Try the following: Every morning, make a strong affirmation of yourself, which includes three of your best personal traits and core strengths. For example, “I am compassionate, intelligent and funny, and these things help me and others live better lives. I am amazing.” Regular affirmations support positive thinking and help keep us on track to our goals. Feel yourself sliding towards negativity? Repeat your affirmations and stay the course. Motivating ourselves and getting psyched about bringing on new business is excellent. But in the long run, maintaining such motivation can be tiring. By practicing regular positive thinking, you will eventually reprogram yourself to simply expect positive results, which is much easier than consciously bolstering yourself. You must realize that consistent action and hard work now will pay off towards the good life. See you at the top!

Regardless of your upbringing or current environment, you are in full control of your thoughts and attitudes. Your current thought patterns are only habits, and habits can be changed. Try this exercise: The next time you’re driving home from a difficult presentation, or wrapping up a tough day on the phone, take the time to relax and reflect on your day. Don’t let discouragement or a sense of overwhelm drain you. Instead, mentally highlight positive things you accomplished that day. From finally remembering to turn off the coffee pot to telling yourself that you did a great job marketing a new project, it could be anything – have fun with it. Positive thoughts are free currency and you should stock up on as much as you can. You simply can’t have too much positivity in your life. Yes, outside recognition is great, it really fuels the self-esteem, but giving yourself a mental pat on the back is what pays the residual dividends. Positive thought encourages self-confidence, which is much more permanent and empowering than any external accolades.

One of the best ways to be more positive is simply telling yourself, “Yes, I can.” And pinpointing areas where positive attitude shines will show you areas of strength to build off. The next time you feel the desire to flee a situation or are feeling overwhelmed by what seems like unobtainable goals, take a deep breath and stand up to the challenge. Oddly enough, some people find it easier to swallow unfilled dreams and cope with mini defeats instead of believing in themselves and putting their abilities to the test. But if you arm yourself with positive thoughts, then even defeat can be rewarding, because you’ll have the comfort of knowing you at least tried, and are sure to have learned something new in the process. An unsuccessful attempt will always be considered a victory when compared to the failure to act. Plus, a positive frame of mind maintains a more accepting mentality and creates openness to new opportunities. From this, you may begin to perceive previously unseen possibilities. 

A particularly effective way to stay positive is working on improving your core strengths, the positive attributes that distinguish you from others. Of course, it is good to work on areas that are lacking. However, you could end up spending a lot of time and energy working to improve weaknesses by only a minimal amount, while you could be improving your strengths exponentially. By no means is this a suggestion to give up and accept defeat in certain areas. Analyze your strengths and determine which ones a little mental elbow grease could improve, and which ones should be considered auxiliary. The majority of your energy should be directed towards building upon your strengths. People are most productive and content when they work on what they’re best at. Sounds simple enough doesn’t it? Yet, there are millions of people who work jobs their discontent with or dwell on tasks they dislike. This is why we encourage our members to communicate openly and often. Combining your team’s abilities means that you don’t necessarily have to tend to tasks you dislike or don’t excel at; bridge each other’s gaps. You’ll be most industrious, happiest, and more likely to accomplish your goals when you incorporate your core strengths.

As the cornerstone of your team, you are the first stone set in the construction of your team. Just as it is with masonry, all other members will be set in reference to the cornerstone, thus determining the strength and position of the entire team. In order to be a solid cornerstone, you must first completely believe in yourself – take a mental inventory of all your abilities and personal gifts. One of the quickest ways to fail is to tell yourself that you don’t have the correct experience. If we allowed experience to rule our goals, then we’d never accomplish anything new. But reviewing our own talents reveals that, even without experience, we do have the means to accomplish our goals. Your teammates will help you build your foundation, filling in the gaps and providing skills that you may not have. But each brick is in a symbiotic relationship, maintaining an equilibrium and building off of each other. No single stone can support the total weight.

Making a mental inventory is also a way of performing a self-assessment of your attitudes towards different situations. For example, does your stomach knot up at the thought of what it takes to be super successful, or do you feel energized and excited? The danger with attitude is that it’s usually on autopilot, and if a challenging situation automatically causes strife, then you’ve got a problem before you’ve even started. Identifying and mapping out factors that trigger anxiety or excitement is extremely important. Identifying negative attitudes will show you areas you need to control and will encourage you to confront such situations, taking the “fight” route instead of “flight.” Negative thought can suck you in and overwhelm like a flash flood, so you may need to retrain your brain to catch it when it first rears its ugly head. Sometimes it’s as simple as telling yourself to think about something else – don’t dwell on what’s got you down, keep moving forward. Other times, when you feel yourself in the shadows of pessimism, a good dose of sound reasoning can shed some positive light. If you make the effort to evaluate your negative thoughts and doubts, you’ll probably find that there isn’t sufficient evidence to maintain those insecurities – study the facts, not your fears.

Imagine you’re planning a hiking trip: you’ve got your heavy pack of supplies (daily responsibilities) and your map (general goals). However, you have a sprained ankle and can barely support your own weight. Do you march off into the wilderness with the responsibility of your family and your job on your back, or do you take care of yourself until you’re strong enough to support them? Even if you have all the right tools and assets from your family or education, you can’t expect anyone to carry you through the wilderness of life. This doesn’t mean we need to become master life project managers before we take on major challenges. It simply means that we need to fortify on an individual basis as much as possible in order to build up an indestructible approach to life.

Unless you’re comatose, you’re capable of virtually anything you wish to accomplish. There are, of course, certain goals that you may never be able to achieve, such as growing taller or becoming governor. However, with growth hormones readily available, Arnold Schwarzenegger holding the title of California governor, and operational civilian space trips, not even the sky is the limit for you.

For starters, you need to acknowledge that you alone are responsible for your success or failure. Most people obviously believe in and promote teamwork, so some may say that the responsibility is shared among team members. Yes, it is. But it’s translated as a matter of individual achievements conglomerating to create a single, powerful entity. In order to make the most out of this power relationship, we need to make sure we have a strong foundation – work on yourself first, and then build up from there.

If you believe in yourself everyday, then you will surely come to realize your true potential – there’s so much that we’re capable of that we’re not even aware of yet. We all simply have to make a conscious choice of growing as people, so that we can continue to better other people’s lives. By doing this, we actually come to eliminate the need for a New Year’s resolution, because we’ll be resolving everyday on how to become all that we are truly meant to be, empowering our human potential. So the next time you feel distressed about a situation, take a deep breath and simply remind yourself that you are amazing, and that within your capabilities, you hold the solution.

You should keep that mentality ready for when you decide to tackle the pressure of holding to your New Year’s resolutions. Have you ever noticed that you hear all about resolutions when they’re first made, but then you almost never hear about a complete follow through on these resolutions? Most often, it’s easier on our conscious when we completely abandon these resolutions instead of contending with the stress of holding to these commitments. 

The best way to arm yourself for staying committal is by cultivating positive health, growth and wellbeing. High-quality health involves more than just eating super foods, it also involves achieving positive wellness: “emotional, intellectual, spiritual, occupational, social and physical” (Nelson & Simmons, 2003). An ideal place to start with eliminating stress in your life and maintaining eustress as an ally is with fundamentals such as eating healthy foods, exercising and getting enough sleep. Two other methods you should practice daily, which only take a minute and are absolutely free, are laughing and physical touch, such as a hearty hug or holding a loved one’s hand. And perhaps strongest of all of these elements is self belief.