You Can be Great If You Really Want To

So how do you stay calm, composed and maintain self esteem in a tough environment? Here are some tips you may to consider as a starter guide to self improvement.

Imagine yourself as a Dart Board. Everything and everyone else around you may become Dart Pins, at one point or another. These dart pins will destroy your self esteem and pull you down in ways you won’t even remember. Don’t let them destroy you, or get the best of you.  So which dart pins should you avoid?

Dart Pin #1 : Negative Work Environment
Beware of “dog eat dog” theory where everyone else is fighting just to get ahead. This is where non-appreciative people usually thrive. No one will appreciate your contributions even if you miss lunch and dinner, and stay up late. Most of the time you get to work too much without getting help from people concerned.  Stay out of this, it will ruin your self esteem. Competition is at stake anywhere. Be healthy enough to compete, but in a healthy competition that is.

Dart Pin #2: Other People’s Behavior
Bulldozers, brown nosers, gossipmongers, whiners, backstabbers, snipers, people walking wounded, controllers, naggers, complainers, exploders, patronizers, sluffers… all these kinds of people will pose bad vibes for your self esteem, as well as to your self improvement scheme.

Dart Pin #3: Changing Environment
You can’t be a green bug on a brown field. Changes challenge our paradigms. It tests our flexibility, adaptability and alters the way we think. Changes will make life difficult for awhile, it may cause stress but it will help us find ways to improve our selves. Change will be there forever, we must be susceptible to it.

Dart Pin #4: Past Experience
It’s okay to cry and say “ouch!” when we experience pain. But don’t let pain transform itself into fear. It might grab you by the tail and swing you around. Treat each failure and mistake as a lesson.

Dart Pin #5: Negative World View
Look at what you’re looking at. Don’t wrap yourself up with all the negativities of the world. In building self esteem, we must learn how to make the best out of worst situations.

Dart Pin #6: Determination Theory
The way you are and your behavioral traits is said to be a mixed end product of your inherited traits (genetics), your upbringing (psychic), and your environmental surroundings such as your spouse, the company, the economy or your circle of friends. You have your own identity. If your father is a failure, it doesn’t mean you have to be a failure too. Learn from other people’s experience, so you’ll never have to encounter the same mistakes.

Sometimes, you may want to wonder if some people are born leaders or positive thinkers. NO. Being positive, and staying positive is a choice. Building self esteem and drawing lines for self improvement is a choice, not a rule or a talent. God wouldn’t come down from heaven and tell you – “George, you may now have the permission to build self esteem and improve your self.”   

In life, its hard to stay tough specially when things and people around you keep pulling you down. When we get to the battle field, we should choose the right luggage to bring and armors to use, and pick those that are bullet proof. Life’s options give us arrays of more options. Along the battle, we will get hit and bruised. And wearing a bullet proof armor ideally means ‘self change’. The kind of change which comes from within. Voluntarily. Armor or Self Change  changes 3 things: our attitude, our behavior and our way of thinking.

Building self esteem will eventually lead to self improvement if we start to become responsible for who we are, what we have and what we do. Its like a flame that should gradually spread like a brush fire from inside and out. When we develop self esteem, we take control of our mission, values and discipline.  Self esteem brings about self improvement, true assessment, and determination. So how do you start putting up the building blocks of self esteem? Be positive. Be contented and happy. Be appreciative. Never miss an opportunity to compliment. A positive way of living will help you build self esteem, your starter guide to self improvement.

Related Blogs

• Will Echelon Link Smart Meters & Smart Building Controls?
• 68 dart won’t f*ing start:( | Classic Mopar Forums
• Instant Tea » Blog Archive » Resource Center responds to DART

Do you find yourself getting angry often during the day? Do you react to daily annoyances by slamming your hands on your desk or shouting at others? Do you feel that you’re constantly on the verge of losing your temper? This isn’t healthy, and it doesn’t help you build strong relationships with co-workers, family members or friends. Fortunately, anger management self help is within reach.

The American Psychological Association recommends several tips for helping people learn how to deal with anger management. The key, doctors at the association say, is to understand that you can’t prevent yourself from feeling anger. But you can, with proper anger management skills, control how you react to your anger.

By relying on certain relaxation techniques, you can quickly calm yourself down when you feel angry. And you can do this without having to resort to loud outbursts or physical intimidation.

