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Your mind has the power to make a big difference in your life. Your imagination has the ability to shape your success. You can use your imagination or let your imagination use you. I come across a lot of people who imagine all kinds of terrible things about themselves - things which are usually not even true. Somehow their imagination has run riot over their self-esteem. They quite often imagine that they are no good for anything or that everything they try is doomed to fail before they begin. This is all rubbish of course it’s just that there mind has made it all up.

Don’t let your imagination do this to you, instead use that power for your own good. Instead of letting your imagination do whatever it wants take control of it and point it in directions where it can help you.

Another word here might be creative, get creative with your mind about the situations you face. When a problem comes along get your creative side working on a solution. When you have an opportunity let your creative side go on planning how you can make the most of the situation.

Your will is so often controlled by what your brain is imagining. Don’t let your imagination bring you down instead force it to help you.

One of the most sought after commodities in anyones life is peace. There is even a children’s book written about a mum who can’t find five minutes peace. The great news is that peace is a free commodity - it won’t cost you a penny to buy. However, the bad news is that this is not something you can simply buy, there is no shop where you can go in and say, “I’ll take five minutes peace please”.

You will find plenty of charlatans who will try to persuade you that they can sell you peace - but they are wrong. Peace is not something you can buy and you can’t get it just by following a new exercise regime or purchasing the latest book about it.

The truth is that peace is something you only get by working at it.

To get peace you need to give yourself a gift of some time

If you want more peace in your life then you need to take some time to get it. Now I know that is is possible to have inner peace even when things seem to be like bedlam all around you but you can’t get that without first of all learning how to do it. So you will need to give yourself some time. I suggest finding at least 15 minutes every day for this. Put it in your diary now.

To have peace you need to be filled with peaceful thoughts

If your mind is full of frantic and desperate thoughts then you will never find peace. You can go to the most wonderful place in the world but if your mind is full of activity then you will not find peace there. The only way to find peace is to put peaceful thoughts into your mind.

You can do this in many different ways. You can use words that are peaceful to help you think in a peaceful calm kind of way - try words like: calm, clear, still, rest, etc. Or you could think about peaceful places you have been to. Or you could make use of a relaxation exercise. Or you could go to someone very peaceful and let yourself indulge in the peace.

Whatever you do you need to get some peaceful thoughts into your mind.

Another way

I hope you will indulge me for just a moment because I want to share a way that I have found peace - a deeper peace than I could have found otherwise. Please don’t think I’ve gone all nutty and religious on you here but I just wouldn’t feel comfortable keeping this to myself when you are searching for peace.

I find that God provides me with a deep inner peace. As a Christian it gives me great comfort and peace to know that God loves me. I still need to think those peaceful thoughts (there is a lot of good stuff in the Bible if you want some extra help on this - if you are not sure where to start then try Psalm 23) but without my faith I don’t get the kind of peace I can get otherwise.

In studies this simple truth has been shown time and again. People with a faith tend to be less stressed than those without. You make your own mind up but I’m happy I have what I do.

Do you want to be successful? Are you successful now? What are you doing to make yourself more successful? It can take quite a long time for a plan to come together and during that time you need to be persistant. However if you keep doing the same thing over and over again then you will only ever get the same results. If you want something different to happen in your life then you need to do something different.

This is such a simple, yet important, rule that you ought to commit this one to memory.

Let’s say you want to be more successful in life. Well you will only get to be more successful if you do something different.

Let’s say you want a better relationship with someone else. If you always treat that person the same then you will always get the same kind of relationship.

Let’s say you want to get fitter. If you only ever take the same exercise that you always take then you will stay at the same level of fitness.

Let’s say you want to lose weight. If you always eat the same kinds of food that you do now then you will always be the same weight (or greater).

Let’s say you want to win a race. If you do the same things that you do now in a race then you will continue to come in the same position.

People who don’t get this basic rule tend to talk a lot about luck. They will say that they will win or be more successful if they can get lucky. They look at others and comment on how lucky those people are to be successful. Luck has nothing to do with it - they are doing something different.

So when you know what you want to do make sure you have a plan to do it and if that plan does not work then change it. If your new plan is less successful you can always return to the first or try another way again. But if you always do the same thing you will always get the same result.

Within the Christian faith there are no set ways of praying. Jesus never gave us a specific formula to use or a structure to stick to. Even when Jesus taught his disciples the Lord’s Prayer (Luke 11) he was only giving them something to say when they pray and it was never intended to be the last word on prayer. This means that Christians have great freedom in the way they meditate or pray. In effect we can do what we like as long as we do it in the right frame of mind and heart.

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This time of year exercising can be extra hard. The mornings and evenings are dark and it’s cold outside. It’s a lot easier to be lazy. This is just the time of year then that we all need a little extra boost in our motivation. I got mine this weekend when I went for a walk in the countryside.

The benefits of countryside walking have been known for a long time. Just today I heard about a report that said people with dogs tend to be fitter and less stressed than those without them. Having a dog forces you to get the exercise that helps make you fitter and lower stress.

But you don’t need a dog to get exercise.

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I once read somewhere that we should never tell someone that they have failed at it. I don’t agree. It seems to me we need to wake up to the fact that sometimes we fail. But failing is not the problem, the problem is how we view that failure.

If you listen to Simon Cowell on the X-factor you will often hear him saying things that sound at face value to be nasty. He will point out what is wrong with a performance when others seem incapable of saying anything negative. Now I’m in favour of being positive but if someone is doing something wrong then they need to hear about what they are doing wrong.

When you understand this simple truth you can start turning a loss into a gain.

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All of us have some idea of what we think we are capable of. It could be that we think we are not good at running or that we are not good at selling. Maybe we believe that we are ok at some things but rubbish at others. Most of what we believe is based on what others have told us and just a little on life experience.

The bad news is that these beliefs can stop us succeeding but the good news is that we don’t have to settle for thinking this way. There is a way to start to think differently and here it is …

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I guess everyone would like to be more healthy. Even those of us who like to over indulge in fatty foods and sugars. We would all like to be more healthy but sometimes it seems to me that the only way to we are encouraged to become healthy  is to take the extreme route perhaps eating uncooked fruit and drinking filtered water. I have nothing against such an extreme view but it is not the way I want to live. I enjoy a good cooked breakfast and the occasional beefburger and I need a way to be healthy and still enjoy these better things of life.

Here is my suggested three stages to getting a healthier life…

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This is just the poem to read if you are struggling with your new vision. Keep going and learn that the best things in life are hard won. I’m intending to do a series of posts based on this poem over the next few weeks so please check back regularly to see where things are going. It was written for a son so it talks about becomming a man but it applies to you whatever your gender. It is really about growing into maturity.

The poem follows …

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Perhaps the biggest question any of us has to face is the about the existence of the soul. Is there something about us that lives on after death? Is there something in us that is not just physical but which can reach out to something beyond the physical.

Some scientists want us to believe that the only thing that is real is the physical world. If you can’t poke it with a stick then it doesn’t exist. Of course they go further than wanting to poke things with a stick but this is the essence of the argument. Then others seem to think that the physical is just an illusion. Who is right?

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