Copyright (c) 1999 by Seashell Publishers and Andrew Matthews
Copyright (c) 1999 by Seashell Publishers and Andrew Matthews
READERS’ COMMENTS “This book is addictive! I couldn’t stop reading it. The content is fabulous – like watching Disney Discovery Channel!” CHERRYN YAP Singapore
“This book has helped me understand life better. It is very useful and very good.” SYAZMIN MOHD KHALID, 15 Malaysia
“BEING A HAPPY TEEN is great! Finally there is a book for us that makes sense and tells us what we need to know.” BEKKY SCHNEIDER, 16 Queensland, Australia
“I was able to relate to the book as well as gain from it. I like the part about friends and being self confident. It really worked when I tried it. I am sure other readers will enjoy it as much as I did.” KIMBERLY WONG Hong Kong
“BEING A HAPPY TEEN is an absolute gem. It makes complex issues simple.” DR PETER MANUEL Principal, Victor Harbor High School, Australia
Copyright (c) 1999 by Seashell Publishers and Andrew Matthews
READERS’ COMMENTS “This is the book I wish I had when I was growing up. As a parent of teenagers, I recommend it to all parents and teenagers.” CHRISTOPHER FERNANDO Barrister, Malaysia
“I love Andrew’s work – it is brilliant, insightful, fun and helpful.” MARK VICTOR HANSEN Coauthor Chicken Soup for the Soul
“I really enjoyed reading BEING A HAPPY TEEN – I hate to admit it but I am a lot more motivated for it.” EVE JACKSON, 15 Sydney, Australia
“Every teenager should have this book! It is simple, easy to read and to the point. I know it will help you.” DATO SHARIZAT MD JALIL Minister for Women & Family Development, Malaysia
“I have been searching for the right book for my 12 year-old son, Ben, who was somewhat troubled by what life dishes out. I tried reading many books to Ben but none held his attention for more than a paragraph. I can’t begin to tell you how much this book means to us.” MARIA LEWTY Brandon, Australia
Copyright (c) 1999 by Seashell Publishers and Andrew Matthews
being a happy
TEENAGER written and illustrated by Andrew Matthews
Seashell Publishers • Australia
Copyright (c) 1999 by Seashell Publishers and Andrew Matthews
Being a Happy Teenager Copyright © 2001 by Andrew Matthews and Seashell Publishers Published by: Seashell Publishers PO Box 325, Trinity Beach Queensland, Australia, 4879. Fax: (within Australia) 07 4057 6966 Fax: (from outside Australia) 61 7 4057 6966 Email:
[email protected] Visit our website: www.seashell.com.au Layout and design by Twocan and Seashell Publishers First published May 2001 Reprinted 13 times
ISBN 09578814 3 6 No part of this publication, text or illustrations, may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior consent of the author and the publisher. Also by the same author: “Being Happy!” “Making Friends” “Get Faxed!” “Follow Your Heart” “Happiness in a Nutshell”
Copyright (c) 1999 by Seashell Publishers and Andrew Matthews
Dedication To my precious wife – and publisher – Julie: Thank you for all your love and guidance. You never cease to amaze me! For ten years you have encouraged me to write a book for teenagers. Thank you for your insights, your inspiration and your endless editing. You made it happen. This is your book.
Thank You To Mary Duma, Julia Green, Elisabeth Davies, Eve Jackson, Lucinda Napper, Serin Kasif, Kumaresan, Syazmin Mohd Khalid, Mahammad Saufee Abdul Shukor, Karen and Matthew Reason, Amanda Wilson-Bunch, Beck Schneider and Christiane Hommel for taking the time to read the manuscripts and for all your comments and suggestions. To Grace and Aaron Tan for your time and suggestions. To Christopher Tan for your advice. To Sharon Hackwood for your help in typing the manuscript. To Susie Grinter and Jill Greaves for your editing. To Colin Martin of Twocan for your creative ideas in the layout of “Being a Happy Teenager”.
Copyright (c) 1999 by Seashell Publishers and Andrew Matthews
“Sometimes I ask myself, ‘Why am I the lucky one?’”
Copyright (c) 1999 by Seashell Publishers and Andrew Matthews
Contents 1. Am I Normal?
9
2. Why Does Life Hurt?
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Why Do I Need Problems? Dealing With Disappointments
3. Who Am I?
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How Can I Like Myself? Feeling Good
4. Parents
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Why Do Parents Act So Crazy?
5. Friends
35
What Others Think When to Keep Your Mouth Shut Self-Criticism Drugs
6. School
9. Laws of Life
91
The Law of the Seed One Thing Leads to Another Everything is Connected
10. Your Strategy
101
Does Positive Thinking Help? Get Organized Risk Power
11. Goals – Why Bother?
109
Mistakes “If It Doesn’t Kill You...” Money
12. Why Not You?
121
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Bullies Why Study?
7. Your Amazing Mind
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Focus on What You Want Improve Your Memory!
8. Happiness
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If You Hate Your Parents... What Do You Expect? Worry and Fear We Choose Happiness
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Copyright (c) 1999 by Seashell Publishers and Andrew Matthews
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Copyright (c) 1999 by Seashell Publishers and Andrew Matthews
1
Do you ever: • wish you were older? • wish you had more money? • get embarrassed by your parents? • wish you looked different? • wish you had different parents? Do you ever feel “No one understands me” Do you ever wonder “Will I fall in love?” Do you sometimes want to drown your brothers and sisters? Do you ever ask “Why do I have to learn all this stuff in school that I will probably never need?” Do you ever wonder “Am I normal?”
“Am I Normal?”
I
f you answered “Yes” to about half of the above, you sound perfectly normal! You will also probably find this book useful. And if it makes you feel better, ninety-six percent of teenagers don’t like their faces or their bodies! Most likely you believe that: • The smartest people are the most successful • People with easy lives (and no work to do) are the happiest • The cutest girls always get the guys • The best-looking guys always get the girls • Mistakes are bad But none of this is necessarily true. Read on...
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Copyright (c) 1999 by Seashell Publishers and Andrew Matthews
If You Keep Doing the Same Thing... At thirteen, I was a little guy with a big mouth – and that got me into lots of trouble... The older kids thought they should teach me a lesson. They dunked my head in the toilets. They locked me in cupboards. Tony Ferguson used to drop me headfirst into puddles. It’s hard to look cool when you’ve just been dunked in a puddle. My teachers also thought they should teach me to control my tongue. They would send me to see the deputy principal. He had a big stick...
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Copyright (c) 1999 by Seashell Publishers and Andrew Matthews
“Matthews, what are you doing here?” “Mrs. Stuart said I was cheeky, sir.” “And were you cheeky?” “Yes, sir.” “Didn’t I see you last week?” “Yes, sir.” “And what was that for?” “Being cheeky, sir.” “Bend over!” WHACK! WHACK! “Have you learned your lesson?” “Yes, sir!” And the next week... “Matthews, what are you doing here?” “Mr. Roberts said I was cheeky, sir.” “Didn’t I see you last week?” “Yes, sir.” “And what was that for?” “Being cheeky, sir.” “Bend over!” WHACK! WHACK! “Have you learned your lesson?” “Yes, sir!” I did learn something from all this. I learned that if you keep doing the same thing in life, you keep getting the same results!
In a nutshell If you want your life to be different, you have to change your behaviour.
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Copyright (c) 1999 by Seashell Publishers and Andrew Matthews
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Copyright (c) 1999 by Seashell Publishers and Andrew Matthews
2
A guy asked me, “What if I don’t want to be happy? What if I want to be miserable?” I said, “Be miserable – if that makes you happy!”
Why Does Life Hurt? Pain
W
hen you accidentally bite your tongue, it’s hard to see “pain” as a good thing. The same goes for a blister on your big toe. You might ask, “Why do I need a throbbing foot?” But what if you felt no pain? How often would you bite off bits of your tongue – or burn your backside in the bath? Physical pain is a perfect alarm system that prevents further damage. It tells us, “You’d better change what you are doing!” Guess what! Emotional pain gives us the same kind of message. If we are hurting a lot of the time – feeling resentful or jealous or angry – the emotional pain might be telling us, “You’d better change how you’re thinking!”, i.e. • “Don’t expect your friends to always agree with you.” • “Don’t depend on your friends to make you happy!” • “Forgive yourself. Forget your mistakes and move on.”
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Copyright (c) 1999 by Seashell Publishers and Andrew Matthews
“Then if you have no luck with control-alt-delete, do an ‘insert bat’!”
With physical pain, a blister on your foot is a message to change your shoes. With emotional pain – which feels like a blister on the brain – the message is usually to change your point of view. When you see things differently, the pain often goes away. How can we see things differently? That’s what this book is about.
In a nutshell With physical pain, when we keep doing the same thing, it keeps hurting. With emotional pain, when we keep doing the same thing, it keeps hurting.
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Copyright (c) 1999 by Seashell Publishers and Andrew Matthews
Why Do I Need Problems? Most of the time, we don’t act until we have a problem – or worse, a disaster! EXAMPLE: You play basketball for the school team. You usually miss your free-throws – because you never practise! Then one night you are playing in the big game. Your team is one point behind with one second left on the clock. Everything depends on your two free-throws. What happens? You miss both of them! And you want to die! After you have finished punching the wall, you get a plan. Every night for the next three months you throw two hundred baskets. You get better and better. Soon you are the best shooter in the team. Why? Because you had a problem. EXAMPLE: Your mathematics results have been slipping. You fail three tests in a row. Your teacher tells you, “Fail one more time and you’ll have to repeat the year.” Now you have a problem! Suddenly you need a plan for mathematics. So you get a friend to help you twice a week. You do extra study. Before long you are passing every test – and you discover it is not that difficult! Why? Because you had a problem! Here’s how life goes. We cruise along until a problem gets serious. Eventually we do something about it. Soon we are even better off than before the problem. We learn more from disasters than we do from success. Disasters get our attention and we take action!
In a nutshell Problems aren’t necessarily bad.
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Copyright (c) 1999 by Seashell Publishers and Andrew Matthews
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Copyright (c) 1999 by Seashell Publishers and Andrew Matthews
Disappointments How do you deal with disappointments? You apply for a part-time job and your friend gets hired. Maybe you get a new car and it gets stolen within a week. Or you fall in love with the guy next door and he falls in love with the girl across the street. When these things happen, you have a few options. You can either: • Ask yourself, “Why do bad things always happen to me?” This gets you stranded in self-pity, an option for losers. While we feel sorry for ourselves we never do anything to fix a problem. • Tell yourself, “It’s not my fault.” This is another excuse to do nothing. Even if it’s not your fault, the question is, “What are you going to do about it?” • Ask yourself, “What do I learn from this?” This is how you bounce back. You ask, “What do I learn?” “What else can I do?” “Who can help me?” Then you get a plan to do better next time. If you believe (or even pretend) that every event in your life has a purpose, you will learn from your disappointments. We are not here to be punished. We are here to be educated.
In a nutshell You are never beaten until you quit.
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Copyright (c) 1999 by Seashell Publishers and Andrew Matthews
Blaming Other People If you say, “I know I’m failing history. It’s my teacher’s fault.” Is it likely your marks will get better? If you say, “I know why I have no money. My boss doesn’t pay me enough!” Will that help? Is it likely you’ll ever save money? While we blame other people, we usually do little to fix the situation. So we keep the problem. Fred says, “I haven’t got any friends. Nobody understands me!” That’s avoiding responsibility. While Fred blames everyone else, he’ll have a lot of lonely Saturday nights. Mary says, “I know I’m miserable. It’s my mother’s fault.” That’s a recipe for more misery. Blaming your mother doesn’t help. Whenever you fail at something, ask yourself, “Was I partly responsible for this? How can I make sure this doesn’t happen again?” These are questions successful people ask themselves.
It’s Not What Happens to You; It’s How You See It Case 1: My friend John Foppe was born with no arms. He holds a masters degree in communication and he gives presentations to companies and schools around the world. He never asks, “Why was I born without hands?” He asks himself: “What am I going to do about it?” Everything you do with your arms – comb your hair, count your money, steer a car, open a door – he does with his feet. It’s fun to eat with John in a Chinese restaurant. While other diners are eating with knives and forks – figuring chopsticks are too hard – John handles chopsticks like a champion: between his toes! Says John, “I accept who I am. Without the challenges I have had, I wouldn’t be the same person.” Case 2: Tony Christiansen is a qualified surf lifeguard, a champion swimmer, a second-degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do, a speedway and racing car champion, a qualified pilot, a successful businessman and a father of three children. Tony has no legs. He lost them in a railway
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Copyright (c) 1999 by Seashell Publishers and Andrew Matthews
accident when he was nine. Tony’s philosophy? Never say, “I can’t.” So long as you believe something in your life is a disaster, it will unfold as a continuing disaster. Let’s say your Dad suddenly announces to the family, “I’ve got a new job. We’re all moving to Peru!” You say, “Oh no! I’ll lose all my friends. My life is ruined! Where can you get a decent hamburger in Peru?” As long as you think that your life is in ruins, you will be miserable. Then one day you change your point of view. You decide, “This is an adventure most kids never get! I’ll get to learn Spanish. I’ll learn to eat different food! Maybe my friends can come and visit me!” You change your attitude and it changes your life.
In a nutshell Every “disaster” in your life is not so much a disaster as a situation waiting for you to change your mind about it.
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Copyright (c) 1999 by Seashell Publishers and Andrew Matthews
3
Who Am I?
Do I Need to Like Myself?
Y
es! People who don’t like themselves are a pain in the neck! Usually, people with a poor self-image use one of two irritating strategies. They either: a) criticize you a lot or b) they criticize themselves a lot. STRATEGY A: They criticize you a lot. They figure that by criticizing other people they can feel better about themselves. Let’s take Fred, who feels inferior. Fred thinks he has a big nose and piggy eyes. He also secretly feels a bit stupid. So what’s his strategy to feel better about himself? He criticizes all his friends. He has names for them like “Flathead”, “Chicken Legs” and “Dogbrain”. Whenever someone else makes a mistake, he announces it to the whole class. (He probably doesn’t even realize he criticizes people – or why he does it.) If you have parents, friends or brothers and sisters who don’t like themselves – they might criticize you and everyone around them. Just remember that they criticize you because they have a problem. If you remember that they are actually hurting inside, you won’t get so upset by their behaviour. STRATEGY B: Some people who don’t like themselves criticize themselves a lot. They use reverse psychology... Take Mary who doesn’t like herself. She’s always telling you, “You are prettier than me. You are smarter. Nobody likes me.” She’s hoping that you will reply, “No Mary! You are clever. You are beautiful.” After a while, people like Mary get on your nerves!
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Copyright (c) 1999 by Seashell Publishers and Andrew Matthews
In a nutshell When we don’t like ourselves, we irritate other people. We also put ourselves through a lot of stress. When we accept ourselves a little better, we don’t play these games.
