Spirituality and Self Help » Motivational

Self Help Tactics To Reduce Depression

shimon — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 11:37:13 +0000

This is a guest post by Ashley Jennings. Ashley writes about depression help and self help techniques for a variety of mental health conditions.

Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open? Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking. Live in silence. — Jalal ad-Din Rumi

If you ever feel exhausted, worthless, helpless, or hopeless, there is a possibility you are suffering from depression. Several steps can be taken to treat this condition.

If you are interested in self-help, there are resources available that can help you get on the right track to feeling more confident and better about yourself.

Self-help consists of several methods that can be performed daily in the comfort of your own home, and these methods are designed to help reduce the effects of depression.

Depending on the severity of your condition, you should seek medical help, but depression help tactics are a great way to start the healing process.

The following tips describe a few methods for reducing stress and building confidence. These methods can also assist in the reduction of your depression symptoms:

• Setting goals are a great way to build confidence especially if you can meet them quickly.
• Split your tasks into smaller sections. This allows you to complete your projects in a timely manner.
• Spend time with those close to you and participate in activities that you enjoy such as going out for a meal, seeing a movie or going to visit some friends. These can both help you feel better.
• Change your physical state: stand straight, smile, hold your head high. Do it in front of the mirror and remember a time you felt great.
• Exercise. It’s scientifically proven that exercise makes you feel better.

This video gives some more ideas on how to reduce depression.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCINURSEg2Y

part 2

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MCN22iPTrU

If you choose to see a therapist to treat your depression, you may be treated with Cognitive Behavior Therapy or CBT. CBT can be considered a form of self-help because of the approach used in treating your depression symptoms. Your therapist may guide this process before allowing you to continue the therapy on your own.

Cognitive Behavior Therapy may consist of keeping a log or diary of your thoughts or facing the problems that may be causing your depression. This method of therapy also helps you to face the problems that may be causing your negative feelings.

Determining the causes of your depression is an excellent first step towards determining the best course of action. In some cases depression suddenly appear in one’s life without an easily distinguishable cause. When this happens, it may be best to see a therapist while continuing your self-help tactics.

The Secrets Of How To Boost Your Charisma

shimon — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 01:10:24 +0000

This is a guest post by Jon Rhodes. Jon is a very successful clinical hypnotherapist from the UK. If you are interested in self improvement, you can read the details of his very popular therapeutic hypnosis mp3 sessions. Charisma can help you in many aspects of life. It can help you win friends, be popular with the opposite sex, and even land that new exciting job. There is almost nothing that charisma can help you achieve.

For some, it is very natural to be charismatic. They just seem to have that ‘X-Factor’. However it is comforting to know that charisma can also be developed. Here are four top methods to help boost your charisma:

1 Have goals you are working towards. There are a lot more followers than leaders, so if you want to stand out then be a trailblazer. There is nothing wrong with being a follower, but people are naturally drawn to leaders.

Set yourself goals to work to. Have a sense of purpose and a vision – a big goal that you are working towards. You may or may not succeed to meet your goal, or it might change over time, but if you always have one, people will naturally feel drawn to you as you present the possibility of an exciting future. Don’t simply pretend to have a goal as people will quickly see through you and you will lose all credibility. In any case it is far more satisfying to spend life attempting to meet realistic goals.

2 Love yourself. If you don’t like yourself, how do you expect others to like you? Unknowingly you constantly give out thousands of small subconscious clues on how you should be treated, and it all begins with treating yourself right.

You need to learn to appreciate that you are a unique and valuable human being. Accept yourself as you are. It’s fine to have some flaws. You can work on improving them. However it must be remembered that the most charismatic people on earth are the ones with flaws. Someone who is perfect is not really all that interesting anyway. People are drawn to people, not robots. Be happy with who you are, wart and all. Love yourself and others will soon follow suit.

3 Be honestly interested in others. You must have met many people who talk incessantly about themselves? This may be OK at first, but after a while it becomes very tiresome and you just want to avoid them.

Charismatic people appreciate other people just as much as they appreciate themselves. Relax and listen properly to what other people are saying. Give them space to talk. You will learn new things, and they will notice and appreciate that you actually listen to them. The Chinese have a saying: “You have two ears and one mouth – use them in that proportion.”

Some people struggle concentrating on listening to others, and become anxious that they may forget what they are thinking next. This causes them to not listen properly to what the person was saying, as they struggle to remember what they want to say, then immediately respond to what they say with something totally irrelevant.

This will not win you too many fans, and is irritating to the recipient. Relax, allow that thought to disappear, and listen. This thought will return if it is still relevant. If it is so important, you will remember it again some time in the future. With a little practice listening becomes much easier, and you will enjoy far more productive two way conversations.

4 Model someone who you consider very charismatic. Hypnotherapists and NLP practitioners often utilize this technique very successfully. It could be a friend, a celebrity, or even a fictional character that you model. You may wish to be like James Bond for example. Don’t try and copy them exactly, just consider how they would act in the situations you face.

You have to sometimes be careful with this as it may not be appropriate to blow up the whole building up with your watch, or do a flying kick to the face a la Bruce Lee! Get a ‘feel’ of a certain character, and how they work on the inside. Try to catch their essence, rather than exactly cloning them. Done with thought and care this can significantly raise your charisma levels.

