the closed doors.

A common mistake people make is to put off their satisfaction and success until they achieve some big, over-arching goal.

When a door of opportunity seems closed it is often because we are placing the cart before the horse.  We think we need something to happen BEFORE we can have a particular experience, when that is not indeed the case.

Remember this creative success secret of the open door: you can always find alternative, creative ways to experience or accomplish more of what you expect to get from any goal presently beyond your reach.

For a high level of individual and team performance, you need a highly motivated team.

Performing well and maintaining positive, productive relationships demands that you feel energized.

Your level of motivation is an expression the degree to which you feel energized.

When a high degree of motivation is sustained, individual performance and teamwork can skyrocket.

When workers feel highly motivated, they exude a positive attitude, creating an inspiring workplace atmosphere.

An environment that is positively charged with the attitude of motivated people is a healthier and more productive environment than one in which workers feel disgruntled or the staff feels bored.

Motivational Tip for Team Building: Great teamwork requires a serious commitment on the part of leadership to provide to the employees with regular, consistent motivational team building.

Think of motivation as the “juice” in your “internal power-battery”. we deplete the positive energy in our battery.

When motivation is low, the positive energy in our “internal power-battery” has been depleted.

This can occur for any number of reasons, including due to

• Overly demanding workloads
• Uninspiring leadership
• Demoralizing micro-management
• The natural ebb-and-flow pattern of motivation levels

Whatever the cause of the decline in worker motivation, performance declines co-measuredly.

Among the workforce problems that typically arise as motivation levels fall include:

• A lack of full workforce engagement
• Interpersonal strife between co-workers
• Lower customer satisfaction
• An increase in the number and seriousness of workplace accidents
• Poor decision-making that may have costly consequences

As an organization takes effective steps to improve motivation among its members, individuals and teams of professionals tend to work at a higher level, including improved:

• Problem Solving
• Decision-Making
• Goal Achievement
• Team Bonding and Cohesiveness

5 Motivational Team Building Tips:

1. Regard the level of employee motivation as a true “energy resource” that is essential for the success of your organization.
2. Motivators are contagious. To produce or to be part of a more motivated team, be self-motivated.
3. DE-motivation is ALSO contagious. Spend no more time than you must with someone expressing low morale, or that person’s negativity can drag your down.
4.  When YOU feel unmotivated, take a break from your work (or take it easy at your work) and try to spend time on your own, to avoid being a drag on others and to avoid being further dragged down by others.
5. Since your attitude impacts your performance and your relationships, as you preserve, nurture, and protect your own power of motivation, you will enjoy the greater rewards of higher performance and more supportive relationships. 

Routine team building trainings and events aimed at supporting and recharging team spirit are essential for the highest level of workforce performance and productivity.

Effective communication skills

We can define a difficult person as someone who seems unable or unwilling to cooperate with you in a way that you regard as reasonable.

From your perspective, this other person seems walled-off to your rational argument, unreasonably inflexible and pointlessly unreachable. It is not uncommon for the person who refuses to listen in a meaningful way to slip into a defense mechanism as a response to what he or she PERCEIVES as you personal attack.

Some people are so insecure because of their painful personal history that they interpret your attempt to influence them as an expression of negative personal judgement aimed at intentionally discrediting them.

So what you are often dealing with, when you encounter a person who is hard to get along with, is a wall of personal insecurity that blocks reason.

Some insecure people feel threatened and attacked if you recommend a way of doing something that differs from how they are operating.

They interpret your well-meaning attempt to help as a negative commentary intended to leave their self-confidence undermined and their self-worth demolished.

While you may try using more emotional intensity to break through the “wall” of the difficult, or even impossible person, you need recognize when you are wasting your effort and causing yourself more hardship and pain by struggling to win a no-win situation.

Once you realize you are being sucked into a petty personal power-struggle sparked insecure ego-domination, it’s time to change your tactics.

Engaging in a more aggressive communicating style will most likely serve to accomplish nothing more than to intensify the confronting defensiveness.

Take a few moments to calm down so you can get clear about exactly what it is that you want to communicate to the unreasonable person, and why.

The more emotional intensity you feel, the more impossible it will be for you to gather your thoughts and come up with a clear intention.

 You need to be calm to be clear.

 Once you know what you want to convey as your message, consider alternative communication strategies.

It might be best to wait and speak about it later, when you feel less threatened by the resistance posed by the “difficult individual” or when that other person can feel less threatened by you.

It might be best to compose a note and deliver it by hand, via e-mail or even via conventional post.

Think outside the box! I know one couple who found that writing down what they wanted to say, and letting the other person read it, right there in the midst of the conflict, would resolve the conflict and allowed both to calm down.

It may be that there is an unconscious hostility or antagonism conveyed by your tone of voice that is triggering the insecurity and defensiveness of the other person.

It may be that you are dealing with such a negative individual that he or she is intentionally resisting your point of view with an aim of “getting your goat” and making you feel dominated, feel powerless, feel out-of-control.

Whatever the other person’s hidden agenda though (which no doubt has it’s roots in early childhood), to the degree that a difficult mate, an unreasonable customer service rep, an excessively adamant boss, an insecure coworker, etc. can “get to you”, to that degree you have self-work to do.