How Can I like Myself? In our hearts, most of us believe we should be doing better. We think that we should have gotten higher grades. We want to be popular and hang out with the “in” crowd. We feel we don’t measure up to our parents’ expectations. Our parents help to confirm this idea when they ask, “Why can’t you be more like your brother?” Whenever you are feeling low, be your own best friend. Accept that, up to now, you have lived your life the best way you know how. No one sets out to screw up their life! Like anyone, you’ve done the odd stupid thing. With more information you’ll likely do better in the future. Liking yourself means forgiving yourself. If you have made some serious mistakes, if you have hurt some people – and yourself – feeling guilty won’t help. If you are feeling guilty about something, you have already suffered enough. Being guilty for another six months won’t help anybody. Forget perfection and aim for improvement. It’s a funny thing. When you forgive yourself for your own mistakes, you automatically begin to let others off the hook for the same things.
“But I’m Not Brilliant...” You might look at yourself and say, “I’m not as beautiful as my sister, I’m not as talented as my friends and I’m not brilliant at anything! How can I feel good about me?” Fact: Nobody is good at everything and most of us have those thoughts! But here’s the lowdown! Talent and beauty are very useful – but there are plenty of talented and beautiful people around whom we don’t necessarily
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admire. And some of them are a pain in the butt! The qualities most of us value above all others are honesty, courage, persistence, generosity and humility. Take a look at this list and you’ll find something interesting. You aren’t born with these things. You develop them. Anyone can have them! If you want self-respect, and respect from others, you don’t have to be an Einstein or a super-model. You simply work at developing your own honesty, determination, generosity, humility and courage. It is called “character”.
In a nutshell How you feel about yourself is in your hands.
What If No One Else Gives Me Any Praise? When you are three years old, you need everyone’s approval: “Mommy, Daddy look at me. Look how clever I am!” And Mommy says, “Yes darling! You can poke your tongue out! You must be a genius!” As we grow we learn to stand on our own feet. With maturity we begin to take more notice of our own opinion and less notice of other people’s. It’s nice to get praise from other people but it won’t always happen. As we get older, we learn to live without it. This is called growing up! When you get no encouragement or support from anybody else, support yourself. Make a quiet note of your own achievements; make a note of the caring and positive things you do.
Feeling Good When we are feeling good about ourselves, we feel healthier, we have more energy and problems don’t seem so overwhelming. When we are feeling miserable – or when we don’t like ourselves – it is almost as if we punish ourselves. We binge on junk food or go looking for arguments. It is not that we do it consciously, but it happens. On those gloomy days we are much more likely to fall off ladders or trip over the carpet. Even accidents just seem to happen when we are feeling depressed. So, how do you keep feeling good about yourself?
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Copyright (c) 1999 by Seashell Publishers and Andrew Matthews
1. Never criticize yourself. We all have faults but you don’t need to advertize yours. Always speak well of yourself 2. Accept compliments. When someone pays you a compliment, treat it as a gift. 3. Give more compliments. There is a myth that if you pay compliments to other people, they will get a big head and then you will feel worse. The fact is, you always feel a lot better. (More about compliments later.) 4. Separate your behavior from yourself. Everyone makes mistakes. When you make a mistake be sure to say, “I made a mistake” and not “I am a mistake”. 5. Spend time with positive people. The company you keep has a huge effect on how you feel. If your family aren’t happy and uplifting, then you will need to find friends who are happy and supportive. Go and have a bit of fun. 6. Continually play movies in your mind of how you want to be. If you repeatedly play movies of yourself as confident, happy and successful, you will become more like that. It is the law of the mind. Whatever you think about, you become. 7. Just as you need good food every day, so you need good ideas every day. Whether or not this is the first “personal development” book you have ever read, read more! Personal development is a life-long program. There are hundreds of great books around on improving your memory, getting financial security, developing your confidence and making friends. We all need a regular dose of this kind of information.
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Copyright (c) 1999 by Seashell Publishers and Andrew Matthews
What About People Who Tell You, “I Am the Greatest!” Don’t you hate people who are always trying to impress you... “My uncle is a multi-millionaire... my father drives a Ferrari... I know the president...” Some people will tell you, “I am the smartest”, “I am the richest”, “I am the most beautiful”. This is not evidence of a good self- image. People who keep telling you how wonderful they are have little confidence. People who keep telling you how clever they are, or how rich they are, or how many famous friends they have, usually don’t like themselves very much. So their strategy is, “If I can get you to like me, then maybe I can get to like myself.” Extraordinary people don’t have to keep telling you, “I’m amazing!” Does Batman say, “Look at me! I’m incredible and I have the fastest wheels in town?” No. He knows he’s cool. So he just gets about saving Gotham City. Does James Bond tell everyone, “I’m sexy and brave?” No. He knows he’s brave. He just fights the crooks. These guys just make it happen. When you know something in your heart – when you really believe it – you don’t need anyone to agree with you. You know it and that’s enough. It’s the people who don’t have much – and can’t do much – who talk the most. My mother always told me, “Empty barrels make the most noise.” If you understand why people boast, then they don’t irritate you so much.
Your Self-Image Imagine this story: during your first weeks of school, you are sitting in maths class gazing out the window when the teacher asks you, “What’s the answer?” “What’s the answer?” You don’t even know the question! You are speechless. Your face turns red. Panic! At that moment you tell yourself, “I hate mathematics!” That night your mother asks: “How was school?” You say: “I couldn’t answer the maths question.” And Mother says: “But no one in our family can do maths!” Suddenly you breathe a huge sigh of relief... “Of course I hate multiplication! It’s in my genes!” From that day onward, it’s official. Will you ever look
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forward to mathematics again? Not likely! Now you begin to tell your friends, “I hate maths. My entire family is bad with numbers!” You figure, “Why make an effort? I’ll never conquer it.” But what really happened here? You got a bad start and fell behind. Maybe this maths story didn’t happen to you. But most of us have our own story – about singing, hitting a ball, drawing a picture, learning to swim, speaking in front of the class. We got a bad start and fell behind. No one came along to encourage us. After one embarrassing experience we gradually convinced ourselves, “It’s hopeless!” It’s worth examining where we get these “facts” about what we can do and what we can’t do. Usually these “facts” are simply beliefs we have – and they are based on very shaky evidence. Teachers, parents, brothers, cousins tell us things about ourselves when we are young. When we are six years old – or ten years old – we believe it... “This is Mary – she’s not academic.” “This is Rudy – he’s the naughty one.” “This is Frank – he’ll be fat like his father.” Then we spend a lifetime believing something someone told us that’s not true. If you have labels on yourself, like “I am a slow learner”, “I am uncoordinated”, “I can’t multiply”, ask yourself, “What’s the proof?”
In a nutshell Challenge your labels. When we give ourselves a second chance, and get some help, most often we can do it!
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Copyright (c) 1999 by Seashell Publishers and Andrew Matthews
“It’s Just the Way I Am!” Did you ever say to yourself, “I can’t change the way I am?” Maybe you were talking about your school results, or your temper, or your weight, or your unhappiness. But people change. You can change. CASE 1: Charles Atlas is the father of body-building. Eighty years before it was fashionable to join a gym and buy all those fancy abdominal machines on TV, Atlas built “the perfect body”. He and his fitness program became world-famous. But Atlas – real name Angelo Siciliano – began training because he was hopelessly ashamed of his skinny body. He was a ninety-seven pound (fortyfive kilo) weakling! What if Angelo had said, “I can’t help it. It’s just the way I am!”
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CASE 2: Bjorn Borg. Borg is one of the great tennis players of all time. He retired at just twenty-six, having won 62 titles including five Wimbledon and six French Open titles. Borg’s great weapon was his cool temperament. He was like a machine! He never got angry, he never swore, in fact he never even spoke! He just silently wore his opponents into the ground. They called him the “Ice Borg”. But aged twelve, Bjorn Borg was banned from playing tennis at his club for six months. Why? For bad behavior – for shouting and throwing his racquet. Young Bjorn had a foul temper! What if Borg had said, “I can’t help it. It’s just the way I am!”
In a nutshell You are the way you are. But you don’t have to stay that way.
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4
Parents
“When I was a teenager, I was proud to be seen with my parents!”
Why Do Parents Act So Crazy?
I
magine you got a puppy for your birthday. You care so much about this puppy. You watch it all the time. You panic when you can’t find it. You are forever worrying about this little ball of fluff and saying things like... “Where have you been?” “Where are you going?” “Be careful!” “Don’t do that!” You love it! You worry about what it eats. You worry when it is
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sick. You want to protect it. You try to teach it things that it doesn’t want to learn! Meanwhile, the puppy is thinking, “I’m dealing with a control freak!” Have you noticed that parents treat you the way you would treat the puppy? They are forever saying... “Where have you been?” “Where are you going?” “Be careful!” “Don’t do that!” They panic when they can’t find you. They worry about what you eat. They worry when you are sick. They want to protect you. They try to teach you things – that you don’t want to learn. Meanwhile you’re thinking, “I’m dealing with a couple of control freaks!” Parents can be irritating. But it’s usually because they care so much. Sometimes it helps to remember that they act so crazy because they care about you.
In a nutshell Next time your parents are telling you what to do, think about you and the puppy. Maybe you’ll understand your parents a bit better.
One More Reason Parents Act So Crazy... What are the main things you have to worry about? Probably the list comes down to: • good grades in school • friends and boyfriends/girlfriends • your hobbies and sport • getting enough cash from your parents That list probably keeps you fairly busy.
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“Steven’s had enough to eat – haven’t you, Steven?” Parents also have things to worry about. Their list – and this is all boring stuff – might include: • keeping their jobs • delivering the family to music lessons, soccer practice, ballet, etc. • monthly car payments, car repairs, car insurance, gas bills • monthly house payments, house repairs, house insurance • bills for gas, water, telephone, electricity, cable TV • caring for their parents • buying new furniture, computers, printers, software • school fees for all the kids • clothes for the whole family • everybody’s health insurance, medical bills, hospital bills, veterinary bills • Christmas/birthday presents for a few dozen family and friends every year • feeding you, your brothers and sisters and the dog. (We could add another 100 things to this list).
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Now here’s what happens. Dad is sitting in his study thinking about this list. Meanwhile he’s wondering how he’s ever going to pay off his $10,000 Visa card debt and his $15,000 Mastercard debt. You walk into his room and say, “Dad, can I have a new mountain bike?” (Just a simple question.) Dad goes bananas! He turns red in the face and he’s frothing at the mouth. He’s shouting, “Do you think I’m made of money? What’s the matter with the bike you have now? I never had a mountain bike!...” Dazed, you stagger to the kitchen to escape the onslaught. You ask yourself, “Why is he acting like a lunatic?” Remember the “parents’ list” and you might understand. Parents have a lot of things to worry about! That’s why they act so crazy!
In a nutshell None of us is perfect. Why do we expect our parents to be perfect? And if you ever wonder, “How come my parents are so boring?” It’s keeping up with this list that makes them boring!
Say, “Thank You!” Parents can be unreasonable, demanding, impossible to please and old fashioned. Maybe you figure it’s just too hard to have a good relationship with your parents. But in case you would like to try and improve things, here is something to remember: More than anything, parents just want to hear their kids say, “Thank you”. Now you may argue that your parents decided to have you, so it’s their problem to feed you, pay the bills and do all the stuff that parents do. Whether this is right or wrong, most parents get frustrated and angry that their teenagers take it all and rarely say, “Thank you”. For the last 10,000 years parents have been asking themselves, “How come my kids are
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so ungrateful? If only they would say, “Thank you!” Parents of thirty-year-olds tell me, “I’m always helping my children out. I give them money, cook meals, baby-sit the grandkids – and they seem to expect it. They never say, ‘Thanks’.” So how do you blow your parents’ minds? Next time your Dad delivers you to basketball training, tell him, “Thanks Dad, I know you’re a busy guy and you have a lot of other stuff to do.” He’ll be delighted. He’ll be amazed and inside he will say, “It’s all worth it!” Whenever your mother, father, stepmother, stepfather cooks a beautiful meal, tell them, “That was a great dinner. Thank you.” Of course, you can argue that it is their job to serve you. You can also argue that they should start to thank you before you thank them. But now you know what’s in their heads.
In a nutshell If you want to get closer to your parents, try saying a few extra “Thank yous” – and tell them why you appreciate it. You’ll light up their lives.
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5
Friends Choose Your Friends Carefully
D
id you ever race into a public rest room that smelt so bad you wanted to choke? But you were so desperate to go to the bathroom that you had no choice. Did you notice something? By the time you left five minutes later, it didn’t smell quite so bad! And what if you accidentally locked yourself in there for an hour? You’d be saying, “What smell?” What’s the principle here? That we get used to whatever environment we’re in. If you don’t smoke, and no one around you smokes, you never even think of smoking. But if all your friends smoke, and you hang out in smoky bars, you get used to it. Sooner or later you’re smoking! If your friends tell lies, in the beginning it worries you. After a while, you get used to the fact that some people tell lies. Hang out with them long enough and you begin telling lies. Hang out with miserable people, you become miserable – and you think it’s normal! Mix with critical people, you become critical – and you think its normal. If you hang out with friends who are happy and motivated, then you become happy and motivated – and you think that is normal. Don’t kid yourself that you aren’t affected by your friends. If your family or friends are negative and miserable, then you will need to find some positive, happy friends. Somewhere in your life, you must have some positive company – or the pessimists will drag you down – and you won’t even know it’s happening.
In a nutshell Every day we are affected and infected by the people and attitudes around us. Sometimes we need to take action – or change friends – while we can still say, “Something smells around here!”
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What Others Think Rule # 1: Everyone won’t agree with you. Rule # 2: It’s okay. Rule # 3: Everyone won’t like you. Rule # 4: That’s okay too. You won’t die! Do you care what other people think? Sure! We all do. We all want other people to think we are cool, smart, attractive and fun. But everyone is not going to like you. What do you do? Get over it!
Trying Too Hard Have you ever wondered why everyone loves babies? It’s partly because babies don’t care whether you like them or not. Babies, eat, scream, make noises and make smells, and they don’t care. Babies don’t try to impress people. When you are a baby, you don’t have to be cool or intelligent or sexy or smart. Isn’t it fascinating! Babies don’t care what we think about them – and we love them for it. There is something to learn from this. Be yourself. This doesn’t mean you should be rude or selfish. It does mean there’s such a thing as trying too hard.
Don’t Be Too Desperate... EXAMPLE: Mary is desperate for a boyfriend to adore her. While she is so frantic, is she likely to find him? Not really. Firstly, her desperation will scare all the guys away. Secondly, while she is desperate, she is not so lovable. EXAMPLE: You meet someone cute at a party and they tell you, “I’ll call you next week.” So you don’t go anywhere for a week – not even to the bathroom! You sit by the phone... and wait. Who calls? Everyone but them. When you sit around and wait for things, it seems they almost never happen.
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What do we learn from this? Never put your life on hold for anybody. Live your life in the present. Stay busy. Don’t hold your breath for anybody or anything. If you are waiting for a boyfriend to call, or waiting for a response to a job application, or a check in the mail, get on with your life. All this defies logical explanation – but you probably recognize this principle in your own life. While you are desperate for something or somebody, nothing happens.