The psychological association recommends that you take several deep breaths when you begin to feel angry. It’s important, though, to breathe deeply from your gut. This provides more relaxation, and takes more of your focus away from your hunger, than does shallow breathing from your chest.

The doctors at the psychological association also suggest that you slowly repeat a calming word or phrase such as “relax” or “settle down.” This is a particularly effective form of anger management because it again takes your attention off the source of your anger and onto your calming words.

Finally, another anger management self help tip involves imagery. When you begin to feel angry, stop and picture a soothing image that has significant meaning for you. Again, this will cause you to focus on something other than the person or situation that is making you angry. These distraction techniques are often surprisingly powerful ways to help you control your anger.

It’s important to remember that anger is a perfectly natural emotion. It’s also important to realize that you’ll never be able to prevent situations or people from making you feel this emotion.

In today’s fast-paced, difficult environment, it can be tough to keep your self-esteem intact and to stay calm. Here are some things you can do in your quest for self-improvement and to build your self-esteem.

No matter who you are, there are things in your environment every day that can affect your self-esteem negatively. Therefore, it’s important for you to protect yourself so that those influences don’t affect you and bring you down. Which of these elements should you avoid?

Number one: A negative work environment

You’ve probably heard that “dog eat dog” is the way things go in the work environment, where everyone else is fighting competitively to get ahead and step on the other guy. This is where self-involved, uncompassionate people usually do their best. If you’re struggling for recognition from coworkers, it’s probably not going to happen in this type of environment, even if you work your hardest, around the clock. Therefore, for your own peace of mind and to boost self-esteem, avoid these types of work situations. A little healthy competition is fine, but not rabidly so. It should not overtake common sense, appreciation for others, or a genuine sense of accomplishment without the feeling of “beating” the other guy.

Number two: Other people’s negative behavior

No matter where you work, you’ve doubtless run into ultra competitive people or those who are otherwise negative in some way. They may be gossipers, hangers-on, brown nosers, complainers, and the list goes on. These people do nothing but suck the energy out of others without ever giving back. They’re bad for your self-esteem and self-improvement, and they’re bad for every other person in that environment.

Number three: A changing environment

Although living and working within your comfort zone can be, well, comfortable, it doesn’t challenge you and keep you fresh and flexible. To stay adaptable and open, you need some change in your life. Even though major changes may shake up your life for a while, and may be stressful in the short term, in fact, they often help improve things overall in the long run. In addition, no matter what you do, some change is inevitable. Therefore, instead of resisting change, accept it and be as open to it as you can.

Number four: Letting past experiences dictate your future

It’s part of the human experience to experience at least some pain, and it’s also inevitable that when times are painful, we’re going to feel rotten for at least a while. We may even be fearful, but this is also normal and is okay in the short term, as long as you face those fears. The difficulty comes when we let pain dictate our movements and let fear limit them. Instead, learn from mistakes, face fears, and move past them.

Number five: Holding a negative worldview

Of course, we’re going to see pain and trouble in our world sometimes. This is normal and when we see such things, it’s also normal that we might feel uncomfortable, sad, or have other negative emotions. However, to keep your self-esteem as high as possible and to build it further, don’t focus on the negative as your overriding concern. Instead, deal with the negative when you must, but move past it and focus on the positive at every opportunity.

Number six: The power of self-fulfilling prophecy and determination

Of course, we are all born with certain inherited traits, including those driven by genetics, environment, and upbringing. However, it’s just as important to remember that your own identity is as important if not more important than these elements. For example, if you grew up in a family where negativism was common, it’s probably a predisposition that you tend toward the negative as well. However, you can buck this trait and transcend it by surrounding yourself with positive people and taking your cues from them. Before you know it, you’ll be discounting your previous “self-fulfilling prophecy” and choosing a new path.

In addition, in the end, you are the one who is the most responsible for who you become, regardless of your beginnings. Self-esteem is as much your responsibility as it is of those around you. Therefore, simply deciding that you’re going to surround yourself with positive things, learn to do what you love, and taking your cues from positive people with their own high self-esteem will go a long way toward helping you reach this path. In addition, it will help you to stay away from negative thoughts if you focus on the positive as much as possible. This includes finding something to be grateful for every day, congratulating yourself for something you’ve done well each day, and complementing others when they do something of merit as well. This in turn, will build contentedness and happiness, and will provide you the building blocks to attain even greater heights with self-esteem and personal happiness, as well as with accomplishment and self-improvement.