HOUR OF POWER

Some of you may be familiar with a Mr Anthony Robbins. Yeah, he's the guy with the pearly white teeth on the late night infomercials living out the American dream and telling you how you can live out that dream too.

Personally I'm not a huge fan of the Californian approach to self-help. I can't help but feel these people are living in a different reality to myself, and that is no bad thing, how you want to live your life is up to you, there are no rights and wrongs, it's just that their way of living is not one that appeals to me. But that doesn't mean they they have nothing useful to say. If you can stomach the nauseating lectures and listen below the surface then you'll realise that people like Tony Robbins are actually onto something. One thing that appears to be universal throughout the self-help community is to start your day on the right foot. Robbins refers to this as the hour of power, and I include this because it directly follows from my previous entry about thoughts.

I know myself, I often get up, turn on my computer, check my emails then log into the usual message forums. Besides the usual negativity in SA forums they do nothing to inspire me in my day ahead. After about 20 minutes I've went through all the new posts, by which time I've settled into my chair. I don't want to move. So what do I do? I refresh the page to check for new posts since I logged in. It's not all that unusual for me to still be sitting there at 11pm, completely ashamed of my existence! I don't know about you but that's not my idea of a productive day. My most productive days come about when I decline the urge to log into the intellect dissolving pastures of online communities and start off on my positive foot. The worst thing you can possibly do when rising out of bed is to sink into a chair with the negativity you woke up with.

As soon as you wake up, before you have the chance to review your negative introspection you need to consciously ask yourself what you're grateful for. And before you begin to tell me how you've got nothing to be grateful for, I'm going to stop you there, you're being a bum! There is always something to be grateful for. It may be the roof over your head, your good health, the repeat of your favourite TV show at 9pm, your family, your friends, this computer, etc. Find something you're grateful for. What do you enjoy? Quickly move on and tell yourself you're going to have a good day, no matter how dull the prospect is you have the power to create. Jump out of bed and get moving, learn to love yourself and appreciate yourself for what you are. If you can believe you're going to have a good day then that is what you will have, the events of that day will have little influence. Once out of bed get that shower and feeling fresh, and if you're feeling really brave dig out the running shoes from the back of the cupboard. Get moving, build on that enthusiasm and feed yourself the energy you need. You can do what you like, you're the boss, just make sure it's positive and that you're thinking positively. This is the most important time of the day as it sets your mood for what is to come, and if you're going to avoid this positivity now, don't hold any hopes for it miraculously showing up later in the day, you've got to create this and there is no time better than the present.

Anyhow, I know I haven't gone into any great detail but I'm trying to set some fundamental approaches that are essential to your mental well being. I can't stress enough how important it is to set your thoughts on the right track, the rest of this blog will require a good amount of positivity for it to be any use to you. You can find your own ways of doing this, and I'll also elaborate on techniques for doing so later on in the blog, but for now if you can grasp the importance in doing so you're off to a start.

And don't worry, I've also got some more characteristic SA stuff to go up next, I'm not gonna dwell on personal-development nuts like Anthony Robbins*.


*For anyone who doesn't know, Anthony Robbins is a motivational speaker in the field of personal development. He is nauseating, but he is also very good at what he does and I wouldn't like to put anyone off checking out his stuff.