Being Scared of People Has this ever happened to you? There’s a new kid in school – we’ll call him Joe. On Joe’s first day you see him in the corridor, and you want to say, “Hello!” But you think to yourself, “I’ll only say ‘Hello’ if he says ‘Hello’ first.” But he doesn’t say “Hello” so you don’t say “Hello”, and at the end of the day you say to yourself, “He’s not very friendly!” Next day you decide, “I’ll say ‘Hello’, but only if he does.” But Joe doesn’t speak, so you don’t. By the third day, you start playing games. You pretend not to notice each other. You pass him in the corridor – he pretends to look at the ceiling, you pretend to study the floor. After a week, you say to yourself, “I don’t like him anyway.” Meanwhile, what was Joe thinking all the time? “I’ll say ‘Hello’ if he says ‘Hello’.” While you were scared to talk to Joe, he was scared to talk to you! On the outside people often look very cool. But nobody is as confident as they look. On the inside they worry about all the things you might worry about... “Am I smart enough? Am I slim enough? Have I got a big nose?”
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In a nutshell You don’t need to be scared of people. Half the time, they are scared of you!
Some Things Are Your Business Just because someone asks you a question, doesn’t mean you have to answer it. Obviously, out of respect for parents and teachers, you will often need to tell them what they want to know. But amongst schoolmates some things are your own business. You don’t need to always explain yourself. If your friends ask you: • “Why do you wear this?” • “Why do you do that?” • “Why do you hang out with him?” • “Why do you listen to that stupid music?” You can sometimes say, “It suits me”, or “I just like it.” Enough said.
In a nutshell You don’t have to spend your life explaining yourself or justifying why you do something. If you like to do something and it is not hurting anybody else, that’s perfectly okay.
You Don’t Have to Get Angry Sometimes brothers and sisters and friends at school will say things to test you out. They might tell you things like: • “You’re fat!” • “You’re ugly!” • “Your team sucks!” • “Your boyfriend is a nerd!” Most often, they are just testing you to see how you will react. They are experimenting to see if they can make you angry. If you get angry, they win! As strange as it may seem, you don’t have to get angry. You have a choice – you’re not a robot.
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“Did someone make you angry?” You can either: a) put a big smile on your face and say, “You may be right!” The last thing they want is for you to agree with them; or otherwise b) pretend you didn’t hear. When they get no reaction, they will usually go away.
Know When to Keep Your Mouth Shut: Complaining What do we love about heroes in movies? They never complain! The hero gets a knife in his back or an arrow in his leg, and he pulls it out and gets on with the job. We like people who don’t complain. Some things other people just don’t want to hear. Things like: • “I’ve got a headache.” • “I’m in a bad mood.” • “I didn’t sleep last night.” • “Nobody likes me.” • “I hate myself!” • “I’m bored.” • “I’m depressed.” • “Why does everything always happen to me?”
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Want to be popular amongst your friends? You don’t always have to be witty or smart. Sometimes it’s enough just to know when to keep your mouth shut. Here’s what often happens in relationships: Ted meets Tina. Both are on their best behaviour. He laughs and jokes. They talk about positive, happy things. And Tina is thinking, “He’s soooooo wonderful! We have so much in common!” After a week Ted starts to relax. He begins to complain about his life and criticize himself. After a month he’s criticizing her – and her clothes, and her parents, and the weather... Meanwhile Tina is thinking, “You used to be really fun. You’ve become a real pain in the neck.” And Ted is thinking, “I thought you loved me. What happened?” If you have troubles, and want to confide in a friend, fine. But put a limit on it. You don’t have to tell the whole world. From tomorrow, you never need to tell everyone you didn’t sleep last night. Isn’t that a relief?
Self-criticism Let’s say you and I are friends, and every day I’m telling you, “I’m so boring. I don’t know why you want to be my friend! I don’t know why you don’t just leave.” Eventually you’ll say, “Good idea!” Mary says, “But if I criticize myself, then I can show people I’m humble!” Wrong! If you want to be humble, be humble. Self-criticism isn’t humility, it’s stupidity. People who run themselves down are irritating. They make you want to punch them in the head. Self-criticism gets on other people’s nerves and it sabotages your self-image. The bad things you tell yourself take root in your subconscious. Make a deal with yourself: “From today if I can’t think of something positive, I’ll keep my mouth shut.”
In a nutshell You become what you think about.
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Compliments Ask yourself, “Am I told that I am good looking, clever, capable, efficient, humorous, lovable or wonderful, as often as I would like?” The answer is probably “No”, isn’t it? The same goes for all of us. We never get enough compliments. Compliments are a bit like food – even if we get a sweet compliment today, we’re hungry for more tomorrow. Even sports heroes and movie stars love compliments. Watch famous people being interviewed on television. When the interviewer tells them they did a fantastic job, you see their faces glowing! What does this tell you? Everybody likes to have their efforts recognized. Your father likes to hear, “Dad, you cooked a great barbeque!” Your mother likes to hear, “You look cool in that outfit!” Your teacher likes to hear, “That was a great lesson.” You say, “Why should I bother to compliment other people?” Firstly, it makes you feel good. Secondly, it makes them feel good. Thirdly, when you notice qualities in other people, they begin to notice them in you. They start to compliment you – and so you feel good more often.
“Sometimes I Compliment People And They Disagree With Me!” Does that mean they don’t like compliments? No. People who aren’t used to receiving compliments will sometimes be a little embarrassed, but inside they love it. Sometimes we react in funny ways... Mary spends three whole weekends shopping for a new dress. Finally she finds the perfect outfit but she has to wait a month for the right occasion to wear it. Eventually she’s invited to a party. She spends five hours getting ready. When she walks into the party, you say, “Mary, what a beautiful dress. You look sensational!” And Mary says, “But I’ve got fat ankles.” Now Mary might have been a little awkward in receiving the
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compliment, but you can bet she loved it. On the surface other people may look very confident and self-assured. But most of us grow up being criticized by our parents, our brothers and sisters. We all get nervous sometimes. We all worry that we’re not good enough. Everyone has thoughts like, “I wish I was taller, I wish I was thinner, I wish I was smarter, I wish my eyes weren’t so close together!” That’s why compliments mean so much. Genuine compliments mean a lot. You don’t just make someone’s day. Sometimes you make their month!
In a nutshell The bonus in paying compliments is that it makes you happier. Paying compliments to people makes you focus on positive things. Whenever you look at positive things, life looks better.
A Compliment Is a Gift What do you say when someone gives you a compliment? “Thank you!” A compliment is really a gift. When you take the time and trouble to give someone praise, it’s much nicer to have the other person say “Thank you”, than have them throw it back in your face. You don’t return a gift – so why would you return a compliment? Whenever you get a compliment, no apologies, no argument – just “Thank you!” It’s good manners. Note: There’s a difference between paying someone a compliment and “crawling”. “Crawlers” will say anything to get people to like them – and nobody likes a crawler. A compliment is a sincere recognition of someone’s qualities.
Focus For a moment, think about your best friend. Now think of one thing about her (let’s assume she’s a girl), that irritates you. Can you think of something? Now think of more things that you don’t like – perhaps in the way she
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talks, the way she dresses, perhaps she’s always running late, or maybe she’s a bit of a complainer. Can you think of some more things? In an hour you might think of ten things you don’t like about her. In a week you might think of a hundred things. Eventually you might decide that you never want to see her again! Now look at the flip side. Think of what you really like about her. Recall how she makes you laugh. What makes it special to be with her? Think of all the good times you have shared. Now you are feeling totally different about your friend. But has she changed? No, you did. You changed your focus. We all have loads of faults. Anyone can find faults in other people. When you look for good things in people, you find good things. When you look for faults, you find faults.
In a nutshell The key to friendships is concentrating on other people’s qualities.
Forgiving People At some point most of us learned that it is a good idea to forgive people. We learned that it is “holy” or “spiritual”. But there is a more basic reason to forgive people: when you don’t forgive them, it ruins your life! Let’s say: a) you leave me off your birthday invitation list, or b) you are my girl, and you run off with my buddy. So I say, “I’ll never forgive you for that!” Who suffers? Not you! I’m pacing the floor. I’ve got a knot in my stomach. I’m losing sleep. You are probably out partying – or asleep! Where do we get the idea that if WE don’t forgive people, THEY suffer? It’s nuts! When you refuse to forgive people – your mother, your teachers, your boss, you wither up inside. It wrecks your life! Next time you are resenting someone, close your eyes and experience your feelings. Experience your body. Making people guilty makes you miserable.
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Miserable people keep a list of resentments in their head... “She let me down, he talked behind my back, he lied...” They run through it to check that nothing is missing! They add to the list. Happy people have better things to do. To forgive someone, you don’t have to agree with what they did. You just have to want your life to work. Sometimes we say, “I’ll forgive but I won’t forget.” Which means “I’ll let it go for the moment, but I might want to remind you about it from time to time.” To forgive is to let something go. Recent studies at the Public Health Institute in California confirm that hostility and resentment tear down your immune system and double your risk of heart attack, cancer and all kinds of illness. Bitterness makes you sick! While we’re talking about forgiveness, the first step towards making your life work is to forgive your parents. I bet they’re not perfect. But your Mom and Dad have had a lot of other things to worry about besides raising you! And they didn’t have all the counseling and pop psychology books when they were growing up. Whatever they’ve got wrong, it’s history. Every day that you refuse to forgive your mother is a vote to screw up your life. One more thing about forgiving people – it’s a continuous process. If you want to be happy, you’ll be continually letting go of things – erasing things from your list.
In a nutshell Is forgiveness easy? Usually not. But you don’t forgive people for their benefit. You do it for your benefit.
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“If You Love Me, You’ll Sleep With Me!” Girls, this is the oldest trick in the book. When you love someone, you don’t make them do things they don’t want to do. You don’t make them do things with their body that they are uncomfortable about. Don’t fall for it! If your boyfriend really cares about you, he’ll respect you. If he threatens you with, “Sleep with me or our relationship is over”, let it be over. Someone who threatens you now will continue to threaten you in other ways. You deserve better.
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No One Can Make You Happy! When you are feeling happy, do you like to hang out with miserable people? Not likely! When you are feeling miserable, do happy people want to hang out with you? No! Happy people want to be with happy people. Miserable people are more comfortable around miserable people. So what does this mean? You can’t depend on other people to make you happy. If you want a happy life, surrounded by happy people, you have to decide to be happy first. You need to put a smile on your own face first. Once you see the bright side of life, other happy people will want to be with you. Then it gets easier and easier to stay happy. Sometimes we tell ourselves, “I’m unhappy now, but if I had a boyfriend/girlfriend I would be happy!” Wrong again. That happens in songs and movies but not so much in real life. If you want to be happy with a happy boyfriend, you need to be happy before you find the boyfriend. While you are a bundle of misery, the happy guys won’t even see you on their radar screen. Miserable couples were usually miserable before they met. Now they just “do misery” together.
In a nutshell Your happiness starts with you. When you are happy, and your life is working, you attract happy friends and happy partners.
Drugs Destroy Lives If you had a friend whose hobby was hitting himself over the head with a hammer, do you think you’d need to try it? Would you say, “Give me that hammer! Let me hit myself a couple of times so I know how it feels!” No! Would you say, “It doesn’t look pleasant, but I want to try it to be sure?” You wouldn’t! Some things you know without trying them. Without trying them, you can tell that drugs will ruin your life. Perhaps you’ve seen drug addicts interviewed on television. The conversation usually goes something like this...
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Q: “How much have you spent on this stuff?” A: “Everything I had! Ten thousand, twenty thousand, a hundred thousand....” Q: “Where do you live?” A: “In the gutter, under bridges.” Q: “How does it feel?” A: “I’ve lost my car, job, family, friends; I can’t eat, I feel sick every day, my body aches all over.” Q: “How did you start?” A: “Smoking grass! Then I tried other stuff.” Usually, the story is something like, “I had this friend, Dave, and he was no junkie. I was feeling a bit depressed and he offered me this stuff. He said it would make me feel better. I thought I could handle it.... I never knew it would wreck my life!”
Drugs Wreck Your Life. Here’s How... MARIJUANA, HASHISH, etc.: (Cannabis) Impair your memory, slow your thinking. Prolonged use can make you paranoid and schizophrenic. SLEEPING PILLS, TRANQUILLISERS: (Depressants) Make you anxious, sleepless and depressed. Often lead to suicide.
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COCAINE AND CRACK: Make you anxious, depressed, give you hallucinations, convulsions and bleeding within the brain. Can cause death by overdose. HEROIN AND MORPHINE: Give you mood swings, skin infections, collapsed veins, lung infections. There is a high risk of HIV/AIDS. Death by overdose is common. Drug pushers don’t care how sick you get. So they add “fillers” to the drugs to make them go further. To heroin they add stuff like laundry detergent, starch, baking powder, sugar and household cleaners. As an addict, you have no idea what concoctions you are injecting into your veins.
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How Do People Get Addicted to Drugs? Under normal circumstances, your own body and brain produce natural chemical substances that keep you happy and healthy. But when you introduce artificial substances to make you feel good (drugs), your body stops making the natural chemicals. So you feel okay when you have the drug in your body, but as soon as it is gone, you feel terrible. The only way to feel better is to take more drugs. When you take more drugs, your body produces even less of the natural chemicals. So you need even more drugs just to feel normal. You become more and more depressed. You get sicker and sicker. Your habit becomes impossibly expensive. One heroin addict, Jenny, told me, “Trying to give up is the worst pain you can imagine. It’s like you have got the flu all over, but ten times worse.” Jenny is seventeen and has been an addict for three years. Her habit costs her a thousand dollars a day. She pays for it through prostitution and stealing from people. Jenny never intended to become an addict. This was not her goal or her dream.
Be a Leader, Not a Follower You may have friends who offer you all kinds of nasty things. And when you refuse, they may get angry or irritated and call you “a chicken” – and worse. But remember that everyone secretly admires strength. If you have the guts to say “No”, and continue to say “No”, you will have their respect – because you can do something they couldn’t. (Though they may never admit it.)
In a nutshell Every drug addict “thought they could handle it”. They all said something like, “I’ll just try it once so I know.” It’s like hitting yourself with a hammer. It’s like walking in front of a train. You don’t need to try it to see if it’s good for you.
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Anna-Louise As I write this, my seventeen-year-old niece, Anna-Louise, is fighting for her life in hospital. Three weeks ago she received head injuries in a car accident. She has been in a coma ever since. My sister and her husband are at her bedside 18 hours a day. All Anna’s beautiful blond hair has been shaved off and she is surrounded by machines, tubes and wires which feed her, keep her breathing, monitor her pulse, blood pressure, temperature, inter-cranial pressure and lots more things I don’t understand. Perched on the machinery in her intensive care cubicle are about a dozen teddy bears sent by her friends. The family have given them names like “Sam” – after the head neurosurgeon – and “Lisa” – our favourite nurse.
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Stuck to the wall and the window are a hundred “Get Well” cards from her friends. They say things like, “Anna we love you”, “Anna you always make us smile”, “Anna, you are beautiful”. Isn’t it strange how we wait for disasters to tell people how much they mean to us. If Anna had not had the accident, how many of us would have told her? Why do we wait? Anna went to a party. She and a friend jumped in a car and went for a drive – just for fun. The car rolled. Next thing they were being delivered to the Alfred Hospital Emergency Department in a helicopter. Most teenagers think, “It will never happen to me!” I can just imagine Anna saying the same thing. But it can and it does. Thirteen years ago my stepson, Michael, had a car accident. He was also a teenager. Michael received massive head injuries and wasn’t expected to survive the night. Michael amazed us all. Against doctor’s predictions, he learned to walk again – but it has been a tough road for him. Remembering things is difficult for Michael. Today he is still learning to speak. Thirteen years later he is still learning to read and write. What would Michael tell you? “It happened to me. It can happen to you.”