If you feel frustration, if you feel insecure, if you feel powerless, YOUR REACTION IS YOUR FIRST COMMUNICATION PROBLEM. When you lose your peace and poise, you lose your power of persuasion - when the person you are facing is being defensive and insecure.

To communicate for success, you need to feel calm, feel confident, and feel secure. Then you are in the “right state” to come up with a strategic response, and your secure attitude and calm voice tone will help the other person to feel more secure – maybe secure enough to let down his or her guard against your rationale.

Make it part of your purpose to develop the self-confidence and develop the composure to calmly and securely face another’s resistance to your will.

And when NO communication course you can think of seems to work, take that as your cue that it is time to form a success strategy that does NOT depend upon effectively communicating with this unreachable human being.

Relate with another’s difficult personal behavior as your opportunity to recognize how YOU need to grow for less interpersonal conflict and more personal success and fulfillment.

Here is a success strategy to keep in mind: Every time you do something for what you want to bring about, you progress a step closer to the goal-achievement you are after.

Whatever it is that you want to happen in your life, as you take action for what you want, you advance toward your success.

Just thinking about your goal, envisioning yourself in the conditions you want in your life, is a form of taking action for it – it represents MENTAL action.

Anyone who feels stuck in procrastination, try spending time envisioning yourself taking the action you want to take.  This will build your motivation to actually take that action.

Of course, fantasizing yourself accomplishing a goal may not be enough to instantly materialize that goal.

Imagineering, or imagining yourself experiencing what you want, represents just one thing that you can do for for achieving success.

Team building is another thing you can do.  As you build relationships with people who can help you, you increase your power by having more supportive people backing you.

Forming strategic alliances is a way to be more successful.

But to harness mind-power is a perhaps the most important thing to do because it gives your life direction.

Envisioning what you want to accomplish directs your subconscious programming, causing you to make choices – often without realizing it – in line with what you want to achieve as your goal.

The moment you visualize in your mind what you want in your life, you head there.

Envisioning what you want also helps you to feel more self-confident, to feel more motivated, to feel more determined.

All of this helps you to take more powerful, positive action for what you want.

When you practice remaining aware of the now, by intentionally paying attention to the present moment,  you can do even more for what you want.

You can more quickly notice when your thoughts, attitude, speech or actions are straying into a self-sabatoging pattern, including anxiousness and worry, getting distracted by petty rivalries, emotionally reacting to things that have nothing to do with your goal achievement process.

All of this wastes energy and time, diverting your power and thereby sabotaging the success that you want most.

The power in your thoughts, feelings, speech and actions is creative in nature.

Approach life with the pro-active mindset that you bring about what you think for, what you feel for, what you speak for, and what you take action for.

When you think of the success you want you draw it to you.

When you allow yourself to feel like the success you want to feel like, you attract that success to yourself.

When you apply the power of speech to help you to achieve what you want, the creative power of your speech helps you to achieve it.

And when you take action for what you want, when you work for it in any way, you are creating the condition you work for, just as a sculptor creates a sculpture by applying the hammer and chisel to carve out his dream.

Whatever mishap, loss, set-back, disappointment, delay or opposition you encounter along the way is nothing but another opportunity to make the best use of your power in line with what you want to accomplish.

As you make that “best use” you are growing in mastery – the mastery required for manifesting the most beautiful life that you can imagine.

As you exercise your power to think, feel, speak and take action for what you want under all conditions, you grow in mastery and apply a success strategy that turns every moment into a golden opportunity .

 

It’s obvious that student motivation is essential for the student’s academic success.

It should be just as obvious that one of the primary sources of student motivation is teacher motivation.

Highly motivated teachers exude enthusiasm, a love of learning and teaching, a love for their students and a commitment to student success.

This highly charged state of motivation radiates from the teacher into the classroom.

So one key to raise the level of motivation in students is to nurture, foster, support and even ignite the motivation in teachers.

One cause for a drooping level of school faculty morale is a communication problem with administration.

If administration communicates with teachers in a way that makes the teachers feel under-valued, those teachers may lose some self-esteem, and a loss of self-esteem translates into a lack of motivation.

Administration can cause this to happen through both verbal and non-verbal messages.

School principals may undermine faculty motivation and performance verbally by:

• Verbally harping what teachers do wrong and expressing too little appreciation for what they do right
• Telling teachers outright that you regard them quite replaceable
• Verbally castigating a teacher in front of his or her students
• Being verbally defensive about your position when questioned instead of being open to integrating the teachers’ perspective into your understanding

A school administrator can drain teachers of self-respect and motivation through non-verbal forms of communication as well, like:

• Excluding faculty from decision-making processes that directly impact their jobs.
• Being gruff or non-responsive to pleasantries or polite greetings offered by teachers when they encounter you in the hall
• Expressing an attitude of annoyance, impatience or even disdain when teachers come to administrators for support.
• Talking down to teachers, as if they are unruly and undependable children.  (It may not be the words that convey this, but the unspoken attitude.)

As a general principle, administration fails faculty by relating from a personally insecure stance.

By cultivating more self-confidence and developing the motivational skills of administrators through school team building trainings, we can help faculty to be more motivated, which translates into more motivation and success for students.

By helping teachers to develop more self-confidence and self-esteem, and teaching them additional skills for getting and staying motivated through motivational school team building trainings, they can overcome at least some of the limits of administration, and soar higher through administrator support, for higher student performance and improved graduation rates.