So remember you should have goals that you are working towards, love yourself, listen to others, and model other charismatic people. Try to be charismatic, but don’t try too hard. Watch other people and observe what they ‘get right’ and what they ‘get wrong’ in the charisma game.

This will greatly increase your awareness over time, and help hone your skills. Pretty soon you will notice huge strides in charisma levels, and your success and enjoyment of life will also soar. Now get out there and wow the world with your new charming charismatic self!

How To Motivate Yourself To Achieve Success

shimon — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 17:39:28 +0000

We all need motivation. Without it nothing would be done. We need motivation to work, study and even to wake up in the morning. Motivation simply means the reason why we do things. In this post I want to share a few ways to motivate yourself.

Motivation at work

Until you’ll find your dream job every other job usually starts the same, at first you’re excited but then with time you enter into a routine and get bored. At this point you have three options: quitting, working and suffering or motivating yourself and even excelling at your job.

Assuming you need the money and you don’t want to quit you’re left with two options. both of them have advantages and disadvantages. Lets start with working and suffering: the advantage is that you get to complain and because people love to complain you will have a common interest with your coworkers and it will be easier for you to communicate.

On the other hand you’ll suffer, you’ll be bored and look at your watch a lot. You’ll probably wont be promoted because people don’t promote mediocre workers. In addition you’ll be tired and you’ll feel that you’re wasting your time.

If you choose to motivate yourself the main disadvantage will be that you’ll need to consciously make an effort at least at the beginning to see the positive sides of your job, and of course you’ll need to find different topics to talk about with your coworkers.

On the other hand you’ll be vigorous, you’ll become interested in your job and therefore better at it which will increase your chances of promotion. In addition time will pass faster and you’ll generally feel better.

If you decide to motivate yourself, here is how you can do that:

start by remembering why you looked for a job in the first place.
Think about all the advantages that this job is giving you.
Divide your job into parts and give yourself small treats for every part you accomplished. The treats should be something you like to do like reading a book or watching TV (avoid food as a treat).
Imagine that someone is watching every step you make and you want them to have a good impression of you.

If you can’t find advantages to your job and you can’t motivate yourself, you should seriously consider finding a different job. The average person spends a lot of time at work and if you’re unhappy at your job it will affect other areas in your life including your health.

General Motivation

Do you want to know how I motivated myself to do skydiving? The answer is simple I told everyone I know that I’m going to do it. I didn’t want them to think that I’m a liar or just one of these people that talks a lot and does nothing so I had to do it. This “technique” still helps me achieve some of my goals, I use it all the time and it’s easy.

In this video Tony Robbins explains what motivates us and how we can do it better.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cpc-t-Uwv1I

So by now some of you still think “I tried to motivate myself in the past and it didn’t work.” The reason for this is conflicting goals: In this video Tony Robbins explains more about it.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0iFgVzXxKc

You can read more about it in my inner conflicts post.

How to Overcome The Fear of Failure

shimon — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 01:00:47 +0000

This is a guest post by Courtney Phillips. Courtney is the owner of Rated Colleges
It’s basic human nature to judge and be judged by our successes or lack of them; it’s a trait that we’re born with and one that’s passed on to us by the adults around us from the time we’re old enough to develop reasoning skills.

Usually the children who are good at something and talented are lauded and feted by society; there’s no room for the also-rans and the jack-of-all-trades in a world where you have to excel academically, have a flair for the arts, sing like a bird, dance like a peacock, play like a jock, and so on and so forth, to be able to say that you’re a success.

This is exactly why we grow up fearing failure. What exactly is failure? In the eyes of society, it’s the act of not being outstanding at anything you attempt. Your parents expect you to top your class when you’re in school; and when you grow up, they expect you to get into the best colleges and land a high-profile job, one that will allow them to be proud of you.

Most people end up failing for this very reason – they’re not able to live up to the expectations of their loved ones. And that my friends, is the root cause of failure – EXPECTATIONS. When we don’t expect anything, it’s easy to be content with what we have. And when we are content with what we have, we’re in that elusive state we refer to as happiness.

Overcoming failure

Failure is a detour, not a dead-end street. — Zig Ziglar

So if you’re looking to overcome your fear of failure, here’s what you need to do :

1Adopt a never-say-die attitude. If there’s something you want badly, (the operative word here is YOU), there’s no shame in trying to achieve it even if you fail repeatedly. After all, if your happiness depends on it, why should you worry about what other people think or say?

History is replete with stories where success comes after multiple failures – we only have to look at the legend of Robert Bruce and the spider and Thomas Edison’s failed inventions for inspiration.

2 Think of the worst that could happen: Very often, the worst that could happen is that you suffer varying levels of embarrassment. Sometimes you also end up losing precious time, money and other resources. But if what you stand to gain is much more valuable than what you could lose in the process of trying, it’s worth making the effort.

3Think of the best that could happen: What if you end up achieving your goals in a spectacular manner? You’d never know how it felt unless you tried. Albert Einstein, one of the greatest geniuses of all time, said that genius was 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration. So if you try hard enough and put your heart and soul into attaining your goal, you’re definitely well on the road to success.

It’s always the first step that’s the hardest to take; once you get past this, you’re definitely going to gain courage with each and every further step that you take. So if you’re able to muster up the strength to take the initial initiative, you have nothing to fear but fear itself.

In this video Phil Van Hooser explains more about the fear of failure.