In a nutshell When we are teenagers, we think we will live forever. Sometimes we think the people we love will live forever. But two seconds can change your life forever – or end it. 1. It is never too soon to tell those you love how much you care. 2. Drive carefully. And if your friends don’t drive carefully, catch a bus!
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“If I give you all the answers how will you ever learn?”
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6
I am the person who sits next to you in class. I am the person who is a bit overweight. I am the person who is laughed at because I am short. I am the person who is picked on because I like computers. I am the person who talks with an accent. I am the person who isn’t great at gym. I am the person who is always to blame. I am the person who takes the bus home in fear. I am the person who stumbles when I walk too fast. But I am also the person who is brave enough to wake up and do it again the next day. Nigel Potts
School Bullies
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hat do Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson, Michelle Pfeiffer and Phil Collins all have in common? They were all bullied at school. If you are being bullied, it doesn’t mean there is something wrong with you. Did you get that? If you are being bullied, it doesn’t mean there is something wrong with you. You have a right to feel safe and secure. If you are being bullied at school, it is the school’s responsibility to stop it. If you are being harassed or attacked outside of school, the police have a responsibility to help you.
The Bully Is the One With the Problem A lot of bullies are already being bullied themselves. They feel powerless and so they look for ways to feel tough at school or on the street.
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Often, the bully is jealous of other kids, so he picks on those who are cleverer, or those kids who have cool gear or more money. Usually, bullies don’t like themselves, so they take out their frustrations on someone else, e.g. you.
What Can You Do? • Look calm and confident – even when you are not! You can practise this in the bathroom mirror. • If possible, ignore the bully. Bullies want a reaction – if you don’t seem upset or angry, they’ll often leave you alone. • Walk away. Just because a bully starts an argument doesn’t mean you have to hang around and finish it. • Avoid being alone. Bullies are cowards who only pick a fight when they know they can win. If you are with friends, they are more likely to leave you alone. • Don’t risk getting hurt. If the bully decides to steal your money or your stuff, let it go. Material things can be replaced.
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Get Help! • Tell an adult you can trust. This doesn’t mean you are weak. In life you often need to get help from other people. When you have a broken leg, you get help from a doctor – it doesn’t mean you are weak. If you are being bullied you also get help. Bullies want you to keep quiet. When you speak up, you refuse to play the bully’s game. Telling others about the problem is a brave move. • Keep a diary of what is happening. When you tell a teacher, a friendly adult, or the police, you need to have the facts: when, where and what happened. Keep to the facts. Avoid exaggerating. • Keep telling people about the problem. If the first teacher doesn’t help, tell another and another. If the first adult doesn’t help, tell another. If the first policeman doesn’t help, tell another. Persist.
When You See Other People Being Bullied If you do nothing, you send a message to the bully that it is OK with you. So what can you do? • Tell the bully to stop it. • Tell other people about it. • Encourage the person who is being bullied to tell others about it. • Be a friend to the person who is being bullied. It may not mean much to you, but it can mean the world to the person who feels scared and alone.
Brand Names Imagine this scene from a movie. A guy and girl are embracing in the moonlight. She says, “Brad, I have to know. Why do you love me?” And he says, “Because you wear Nikes.” How stupid is that? Do your friends wear “brand names” on their jeans, belts, underwear? Maybe you think having brand names is a matter of life and death. It isn’t.
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If your friend Jim wears three hundred dollar sneakers, all it means is that his parents had a spare three hundred dollars. What does that have to do with you? Does that make Jim any better than you? No! There will always be people around who wear clothes, drive cars and live in houses that you can’t afford. Get used to it. What really counts is who you are and what you stand for. It’s what’s on the inside, not what’s on the outside.
In a nutshell If you think it really matters, then it really matters. As soon as you say, “It doesn’t matter”, you can relax.
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Why Algebra? Did you ever ask the question, “Why do I need to study algebra ? I want to be a lawyer!” Or, “Who cares about Julius Caesar? I want to be an accountant.” After you leave school you may never need to know about quadratic equations (or Julius) again. But school is about more than learning facts. It’s also about: Finding out what interests you. By studying a broad range of things, e.g. pieces of geology, physics, computing, mathematics, language etc., you find out what you like and what you don’t like. That’s useful for later life. (Doesn’t that make sense?) Learning how to do things. Maybe you hate mathematics. But the same logic you use to solve equations and geometry problems, you use to solve other problems in life. We’re talking here about sharpening and preparing your brain. (Just like a sprinter lifts weights to prepare his body, you lift “mental weights” to train your mind.) Getting confidence. You may learn French at school and never need it. But you prove to yourself that you can learn a language. Then one day you get offered a job in Rio de Janeiro, and you say to yourself – “I can do that. I almost passed French! I can learn some Portuguese.”
If Only School Was Easier! (Then I’d be happy.) You might think, “If school work wasn’t so difficult, I’d be happy!” No you wouldn’t! Imagine I was your mathematics teacher. Imagine I told you, “Today we are going to do stress-free mathematics. You’ll love it. Here’s the problem for today. You’ve got three hours to figure it out.” And then I wrote on the board:
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You would say, “This is an insult! Get rid of this stupid teacher... and give me a challenge!” Challenge is what makes life exciting. Everywhere we look we see people testing themselves. It’s why we play Nintendo – and all those computer games. It’s difficult. We want to test ourselves, and move to the next level. It’s why people love to play golf. Golf is so hard! It’s designed to drive you nuts. Remember how happy you were when you learned to tie your shoes. Remember how proud you were the day you learned to ride a bike? You haven’t changed! You are happiest when you are solving problems. That’s when you see what you are made of. Let’s stop pretending that we want our life to be easy. When things get too easy, we get bored and leave – and look for another challenge.
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Why Should I Do My Best? Have you ever watched a quitter in a boxing match – a guy who just gives up and walks away. The whole crowd boos. They hurl drink bottles and bits of hot dog into the ring. They don’t throw stuff because he lost. They throw stuff because he quit. In our hearts we all believe that we should give our best. Eric Moussambani swam for Equatorial Guinea at the 2000 Olympics. He didn’t win. Eric had never even seen a 50 meter pool. At home he trains in a little hotel pool – when there are no guests. The two other competitors in his 100 meter heat – from Niger and Tajikistan – were both disqualified for false starts, so he swam alone against the clock. This was also the first time Eric had swum a 100 meter race – something the crowd soon suspected. He swam with his head out of the water and he barely kicked his legs. In the first lap he was really struggling. In the second he was nearly drowning! But Eric was fighting with everything he had. At the turn, 17,500 spectators began to roar and with every stroke the noise got louder and louder. Twenty metres from the finish, Eric was barely moving but the crowd was going bananas. When he finally hit the wall, the cheering and stamping all but lifted the roof off the stadium. His time of 1 minute 52 seconds was about a minute slower than all the other competitors. Who cared? Eric Moussambani had done his best. When you give an honest effort, people support you.
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You Feel Happier When You Do Your Best Remember what it feels like walking to school on those days when you have done all of your homework – and done it as well as you can. Don’t you feel just a bit more enthusiastic about school? Why? Because you are always happier when you give 100 percent, whether it’s an essay or whether it’s a basketball game. Your teachers will tell you “Work hard!” And your parents will probably tell you “Work hard!” One day your boss will tell you “Work hard!” But you don’t work hard to please parents and teachers, and you don’t work hard to keep your boss off your back. The big reason you do it is for you. If you get good marks, that’s a bonus. If other people notice, wonderful! But the main reason is how you feel about yourself.
Sometimes you give everything you’ve got... And still fail! It’s not failing that hurts so much. It’s that feeling that you didn’t do all you could. Even when you do your best, there are no guarantees that you will succeed. You may do your best, and still be criticised. You may do your best and still have people laugh at you. But when you do your best, the reward is that feeling that says, “I did everything I could.”
And if you have done all you can... There comes a point when you say to yourself, “That’s enough.” If you are facing an examination, or an important interview, and you have prepared as well as you can, you then let go. You walk into the examination room, or the interview, and say to yourself, “I have done everything I can – I’ll accept whatever happens.”
Enjoying Your Work Last year I saw a TV show about a fellow called P.C. Taylor. P.C. removes garbage. He and his team clean the subway tunnels in New York City – not the platforms, the tubes! He spends his life in the dirty,
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stinking, rat-infested, trash-ridden tunnels through which the trains run. In the documentary they took the cameras underground. It’s like being in a long cave, but not so healthy. P.C. has been at this job for 25 years – killing the rats and hauling out the rubbish. The interviewer asked P.C., “So do you like your job?” “Like it?” he said. “I love it! Homeless people live down there in those tunnels. And I’m helping to give them a better home. And while I’m helping the homeless, I’m putting my two daughters through college!” P.C. is proud of his work. He also proves that it is possible to find job satisfaction in a miserable workplace. I suspect it’s not actually the garbage and the rats that excite him – it’s his belief that he is helping to make the world a better place. In other words, it’s easier to do a lousy job if you are focused on WHY you do it. I think of P.C. quite a lot! Whenever I have a job to do that I don’t want to do, I imagine myself chasing rats and hauling garbage.
In a nutshell It’s not the work you do, it’s your attitude that makes the difference.
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7
Your Amazing Mind
Habits and Patterns
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hen you cut your finger, do you have to concentrate to heal it? When you go to sleep, do you have to remember to
breathe? Do you have to think about growing hair? These things just happen, right? Your subconscious mind makes all these amazing things happen automatically. There are thousands of “programs” in your subconscious to keep you warm, cool, digesting, perspiring, blinking, excreting, replacing skin, growing hair. Your heart pumps 100,000 times a day and you never give it a thought. You were born “pre-programmed” with these patterns. Apart from these patterns that you were born with, you also have subconscious patterns that you develop after birth. Some of these patterns, like walking and talking, almost everybody has. Other patterns are quite personal. “Personal patterns” also cause us to behave “automatically” where we tend to repeat the same behavior over and over again without thinking. Some people keep losing money, some people keep getting sick at certain times, some people are always late, some people are always having dramas. DRAMA PATTERNS: I know someone called Gunther. He is an intelligent guy who keeps having crazy accidents. A few months back, he and his son were riding their bikes on a boardwalk at the beach. Gunther looked over his shoulder to tell his son, “Josh, watch where you are going!” – but turned around too late to stop himself riding his own bike straight off the end of the pier and into the sea. Gunther survived – and swam to shore with his bike!
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(There was even a wedding party and photographer on the pier to watch the performance and record the action.) Weeks later Gunther was at a party. Being a cool evening he was warming himself by the heater. Gunther recalls, “I could smell something and my skin felt itchy. Then I realised,” says Gunther, “I was on fire!” Everyone threw their drinks on him and he survived. (Don’t try this at home!) Next day Gunther went shopping. He bought five hundred dollars worth of clothes – and then accidentally threw all the parcels out with the garbage. He searched through trash cans for his whole apartment block to find his new outfits. Gunther survived. Last I heard, he flooded his house. Just when you think, “Surely nothing else can happen to him”, he does it again! MONEY PATTERNS: Do you have friends who never have any money? Take Mary for example... it’s not that her parents never give her any money, or that she never earns any. But her pattern is so strong. The minute she gets $50, she borrows $200 and buys a pair of $250 shoes. Next week she earns another $200. But rather than pay off what she owes, she borrows more and buys a set of $400 roller blades. And if you ask
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her, she’ll tell you, “It’s not my fault. Everything is so expensive.” SICKNESS PATTERNS: Some people get sick every time they go on vacation – or they get sick every time a big opportunity arises. Some people get sick every Monday morning! LATE PATTERNS: Some people are always late. Wherever they are going, whatever they are doing, they will be late. Traffic jams – they’ll find them, car keys – they’ll lose them, flat batteries – they’ll have them. These guys can get up at 6.00 am to be at work by 9.00, and at 10.15 they’re still searching for their socks. “PEOPLE WALK ALL OVER ME” PATTERNS: Some people keep having relationships with people who bully them. MESS PATTERNS: Need I say more? JERK PATTERNS: Did you ever meet a lady who said, “I always meet jerks!” She has a radar for finding rude, selfish, lazy people – and then dates them! It’s not that we consciously try to be late, or broke or have one drama after another – it’s a program in our subconscious mind that keeps repeating itself. To understand these patterns we need to know something about our subconscious.
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Recognize the Monster! A pattern can be like a monster that sits around in the back of your mind and won’t leave you alone. You push it out the door and it squeezes in the window. If you have a broke pattern, the monster will pester you... “Spend it – you deserve it. You can save next month.” Whenever you get a spare hundred bucks, it burns a hole in your pocket. The monster says, “Spare cash? That feels weird! Quick get rid of it. Buy some DVDs.” If you have a “my relationships never last” pattern, the monster will give you helpful suggestions to ruin your relationships... “Tell her she’s fat and see what happens! (Test her sense of humour!)” The good news is that the monster is not you. You can change your patterns. But it takes effort!
Challenging The Monster – Mental Movies So how do you slay the monster? First you have to look the monster in the eye. You recognize it’s not a matter of “LUCK”. You say “I HAVE A PATTERN WHICH CREATES THESE PROBLEMS. But the pattern is not me!” Then you build positive new patterns in your subconscious mind by using your imagination in the right way. Your mental picture is critical.
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Before you do anything in your life, you must first imagine it. (You may not be aware of this!) Before you swing a golf club, you picture it in your imagination. To get out of your chair and walk across the room, you picture the action in your mind. You picture it, and your brain then has the pattern for you to get up and do it. Researchers have discovered that when you imagine yourself performing any task, your brain cells undergo electrochemical changes as if you were actually doing it. That is why all the great athletes, golfers, actors and singers practise in their imagination. It is called “mental rehearsal”. What does this tell you? That anything you want to do in your life, you must picture in your mind. The more often you picture it, the stronger the patterning of your brain cells, and the easier it is to do it. You can do the same – at the bus stop, lying in bed, sitting on a train. Let’s assume you have a “nervous pattern” where you can’t speak in public. Whenever you try to speak in front of the class, the monster takes over. You stand up but your mind sits down! You shake, you sweat and nothing comes out of your mouth. What do you do to fix this? You begin to play movies in your mind of the confident new you. You begin to regularly picture yourself standing in front of the group with a smile on your face. You see yourself speaking effortlessly. You might imagine yourself as being relaxed like people you have seen on television, or confident like friends of yours who seem to handle any situation. In this movie you are happy, relaxed and in control. As you start to play these mental movies, the monster will fight you. It will be whispering, “This isn’t right. You should be wetting yourself!” But keep running the positive movies and you’ll see more and more of the new you. You’ll have doubts and scary moments. But keep playing those movies in your head. Each time you stand up to speak it will be easier and easier. Eventually you’ll become so confident, you’ll forget you ever had a problem. The mental picture you have of yourself made you who you are today. When you change that mental picture of yourself you will change to match that picture.
