…or do it because you have too?  I was watching my husband last week preparing a meal in the kitchen.. He loves to cook! You can see it in his face, hear it in his voice and the best bit, taste it in the end result! When he prepares food, he is totally in the moment, absorbed by the sights, sounds and tastes of his dishes. How often have you heard Celebrity Chefs on the TV telling you that food must be made with love!

What about your life?  Do you go about your day with passion, positivity and focus, or do you go about it begrudgingly with a voice in the head that says you really don’t want to be here? Do you say to yourself that it’s going to be another tough day at the office before you even arrive?

You attract into your life what you think about, so if you tell yourself you are going to have a bad day at work, or it will be hard to win that sale, it probably will be! Remember the words of Henry Ford “If you believe you can or you believe you cannot you are probably right.”

Have you ever wondered why your results aren’t that great, or life never seems easy? Well, this is one reason why. Humans are 70% water. All matter is made up of energy and energy is pure potential. So, every time you think a negative thought you are dirtying your water, contaminating your mind and sabotaging your potential. How much easier is it to swim in a crystal clear ocean than a dark murky lake?

Did you know that around 57% of other people’s opinions about you are governed by how you feel about yourselfwhich is in part determined by what you think most of the time?  Another reason to keep your water clean. Here is how you can start to clean your water!

If you don’t feel like going to work, then try showing up with a different attitude!  What if you decided to think positively about the day ahead from the moment you woke up?  Do you think your day might perhaps be more enjoyable? When you start to think positive thoughts you will see the magic happen in your day! Creating a positive mindset, which is linked to self esteem and confidence takes practice. Just as you have to work out in the gym to build your muscles, you must work on your Mindset muscle to improve it. This will help you keep your water clean.

If you don’t know where to start with making changes, try taking a step back first so you can see where you are sabotaging your success or getting in your own way. Keep in mind that you may change quicker if you get a coach or someone to help you. Athletes have coaches so they can achieve their goals and every successful person knows the value of focusing on the positive and seeking help along the way.

Presuming you do want to be successful, once you have stopped, looked back and become aware of what you say to yourself and how it impacts your results, the next step is to take action. You must practice changing any negative self talk into positive statements instead. Observe your self talk and practice changing the channel if you don’t like what you hear.  Imagine that you are your own best friend. How would you like to be treated by your best friend? Practice this every day. Take daily consistent steps and it will soon become a natural way of thinking, like a newly formed habit. Watch the magic happen in your life then. Who knows, it might even make your meals taste better, the housework not seem such a chore or the day at work so much more enjoyable!
So, what were you thinking before you read this and changed your mind? Perhaps you are now looking forward to changing your self talk? You may even get excited when you start to love everything you do!

Until next time
Remember your Mindset Matters!
Mandy Napier BSc

... said the three wise monkeys.

Last week, I attended a course and one of the segments was to play a game in teams of three. It was called “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” taken from the above proverb.  The idea was that one of us had to be blindfolded, one of us was not allowed to speak and the other had to listen to loud music via earphones so they couldn’t hear.  We were then handed a set of instructions outlining what we had to do and within a set time.

Now, I don’t know when you last played games at a course or training?  Some people love them and some people hate them! I have played many games in the courses I have attended, and the results always fascinate me as to a great insight into human behaviour. Even though this was a game, there is an expression that I tend to live by, which is “how you do one thing in life is how you do everything in life.” So, I related my experiences and others, to how we communicate with ourselves and others in life, and what results we achieve!  For me, I discovered afterwards, that when I couldn’t hear, I seemed to lose the ability to speak, which I found interesting!  I asked myself the question, where else in life do I get distracted by noises and other people’s conversations and find myself unable to express myself clearly?….  None of us actually achieved the task by the due time, so I wondered how the results of this game could relate to our lives, communication and results.

I came up with a set of insights which showed me just how often we are not really present, fully aware, really listening and observing what is going on.  We often don’t use our senses fully even when we have them all! One of the theories in relation to the above proverb says that it can relate to the “things that one has done wrong in the last 59 days.”  So, look at your conversations and your results in the last 2 months and consider them in light of the following questions.

• Do you really listen to people or are you too busy listening to your own chatter, thinking about what you might say next?

• Do you give your full attention to others when they are speaking to you?

• Are you good at remembering names or do you forget them?  What sort of importance do you place on them?

• Do you butt in because you must get your point across or do you keep quiet and listen, allowing others to talk?  (Remember we have one mouth and two ears!)

• What did you misunderstand or miss out on because you didn’t listen or take all the information in?

• What happens in life when you are feeling angry and your judgment is clouded? Are you even aware of how you are feeling? Do you let your emotions dictate your actions or are you able to respond in another way?

• Do you know what you are saying to yourself all day?  Are you aware of your self talk, the monkey chatter that is going on in the head?

• Do you judge others by what they say or do?

• What sort of results are you getting in your life with yourself and when communicating with others?

• How many times do you not get the results you want because of a missing piece of information – something you didn’t ask or see or take in?  A missing piece of the puzzle.

• If you were fully in the moment, really listening, observing and only speaking when you had something relevant to say, what sort of results would you get? If you understood how you thought and how others think and process information don’t you think you could get even better results?

• What if you could understood your boss, your employees and your partners, friends of family better. Would you change the way you

If you want to negotiate and communicate better, cut back on arguments, misunderstandings, create more peace and harmony you don’t have to blindfold the other person or put a piece of sticky tape on your mouth!  Come along to POWER TALK! on 21st April and learn how you communicate with yourself and understand others better.  Register from this site or call me on 0408 666 176

Until next time

Remember Your Mindset Matters

Mandy Napier BSc

Have you ever been frustrated when someone just can’t see things from your perspective?  Have you ever had one of those moments when something just slipped out of your mouth before you realised what you were saying, and it was taken the wrong way? Well, the reality is, we all see things from our own perspective. Too often, we take the easy road, we go down that well trodden path even though we know it might not get us the results that we want.
To become an expert or master communicator, you must learn to see things from other people’s perspective. This means, you first have to understand yourself, how you process information and what is important to you. Then you have to start to understand others, and use your own set of magnetic words so you can connect with them on a new level and get better results.

To illustrate how we all view things differently, take the following simple example. John, Jack, Mary and Susie all went out for a dinner.  They each related their experience of the evening. Read More→