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EXAMPLE: Let’s say you are always short of money – and owing other people money. You decide, “Now for the first time in my life I am going to have spare cash!” You start to play mental movies of yourself with spare cash. You see yourself depositing savings at the bank. Now you can bet that the very week you decide to take control of your finances, there will be big sales downtown. There will be half-price deals at the music store. There will be unrepeatable bargains on roller blades and trendy gear at the sports stores. And the monster will be telling you, “Quick, buy now and beat the rush!” It always happens. You can count on it. But stick with your movies and you will become like your mental picture. EXAMPLE: To become a good student, you must first see it in your creative imagination. So you might play a mental movie of yourself completing your homework every night. (The monster will argue!) See yourself enjoying your study and proud of your progress. Replay those pictures in your mind and over time, you will become that student in your mental movie. One more thing... when you play these movies, feel the emotion. Feel the excitement. Why? Strong emotions make the strongest imprint on your brain cells. That’s why you remember the happiest and saddest experiences of your life. So you make your mental movies work best by feeling excited. When you are lying in bed, playing your movie, feel how happy you are about having spare money, improving your school grades or your new speaking abilities. The picture will burn itself into your subconscious. Too easy? This is not a “once or twice” thing. It takes daily persistence. That is, every day for weeks! But you can do it! You don’t achieve great things by looking at what you are. You achieve great things by looking at what you want to be – and then playing those movies in your mind. The bonus in playing these movies in your mind is that you can play perfect movies, without mistakes. So you program your subconscious toward perfect performance.
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In a nutshell Whatever patterns you have, you can change. From now on you never have to think, “That’s just the way I am.” You can think, “That’s the way my pattern is – and I am about to change it.”
Focus On What You Want This is extremely important... Most people use their minds the wrong way around – and then wonder why they get bad results. EXAMPLE: Let’s return to that example of speaking in front of the class. Before a presentation, many people tell themselves, “Don’t be nervous! Don’t forget your lines! Don’t embarrass yourself!” What happens? They screw it up! They even forget their own name! Then they ask, “Why did this happen when I told myself NOT to be an idiot?” It’s because of the way our mind works. There is an important principle operating here – and it is rarely explained. You must understand this... As we know, your mind operates on pictures. To do anything you need a picture. To touch your nose, you need a picture in your mind of your finger on your nose. With this correct picture, your subconscious mind can tell the muscles to do it. To give a confident speech, you need a picture in your head of you giving a confident speech before you even stand up. Only then can your mind instruct your body to act it out. So here’s the crunch – You cannot give your mind instructions not to do something. Your subconscious mind must have a picture of what you want. (If I say to you, “Don’t think of a pink elephant with blue spots”, what fills your mind?) So when you tell yourself, “Don’t be nervous! Don’t shake!”, what pictures fill your head? Pictures of you shaking and stammering. These
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pictures filter into your subconscious and program your brain cells for a shaking, stammering performance! So you shake and stammer. It’s the law of the mind. No other result is possible. This explains why confidence is so critical in anything you do. When you are confident, you have only positive pictures in your mind – of a good speech, of a relaxed job interview, of a successful driving test, of a great piano recital. When you are confident, you don’t play disaster movies, you play success movies – so you regularly succeed. You’re not perfect, but you always give yourself the best possible chance. This is why positive thinking works! Positive thinkers have the habit of picturing what they want, not what they fear! And what you think is what you get.
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Expect a Fight! You can change your patterns by playing mental movies. But expect a fight. Whenever you set out to slay the monster/change a pattern/create a new behavior that doesn’t match the current picture you have of yourself, your monster will try to sabotage it. EXAMPLE: Let’s say you haven’t had a date in two years. Until now, you have had an image of yourself as a lonely person. So you start picturing yourself dating and having a good time. Soon you get invited on a date for the weekend... and you wake up Saturday morning with a headache and a fever – and ask yourself, “Of all days, why today?” (The monster loves doing this sort of stuff!) Persist with your mental movies and things will change. The monster will give you trouble! It is almost as if we are tested to see if we are really serious. Be prepared for a bit of a struggle. Persevere and you will win.
In a nutshell Change is always challenged.
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Good Patterns! So far we have only looked at bad patterns – the “monsters”. Some patterns are positive. “Things always work out” patterns: Some people always land on their feet... Dave’s car breaks down in the middle of nowhere. But a stranger picks him up, drives him home and then offers him a job. “I trust people and they treat me well”: Some people trust everyone, and other people always seem to look after them. “It’s easy to make money”: Yes, some people have that pattern too! If you already have these, work on keeping them.
Why Relax? Have you ever had this experience... you are casually approaching the front door of your house when suddenly you hear the phone ringing. Quick! Quick! “Where’s the key?” Now it has literally disappeared from your key ring! You examine every key twice. You’re losing your eyesight! Eventually you find it. As you try to shove it in the door, it expands to three times its normal size – and the hole shrinks. The key is in but it won’t turn. Now the door is stuck. Somehow you fight your way inside and just as you get to the phone it stops ringing! When you get a little bit anxious, nothing works. If you have ever played softball, soccer, tennis, haven’t you found that you can throw the goals or hit the ball over the net in practice – and do it blindfolded? What happens when you get into a match? The net gets higher, the hoop shrinks. Why is it that your stomach forgets how to digest your food before a big examination? Why does your mind go blank in a big examination? Whenever you are tense, simple things become difficult. We can explain it scientifically by looking at your brainwaves! This is fascinating because it affects everything you will ever do...
Brainwaves Your brain produces four kinds of waves, or “rhythms” – beta, alpha, theta
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and delta waves. Theta and delta waves are strongest when you are asleep or unconscious – so forget about those. It’s the beta and alpha that tell the story. BETA WAVES – When you are stuck halfway across a traffic intersection and the lights change, and the car stalls, and you hear fifty horns and lots of swearing, you’re in beta! When you turn over your examination paper and you realize there’s not one question you can answer – and you have a mental blank, you’re in beta. Beta is the brain activity you produce when you are tense or nervous. These brain rhythms occur at around 14 cycles per second and above. ALPHA WAVES – Your brain looks like a big walnut. Like a walnut, it has two halves – or hemispheres – left and right. When you are relaxed, and producing strong alpha waves, both halves of your brain are working together. Everything flows. You may be writing an essay, skiing down a mountain or painting a picture – and everything comes easily. At times like this you are producing a lot of alpha waves – 7 to 14 cycles per second. Athletes call it being in “the zone”. As you relax your physical body, your whole metabolism comes into balance: your blood pressure drops, your breathing becomes deep and easy, your digestion works and all your organs work most efficiently. Alpha waves enable you to perform at your peak. Interestingly, alpha waves will be strong whenever you are visualizing – playing your mental movies.
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A Relaxation Technique There are four simple things anyone can do which automatically produce relaxation in your mind and body: • Closing your eyes (not too difficult!) • Deep breathing (also not difficult!) • Relaxing your body (not difficult with the following exercise). • Spending time with nature, whether it’s in reality or in your imagination (also not too difficult). Now that we know that you perform best when you are relaxed, let’s look at a simple relaxation technique. It’s similar to any relaxation technique taught by doctors or sports psychologists the world over. I have taught this to thousands of people and anyone can do it. You can use this before a speech, before an examination or a soccer match or just to feel good. It’s also useful to do this exercise to relax your mind before you play your mental movies. We use each of the above four steps. This is a guide only. It doesn’t matter if you vary it a little so don’t get stressed about it. The idea is to relax! 1. Find yourself a comfortable position in a chair and close your eyes. Uncross your arms and legs. 2. Take some deep breaths. Breathe in as you count to eight. Breathe out as you count to eight. Do this about ten times. 3. Imagine the muscles in your face relaxing... As you continue to breathe deeply and evenly, become aware of all the little muscles around your eyes. Just bring to mind these muscles while you take a few breaths. Next become aware of the muscles in your forehead as you continue to breathe deeply and evenly. As you relax your body you will shift your awareness down your body... from your forehead to your cheeks, to your mouth, chin, neck, shoulders, upper arms, forearms, hands, fingers, chest, stomach, pelvis, upper legs, knees, calves, ankles and finally your feet. (Perhaps you’ll spend five or ten minutes moving from your head to your feet.) (NOTE: You don’t need to remember the exact order, and the names of the body parts as I have written them here. Also, you don’t have to consciously
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tense or relax each part of your body. Just become aware of each area. That area will automatically relax when you forget about it and move to the next area.) 4. Imagine yourself slowly walking down a staircase of twenty steps... 20, 19, 18 down to 1. Imagine yourself standing at a door. Open the door and walk out into a beautiful scene from nature. 5. Now start to imagine yourself in a beautiful scene from nature. You might imagine yourself on a beach or on a mountainside, or by a river or in a meadow or floating on an iceberg. You might choose a scene that you have been to, or one that you can imagine. Different people experience imaginary things in different ways. So it may be that you will find it easier to hear things, or see things or even taste and smell things in your imaginary scene. Just go with the flow and stay there for as long as you choose. You might want to spend ten or twenty minutes in your peaceful scene. As you relax, you can play whatever mental movies you choose. When you are ready to leave your relaxation session, walk back through the door, up the twenty steps... 1, 2, 3 up to 20 and open your eyes, feeling wide awake and refreshed. The more you use this technique, the easier it will be. Why do it sitting in a chair? Because you will probably fall asleep if you are lying down and the idea of deep relaxation is not to fall asleep. But if you want, you can also use this exercise to go to sleep at night.
Your Memory Your memory works on pictures, not words. Let’s test it. Read this: A man is trying to get away from a dog. The dog has the tail of the man’s shirt in his mouth. The dog appears irritated. The man is slightly amused. The dog has a white tail, one white foot and one red ear. The shirt is red and white striped. The man is reaching forward, standing on one leg... (It might take you fifteen seconds to read this and process the information.)
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Look at this:
(It might take one second to look at the picture and process the information.) Guess what! You would remember more from looking at the cartoon for one second, than you would from reading the words for fifteen seconds. Your memory processes and recalls pictures better than words! So when you have important things to remember, it will help you to draw little diagrams, maps or sketches wherever possible. It doesn’t matter if you don’t draw well – anything will help. Let’s look at how you might use pictures to help you remember...
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History: here’s how you might remember that on 20th of the 7th month 1969, the American Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon as part of the Apollo 11 mission. Language: the Spanish word for hair, “pelo”, sounds like “pillow”.
Watch How You Describe Your Memory! Beware! If you tell people you have a terrible memory, it gets worse. Science tells us that we never really forget anything. Astonishing facts and details from our past are all filed away – it’s just that we sometimes have trouble recalling them. You know that. Haven’t you ever “forgotten” a phone number and then recalled it a week later? What does that mean? It was there all the time. Studies of people under hypnosis also confirm that we can remember extraordinary things. Under hypnosis you might easily recall yourself aged fourteen months, sitting in your green high chair. You might recall the yellow drapes, the cookie jars and the red spoon you are using to hurl mashed potato at the ceiling. So if the information is there, it’s better to encourage your subconscious to recall it than to give it a message that it is gone entirely. Using words like “I forget” sabotages your memory. Next time you are struggling to recall something, say “It has temporarily slipped my mind” or “It will come back to me.” When you encourage your memory like this, it works much better.
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And NEVER tell people you have a terrible memory. Your mind will accept what you tell it. The more you tell all your friends and family that you have a terrible memory, the worse it will get.
Affirmations There’s a trick that you can play on school friends. I hope that you won’t do it because it’s not very nice... Your friend Bill appears perfectly healthy, but you call him over and say, “Bill, what’s the matter?” And Bill says, “Nothing. Why?” You say, “You don’t seem yourself! You look sick.” Next, another friend says, “Bill – you’re looking pale!” And another friend says... “You look terrible. Are you sure you’re OK?” Eventually poor old Bill will start to droop. By lunchtime he will likely disappear for home. Why? Because we are all open to suggestion. Our thoughts affect our bodies in ways science doesn’t yet understand. But it’s real. That’s the negative side of how your mind works. It can also be used in a positive way, using what we call “affirmations”. An affirmation is a positive phrase or sentence that you repeat to yourself. So let’s say you have a splitting headache. You start to tell yourself “My head feels wonderful”, or “My head feels relaxed and at ease.” As you begin to repeat this to yourself, you’ll probably have a little voice in the background saying, “You stupid idiot. You feel terrible!” But stay with it, and the thought that you are feeling well will take root in your subconscious. Perhaps an hour later you might say to yourself, “My headache’s gone – is it coincidence?” Impossible? No. When we feel happy and optimistic, our brain releases lots of chemicals into the blood stream. These chemicals include endorphins that are natural pain killers. One of the pioneers of using affirmations to influence the subconscious was a Frenchman called Emile Coue. He found early this century that hospital patients healed faster when they used affirmations. He popularised the phrase: “Every day in every way I’m getting better and better and better.”
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So you might be running a 1500 meter race or competing in a triathlon, and you begin to feel exhausted. Then you begin to use affirmations... “I’m strong. I’m fresh. I’m strong. I’m fresh.” Soon you’ll begin to feel stronger. Will affirmations work miracles? Maybe not. Will they help? You bet your life! Whether you are a singer or a high jumper, the key to good performance is confidence and self-belief. Affirmations help you build your confidence and self-belief. If you are feeling stressed, repeating affirmations like “I’m peaceful and calm... I’m peaceful and calm” can help you to relax. Affirmations are not complicated or sophisticated, and if you are sophisticated and intellectual, it’s possible to think, “I’m not using that third grade stuff!” But then you ignore a great tool to help you in your life. Rules to keep in mind... 1. Always think in the positive. We know that your mind cannot work on the reverse of an idea. So affirmations like “I will not fight with my boyfriend” or “I will not be nervous” will make the problem worse. Instead, “Freddie and I are happy and loving” or “I am relaxed.” 2. Write or say out loud. If you just think your affirmations, your mind will wander off to topics like “What’s for lunch?” and “Where are my house keys?” Talking or writing involves more of your physical senses so the effect is more powerful. 3. Repetition. Don’t expect to turn your life around by telling yourself six times, “I’m really happy!” The essential value of affirmations is that you can talk yourself into something, whether you believe it or not. But it takes repetition.
In a nutshell In the past you might have asked yourself, “Why do I cop all the lousy stuff and other people have a great life?” It’s not because God, whatever you conceive him to be, has decided to punish you. But it may be that your subconscious programs were giving you a hard time! Nowhere is it written in the stars that anyone has to be a loser. If you have struggled up until now, you now have some simple strategies – visualization and affirmations – to improve your life.
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“They’re not happy. They just THINK they’re happy!”
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8
Do Some People Really Want to Suffer? Sometimes. They might figure... 1. “IF I SUFFER I’LL GET SOME SYMPATHY!” Maybe. But other people’s sympathy only lasts so long. Then they get tired of your grumpy face and they want to punch it! 2. “If I suffer I’LL GET EVERYONE’S ATTENTION. THEY CAN ALL WATCH ME STRUGGLE.” There’s a big difference between getting love and getting attention. Soap operas are better left on TV. 3. “If I suffer enough GOD WILL GET TIRED OF WATCHING MY PAIN, AND HE’LL STEP IN AND FIX MY LIFE!” Don’t hold your breath!
Happiness Sickness ometimes people control everyone around them by being sick. Why would you do that? Let’s say your friends and family usually ignore you. Then you get sick and suddenly they are all bringing food, medicine, videos, flowers and chocolates to your bedside. Suddenly the whole family is NICE to you! You don’t have to help around the house. You get to miss school. Then you get better, and suddenly it’s “Frank, get off your backside and clean up your room!” Being sick seems pretty good, doesn’t it? You say, “But can you decide to be sick?” Well, at the very least you can stretch it out. Or pretend you’re sick. Also, when you are miserable, your immune system is weak. So you fall sick more often. You’ll also notice that people who feel ignored or unloved or helpless get sick more often. This seems to be how they control others and get their own way.
S
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“One more operation – we haven’t beaten this thing yet.” While being sick is a way to control other people, there are better ways to get what you want.
If You Hate Your Parents... Hating people is a bad idea – this includes hating your parents. It takes a lot of energy and there are also traps. Sometimes we decide to fail just to punish our parents... If you hate your parents, you naturally want to prove them wrong wherever possible. And the best way to prove them wrong is to show them that they are bad parents. And the way to prove that they are bad parents is by screwing up your life – by failing wherever possible! So you mess up your future just to prove to them that they were bad parents. It’s a stupid strategy but people do it – either consciously or unconsciously! There are better ways to get attention and to get what you want.
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You Find What You Look For If you made a list of all the things that bug you, you could find thousands! Maybe you don’t like your nose or your teeth or perhaps you don’t like your backside. Probably your parents don’t understand you, your best friend talks too much, your bedroom is too small, you never have enough money and your girlfriend has bad breath. As the list got longer, you would feel more depressed. By adding to this list every day, you could keep yourself depressed for the rest of your life! If you made a list of all the positive things in your life, you could also find thousands! Maybe you would say, “I am reasonably healthy, I’ve got two good ears, good eyes, clothes to wear, I’m getting an education, I’m being fed, I have a bed to sleep in, I have friends, good books to read, a computer, a bicycle, this is an exciting time in history to be alive...” By reading through this list, and adding to it every day, you could stay quite happy for the rest of your life! Your happiness is not about the “facts”, it’s about what you decide to look for. Of course, there are people who say, “Positive thinking makes no difference.” But guess what! These are usually unhappy people. Why would you take notice of them?
In a nutshell Look for reasons to be happy and you will find them. Look for reasons to be unhappy and you will find them. You find what you look for.
Tall and Small Things don’t always have to be “good” or “bad”. Why not just see them as different? Let’s talk about your height, for example: Good things about being tall: • People notice you. • You have a great advantage in basketball and volleyball. • Supermodels are all tall. • You get a better view at the movies and at concerts. • You can reach things in high cupboards!
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Good things about being small: • It’s more comfortable travelling in buses and airplanes. • Clothes and shoes take less room in your suitcase. • Your feet don’t stick out the end of the bed. Good things about being average: • It is easy to get shoes and clothes to fit. • You get a bigger selection of clothes to choose from. • Driving a car is more comfortable – your head is always in the perfect position. One doesn’t have to be better than the other. They are just different. And this is true with most things in your life – whether we’re talking about our family, where we live, what we look like, our life experiences. Don’t think “good or bad”. Think “different”.
In a nutshell Your attitude is more important than the facts!
What Do You Expect? Have you noticed that whenever you leave the house angry, you seem to meet angry people? When you leave school feeling irate, you find other irate people at the bus stop. The reverse is also true. How different the world looks when we fall in love! The world is a mirror – what you feel inside, you find on the outside – which is why you can’t fix life by working on the outside. If people on the street are unfriendly, changing streets doesn’t help! If nobody at school gives you any respect, changing schools won’t fix it. You have to change yourself. The world is a reflection of you and your thoughts. EXAMPLE: Fred is off to a party. He says, “No one will want to talk to me. I know I’ll have a bad time!” He arrives looking miserable. He hides in the corner because he’s convinced it’s not worth the effort. Everyone can see he is having no fun so they don’t talk to him. Fred succeeds in having a lousy time! Then he blames the people at the party!
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EXAMPLE: Jane believes that people are basically friendly. Jane takes a vacation to Spain. What kind of people will she find in Spain? Friendly people! Wherever people are having fun, she’ll find them! Bright and happy people find mostly bright and happy people. People who always have a good time expect to have a good time.
Worry and Fear Do you ever worry about things? Did you ever worry yourself sick about test results? Or maybe you scratched your dad’s car, and you said to yourself, “I’ll never survive this?” But what happened? Did you die? Notice that your fear is never about what is happening now. It is nearly always about what might happen, or what could happen. Your mind is in the future and that causes all the stress. Two things to remember: Firstly, things usually have a way of sorting themselves out. Before now, you’ve worried about lots of different things – but you survived!
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Secondly, how much you worry makes no difference. (You might want to share this information with your parents!) If you want to take some action to fix a problem, wonderful! But sitting around fearing the worst – and telling everyone how worried you are – achieves nothing. Fred says, “Of course I worry. I can’t help what I think!” If you can’t help what you think, Fred, who can? If you’re a worrier, here’s one strategy for controlling worry: Make a worry list. Anything you want to worry about you write on your worry list... e.g. “Will I pass my exams?”, “Does my boyfriend love me?”, “Is my nose too big?”... All go on your list. Now you set yourself a time, say, three o’clock on Saturday, when you will worry about everything on the list. Until then you get on with enjoying your life. Then when three o’clock Saturday rolls around, you’ve got two options a) you can sit down and worry about everything that’s on the list... and you’ll save time because half of the things you were going to worry about will have already happened, or b) you can rip up the list and go to the movies. I’m serious! It’s your mind – and you can reschedule worry. You choose what you think. Who decides what you think about, if not you? One more thing to remember – your mind is not a vacuum. If you want to get worry out, you have to replace it with something. Worries will force their way in unless you do something. You can say affirmations (see chapter 7), say prayers, plan a strategy... The best solution is to take action. Fix the problem. We’ve been conditioned to believe that “responsible people worry, good parents worry”. Responsible people take action – but worry is destructive. It ruins your health and it makes you bad company!
In a nutshell When you take no action, and when you allow your mind to drift from the present into the future, that is when fear will come and grab you by the throat. Mark Twain once said, “I’ve been through some terrible things, some of which actually happened!”
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“I Can’t Help My Emotions!” Have you ever watched a two-year-old playing? He’s crawling around on the coffee table... and suddenly he falls over on his head? What’s the first thing he does? He looks around to see who is watching, and then depending on the audience, he decides on his strategy... “Will I laugh or cry?” There is a split second while he makes a decision. What does this tell us? That when you are two years old, and something goes wrong, you take a moment to decide whether you’ll accept it calmly – or whether you’ll kick and scream . So what about when you are thirteen or thirty? Same deal. You choose your emotions. Your neighbor is rude to you... You lose your wallet.... Your boyfriend dumps you. You make a decision – will I stay happy or will I kick and scream? You decide. Let’s not pretend that emotions happen to us, as if they somehow arrive from outer space. WE CHOOSE OUR EMOTIONS.
We Choose Happiness Some people are mostly happy and some people are never happy. The fact is: we choose happiness in spite of our problems. Have you ever: • had an argument with your girlfriend? • failed a test? • been grounded by your parents? • been sick? • been let down by a friend? Did you ever need money but your parents wouldn’t give you any? Did you ever lose a friend or a relative? Did you ever do all the work and someone else got the credit? These things happen to all of us, right? And when they happen, a lot of people say “This is going to ruin my day/week/year” – and it does.
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But the happiest people say, “Whatever crazy stuff is going on in my life, I’m determined to be happy anyway.” Happiness is an act of will. You achieve it by taking control of your thoughts. It’s your mind. You decide what you think about. I remember waiting for my life to get easier. I thought, “When I have less problems, then I’ll be happy!” Then I noticed something fascinating. The happiest people I knew had more problems than I did! Maybe you have noticed the same thing – that people who seem to be the happiest have usually had the toughest lives. They have lost family members, they have lost money, they have suffered major illnesses – and most likely, they still have big problems! But they are happy because at some point they decided “happy” is the only way to live. Happiness doesn’t just happen to you, like some “accident”. It is something you choose. I was recently chatting on radio in Cleveland, Ohio, with a lady called Rena. Rena said to me, “I just got divorced, I am currently being sued, my house just burned down and now my doctors tell me that my cancer has returned for the third time.” But she said, “You know, amongst all this, I am happy!” Rena was saying, “You don’t find happiness in the absence of problems, you find it in spite of your problems!” You choose it.
In a nutshell You make the choice to be happy first. Happiness is a daily decision.
“Why?” or “What?” How do you deal with disappointment? Maybe you try out for the basketball team and you get cut. You apply for a job and you get over-looked. You get a new bike and it’s stolen within a week, you fall in love with the guy next door and he falls in love with the girl across the street. You might ask questions like... “Why me?” “Why now?”
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“Why do I have so many problems?” “Why did he leave me?” You can go round in circles with “Why?” questions. Very often, the important question is not, “Why?” The important question is, “What?” 1. “What do I learn from this? 2. “What am I going to do about it?” Is life fair? Probably not. But it doesn’t matter “why”! Once you ask, “What do I learn and what am I going to do about it?”, you are on the rebound.
In a nutshell Pretend that every event in your life has a purpose and your disappointments will have a purpose. Every “disaster” in your life is not so much “a disaster” as a situation waiting for you to change your mind about it. We are not here to be punished. We are here to be educated.
Gratitude and Happiness Most of us grow up with feedback that we are not OK. We soon decide that our families, our houses, our cars and our school results are not OK. We dwell on what’s missing. “If only I had some respect at school, if only I had better clothes...” Is it any wonder we find happiness so elusive? Every time we feel thankful for something, we feel better. Every time we say “Thank you”, we are affirming: “I accept what I have and where I am.” Happiness comes from concentrating on what you have, not on what is missing.
In a nutshell If you are serious about being happy, at some stage you’ll need to feel thankfulness. If you say: “When my life gets better, then I’ll be grateful”, you never will be!
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9
Laws of Life Something Can Be Staring You in the Face...
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hen I was ten, my most prized possession was my football. I ate with it, slept with it and I polished it weekly... instead of my shoes. I knew all about football – but on some other things, like where babies came from, I was a little hazy. One afternoon I was playing in the street and I lost my precious ball. I looked everywhere. I figured someone had stolen it. Eventually I spotted a woman who seemed to be hiding it under her jacket. So I marched up and asked her: “What do you think you’re doing with my football stuck up your shirt?” It turned out that she didn’t have my football – but that afternoon I learned where babies come from – and what a woman looks like when she is nine months pregnant. Later that day, I also found my ball. What fascinated me most of all, was why, before the age of ten, I had never noticed a pregnant woman... and why, from then onward, I seemed to be surrounded by them.
In a nutshell We reach points in our lives when we are ready for new information. Until then, something can be staring us in the face but we don’t see it.
Natural Laws If you take an elevator ride to the top of the tallest building in town, then sneak out onto the roof and step off, what will happen? You will experience gravity! What if you don’t believe in gravity? Will you fall? What if you sneak onto the roof at 3.00am and step off? Will you still fall?
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Gravity is a natural law. It doesn’t care whether you believe in it or not. It happens. Natural laws govern the universe and everything in it. These laws control the movement of the planets, the cycles of the tides and the changes of the season. And you don’t have to believe in them. Most people accept that everything in the universe is governed by invisible laws – like gravity, magnetism, electricity. But when it comes to their own lives, and their own successes and failures, they talk of fate, chance and “unlucky breaks”. There are other natural laws and principles that affect your life just as much as gravity. How you use them, determines your success or failure. Just like gravity, they are invisible but you see their effects! Whether you are a bushman in the Kalahari or a computer programmer, the same rules apply. You either can work with them or bash your head against them.
The Law of the Seed Take a look at an apple tree. There might be five hundred apples on the tree, each with ten seeds. You might ask, “Why would you need so many seeds to grow just a few more trees?” Nature has something to teach us here. It’s telling us: “Most seeds never grow. So if you really want to make something happen, you had better try more than once.” This might mean: You’ll attend twenty interviews to get one job. You’ll try on ten pairs of shoes to get a perfect fit. You’ll meet a hundred kids at school to find one special friend. It also means successful people fail more often – they plant more seeds! In addition, the law of the seed says, “You reap your harvest after you do the work.” You dig the soil and water the seed (effort), wait a while
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(patience), and then you pick your beans. Effort + patience = results. Sometimes we forget this principle. We ask, “If I plant beans today, what will I get back tomorrow?” And the answer is, “Wet bean seeds.” The law of the seed says, “You plant today and you harvest... later!” Plant beans now, pick beans in four months. Fred says, “If I enjoyed school, then I would really work hard, but I don’t like it so I don’t work.” Wrong, Fred! You only start to enjoy it AFTER you put in the work. That’s when you start to feel good about it. Effort first, harvest second. It’s a principle. Mary says, “Promote me, and then I’ll quit sleeping on the job.” Frank says, “Pay me more and I’ll stop being sick.” Jane says, “If I had a good relationship, I would be nice to my boyfriend.” Wrong way around. We need the effort first. When we understand the “Law of the Seed”, we don’t get so disappointed. We stop feeling like victims. Laws of nature are not things to take personally. We just need to understand them – and work with them.
The Law of Cause and Effect You never hear anyone saying, “I get up early, I’m exercising my body, I study hard, I’m putting maximum effort into all my work – and nothing good is happening in my life.” If your life is dull and boring, examine how much effort you are putting into it! Your life is an energy system and you know about energy systems from physics. You put energy in, you get something out. You put effort in, you get results. Success always requires effort. Even for those kids in school who seem to get straight A’s without a minute’s study. You can bet that most of them go home and study their brains out! But they like
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to look smart, so they pretend they never do any work. Don’t believe it.
In a nutshell Want better results? Raise your effort.
Waves Life happens in waves. You know about sound waves, light waves, brain waves, microwaves. In nonscientific terms, waves demonstrate that things have a tendency to travel in bunches. This means family crises, invitations to birthday parties, car repair bills and homework assignments also tend to travel in bunches. If you remember this, you don’t get so stressed. You can plan ahead. When you strike a month without bills, you say to yourself, “I’ll put something aside for the next wave.” When you get swamped by the next wave, you say to yourself, “I know about these waves – this is only temporary.”
One Thing Leads to Another Sometimes it seems like other people have all the luck! Let’s say your friends all have great part-time jobs. They make good money. You also need a job to make some money – and the only work you can find is in a car wash. You ask yourself, “Do I want to stand out in the wind and rain, washing cars and making almost nothing?” If washing cars is the only job you can find, go for it! Sometimes we can make the mistake of being too selective. We might reject an opportunity, reasoning: “It’s not quite the job I want.” If it’s all you’ve got for the moment, grab it, master it, and watch it lead you from one thing to another. If you have nothing big going for you, start small. Jump in the water. You progress in life by: a) developing your skills b) being seen by the right people c) demonstrating your commitment.
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If you go work in the car wash, chances are: 1. You’ll get confidence you didn’t have before – and that’s helpful. 2. Someone will notice you, or someone will promote you, or someone will hear that you are washing cars and ask you to work for them, or one day some guy will drive into the car wash and say, “You are so polite, and such a good worker – come and work for me and I’ll pay you twice what you make here.” No experience is wasted. Also, it’s easier to get employed in a second job if you already have some experience in a first job. Start anywhere you can. Give your best shot to whatever is in front of you, and opportunity will begin to find you. It’s called developing a reputation. It’s called “one thing leads to another”.
As You Get Better, The Game Gets Bigger When we succeed at a little game, we get to play in a bigger game... and an even bigger game. When we start school, we begin in Grade One. Next we move up to Grade Two, Three and so on. It’s an effective system, and the principle is, “When you get BETTER, the game gets BIGGER.” Somewhere along the way, people lose track of this concept. Frank is struggling to make his car payments. In twenty years of working, he has saved exactly eighty-seven cents. He says: “If I had a million bucks, I’d know how to take care of it!” Wrong! Your current mission, Frank, is to learn to save ten dollars. Hundreds come before thousands... and you work your way up to the million. Life is a gradual progression. The question is always: “WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH WHAT YOU HAVE?” While the answer is “not much”, nothing gets better.
In a nutshell Life rewards effort, not excuses.
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Everything Is Connected! Have you noticed that whenever you exercise regularly, you feel like eating healthier food? Have you noticed that when you eat healthier food, you have more energy – so you feel like exercising more? Everything in life is connected. The way you think affects the way you feel. The way you feel affects the way you walk. The way you walk affects the way you talk. The way you talk affects the way you think. Effort you put into one part of your life affects all the other parts. When you work a little harder at school, you feel a little happier at home. When you are getting on better at home, you feel happier at school. So what does all this mean? Everything is connected and everything affects everything else. This means: 1. That to improve your life you can start on ANY positive path. You might start with a savings plan, a goal list or a fitness program. That positive path will lead to other positive results because everything is connected. 2. It doesn’t matter WHERE you start to put more effort into your life. It matters THAT you start. 3. It works both ways! If you let one part of your life collapse, everything will begin to spiral downward. This keeps us paying attention!
In a nutshell When you put some effort into one part of your life, you feel better in the other parts. Everything you do matters!
Little Things Count I used to paint portraits for a living. People would ask me, “What is the secret to getting a likeness?” There’s no secret. Getting a painting to look like a person depends on a thousand things. It’s in the eyes and getting the right size, slant, color and
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distance apart. It’s in the angle of the nose. It’s in the shape of the mouth and getting the particular curve of the lips. And there’s the skin tone, the shape and tilt of the head, the expression.... Which makes painting like playing a round of golf – a thousand things matter... To hit just one good shot, you picture it in your mind, you bend your knees, keep your head still, relax your grip, take a smooth swing, forget this morning’s argument with your girlfriend, relax your body, choose the right club, watch the ball. Which makes golfing like managing a restaurant... A thousand things make it work... clean bathrooms, good location, interesting menu, a clean kitchen, friendly staff, quality ingredients. And some weeks it will still lose money! Success at anything is not the result of doing one big thing “right”. It is the sum total of doing hundreds of things as well as you can, consistently and repeatedly. Improvement is the result of getting better at each little thing. Losers hope that a lucky break is someday going to change their lives. Winners know that consistent effort in all the little things, every day, changes your life.
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In a nutshell The secret is... there’s no secret.
Discipline Have the discipline to do little things you don’t like, and you can spend your life doing the big things you do like. Discipline is not everyone’s favourite word. In popularity, it probably slots somewhere between dentist and diarrhea. But self-discipline makes all the difference. Life is a trade-off between instant pleasure and long term reward. Self-discipline in the little things – studying instead of TV – leads to a big thing – better results. Self-discipline in the little things – three sessions a week at the gym – leads to a big thing – a healthier life. Self-discipline in the little things – saving five dollars a day instead of blowing it on junk food – leads to a big thing – your own car. The key to self-discipline is knowing WHY you want something. If you have a target and something to save for, it’s easier to save. If you are clear about why you want to improve your results, it’s easier to study. Something else about discipline: when you are self-disciplined, you don’t need to get discipline from anywhere else. As a result, you run your own life and people don’t tell you what to do. When you don’t have self-discipline, you get it from outside. People who can’t discipline themselves often slot into jobs where they take orders. People who have absolutely no self-discipline, get themselves locked up!
The Frog Principle There is an old story about a frog and a bucket of water. It illustrates the law of deterioration... If you take an intelligent, happy frog and drop him into a bucket of boiling water, what will the frog do? Jump out! Instantly, the frog decides: “This is no fun – I’m gone!” But take the same frog, or a relative, and drop him into a bucket of cold water, put the bucket on the stove and gradually heat up the bucket. What
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then? The frog’s relaxing, and a few minutes later he says to himself: “It seems warm in here.” Soon enough, you have a cooked frog. The moral of the story? When change is gradual, the frog doesn’t notice what is happening until it’s too late. Like the frog, we can also be fooled, and suddenly it’s too late! QUESTION – If you woke tomorrow 40 pounds heavier, would you be worried? Sure you would! You would be calling the hospital: “Emergency! I’m fat!” But when things happen gradually, a pound this month, a pound next month, we tend to let it go. Suddenly you are 40 pounds heavier. When you overspend on your budget by ten dollars in one day, it’s no big deal. But if you do it again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, you end up broke. For people who go broke, put on weight, fail their exams, it usually isn’t one big disaster – it’s a bit today and a bit tomorrow – and then one day “Kaboom!” – and they say: “What happened?” Little things add up to big things – like the drops of water that wear away the rock. The frog principle is telling us to watch the trends. Each day, we ask ourselves: “Where am I heading? Am I fitter, healthier, happier, more prosperous than I was last year?” If not, we need to change what we’re doing.
In a nutshell Here’s the scary thing – there’s no standing still. You’re either gaining or slipping.
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“Say Brad, did I ever tell you ‘bout the time I nearly sprained my ankle?”
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Your Strategy Does Positive Thinking Help?
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magine you are sitting in a jumbo somewhere over Europe, and an engine falls off the wing. How would you want the pilot to react? Would you want your captain saying: “Stay calm and buckle up! This will be bumpy but we’ll find a way home?” Or would you want your captain running up and down the aisle yelling: “We’ll all be killed! We’ll all be killed!”? Which fellow is more likely to get you down safely? Now think about your everyday life in which you are your own pilot. Which approach is most likely to solve your problems: “We’ll find a way”, or “We’ll all be killed?” This is the essence of positive thinking. It doesn’t offer guarantees, but it gives you your best chance. Losers focus on what’s difficult until all they see are problems. Positive thinkers think about what’s possible. In concentrating on the possibilities, they make things happen.
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Watch Your Mouth Fred and Bob are opponents in a boxing match. Fred says, “I’ll try and win,” Bob says, “I will win.” Who would you put your money on? The words we use tell people how serious we are. What do you know about people who say, “I’ll try to be on time”? They are always late. What about people who say, “I’ll try to be there”? They never show up! The word “try” is for losers. It means you are a leaf in the breeze. People of action don’t use wimpy words like “try”. When James Bond spots a supermodel about to fall into a burning volcano, he doesn’t say “I’ll TRY to save you!”
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Substitute the word “will” for “try”. “I will do it”, “I will be there”, “I will pass chemistry”. Another word that we often use dishonestly is “can’t”. Let’s say you haven’t learned to swim yet. Someone asks, “Can you swim?” Better to say, “Not yet!” No doubt you could swim when you take the time. To say “I can’t” suggests the condition is permanent – which is not true. Am I getting too technical? No. The words you use give messages to your subconscious. They tell the story, “Am I in control?” or “Am I out of control?”
Keep Your Promises How often do friends tell you things like: “I’ll help” – and then they don’t; “I’ll call you” – and then they don’t; “I’ll pay you back the money I owe you” – and they forget all about it. How do you feel about friends like that? You lose respect for them. You don’t trust them. If you want other people to respect you, keep your promises. Avoid making commitments you don’t intend to keep. If someone asks you to do something, and you don’t want to do it, say “Not this time – but if I change my mind, I’ll call you.” This strategy keeps you from getting into awkward situations. It makes life simpler and saves you embarrassment. When you are careful about your promises your friends begin to trust you. The bonus is that you begin to believe in yourself. Successful people don’t take themselves too seriously BUT they take their word very seriously.
Get Organized and Throw Out the Junk! Want to feel better about yourself? Clean out your room and get rid of the junk. Really! Psychological tests show that people suffer more stress in cluttered rooms and cluttered offices. In clean spaces we feel more relaxed and energetic.
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Healthy rivers flush themselves out. Trees drop old leaves and fruit. Your body feels better when you clean it out. So does your bedroom. We can learn from nature. Nature keeps what is essential and gets rid of the garbage. It’s called organization. If you want to feel better about your life, your studies, get organised. Clean up your desk, organize your books, your folders. You might say, “My desk is a mess, but it’s an organized mess. I am actually very efficient!” Oh really! How would you feel about being wheeled into an operating theater for brain surgery, to find the medical team standing amongst piles of old needles, bandages, old bottles and hamburger wrappings. The head surgeon says, “Relax, it’s a mess in here but we’re in total control!” Wherever performance counts, there is organization. Firemen always know where to find their helmets, ambulance drivers have one spot for car keys. When you clean up, set small goals. Rather than say, “I’m going to clean the whole room”, aim to do one cupboard. Then tackle another cupboard. Build momentum. The hardest bit is starting.
Ask People! When you were four years old, you were very good at asking. “Mom can I have an ice cream?” “Dad will you buy me a water pistol?” You are probably still very good at asking your parents
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for presents, money, favours or just about anything! But perhaps you forget to ask other people for help. If you have tried your very best to fix your bike, understand your computer software, make the soccer team – and you are really stuck, ask yourself who you know that may be able to help you out. Neighbours, teachers and friends are often delighted to help. But they can’t help you if you don’t ask. People can be very helpful and generous with their time. They will be particularly helpful if they if they can see that you have already made a big effort.
In a nutshell If you don’t ask, you don’t get.
Learn from People You learned to speak by listening to your family and friends. You learned to walk, eat, sing, and do most things, by watching people around you. They were your role models. Guess what! The technique still works. If you want to get better at anything, study other people. Watch confident people walk – and walk how they walk. Listen to confident people talk – and talk how they talk. Find a wealthy person – and save how he saves! If you want to be a good student, a fine athlete, a top musician, find yourself a good role model. Ask questions. Get inside their heads. Learn to think how they think. Of course, in time you’ll develop your own style, but a role model can get you rolling!
Tell People Before They Find Out Imagine that you borrowed Dad’s new car. His last words to you were, “Whatever you do, don’t scratch it!” Within 20 minutes of leaving the garage, you’ve already smashed a headlight and scraped the paint off the driver’s side door.
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When you get home that night, you are hoping Dad is asleep – then you won’t have to tell him. Unfortunately, he is still watching TV. So you say to yourself, “Dad is relaxing now, I won’t bother him. I’ll tell him later.” Soon he switches off the TV. You tell yourself, “I don’t want to spoil his night’s sleep – I’ll tell him in the morning.” When you get up next morning Dad is eating breakfast. You tell yourself, “If I confess now, he’ll get indigestion. I’ll tell him later.” The phone rings. It’s one of Dad’s employees calling about a disaster at work. Dad seems upset by the phone call! You tell yourself, “He’s angry now – I’d better not tell him about the car when he’s angry!” Next thing, Dad walks into the garage, sees his car and storms back into the house. Now he is really mad. Now he wants to kill you. Look what happened here. You postponed the inevitable. Instead of telling Dad up front, you put yourself through an extra 12 hours of stress. When he found out, you got more stress! If you make a mistake, the best time to own up to it is as soon as possible. It minimizes your suffering. People, and even parents, will respect your honesty and courage.
In a nutshell Life works best when we take control of the situation. If you have made a bad mistake, tell people before they find out.
Power If you have ever swung a bat or kicked a goal, you know that sport can be great fun. And what you learn at the ping pong table, on the badminton court, on the ski slopes, you can apply to the rest of your life. For example: Keep your cool. Getting angry never works. Have you ever seen a tennis player get angry? He’s history. What about irate boxers and race car drivers? Dead meat! The same goes for parents and school teachers. Don’t hate your opponent – lift your performance! Hating things and
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people drains your energy, poisons your body and takes your mind off what you are meant to be doing. Live in the present moment. It is possible to think too much. You bowl your best ball, throw your best pitch, shoot your best shot when you forget about the score. The less you worry about winning and about what other people think, the better you perform. Forcing things never works. Real power comes when you are relaxed. Try clubbing a baseball with brute strength! You are most powerful when you are not trying to prove you are powerful! This also applies to relationships. If you think the world is against you, it is. Blaming other people doesn’t work. Once you decide that everything is going wrong – that the umpires, the referees, the wind and the ball are trying to ruin your life, they will. Successful athletes are like any other effective people – they take maximum responsibility. They don’t blame their mothers. Extraordinary performance stems from extraordinary commitment. The casual observer assumes that a Kobi Bryant or a Tiger Woods was simply born with more talent. But all people are born with gifts. A closer look reveals that the stars demand more of themselves than anybody else. In sport and life you must concentrate on what you want. (This is some revision from Chapter 5.) When you think about what you don’t want to happen, e.g. a double fault, a slice into the water hazard, a dropped catch, it happens! Why? Your mind works on pictures. Whenever you tell yourself: “Don’t hit the ball into the net!”, your mind creates a picture of the bad shot. It then goes to work with the only mental picture it has – a picture of a ball in the net. And you make it happen! Fear is a killer, not just in sport, but during a job interview, during a speech, during anything where you want to perform. When you concentrate on what you fear, and create those disaster pictures in your head, you are heading for disaster. Concentrate on what you want.
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In a nutshell Play some sport – not for the trophies you get, but for the lessons you can learn.
When to Quit? Imagine you’ve started learning piano – and already you are thinking: “This is too hard. Maybe I’ll learn the triangle...” Or maybe you’ve begun a physics class and you can’t believe how complicated it is! You ask yourself, “Is it time to quit and look for something easier?” No! The best time to quit is AFTER YOU’VE SUCCEEDED! Why? Because, success is more about persistence than talent. With practice you can probably do most things quite well – maybe not like an expert, but reasonably well. And you don’t know how much fun something is until you can do it reasonably well. Until you can play a dozen songs on your piano, you’ll never know the thrill of making music. Until you have passed a physics class, you don’t know how good it feels. Of course, sometimes you try something and it’s obvious, “This was a really dumb idea!” But otherwise, it’s all about persistence. When you finish whatever you start, two things happen: 1. You consider carefully before starting something, and 2. You develop a success habit. Set a fair target, achieve it, and then decide if you’ll quit. It’s amazing how a little success can change your mind!
Ants We can learn a lot from ANTS! Find an ant that’s going about his business, and put your foot in his way! What will he do? He’ll try getting under it, he’ll try getting over it, he’ll try going through it. How long will he try? Until he dies! Now that’s determination: try until you die!
In a nutshell You are never beaten until you quit.
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Did this ever happen to you? You visit a friend and ask, “What are you doing today?” And they say, “Nothin” And you say, “What did you do yesterday?” And they say, “Nothin” And you say, “Well, what do you plan to do with the rest of your life?” And they say, “Beats me.”
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hat is it like spending time around people like that? Boring! You feel like slapping them around the head – or throwing a bucket of cold water over them. Interesting people are going places. They are excited. If you want to spend your whole life just floating about, you might as well be an ameba. It’s possible to spend your life doing nothing and going nowhere – but you bore yourself and everybody around you to death!
It’s What You Become... Sometimes we pick up the newspaper and read where an accountant has just rowed across the Atlantic in a bathtub, or where a librarian is maybe riding a camel across the United States. We might ask ourselves, “Why not take a plane?” The answer to that is, “If you travel by bathtub (or camel), you arrive a whole different person from the one that left!” Not only do you reach your destination knowing a lot more about stars and rain and navigation – you know a lot more about yourself, and about your own courage and capabilities. Buying a plane ticket doesn’t have the same effect.
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When you set yourself a goal to learn the guitar or compete in a triathlon, when you set a goal to get a degree or a promotion, or to learn French, you arrive at your goal a different person from the one that started. That’s what “goals” are really about – what they make of us in the process of achieving them. That’s why we bother. Your friends don’t always understand this idea! So you may set yourself a goal – maybe a fitness goal or an academic goal or personal goal – and your friends say, “Why bother?” “What are you trying to prove?” They may say, “It’s too hard!” “It takes too much time.” “You might fail!” “It’s easier to stay in bed!” This may all be true. That’s why you’ll feel so good when you reach your goal!
In a nutshell We set goals not for what we GET, but for what we BECOME.
It’s OK to Be Wrong Let’s say you try out for the lead in the school play, and you discover you don’t like acting. That’s terrific. You’ve discovered something more about yourself. Tick it off the list. Now you can say, “Forget Hollywood!” How else would you know but by trying? Imagine you begin a law degree and don’t like it. That’s OK. (I know – I started law and hated it!) How else could you know but by trying? You become happy and prosperous by doing lots of things, making plenty of mistakes, and taking the time to learn from things that didn’t work. In school we learn to fear mistakes. The goal is, “Make as few mistakes as possible and you’ll be at the top of the class.” This works for examinations. It doesn’t work as well for life in general. We learn more from mistakes. When we win, we usually celebrate. Often we get cocky. Blunders and disappointments hurt so much, we go away and think about them. We get serious. When we fail, we go to work. We try harder, we come back stronger. We surprise the competition.
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Einstein failed mathematics at school. Abraham Lincoln had ten different election failures over 30 years before he finally became president. Failure is not an end. Failure is a beginning. The question is, “Does failure make you bitter or does it make you better?”
“People Don’t Encourage Me!” Maybe people don’t encourage you. Maybe people don’t believe in you. It happens to the best of us! The most popular singer in history... In 1954 Elvis Presley gave one performance at the Grand Ole Opry – and then was fired by the manager, Jimmy Denny. Denny told Presley, “You ain’t goin’ nowhere, son. Go back to drivin’ a truck.” What if Elvis had said, “I quit”?
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The greatest basketball player in history... Michael Jordan was cut from his high school varsity basketball team. You probably know the rest.
What if... Perhaps you had the idea that great students, top actors, famous singers and top athletes succeed because they are lucky. Wrong! They make it because they want it more than anybody else. I’ll repeat that – They succeed because they want it more than anybody else.
In a nutshell Luck is never enough.
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“But Circumstances Are Against Me!” In 2001, Oprah Winfrey was crowned by Forbes Magazine as the world’s highest paid entertainer. But she didn’t start out that way! She was born to teenage parents in extreme poverty. As a child she was sexually abused by male relatives. She spent her teens in and out of trouble. At 14 she gave birth to a premature baby who died soon after. She used drugs. For much of her life she has been overweight. Her first job at nineteen was with a little radio station in Nashville. With study, hard work and belief in herself, she became an international phenomenon. She heads a huge corporation, she owns her own studio and directs movies. She won an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress in “The Color Purple”. She also makes enormous contributions to charities in time, effort and money. She is one of the world’s most powerful people – and she has also had the courage to tell her story. There is a pattern amongst people who achieve their dreams. They often start from a long way behind. You find sickly asthmatics who became champion athletes, you find multi-millionaires who began with nothing. You find a thousand stories of illiterate immigrants who became college professors and company presidents.
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When the odds are stacked against you, you develop a mental toughness. If you’ve had it tough until now, you have an advantage! The strength you developed just to survive is your secret weapon.
“If It Doesn’t Kill You...” The American cyclist Lance Armstrong competed at the 2000 Olympics with a broken neck. Armstrong had a head-on collision with a car a month earlier, suffering severe bruising and fracturing his C7 vertebrae. But that didn’t stop Armstrong. He came to Sydney and won a bronze medal in the time trial. Lance has a habit of proving that old saying: “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” In 1997 he contracted testicular cancer. When it spread to his abdomen, lungs and brain, doctors gave him a forty percent chance of survival. But Armstrong did more than survive. He got back on his bike and won the world’s toughest road race – the Tour de France – three times in row, in 1999, 2000 and 2001. South African Terrence Parkin won silver in the 200 meter breast stroke at the Sydney Olympics. Parkin is totally deaf. He can’t hear the starting gun and can’t hear the crowd cheering! These are just two examples of a common theme. Every top athlete deals with illness, injury and massive disappointment. I get inspired by people like Lance Armstrong. It reminds me of what we can do when we are really serious! And I tell myself, “If this guy can cycle 1000 kilometers a week, I can run ten!”
In a nutshell No one gets anything that easy. There’s always a story behind the story.
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The Law of Progress Let’s say you have a goal – any goal. Maybe you are saving for a bike. Or perhaps you want to get fit or improve your school results. (Now take a look at the graph.)
Do you think your progress would follow the path of the wavy line or the straight line? You can bet it’s the wavy line. Any progress consists of ups and downs. Watch a tree grow. It grows some leaves and along comes a storm and blows some away. It grows more leaves and along comes a storm and blows some away. Watch the stock markets or the tides at the beach. There are ups and downs. You’ll have ups and downs. But keep up your effort and you’ll get to where you’re going. Quitters don’t understand this. They figure that progress should all be one way – up. As soon as they start to slide a little, they think the game is over, and they give up. Understand the progress principle and etch it in your mind. It might change your life.
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The Bonus of Setting Goals Let’s say you love rock music. So you and a few friends decide to start a little rock band. Here’s the interesting thing: your goal might be to make music, but you’ll learn about more than making music: • You’ll probably need to buy equipment – so you might learn about earning money and saving money – and maybe about paying off a loan. • You’ll learn something about organising people – so that your practice sessions happen. • You will learn about hard work as you strive to refine your sound. • You will likely learn something about electronics. • In promoting your band, you will learn some things about marketing. When you begin to charge for your performances, you will learn about business. Your goal was making music, but look where it took you! How often does this happen... someone starts learning a language, say Japanese. As they progress, they become fascinated by the culture. They take a trip to Japan. Before long, they are living in Tokyo or working for a Japanese company – or married to a Japanese person. The goal was to learn Japanese and in the end it changed their life. Whenever you set out to achieve a goal, whether it’s building a website, breeding canaries or saving a thousand dollars, it takes you places and gets you into things you never dreamed of. That is why we set ourselves goals – to make our life interesting.
Take the Plunge! Has this ever happened to you? It’s Saturday morning and your whole day is planned. You and your friends are heading for the mall, then a movie, then dinner and then a party! As you are leaving the house, you discover your mother between you and the front door – “When are you going to clean your bedroom?” And you say, “Tomorrow.” And she says, “You said that last week.” She looks angry – “Get back upstairs. You don’t leave this house until you
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tidy your room!” Back upstairs, you fight your way into the bedroom amid pizza cartons, dirty socks, empty coke cans, school books, newspapers, nose drops, coffee cups, old tissues, magazines, CDs, sweaty gym shorts, batteries, rollerblades, handkerchiefs, a dozen dirty T-shirts... The usual stuff. You think, “This has to be the worst job in the world!” Silently cursing, you start stacking magazines and CDs, putting dirty clothes in the basket, pencils and erasers into the drawer, pizza cartons into the bin. You even wipe the chocolate caramel off the PC. Things are looking better. Suddenly you have a vision... “I could have a tidy bedroom.” You feel a surge in your chest and you begin to plan: “I’ll reorganize my shelves, label my videos, I’ll have a special jar for ball-points. I’ll even empty my waste basket every week!” Now you’re on a mission. You’re creating the world’s cleanest bedroom! You vacuum the floor and even make the bed! You would hate to admit it, but you are almost enjoying yourself! This is the bedroom cleaning principle, and it applies to writing essays, digging ditches, going to the gym, washing the car. You only get excited about doing things after you start. You take the plunge, and then you feel the energy and excitement. We sometimes make the mistake of saying: “When I get the energy, I’ll begin jogging every morning!” No! You start first. “When I feel more enthusiastic, I’ll do my homework.” Wrong.
In a nutshell You get the energy and the enthusiasm for the job after you begin. You get the energy as a result of your involvement. The secret is to make a start.
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Money If you want to get fit, you need a plan – you have to run and work out every day. If you want good grades you need a plan – you need to do some study every day. If you want money you need a plan – you need to save a little every day. You don’t save money by accident. You need a goal and you need a strategy. To accumulate money for the things you want in life, remember this: Save first, and spend what’s left. Poor people do the opposite. Poor people spend first and save what’s left – which is usually nothing!
Quentin Kenihan Twelve years ago in a restaurant in Adelaide, Australia, I met thirteen yearold Quentin Kenihan. He was confined to a wheelchair and his tiny body was the size of a three-year-old. His father Geoff told me, “Quentin suffers from a rare bone disease, osteogenesis-imperfecta. His body is so fragile that he has had 300 broken bones since birth. He has spent half his life in hospital.” Geoff said, “We had steel rods put in his legs to try and help him walk. But his muscles are too weak to support him.” I remember wondering, “What is this kid going to do with his life?” Now 26, Quentin would still be three feet tall – but he is unable to stand. In the last 12 years he has broken 328 more bones – about every bone in his body except his neck. He gets more pain in a week than most people get in a lifetime. He was also run over by a car in 1999.
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But that hasn’t stopped Quentin. He is currently studying for a degree in film making at Flinders University. He says, “I know what I want to achieve. I may never get there but the journey sure is fun!” His last job was in marketing and now Quentin has his own media production company. He has already made television commercials, two short films and two documentaries. He has written scripts for other films. He now lives by himself. He needs help to get out of bed, he needs help to wash and dress himself. His family and a lot of caring people support him. They support him because he has guts, a great sense of humor and a huge fighting spirit. People help Quentin because he helps himself. My wife, Julie, spoke to Quentin last week. He was back in hospital with a fracture in his back. Five days later he flew to L.A. to film the Oscars. What a guy!
In a nutshell Says Quentin, “The more time you sit around the house and bitch about “why not”, the less time you spend going out and doing it.”
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Why Not You?
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hen I was a kid, we used to visit family friends, the Zerners. They always had Coca-Cola in their refrigerator. (Mom said it was because they were rich. At home, we drank water.) So I figured once you had Coke at your house, you had really “made it”. Then one day we got some Coke in our refrigerator. Only then did I realize Coca-Cola didn’t make you a superstar. For a while it seemed to me people who wore suits had really “made it”. Dad only wore suits to funerals, and I figured that didn’t count. Then gradually it dawned on me that wearing a suit didn’t make you a genius. When I was twelve, I wanted to be Prime Minister of Australia. “Prime Ministers would know it all!” I changed my mind about that one. Until I started writing books, I thought authors must have all the information. Maybe, at times, you have thought the same – that there are people who are “born” to be happy or successful. There aren’t. Successful people aren’t superhuman. They have one brain, twenty-four hours in the day, and usually, two arms and legs.
In a nutshell Nobody is born with special permission to be happy – or successful. God doesn’t come down from a cloud and say: “Now is your time!” He doesn’t say: “You can”, or “You can’t.” YOU DO!
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Every Day Counts As kids, most of us heard the story of the tortoise and the hare. We heard how the tortoise and the hare had a race. The hare took off at great speed. Before long he was within sight of the finishing line, and being so far ahead, he decided to take a nap. The tortoise continued slowly and steadily toward his goal. When the hare finally woke up, he couldn’t believe his eyes. There was the tortoise crossing the line! There is a reason why this story has been told a million times – and why it is still being told. It’s your story. Whatever you want to achieve, steady effort is the best way to get there. If you are learning French, if you are saving for a bike, if you are practising your free throws or struggling to pass chemistry, if you want to be a cross-country champion, if you want to get to Harvard or if you want to be happy, it’s regular, daily, unspectacular effort that will get you there. Life is a building process. Every day counts.
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Books by Andrew Matthews “FOLLOW YOUR HEART” The international #1 bestseller. This book is about: • doing what you love • dealing with bills and disasters • discovering your own power • finding peace of mind It’s also about: • how HAPPY people think • why rich people make money, even by accident • what losers do and how not to be like them. ISBN: 0-646-31066-6
“BEING HAPPY!” Over 1 million copies sold in 50 countries in 18 languages. It’s about: • understanding yourself • forgiving yourself • being able to laugh at yourself • why some people always seem to be in the right place at the right time – and how you can be one of them. It’s about BEING HAPPY! ISBN: 981-00-0664-0
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“MAKING FRIENDS” Andrew’s best selling book about: • relationships • dealing with anger • being able to say “No” • enjoying people. Used in corporations and schools around the world. ISBN: 981-00-1953-X
“HAPPINESS IN A NUTSHELL” The hugely popular pocket book of Andrew Matthews’ favourite sayings. ISBN: 0-9577572-6-3
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READERS’ COMMENTS “Writing a book on teenagers for teenagers is a challenging task. In his book, Andrew identified their problems and tackled them with humour. He offered positive and practical solutions. I am very happy that the book is now accessible to Thai readers.” ABHISIT VEJJAJIVA Member of Parliament, Democrat Party, THAILAND I absolutely loved “BEING A HAPPY TEEN”. So simple and clear – I have taken away ideas that I constantly use in my everyday life. CRAIG BAUM New Orleans, USA “Your books have changed my life. I am happier and a much better person. Thank you.” RONALD MERVIN SISON Manila, The Philippines “Andrew Matthews makes simple what used to be complicated.” KEN BLANCHARD, Ph.D, Co-author of “The One Minute Manager” “A lot of people tried to help me but it seemed nothing could help – then my sister gave me your book. It is great how you explain everything with simple examples. It really helped me. THANK YOU!” ASHLEIGH JONES, 14 Woollongong, AUSTRALIA
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READERS’ COMMENTS “BEING A HAPPY TEEN is vital for every child growing up in today’s rapidly changing world. Its infinite wisdom is more valuable to a child than knowledge learnt from a textbook.” CAT RIGBY Port Douglas, Australia
“Your book is really for teenagers in a modern world.” PURINET BUASAP, 16 Bangkok, Thailand
“Andrew Matthews’ ability to connect with young people is quite extraordinary!” WAYNE JOHNSON, Principal, Grant High School, Australia
“I am a year 7 teacher and I have been using Andrew Matthews’ book, BEING A HAPPY TEEN in my class for the last 3 years. This book is like a bible for teenagers. It conveys such positive, easy to understand messages about making friends, tackling challenges, saying “no” to drugs, dealing with problems at home... This stuff is the real stuff. What is more important, the teenagers enjoy it. My class spends a year going through the book from cover to cover. MATT JOLLY Queensland, Australia
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About Andrew Matthews Andrew Matthews speaks to corporations worldwide on happiness and attitude. His books, including Follow Your Heart, Happiness Now, Happiness in a Nutshell and Being a Happy Teen are published in 35 different languages. To see more of Andrew’s books and cartoons visit
www.andrewmatthews.com
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